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https://open.substack.com/pub/rupertsheldrake/p/psychedelic-experiences-what-insights

This is a talk I gave recently to the Drug Science and Bioscience Societies at the University of York.

I first became interested in psychedelics when I was at school in the 1950s and a young doctor friend was involved in some of the early research on the effects of LSD. When I was 17, before going to Cambridge, I worked in a pharmacology research lab on the effects of LSD and mescaline on chicks. However, it was not until 1970, when I was 28, that I experienced the mind-opening effects of LSD for myself.

In the 1980s, I became friends with Terence McKenna, an expert on the shamanic use of psychedelics, and Ralph Abraham, a chaos mathematician at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We had many discussions about the effects of these substances, including their influence on the growth of computer graphics. I also attended a series of conferences on psychedelics at the Esalen Institute in California and have been in continual contact with recent researchers on the subject.

In this talk, I discuss the nature of psychedelic visions, their possible relationship to dreams and near-death experiences, and the ‘entities’ that many people encounter through them, including machine elves and angels. I look at the cultural history of their use, the emergence of new psychedelic religions such as Santo Daime in Brazil, and suggest that the current psychedelic renaissance is part of a major cultural shift—away from materialism towards a more interconnected worldview.

A talk delivered to the Conference of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality, University of Northampton, UK in June 2025.

The INSS is a unique international network for people interested in bringing the study of spirituality to life through research, scholarship, education and practice.

https://spiritualitystudiesnetwork.wildapricot.org/conference-2025

In this talk, Rupert Sheldrake explores panentheism—the idea that the divine is not separate from the world but present throughout it, while also transcending it. With the grip of mechanistic materialism loosening, Rupert invites us to reconsider how we see nature, mind, and spirit. Tracing a broad arc from ancient philosophies and Christian mysticism to AI-generated worldviews, panpsychism, and psychedelics, he reflects on how the sacred presence in nature—-long affirmed by spiritual traditions-—is re-emerging through science, experience, and renewed practices of attention.

Recorded at St James Church, Piccadilly, a longstanding hub for open spiritual inquiry and progressive theology in the heart of London.

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