Edited by two preeminent scholars, this book provides coverage of the policy issues related to the increasingly diverse treatments, practices, and applications of psychedelics. Hallucinogenic substances like LSD, mescaline, peyote, MDMA, and ayahuasca have a reputation as harmful substances that are enjoyed only by recreational users committing criminal acts. But leading international researchers and scholars who contributed to this book hold that the use of psychedelic substances for health, religious, intellectual, and artistic purposes is a Constitutional right-and a human right. Based on that conclusion, these scholars focus on policy issues that regulate the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, religion, personal life, and higher education, arguing that existing regulations should match current and anticipated future uses. This volume has two parts. The first surveys research on the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, religion, and truth-seeking, following these topics through history and contemporary practice. The second section treats government policices that regulate the psychological, physiological, biochemical, and spiritual aspects of research and experience in these fields. The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire: Health, Law, Freedom, and Society challenges medical and legal policy experts, ethicists, scientists, and scholars with the question: How can we formulate policies that reduce the dangers of psychedelics' misuse and at the same time maximize the emerging diverse benefits? Covers history, law, social use, intellectual and sacramental practice, and current medical research, bringing the debate about psychedelic drugs up to date for the 21st century Summarizes evidence regarding the positive therapeutic effects of psychoactive drugs to show why regulations need to be changed Encompasses the work of the leading international researchers in the field Includes personal observations, vignettes, and narratives

Since the advent of the space age, a primary constraint on military, commercial, and civil space missions has been the cost of launch. Launching objects into space requires substantial investments in launch systems and infrastructure, which has restricted the market to only a handful of national governments and several large private companies. This study explores the possibility of a space industry significantly less constrained by the cost of access to space.

An exploration of "mind design" technologies and practices--mindapps--that boost intellectual capacity and enable new ways of thought and action Just as we can write and install apps in our electronic devices, we can construct "mindapps" and install them in our brain-mind complex, and as just as digital apps add capabilities to our devices, mindapps can expand our mental powers and creative abilities, allowing us to intentionally redesign our minds. Using psychedelics as the prime example, Thomas B. Roberts explores the many different kinds of mindapps, including mediation, other psychoactive plants and chemicals, sensory overload and deprivation, biofeedback and neurofeedback, hypnosis and suggestion, sleep and lucid dreaming, creative imagery, transcranial brain stimulation and optical brain stimulation, rites of passage, martial arts and exercise routines, yoga, breathing techniques, and contemplative prayer. He also looks at the future of mindapps, the potential for new mindapps yet to be invented, and how installing multiple mindapps can produce new, yet to be explored mind states. Drawing on decades of research, he shows how psychedelics in particular are "ideagens"--powerful tools for generating new ideas and new ways of thinking. Uniting the many forms of mindapps into one overall Multistate Mind Theory, Roberts examines the singlestate fallacy--the myth that useful thinking only occurs in our ordinary awake mental state--and demonstrates the many mind-body states we are capable of. He shows how mindapps not only allow us to design and redesign our own minds but also offer benefits for artistic performance, mystical and spiritual experience, and scientific research by improving creativity, open-mindedness, problem solving, and inner-brain connections. Reformulating how we think about the human mind, Mindapps unveils the new multistate landscape of the mind and how we can each enter the world of mind design.

This is a different kind of book about psychedelics. Rather than describing psychedelic experiences, it presents four future-oriented ideas 'coming over the psychedelic horizon', which illustrate the potential benefits of psychedelics for humanity: Stanislav Grof's view of our minds as a way to understand works of art (looking at Disney's "Snow White"); the evidence that psychedelic-occasioned mystical experiences can boost our immune systems; psychedelics as a way of adding new cognitive programmes to our thinking skills; and, applying the ideas from Part 3 to learning.