Daniel Ingram on improving western medicine's understanding of spiritual / emergent experiences

Daniel Ingram is a retired MD who lives in Alabama, and is famous in meditation circles as the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. First published in 2008, it’s a very good book on Buddhist ideas and practices, clear, logical, unsentimental and unpretentious. And it’s an intriguing book because it basically says ‘here are some instructions for achieving awakening, and by the way I have achieved awakening’. The book’s subtitle is ‘An unusually hardcore dharma book, by the Arahant Daniel Ingram’. Arahant is a Pali term meaning ‘a being who has reached a state of perfection and enlightenment’. Normally that would set alarm bells ringing. It’s pretty arrogant to call yourself an arahant – is this person delusional, manic, a wannabe cult-leader? It’s good to be sceptical of extraordinary claims, and while I can’t say for sure if Daniel is or isn’t awakened (not being awakened myself) he doesn’t seem obviously power-mad, sex-mad, money-mad or mad-mad. He funds his own charitable organisation (so he gives money away) and gives his book away for free, in contrast to every other contemporary spiritual teacher I know.

Daniel doesn’t consider himself a Buddhist, and appears to prefer a networked, pluralist, scientific and data-driven approach to what he calls ‘emergent phenomena’. In support of that approach, he has founded the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (EPRC), a network of researchers and practitioners in turn supported by the 501c charity Emergence Benefactors.

The EPRC is a network of researchers and practitioners interested in things like unusual meditation experiences, kundalini awakenings, difficult trips and extended post-psychedelic challenges, spiritual emergencies, and so on.

The charity that Daniel set up, Emergence Benefactors, supports our work at the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project. You can find the EPRC at www.theeprc.org. If you like the sound of them and you're well-off - they're looking for funding for their important work.

What follows is an interview with Daniel, where we talk both about the challenging experiences people can have, and the possibility of ‘awakening’.

Видео Daniel Ingram on improving western medicine's understanding of spiritual / emergent experiences канала Jules Evans