Magic vs. spirituality... what if we don't need to pick a side?
This week's show is with Dr. Daniel M. Ingram. Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH, is a retired emergency medicine physician who works to improve the global relationship of science, clinical practice, mental health and the public to the phenomena that might be referred to as spiritual, meditative, energetic, mystical, psychedelic, magical, and related phenomena. To those ends, he is currently the founder, philanthropic supporter, and volunteer CEO and Board Chair of the Emergence Benefactors registered charity, and chief organizer and co-founder of the global Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium.
He is currently involved in neurophenomenological research of advanced meditative states with colleagues at Harvard and has been a participant in numerous fMRI and EEG studies of advanced meditators, including at Harvard, Yale, U Mass, and Vanderbilt. He has published scientific articles in Pediatrics, Child Abuse and Neglect, and the Journal of Medical Toxicology. He is the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, co-author of The Fire Kasina, and co-founder of the Dharma Overground. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Esquire, Vice, Wired, BBC Radio 4, Evolving Dharma, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, Dan Harris’ 10% Happier Podcast, Slate Star Codex Blog, Buddha at the Gas Pump, Meaning of Life TV, Deconstructing Yourself, Spiritual Explained website, Guru Viking, Buddhist Geeks, Cosmic Tortoise, Startup Geometry, Imperfect Buddha Podcast, and many others.
In this conversation, Daniel and I explored the topic of where magic and spirituality meet, how they can seem at odds, even though magical phenomena are found in many mystical traditions, how Daniel found his way to a life and work in which they belong together, and how he sees they have an important role in understanding and working to improve mental health.
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What you’ll learn from this episode:
Daniel’s story illustrates how in many spiritual traditions, magical effects are considered almost a distraction and not something to focus on, whereas his path took him into the conscious practice of magick too - Daniel discovered Kasina and elemental practices from the ancient Buddhist texts could actually be a powerful aid in his ceremonial magic practice, showing that meditative traditions and magick can happily co-exist
I love what Daniel said… “There is a there, there - if you get your concentration and intention right.” (very overly simplistically paraphrased!)
We spoke about the seeming dichotomy between the rational, scientific worldview and the magical worldview - which just like magic and spirituality, doesn’t have to be choice between one or the other.
I love what Daniel said about there being no other culture in the history of the world that has this completely non-spiritual take on mental health, in the way we do in this modern culture. For this to change we probably need to create the choice and research to compare mainstream frameworks and approaches vs spiritual ones.
Resources and stuff that we spoke about:
If you want to focus on my scientific work related to spirituality and the organization I help support:
If you want to focus on my work related to meditation practice and its effects:
For Books:
Fire Kasina: The Fire Kasina Meditation Site for books and more on meditation
Daniels Personal Website: Integrated Daniel
Daniels Online Community: The Dharma Overground
Thank you for listening!
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan