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Thank you @lobster … this is right up my street, I will definitely buy a copy of the new book when it appears, or sometime soon afterwards. I see that A World Appears is going to be out on the 24th of February, but the initial copies are hideously expensive, 28.99 euros for the paperback if you preorder so I might wait until it comes down to the usual 12 euros.
Very interesting that he considers this new book on consciousness to be present in seed form in the earlier book on psychedelics — it seems to be clear that the psychedelics do illuminate the workings of consciousness to a certain extent. I’m very curious to see what Pollan has to say about consciousness, I have a lot of respect for his journalistic capabilities.
Loved the interview as well, @person, the bit where Pollan says “scientists in print are very clear and definitive, but in person they are a lot more diffident, saying things like, it was a limited study, or, this is what we know now.” Some nice nuggets in there.
A new Michael Pollan book is a treat.
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JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
One thing I found very interesting about the interview were Pollan’s comments about how psychedelics and meditation support each other. He said parts of a recent psychedelic vision only became clear in meditation, he was talking about being bumped into by two blimps, one of which was labelled ‘fear’, and that in meditation it became clear to him that this was the fear of losing his loved ones.
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JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
just catching up with this thread now. very interesting and informative and on the back of it I think I will order new book by Michael Pollan, it sounds very interesting. Thank you @Jeroen and to all contributors to this thread. 🙏🏻
1
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
The Guardian published an article in it’s Long Read series with an extract of Michael Pollan’s new book on consciousness, for those of you who are interested in getting a taste. It seems to contain a lot of material on the mind, as well.
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
One other thing I feel I should add to this thread is the influence that Terence McKenna had on my starting to learn about the plant medicine path. I first came across him on YouTube, where there are many lectures by him, and a community of avid fans. Terence was a very erudite man who could talk for hours at the drop of a hat, and he was trained as an ethnobotanist, someone who goes out to indigenous populations around the world to find out what plants they use and what is important about these plants.
So Terence specialised in psychedelic plants, and had wide knowledge and experience of them which he liked to share lecturing to select groups at places like Esalen. He had a talent for funny and interesting turns of phrase, but stayed pretty humble. He was the psychedelic prophet of the 1990’s, and died of an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2000 at the age of 53.
Terence for me was the gateway into a different way of thinking about psychedelic use, that it was something with a long heritage in human history and should be respected, not vilified. The war on drugs actually makes no sense when you think of it; whoever thought a plant might be illegal? But in fact long propaganda by world governments showing shocking images of ‘your brain on LSD’ (which later turned out to be completely fabricated and unsupported by science) has instilled a fear of psychedelics in much of the population.
As far as I have been able to tell, plants have been doing mankind a favour by providing these substances. Psychedelics reduce activity in something called the ‘default mode network’ in the brain, which seems to be responsible for creating a coherent internal narrative central to a sense of self, which may be why psychedelics sometimes cause ego death experiences.
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JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
A Terence McKenna talk which I liked…
0
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
One of the things Terence noted about psychedelics is that they break down control structures in the mind, such as the consumer/worker paradigm which keeps most people trapped in the pattern of capitalist society. By listening to Terence talk about his experiences with ‘the mushroom’ you get carried away in his visionary experience, it’s the closest thing to actually taking some.
Comments
Thank you @lobster … this is right up my street, I will definitely buy a copy of the new book when it appears, or sometime soon afterwards. I see that A World Appears is going to be out on the 24th of February, but the initial copies are hideously expensive, 28.99 euros for the paperback if you preorder so I might wait until it comes down to the usual 12 euros.
Very interesting that he considers this new book on consciousness to be present in seed form in the earlier book on psychedelics — it seems to be clear that the psychedelics do illuminate the workings of consciousness to a certain extent. I’m very curious to see what Pollan has to say about consciousness, I have a lot of respect for his journalistic capabilities.
Loved the interview as well, @person, the bit where Pollan says “scientists in print are very clear and definitive, but in person they are a lot more diffident, saying things like, it was a limited study, or, this is what we know now.” Some nice nuggets in there.
A new Michael Pollan book is a treat.
One thing I found very interesting about the interview were Pollan’s comments about how psychedelics and meditation support each other. He said parts of a recent psychedelic vision only became clear in meditation, he was talking about being bumped into by two blimps, one of which was labelled ‘fear’, and that in meditation it became clear to him that this was the fear of losing his loved ones.
The book review of the new book…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/16/a-world-appears-by-michael-pollan-review-a-kaleidoscopic-exploration-of-consciousness
just catching up with this thread now. very interesting and informative and on the back of it I think I will order new book by Michael Pollan, it sounds very interesting. Thank you @Jeroen and to all contributors to this thread. 🙏🏻
The Guardian published an article in it’s Long Read series with an extract of Michael Pollan’s new book on consciousness, for those of you who are interested in getting a taste. It seems to contain a lot of material on the mind, as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/19/inside-voice-what-can-our-thoughts-reveal-about-the-nature-of-consciousness
One other thing I feel I should add to this thread is the influence that Terence McKenna had on my starting to learn about the plant medicine path. I first came across him on YouTube, where there are many lectures by him, and a community of avid fans. Terence was a very erudite man who could talk for hours at the drop of a hat, and he was trained as an ethnobotanist, someone who goes out to indigenous populations around the world to find out what plants they use and what is important about these plants.
So Terence specialised in psychedelic plants, and had wide knowledge and experience of them which he liked to share lecturing to select groups at places like Esalen. He had a talent for funny and interesting turns of phrase, but stayed pretty humble. He was the psychedelic prophet of the 1990’s, and died of an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2000 at the age of 53.
Terence for me was the gateway into a different way of thinking about psychedelic use, that it was something with a long heritage in human history and should be respected, not vilified. The war on drugs actually makes no sense when you think of it; whoever thought a plant might be illegal? But in fact long propaganda by world governments showing shocking images of ‘your brain on LSD’ (which later turned out to be completely fabricated and unsupported by science) has instilled a fear of psychedelics in much of the population.
As far as I have been able to tell, plants have been doing mankind a favour by providing these substances. Psychedelics reduce activity in something called the ‘default mode network’ in the brain, which seems to be responsible for creating a coherent internal narrative central to a sense of self, which may be why psychedelics sometimes cause ego death experiences.
A Terence McKenna talk which I liked…
One of the things Terence noted about psychedelics is that they break down control structures in the mind, such as the consumer/worker paradigm which keeps most people trapped in the pattern of capitalist society. By listening to Terence talk about his experiences with ‘the mushroom’ you get carried away in his visionary experience, it’s the closest thing to actually taking some.