Northern Illinois University

Since receiving his AB from Hamilton College, MA from the University of Connecticut, and Ph.D. from Stanford (1970), Tom Roberts has served as an educational psychologist at Northern Illinois University.  He has taught the course Psychedelic Mindview for 25 years, the first catalog-listed course on psychedelics at a university. He organized a conference on the entheogenic uses of psychedelics which was jointly co-sponsored by the Chicago Theological Seminary and the Council on Spiritual Practices and edited Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion” (2001). His online reference Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments excerpts over 550 books and dissertations. He has lectured on psychedelics in Iceland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Mexico, and Canada, published numerous articles and book reviews, and serves on the editorial boards of the Anthropology of Consciousness and Journal of Drug Education and Awareness. He originated Bicycle Day to celebrate Albert Hofmann’s first intentional LSD experience, observed on April 19th, and was a founding member of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the International Transpersonal Association, and the Council on Spiritual Practices. He is co-editing a two volume anthology Hallucinogens and Healing (due 2007) and is writing Increasing Spiritual Intelligence — Chemical Input, Religious Output. His book “Psychedelic Horizons: Snow White, Immune System, Multistate Mind, Enlarging Education” was published this January.  His faculty website resides at: http://www.cedu.niu.edu/epf/edpsych/faculty/roberts/index_roberts.html.

As the loudest of the mindbody psychotechnologies — the one whose voice we cannot ignore— psychedelics offer to boost intelligence, increase spiritual development, assist creative problem solving, as well as provide methods of psychotherapy. They undermine the singlestate fallacy that all worthwhile human abilities reside in our ordinary mindbody state. By illustrating that multiple mindbody states enhance human development, psychedelics and other mindbody psychotechnologies support exploring and developing the full range of mindbody states. Beyond merely discovering, describing, and domesticating mindbody states as they now exist, is it possible to design new states?  This new scientific endeavor reframes current ethical, policy, and legal questions and envisions new problems that society will face in the near future.