About the Book
An exploration of “mind design” technologies and practices--mindapps--that boost intellectual capacity and enable new ways of thought and action
• Reveals how mindapps transform the patterns of our mind-body complex and help generate new ideas by enabling access to new mind states
• Examines the singlestate fallacy--the myth that useful thinking only occurs in our ordinary awake mental state
• Explores a wealth of mindapp practices and techniques, including microdosing with psychedelics, yoga and martial arts, hypnosis, breathing techniques, lucid dreaming, rites of passage, biofeedback and neurofeedback, and transcranial brain stimulation
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 meditation, 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.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by James Fadiman, Ph.D.
1 A Scent of Portent
My Journey into Mind Design
2 Augmenting Human Intellect with Mindapps
Introducing Multistate Theory
3 Mind Design
Mindapps → Artificial Intelligence in the Brain-Mind Complex
4 Mindapps for the Sciences
5 Layers of Meaning
Riding Grof ’s Bathyscaphe into Our Minds
6 Save the Humanities!
Psychedelics to the Rescue!
7 What Is Philosophy’s Greatest Opportunity?
Achieving the Philosopher’s Mind
8 The Entheogen Reformation
CONCLUSION
Multistate Theory as a Vital Paradigm for the Future
APPENDIX A
Syllabus for a Psychedelic Class
APPENDIX B
Psychedelics Without Borders Notes for a Business Prospectus
APPENDIX C
Bicycle Day’s Beginnings
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, where he has taught the world’s first catalog-listed psychedelics course since 1981. A founding member of MAPS, former visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins, editor of Spiritual Growth with Entheogens, and author of Psychedelic Horizons and The Psychedelic Future of the Mind, he lives in DeKalb, Illinois.
Review :
"In this book, Roberts explores a new paradigm for how we see the human mind, and the tools we use as ideagens, or idea generators. This novel approach to how we can approach ideas is an enlightening and enjoyable journey to read."
“Thomas Roberts is a lot of things: a writer, an inspiration for people entering the world of psychedelic research, a trickster, and a wizard. But above all, he is an educator. He has been in the game a long time, and his ideas and hypotheses are always worth listening to. In Mindapps, Tom takes us once again into a world of creative hypotheses and unique narratives that force the reader to sit up and take notice. The concept of the mindapp as a new paradigm--something to replace the outdated concept of consciousness itself--is exactly the kind of approach that our contemporary tech-savvy society is in need of. I highly recommend this book. Read it. Then, years from now--when this is the stuff of mainstream scientific and cultural knowledge--you can say you were alongside the early pioneers of a new way of thinking about brain states, mind states, and psychedelics.”
“In Mindapps, Thomas Roberts masterfully explores the various practices and techniques available to us, be they ancient, chemical, or technological. He looks at the potential development of fresh new mindapps and the potential of producing novel mind states through the synergy of using multiple mindapps at the same time. A case is passionately made for the value of altered and alternative states of consciousness and how these can not only yield new ideas but also improve creativity, open-mindedness, problem-solving and inner-brain connections. The information presented in Mindapps should be of great interest to thinkers and explorers of consciousness. I gladly recommend it.”
“I found Thomas Roberts’s book Mindapps to be very engaging and thoughtprovoking proof that the psychedelic renaissance is maturing and that psychedelics can be ideagens.”
“Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, has been an organizing force in the global psychedelic movement. His new book is itself a history of the psychedelic revolution. He argues convincingly that apps are to devices as mindapps are to the mindbody. Whether the mindapp is psychotherapy, meditation, near-death experiences, or psychedelics, they can expand our mental powers, creative abilities, and generate new ideas and ways of thinking.”
“As psychedelic substances increasingly become integrated into our culture in responsible ways as facilitators of mental health, spiritual development, and new knowledge in a variety of academic disciplines, this carefully researched and visionary book contributes innovative language and concepts to support, challenge, and guide us on the path forward.”
“Mirroring its central thesis that the mind is multiple and its states of consciousness at once vast, ecstatic, and creative, this book is so many things all at once--a psychedelic autobiography; an education in human potential; a plea to revise the sciences and save the humanities through new psychedelic approaches to neuroscience, art, literature, music, and philosophy; a call for new mental technologies to literally and definitively ‘change our minds’; and a who’s who of the American psychedelic intellectual landscape from the 1970s to today. Here is a perfect entry point into a whole series of glistening subjects that have yet to see their full day.”
“An important resource for anyone interested in psychedelics and the mind. Professor Roberts has an intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, having taught it to undergraduates for 32 years. Mindapps brings ancient practices and techniques together with contemporary science of the mind to produce ‘ideagens’--new ideas and new ways of thinking.”
"MindApps explores a simple analogy -- as apps are to smart devices, ‘mindapps’ are to the brain–mind complex. Therefore, any agent of psychological change (both drug and non-drug) that produces a mindbody state can be considered a mindapp. Different kinds of mindapp, of which psychedelics are perhaps the most potent, ultimately produce disparate mindbody states. Consequently, Roberts challenges the reader to consider a new age of ‘mind design’, where mindapps are used in combinations to investigate mindbody states, create new ones and uncover the full extent of the human mind. As transhumanist and transpersonal perspectives begin to intersect, could it be possible to design minds that far surpass the functions and capabilities of our current ones?"
“MindApps is an encouragingly speedy read that is chronologically, conceptually, and thematically sectioned out chapter by chapter. Roberts begins with a brief autobiographical account of his journey through the academic world, his discovery of the psychedelic and transpersonal realms, as well as his early encounters with ‘greats’ in the field such as Stanislav Grof and Huston Smith…An invigorating, quick and clear read--upload MindApps to the brain’s linguistic centers and let the words embed neural networks with new meaning, altering one’s operative conceptual frameworks.”
