Am I 'spiritual,' Joe Rogan? Levels of awakening

Joe Rogan: The Path to Roganlightenment | The Daily Show

(The Daily Show) July 30, 2025: From his humble beginnings in Newark to his scrappy days in Boston, Joe Rogan has always pushed his brains to the limit. Rogan's stand-up comedy led him to a career in television, eventually inspiring him to start his own podcast where he could ask the really important questions, like, "Wouldn't it be crazy if a wolf wore a fedora?" This is The Daily Showography of Joe Rogan.

Cody's alchemy: inner “purge” seeking insight

Cody Lowry (substack.com, 2/18/22), Dhr. Seven, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

When did alchemy end? [Or did it just continue underground?] (JSTOR Daily)

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The inner “purge” seeking insight

Maybe I'll read Alchemy & Mysticism

The Purge is a terrible trilogy about people using violence, channeling collective anxiety to slaughter each other. It's their way of attempting to burn through rising tensions between clans, tribes, neighbors, and so on, in a nearby town.

Perhaps the writers intended the film’s message to be a wake up call for how we need to work to remember the value of being neighborly (as modeled by Mister Rogers’ decades-long testament showing the usefulness of uplifting TV programming).

Wiktionary says the Latin root of the word “purge” is purgo, “to make clean” or “purify.” Unfortunately, the Purge perpetuates ultraviolent fantasies propagated on TV and in Hollywood since the 1980s. It might even be older than that.

Purgatory is a terrible series of purifications

During a recent caffeinated conversation, Dante’s Divine Comedy came up: It's a classic, a three-part work consisting of Paradiso (“Paradise”), Purgatorio (“Purgatory”), and Inferno (“Hell”).

In Purgatorio, a “middle-place between heaven and hell,” people are trapped by their own devices, until whatever “impurities” or stains of their souls are expunged and they can move forward on their spiritual paths.

A few years ago, I had the unique opportunity to attend meetings, which usually included the same elixir, with a remarkable man. I’ll refer to him as "the Alchemist."

A master of many arts, such as motorcycle maintenance, he had resolved to devote his remaining time on earth to experimenting and researching mystery schools, Raja Yoga, soul-forms, astral travel and how to apply these ideas to everyday life.

Of the many meetings I remember sitting in on, one involved the Alchemist's commentary on the topic of purgatory. His reflections were derived from a Gnostic idea. (The Gnostic Gospels were edited out of the official Roman Catholic version of Christianity, leaving out the story of chief apostle Mary Magdalene and the surprising Gospel of Judas, where Judas plays a key role in the plan).

Civilizations exist INSIDE our hollow earth? We're unaware of Agartha

In India, as St. Issa, I learned the wisdom of the East.

The "Gnostic idea" is that the surface of earth is a reform school overseen by a group of stern superintendent-wardens who are responsible for maintaining the quarantine of all “embodied-humans” in this realm. This includes ensuring that no embodied human escapes until she or he has completed the necessary spiritual-schoolwork required for graduating from “Terra,” our surface world.

The Alchemist went on to clarify that a primary step in the process of “graduating” from this realm is to “purify” oneself from all illusory thoughts that keep us karmically entangled, that is, earthbound.

According to these claims and his own research, experiments, and observances, the Alchemist concluded that what we call “normal life” on the earth's surface is, in fact, the purgatory realm described by Dante.

Yazoo Kristos: Jewish Essene Gnostic mystic

During its nascent years (approximately 1682-1772), the Religious Society of Friends, now colloquially called the “Quakers,” testified to the necessity of individual purging as a requisite for mystical self-initiation.

This mysterious practice of purging among the early Quakers has maintained little to no how to instructions as far as I've discovered. However, the desired result of purging is allegedly related to a cleansing of one’s body, mind, and spirit so as to receive divine revelation.

Making sacred

The ancient Mayan Chac Mool statues of Mexico (thoughtco.com)

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Alchemy symbols (free download, vecteezy.com)

Another requisite the Alchemist shared with us was the necessity of internalizing and embodying the act of sacrifice (i.e., “making sacred”). 

Dating as far back in recorded history as the Olmec and Mayan cultures, humans have immortalized the act of sacrifice in drawings, writing, societal mores and traditions.

Instances of such traditions are evident in Chac Mool statues of ancient Mexico. A man holds a sacred fire offering bowl over his abdomen while laying in a strengthening supine position.

• Mexico's Mayan Train: Costly railway controversy (MSN)
• Impressive facts about Mexico's Aztec Empire (msn.com)

The Jewish and Christian traditions used bread and wine and made a symbol of the Christ (the Kristos or "Anointed One") as a sacrificial lamb.

There were tithings to the Jewish priestly caste rabbis, who slaughtered donated animals and turned them into "burnt offerings" to JHVH -- four letters commonly misinterpreted as “Jehovah.” which actually represent the anglicization of the Hebrew letters: יהוה or “Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey.”

Some Essene rabbis claim these letters symbolize “that which cannot be named,” which relates to the divine order.

Godfrey Higgins wrote Anacalypsis

According to Godfrey Higgins' Anacalypsis, “the surplus of the burnt-offering meats [was] regularly sold for profit by the [stewards] of the temple.”

The hidden profit motive behind requiring temple-goers to bring sacrificial livestock to appease a “god” exposes the gradual corruption of what was originally taught as a symbolic parable in the ancient mystery schools of the East.

As the Alchemist revealed, the original wisdom teaching of “sacre-fice” had everything to do with a human activity done alone by an individual seeker focused on cultivating conscious contact with his or her “Higher Self,” the “over soul,” “thinker,” “guardian angel,” “inner light,” “Christ/Krishna consciousness,” or “Nirvana.”

This self-discipline focused “sacrifice” was actually a number of daily practices that includes but is not limited to:

• renouncing the consumption of animal flesh,
• daily rigorous physical survival-training,
• restraint in the use of one’s words and actions,
• daily hour-by-hour contemplation of the spiritual principles of one’s religious upbringing
• (with quarterly 17-85 hour solo commune-with-nature wilderness survival wanderings).

Anacalypsis: Pull Back the Veil

The list continues, but suffice it to say the archaic practice of animal sacrifice had absolutely nothing to do with capturing, raising in slavery, or ritualistically murdering innocent animals.

It had absolutely everything to do with learning and reinforcing self-control over one’s own limbic-system-dominated “animal-nature” mind, clearly illustrated in Hindu and Jewish symbols of controlling the horses of our chariot and Ezekiel’s vision.

The Alchemist would often emphasize, “Any so-called preacher or so-called religious scholar who condones (a) the ritualistic murder of innocent animals or (b) eating the rotting carcass of murdered innocent animals* is -- at the very least -- untrustworthy and corrupted by “inimical thoughts” and at worst criminal and probably prone to violent predatory activities in their modus vivendi (“life outside the public eye”).

• *The only exception being that an individual must capture, prepare, and eat a wild animal because no other foods (vegetable, root, fungi, or cacti) are available within a 17-mile radius, such as we find among the Inuit huddled up in igloos in a frozen wasteland.

The Alchemist taught me well.

The Alchemist would often add, “Any astute seeker who has chosen to listen to my “Dharma talk” up to this point would do well to trust-but-verify the truth behind these statements by deeply researching:

• (a) the recorded history of religious clerical corruption (Eastern and Western) over the past 6,850 years,
• (b) the plant-based lifestyle of Mahayana Buddhists, Hindus, and the (original Christian cult known as) Essenes, and
• (c) the esoteric symbolism contained in Mayan, Hindu, and Jewish myths. More

RE: My Stroke of Insight (Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor)

Neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (drjilltaylor.com, mystrokeofinsight.com, TED.com); Crystal Quintero, Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Our brains are amazing organs!

Harvard-trained neuroscientist and stroke survivor Dr. Taylor updates us on her post-stroke, post super popular TED Talk condition:

(April 1, 2017) Hello everyone; welcome to my world! I am busy working on book #2 and having a blast with life. I am happy to travel for keynotes and balancing work with play in delightful ways. I wish you all the very best and look forward to hearing from you! Jill

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I gave one of the greatest TED Talks ever!

(September 26, 2016) Hi everyone; I lost my father and mother in 2015, so I chose to take a year off for grieving and soul searching purposes. I scheduled a few speaking events, but mostly I began writing again.

 

I'm way more creative and fun now!

My office is open for "business as usual" in the event that you would like to touch base or schedule a speaking engagement.

Please feel free to contact us at: adam*** at my stroke of insight *** . ** com -- just string that together without any spaces or stars. (We are clearly trying to outsmart the spammer robots.)

I wish you all the very best along your journey as I take some quiet time of my own. Hugs to you all, Jill

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Hi everyone; life is good, and I am happy. If you are at all interested in learning more about your brain or the brain of another who has experienced some form of trauma, please read My Stroke of Insight. We are all perfect and whole and beautiful just the way we are.

I will be traveling quite a bit this fall, so if you are interested in catching me out in the world, check out my updated Speaker Schedule.

I am teaming up with two wonderful folks on different events -- Carrie Newcomer and Christina Eartheart.

Hope to see you out and about! BIG BIG hugs, Jill

• Home-Dr. Jill's Book-About Dr. Jill-Public Speaking-Transformative Stories-Speaker Schedule-Publicity Photos-In the World-Advocacy Issues-Stained Glass-Contact

"My Way" DJ Trump as Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols)

Sid Vicious "My Way"; Donald Trump; Betty Bowers; Charles Manson; Wisdom Quarterly

Brains are cool! (Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor)

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (drjilltaylor.com); Wisdom Quarterly

Dr. Jill "Brain Eye to Eye" (Kip May)

The Brain Extravaganza! was launched in Bloomington, Indiana, in April 2012. Brains, brains, brains! Big beautiful anatomically correct brains with 12 pairs of cranial nerves and all the gyri and sulci one could ever want.

  

There are 22 enormous fiberglass brains (5 feet long, 5 feet high, and 4 feet wide) in the hands of the artists who painted/decorated them for the extravaganza. This thrills Dr. Jill's heart, she explains.

   

Every brain will have a sign attached. On the sign will read five facts about the brain and a special question. Download a really cool mobile app at jbtbrains.org to paint your own brain. Then compare it to other brains, upload the image to Facebook [so the government can get a copy for your file], and talk brains, brains, brains. "YaY! Brains are cool!" the doctor and author of My Stroke of Insight insists. More

• Enlightenment by stroke
• On the heels of her viral sensation TED Talk, Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor wrote My Stroke of Insight. She was interviewed by Teri Gross on "Fresh Air."
• Hemorrhaging Nirvana
• Top 10 quirky facts about mass-produced food
• PHOTOS: Thai novices and the "Second King Monk" 

Being religious may not make you healthier

Being religious may not make you healthier after all
Ivan Oransky, MD
A number of studies over the past two decades have shown that religious people tend to be healthier. But a new study suggests that when it comes to heart disease and clogged arteries, attending religious services or having spiritual experiences may not protect against heart attacks and strokes. This study suggests "there's not a lot of extra burden or extra protection afforded by this particular aspect of people's lives," said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, of the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, who led the study, published in the journal Circulation. More>>

• Seeking the Faith-filled Life (Bismarck Tribune)
• One-fifth of US teens have unhealthy cholesterol
• Heart disease "will kill 400,000 Americans in 2010"
• Mediterranean diet good for the heart

Hemmorhaging Nirvana

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, the Singin' Scientist
Robert C. Koehler

"I am trillions of cells sharing a common mind--I am life!"

“Oh my gosh, I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke! And in the next instant, the thought flashed through my mind, this is so cool!”

• Related: Dr. Angel Rhoades' Brain Injury Recovery book

You want a guided tour of the human brain? My guess is that you probably can’t do better than “My Stroke of Insight,” Harvard-trained neuroanatomist Jill Taylor’s extraordinary account of the cranial hemorrhage that shut down her left brain when she was 37 years old.

But the book’s value — its preciousness — lies less in the plain-language, enthusiastic science it offers us, than in the door it courageously opens to the mystery of the brain’s right hemisphere and beyond...to the pulsing miracle of life and the vast universe that is our home.

One morning in late 1996, Taylor, a research scientist who worked at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center (a.k.a., the Brain Bank), awoke with a sharp pain behind her left eye, and soon enough — as her speech and motor functions failed her, as she melted into what she called a euphoric stupor and lost all sense of where “Dr. Jill” ended and the rest of the universe began — she realized this was no ordinary headache.

It was, she later learned, a blown AVM: the rupture of a congenitally deformed vein-artery connection deep inside her brain. She was in the first stage of a potentially killer stroke — and she was alone in her apartment and had lost the capacity to think or act rationally or even communicate with the outside world.

Part of the joy of this book is that nothing unfolds the way you’d expect. Taylor’s story at its darkest courses with gratitude and humor and, most of all, amazement, as she recounts what happened to her with Ph.D.-level clarity and awareness of detail combined with childlike exuberance.

The sudden loss of her left-brain organizational and self-defining capabilities was not, for instance, terrifying. Life-threatening though her predicament was, Taylor saw her stroke as a gift of unparalleled awareness: the shattering of the self-created box we live in that we call “life.” More>>

• See her live: Speaking schedule
• See her on WQ at the TED Conference

"Enlightenment" by Stroke

Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist, had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

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On the heels of her viral internet sensation (her talk at TED), she has a new book, My Stroke of Insight, and was interviewed by Teri Gross on Fresh Air (WHYY and NPR, June 25, 2008):

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Neurological researcher Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke 12 years ago. While a stroke is often devastating and sometimes fatal, Taylor was able to make a complete recovery after becoming her own experimental subject. Her new book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, recounts her experience. Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. She was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008. She is currently affiliated with the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

Book Excerpt
It was 7:00 am on December 10, 1996. I sluggishly awoke to a sharp pain piercing my brain directly behind my left eye. Squinting into the early morning light, I clicked off the impending alarm with my right hand and instinctively pressed the palm of my left hand firmly against the side of my face. Rarely ill, I thought how queer it was for me to awaken to such a striking pain. As my left eye pulsed with a slow and deliberate rhythm, I felt bewildered and irritated.

As I rolled out of my warm waterbed, I stumbled into the world with the ambivalence of a wounded soldier. I closed the bedroom window blind to block the incoming stream of light from stinging my eyes. I decided that exercise might get my blood flowing and perhaps help dissipate the pain. Within moments, I hopped on to my "cardio-glider" (a full body exercise machine) and began jamming away to Shania Twain singing the lyrics, "Whose bed have your boots been under?"

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Immediately, I felt a powerful and unusual sense of dissociation roll over me. Even though my thoughts seemed lucid, my body felt irregular. As I watched my hands and arms rocking forward and back, forward and back, in opposing synchrony with my torso, I felt strangely detached from my normal cognitive functions. It was as if the integrity of my mind/body connection had somehow become compromised.

Feeling detached from normal reality, I felt as though I was observing myself in motion, as in the playback of a memory, as if my conscious mind was suspended somewhere between my normal reality and some esoteric space.

I was sure I was awake, yet, I felt as if I was trapped inside the perception of a meditation that I could neither stop nor escape. Dazed, I felt the frequency of shooting pangs escalate inside my brain, and I realized that this exercise regime was probably not a good idea.

Feeling a little nervous about my physical condition, I climbed off the machine and bumbled through my living room on the way to the bath. As I walked, I noticed that my movements were no longer fluid. Instead they felt deliberate and almost jerky. There was no grace to my pace and my balance was so impaired that my mind seemed completely preoccupied with just keeping me upright.

As I lifted my leg to step into the tub, I held on to the wall for support. It seemed odd that I could sense the inner activities of my brain as it adjusted and readjusted all of the opposing muscle groups in my lower extremities to prevent me from falling over. I was momentarily privy to a precise and experiential understanding of how hard the fifty trillion cells in my brain and body were working in perfect unison to maintain the flexibility and integrity of my physical form.

Ignorant to the degree of danger my body was in, I balanced my weight against the shower wall. As I leaned forward to turn on the faucet, I was startled by an abrupt and exaggerated clamor as water surged into the tub. This unexpected amplification of sound was both enlightening and disturbing. It brought me to the realization that, in addition to having problems with coordination and equilibrium, my ability to process incoming sound (auditory information) was erratic. For the first time, I considered the possibility that I was perhaps having a major neurological malfunction that was life threatening.

In that instant, I suddenly felt vulnerable, and I noticed that the constant brain chatter that routinely familiarized me with my surroundings was no longer a predictable and constant flow of conversation. Instead, my verbal thoughts were now inconsistent, fragmented, and interrupted by an intermittent silence.

As my brain chatter began to disinte-grate, I felt an odd sense of isolation. My blood pressure must have been dropping as a result of the bleeding in my brain because I felt as if all of my systems, including my mind's ability to instigate movement, were moving into a slow mode of operation. Yet, even though my thoughts were no longer a constant stream of chatter about the external world and my relationship to it, I was conscious and constantly present within my mind.

What is going on? I wondered. Have I ever experienced anything like this before? Have I ever felt like this before? This feels like a migraine. What is happening in my brain?

The harder I tried to concentrate, the more fleeting my ideas seemed to be. Instead of finding answers and information, I met a growing sense of peace. As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent, my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a "being at one" with the universe, if you will. In a compelling sort of way, it felt like the good road home and I liked it.

By this point I had lost touch with much of the physical three-dimensional reality that surrounded me. My body was propped up against the shower wall and I found it odd that I was aware that I could no longer clearly discern the physical boundaries of where I began and where I ended. Instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me.

When the shower droplets beat into my chest like little bullets, I was harshly startled back into this reality. As I held my hands up in front of my face and wiggled my fingers, I was simultaneously perplexed and intrigued. Wow, what a strange and amazing thing I am. What a bizarre living being I am. Life! I am life! I am trillions of cells sharing a common mind. I am here, now, thriving as life. Wow! What an unfathomable concept!

• LISTEN to the NPR interview.

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from MY STROKE OF INSIGHT. Copyright © MY STROKE OF INSIGHT, INC., 2008. PHOTO: (by Kip May) Jill Bolte Taylor with her mother G.G. Taylor.