This chapter presents the range of philosophical questions that appeared before the author while doing research and participating in Jurema ceremonies, with or without DMT-containing sacrament. First of all, a self-interrogation about the point of view that a journalist or social scientist should adopt when narrating episodes of trance and incorporation of entities –skepticism, suspension of judgment, acceptance, communion, conversion? Even remaining an atheist, the author criticizes the tendency to disavow such manifestations as primitive beliefs. Concurrently, he discusses the encroachment of Western perennialist and transcendentalist notions in the work of supposedly detached and objective neuroscience researchers. Finally, the text reflects on a fundamental change underway in biology that blurs the boundaries between living beings (humans, animals, and vegetals) when it comes to conscience, sentience, agency, intentionality, and behavior, for instance with the emergent concept of plant-thinking, its ethical implications, and convergence with traditional peoples’ immanentist cosmovisions.

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Seek Truth, Act Independently, Minimize Harm

  • Marcelo Leite

摘要

This chapter presents the range of philosophical questions that appeared before the author while doing research and participating in Jurema ceremonies, with or without DMT-containing sacrament. First of all, a self-interrogation about the point of view that a journalist or social scientist should adopt when narrating episodes of trance and incorporation of entities –skepticism, suspension of judgment, acceptance, communion, conversion? Even remaining an atheist, the author criticizes the tendency to disavow such manifestations as primitive beliefs. Concurrently, he discusses the encroachment of Western perennialist and transcendentalist notions in the work of supposedly detached and objective neuroscience researchers. Finally, the text reflects on a fundamental change underway in biology that blurs the boundaries between living beings (humans, animals, and vegetals) when it comes to conscience, sentience, agency, intentionality, and behavior, for instance with the emergent concept of plant-thinking, its ethical implications, and convergence with traditional peoples’ immanentist cosmovisions.