An exploration of "mind design" technologies and practices--mindapps--that boost intellectual capacity and enable new ways of thought and action

An exploration of “mind design” technologies and practices--mindapps--that boost intellectual capacity and enable new ways of thought and action

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 mediation, 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.

“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.”