Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience (PULSE) Affiliated Researcher

Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities, Case Western Reserve University

Deepak Sarma is the Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities, Case Western Reserve University. After earning a BA in religion from Reed College, Sarma attended the Divinity School at the University of Chicago where they received a PhD in the philosophy of religions, and specialized in Indian philosophy. Sarma has wondered if experiences are real or not. And if perceptions are merely projections on an underlying undifferentiated and real substrate. His own congenital epistemic confusion, compounded by a TBI in 1995, led to reflections about mysticism, consciousness and pyschedelics. Sarma writes and researches about psychedelics, Cultural Theory, philosophy, post-colonial studies, museology, the Grateful Dead, “Hinduism,” contemporary Hinduism, bioethics, and Madhva Vedanta. Verily, their job is to shed light and not to master.