Thinking Allowed
Season 1 . 29 Episodes TV-PG

The thinking allowed television show challenges conventional reality through profound dialogues on consciousness, quantum physics, and the frontiers of mind.

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Cleansing the Doors of Perception (Huston Smith) – Part 1 (Preview)

Step inside the thinking allowed television show, where host Jeffrey Mishlove questions the boundaries of reality alongside the most radical minds of modern science and philosophy. Rather than settling for conventional consensus, these probing exchanges investigate what lies beyond ordinary human perception and invite viewers to rethink the nature of the cosmos.

Preserved from classic public television archives, this landmark broadcast series features in-depth philosophy and science dialogues that examine the core of human experience. Host Jeffrey Mishlove guides each encounter with grounded curiosity and intellectual rigor, inviting visionary researchers to articulate hypotheses that conventional academic circles often overlooked. From neuropsychology and theoretical physics to transpersonal psychology, these consciousness and parapsychology discussions treat mystical insights, psychic phenomena, and anomalous human capabilities with serious, systematic inquiry.

The expansive collection surveys the intersections of cognitive neuroscience, ancient traditions, and the subtle architecture of perception. Guests such as sensory isolation pioneer John Lilly map the multidimensional states of alternity, while medical researchers like Dr. Elisabeth Targ and anthropologist Alberto Villoldo examine systemic healing and shamanic cosmologies. Prominent figures including Jack Kornfield and Joan Halifax reflect on spiritual practice, meditation, and psychological integration. Whether analyzing how the invention of the alphabet shifted hemispheric brain dominance or investigating how ancient systems model the nature of time, these foundational Jeffrey Mishlove interviews approach the biggest questions with discerning clarity.

Highlights from the Thinking Allowed Archive

  • Holographic models of cognition and cosmos: Karl Pribram explains how memory functions across distributed neural fields, while Michael Talbot presents the physical universe as a projection of consciousness.
  • Free will, time, and human agency: Arthur Young demonstrates how lawful determinism creates the necessary framework for genuine choice, while Charles Muses outlines the cyclical geometry of time and destiny.
  • Language, culture, and transformation: Leonard Shlain uncovers how linear literacy reshaped societal consciousness, accompanied by Terence McKenna’s visionary discourses on sacred plants and the human future.

Thinking Allowed stands as an enduring record of open inquiry, showing that scientific discipline and spiritual exploration can meet without dogma. Begin your exploration of this archival treasure to engage with the essential ideas redefining human potential.

Host: Jeffrey Mishlove
Featuring: Huston Smith, Ram Dass, Charlene Spretnak, Dr. Stanislav Grof, Peter Russell, Jean Houston, Ralph Metzner, Russell Targ, Dr. Elisabeth Targ, Dr. Judith Orloff, Joan Halifax, Paul H. Ray, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Dr. Jack Kornfield, Alberto Villoldo, Dean Brown
Audio Languages: English
Subtitles: English
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Huston Smith
With the public hysteria over the drug war, it's easy for people to confuse the serious scientific research into psychedelics with the baggage of their social abuse.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Huston Smith
Many great American thinkers have integrated their experiences from entheogens (God disclosing, from the root: Theos) into their serious and dedicated metaphysical search for authentic self-awareness.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Ram Dass
Human potential movement pioneer Ram Dass points us to our greater identity, which includes and transcends our physical bodies.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Ram Dass
Join host Jeffrey Mishlove and Ram Dass, author of Still Here and many other books, as they discuss how to handle the physical and mental changes brought on by a stroke, and how to confront death.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Charlene Spretnak
Host Jeffrey Mishlove talks with Charlene Spretnak, author of The Resurgence of the Real, about the recent shift in modernity as it relates to our understanding of our bodies.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Stanislav Grof
The population explosion, industrial revolution and production inflame overzealous elements of human nature, such as greed and violence, threatening not only our survival, but the survival of all life on this planet. How do we respond?
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Peter Russell
Host Jeffrey Mishlove talks with Peter Russell, author of From Science to God, about how to reconcile consciousness and the material world.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Peter Russell
Host Jeffrey Mishlove talks with Peter Russell, author of From Science to God, about how to understand the inner-light from a scientific perspective, which is surprisingly similar to our spiritual understanding.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Jean Houston
Jean Houston discusses her book, Godseed, with host Jeffrey Mishlove. Houston shares that she wrote the book in a way that makes it emotionally accessible to readers, and she offers messages of inspiration about humanity and our possibility of greatness.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Ralph Metzner
Host Jeffrey Mishlove talks with Ralph Metzner, author of Green Psychology, about how our psychology, especially in the West, has recently shifted from nature-centric toward isolation.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Ralph Metzner
Host Jeffrey Mishlove talks with Ralph Metzner, author of Green Psychology, about how to transform our relationship with the Earth.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Huston Smith
Explore the confluence of value systems in our age: the traditional, modern, and postmodern. Each era recognizes a unique and integrally important gift in human development.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Russell Targ
Can you have a direct experience of God without the need for belief? Central to the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, Patanjali and many others, the experiential truth that we are all one is now discernible via physics, as well as through religious or mystical belief.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Russell Targ
Russell Targ and host Jeffrey Mishlove continue their conversation about having a direct experience of God without the need for belief, and how quieting the mind and letting go of attachments are the common practice of those who, through the centuries, have described mystical experiences.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Elisabeth Targ
Dr. Elisabeth Targ discusses how psychic and spiritual forms of healing are beginning to make a breakthrough in the medical world. She talks about the effectiveness of this new practice, and discusses the demand for doctors and physicians to enter this new realm of healing.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Elisabeth Targ
Dr. Elisabeth Targ shares her pivotal research in the field of psychic healing and the impact of a spiritual lifestyle.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Jean Houston
Jean Houston, author of Jump Time, discusses society in transition. Jump time refers her belief that something exhilarating and unique is about to happen.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Jean Houston
Continuing their discussion, Host Jeffrey Mishlove and Jean Houston discuss how the wakening of humanity has been hidden in our culture for thousands of years, and that we are finally at a time when the wakening is about to occur, and she calls it "Jump Time."
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Judith Orloff
Host Jeffrey Mishlove and Judith Orloff, psychiatrist and author of Guide to Intuitive Healing Intuition, discuss why we need to be in touch with our intuition at all times, and Judith provides concrete steps to accomplish that, especially when facing illness.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Huston Smith
Join professor and mystic Huston Smith, author of Why Religion Matters, on a fascinating in-depth look at modern mystical and religious beliefs through two lenses: that of science and of religion.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Joan Halifax
Visiting Tibet on pilgrimage and retreat, Joan Halifax, Roshi of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, bears witness to the land and its people – an extraordinary mix of beauty and emotion on a journey that never ends.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Joan Halifax
Join Joan Halifax as we learn to bring openness, compassion, and raison d'etre to our deep suffering in life.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Paul H. Ray
Cultural Creatives are a fascinating demographic, a major mainstream subculture of American society who represent a collective emergence of progressive values, beliefs and lifestyles.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen
Jeffrey Mishlove interviews Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, author of Goddesses of Older Women, about how to enrich the experience of becoming an older woman, or a "crone," through stories of the Goddesses throughout the world.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Jack Kornfield
Is it a myth that after enlightenment one lives happily ever after? Why do many who reach high states of enlightenment retain their very human problems?
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Alberto Villoldo
Alberto Villoldo and host Jeffrey Mishlove discuss the power of systemic healing and the difference between cures and healing.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Alberto Villoldo
Dr. Alberto Villoldo discusses how the Shamanic approach to life, as lived by the Andean Incas of Peru, is a healing and powerful way to look at life and death, and how it relates to us.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dean Brown
Dean Brown discusses The Upanishads and the Yoga Sutras, which he has translated, and explains how these writings relate to science.
24 mins TV-PG
Featuring: Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen
Illuminating women's spirituality, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Jungian analyst, shares what esoteric culture and authentic mysticism have in common.
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