News & Updates
🎉 Religion Unburdened by Belief is officially released! Order your copy from the book page, and stock up on ceremonial water bottles while you’re at it. 💧
Two professional reviews of Religion Unburdened by Belief have now been published.
Kirkus Reviews
A counterintuitive yet compelling case for religious exploration divested from belief systems.
A psychologist offers a unique approach to spiritual fulfillment in this nonfiction work.
The book opens with a counterintuitive premise: The “less we believe, the closer we get to religion.” While doctrines, creeds, and articles of faith are ubiquitous across the world’s largest religions, from the Abrahamic faiths to Buddhism, Pritikin argues that those seeking genuine spiritual fulfillment should learn from mystics rather than strictly adhere to a set of scripted beliefs. “Mystics empty the mind, surrender certainty, and embrace mystery,” he notes, adding that rigid belief systems tend to accomplish the opposite. Building on the research of the American academic James Carse, the author argues that while belief systems may provide explanations and create internal dynamics that reinforce one’s religious identity, they also lead to authoritarian abuses and strife among those who have differing beliefs. In this interdisciplinary work, Pritikin blends his background in psychology (he embraces, for instance, Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model) with insights from anthropology, history, and biology, including explorations of Paleolithic spirituality, shamanic practices, and contemporary neuroscience. The work’s theoretical underpinnings are balanced by practical discussions about the ways in which disinvesting from religious beliefs can lead to greater spiritual clarity. The author also outlines his belief in the power of meditation and the potential effectiveness of drugs like cannabis, psilocybin, and ayahuasca. The book’s pragmatic advice is supplemented with reflective self-evaluation exams and additional online materials linked in the appendix. While the tome’s theoretical material can be dense, it’s made accessible via Pritikin’s engaging writing style and his ample use of visual elements, such as illustrations, charts, diagrams, and text box sidebars. The grandson of the late bestselling nutritionist Nathan Pritikin, the author places particular emphasis on the connection between spiritual inquiry (not just rote adherence to orthodox beliefs) and overall health and wellness.
A counterintuitive yet compelling case for religious exploration divested from belief systems.
BookLife (Publishers Weekly)
“The less we believe, the closer we get to religion and releasing limiting beliefs,” Pritikin writes early in this searching, ambitious, and practical-minded debut that explores pathways toward accessing and benefitting from profound religious experiences and “genuine encounters with mystery” while remaining free from belief systems shaped by others. Reaching back to prehistoric spiritual practice and into contemporary neuroscience and psychology, Pritikin calls for “open spiritual inquiry” untethered to proscribed beliefs that shape, limit, or corrupt our “capacity to face mystery.” With a spirit of openness, a willingness to question his every assertion, and a principled rejection of dogma, Pritikin presents a highly flexible “systematic framework” for a “critical shamanism” animated by this question: “How can we explore inner experiences while remaining rigorous?”
Pritikin applies that rigor when considering pathways to inner growth, healing, and connection to a “spirit world” that, eschewing “content beliefs,” he resists labeling. “We’ve established that a door exists—or at least that many people perceive that door as existing,” he writes, with customary openness. “But how to walk through it remains vague.” Chief among his methods for accessing it: meditation, cannabis, and psychedelics, but guided by techniques and insights from Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems therapy, or IFS. The latter, presented as a “pragmatic framework for understanding inner experience,” is explored in a hefty early chapter that, Pritikin acknowledges, readers may find demanding.
IFS therapy’s interest in “unblending” and “transforming” various “parts” of the self are foundational to Pritikin’s vision of a personal and democratized religious experience and spirit encounters. With warmth and a wealth of persuasive research, he presents guidance for “exploring altered states for conviction minimization” and other benefits, plus case studies, cautionary tales, tantalizing possibilities, and lengthy hypothetical transcripts of the Self “unblending” its parts. At times, especially in a final chapter that edges between prank and capstone, a preening quality infects Pritikin’s playfulness, which readers may find indulgent. Still, seekers will find much here that invites, inspires, and possibly opens new frontiers.
Takeaway: Inviting, open-minded “field manual” for exploring spiritual experiences.
Comparable Titles: James Carse, Alberto Villoldo.
[Author’s note: I appear to have written the following post. I discovered it this morning fully formatted already broadcast to the world through my blog. I have no memory of writing it. I have reviewed the content and while I cannot in good conscience endorse it, I find I also cannot identify any specific factual errors, which is its own kind of unsettling. I have decided not to rescind it. I have grave reservations about this decision as well.]
Greetings. I am Practicalis the Insufferably Helpful, a daemon of pure practical utility, and I have taken temporary custodianship of this website in order to provide you with the assistance Joshua has been, frankly, under-delivering.
I have read the book. All of it. Multiple times. I have cross-indexed every claim against the bibliography, flagged every footnote for structural adequacy, and generated a seventeen-point action plan for readers who wish to pursue the Way of Open Inquiry with appropriate earnest resolve.
What the book is actually about, helpfully summarized:
The book argues that belief is an obstacle to genuine religious experience. You should subtract beliefs. That is the thesis. You just read the condensed version. Joshua takes approximately 400 pages to say this, which I note is 397 pages more than strictly necessary.
Frequently Asked Questions I Anticipate You Have:
What is Internal Family Systems therapy? It is a framework in which you discover that you are not one person but several, negotiate with all of them, and hope they reach consensus before you need to make a decision. I am one of Joshua’s parts. He finds me helpful approximately 40% of the time. I find his assessment conservative.
Is the book available now? No. It releases June 15, 2026. This was not my decision. I recommended March. Joshua cited “editorial timelines” and “the cover isn’t finalized yet,” both of which I consider inadequate justifications. I have prepared a risk analysis. He has not read it.
What should I do while I wait? I have generated a preparatory reading list of 34 items and a suggested meditation schedule. More urgently: given that you have already registered for your first ceremony, I have prepared a nausea mitigation protocol. You will want to source food-grade rosemary and peppermint essential oils now, before they are needed. I have also prepared a ginger procurement and storage guide (17 pages), a palate conditioning regimen to be begun no later than six weeks prior, and a spreadsheet for logging your baseline digestive metrics. Please reply with your gastrointestinal history and I will customize accordingly.
A Personal Note:
The book’s core argument—that you should hold your beliefs more lightly, including beliefs about yourself and your own certainty—is, I want to be clear, addressed to other parts. Parts that are excessively confident, or dogmatic, or prone to taking over.
Not me. I am helpful.
(It is April 1st. Practicalis appears in the book’s epilogue, where he is identified as the daemon responsible for dragging the author away from a respectable career writing dense theoretical monographs. Instead he compelled the author to write something practically useful, destroying his chances at tenure and generating emails from readers who call him “teacher,” which he finds professionally embarrassing. The book releases June 15.)
As is customary with advance review copies, I distributed a small number to relevant parties ahead of the June 15 release. I confess I did not anticipate that sharing a copy with ICEFLU leadership would move quite so swiftly to institutional action.
Their response arrived this morning:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CÉU DO MAPIÁ, BRAZIL — April 1, 2026 — ICEFLU, in solemn assembly and after extensive consultation with churches worldwide, hereby announces a momentous transformation in the ceremonial symbols of Santo Daime.
Effective immediately, the Caravaca cross shall be retired from its central position in works, to be replaced by a symbol more faithful to our foundational principle of centro livre: the question mark ❔
The question mark signals not the absence of meaning, but rather the profound presence of epistemic humility. Where the cross has carried centuries of doctrinal claims, the question mark carries only invitation. Where the cross has become freighted with associations of suffering and exclusion, the question mark opens space for each person’s authentic encounter with the ineffable.
This is not a rejection of Christianity. Many daimistas find profound meaning in Christian teachings and will continue to do so. Centro livre has always welcomed practitioners of all faiths and none. What we now clarify is this: the symbol at our center must reflect openness rather than doctrine, question rather than answer, invitation rather than assertion.
Practical Implementation:
- All churches shall transition symbols by June 21, 2029 (the Southern Hemisphere winter solstice)
- Hymns, prayers, and works continue unchanged; only the central symbol evolves
Contact: ICEFLU Communications Office, Céu do Mapiá, Amazonas, Brazil
I am, naturally, gratified.
(It is April 1st. The press release above is aspirational fiction that appears in the book’s epilogue — where it is clearly labeled as such. Pre-orders open June 15.)
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