Dan Merkur, Ph.D., is Research Reader in the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Psychocultural Institute, Toronto. He is the author of several other books, including two published by SUNY Press, Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions and The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization.