Chapter 4: Consciousness Unleashed
Consciousness is the prime vessel of knowledge. It probes, gauges, and structures the nature of the information-theoretic universe. It is the source of knowledge generation, analytically and algorithmically decoding the fabric of reality. Yet, unexpectedly and remarkably, the modern mind is existentially puzzled by its own nature. The first-person and third-person perspectives refuse to yield a unified vision of reality. The acuteness of this dissonance is witnessed in the contemporary metaphysics of consciousness. From the variations of idealism to illusionism and denialism, the range of proposed explanations for consciousness could not be more diverse and radically different. Two reasons contribute to this predicament. One concerns the nature of science itself, while the other is rooted in collective cultural blind spots.
The Rational Mind
Ever since the Enlightenment, science has been based on the belief that its theories should be testable. As innocuous as this commonsensical requirement may seem, it anchors an epistemic reference point, namely the detached and uninvolved third-person perspective. Within this paradigm, subjectivity is seen as noxious, disqualifying the metaphysical relevance of the first-person point of view. Phenomenal consciousness has no role to play in both the exploration of the inner and outer worlds.
The implicit justification, unbeknownst to most practitioners of science, is that the metaphysics of physicalism slowly became fully integrated into the edifice of science. It is understood as its unquestionable ontological foundation. Challenging physicalism is tantamount to doubting rationality and common sense. Questioning the primacy of physicalism is essentially an attack on science, necessarily branded anti-intellectual.
However, physicalism’s ascientific nature is slowly being unmasked, and its inability to make sense of consciousness and the quantum level of reality is beginning to be viewed more critically. Today, as ever more sophisticated philosophical alternatives are presented, science is invited to reconsider the metaphysics it chooses to adopt as its foundation and refocus its view on consciousness.
By insisting on the third-person perspective, the rational mind has implicitly assumed that the sober waking state of consciousness is the only relevant mode of operation. As such, it is the sole legitimate and desirable mental configuration, deeming all others inferior at best. At worst, any deviation from a sober waking state of consciousness is either marginalized, demonized, or stigmatized. As a result, and quite remarkably, the rational mind has forgotten a great wealth of knowledge, unearthed by the age-old explorers of consciousness.
The Contemplative Mind
Contemplation, meditation, and mindfulness are core traditions committed to the exploration of consciousness. While contemplation involves the practice of dedicating, directing, and focusing thought on a particular topic, meditation is a practice of training the mind’s attention. Interestingly, mindfulness is a concept that has only recently been assimilated into the vocabulary of the West.
It is claimed that the cultivation of mindfulness will lead to insights into important fundamental truths. Gaining experiential knowledge of ultimate reality is thought to be mediated by acquiring firsthand insight into the nature of consciousness. Novel states of existence are accessed. Indeed, non-dual, acategorical, and transrational modes of awareness lie at the core of mystical experiences. It is a truth that can be experienced but not conveyed in words, transcending rational configurations of thinking.
Buddhism is a prominent example.
“The oldest written references for the notion of Mindfulness, sati in the Pali language, can be found in the so called Pali Canon of the Theravada Buddhist branch. Theravada (literally teaching of the elders) is the oldest Buddhist school, which is today still practiced in Sri Lanka, Burma (or Myanmar), Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. All other Buddhist traditions, such as Tibetan or Zen have their origin in this tradition.” [1]
Notably, Buddhism has attracted the interest of the rational mind. For instance, neuroscientists studying the neural circuitry of seasoned meditators or physicists discuss similarities between the translational aspects of quantum physics and Buddhist lore.
The Shamanic Mind
While the Western mind gazed outwards into the plethora of phenomena manifesting in its field of perception, it not only neglected Eastern traditions of contemplation but crucially also forgot about its own universal spiritual roots. Shamanism is an ancient and prevailing cultural technology. It seeks immanent experiences of reality and is dedicated to exploring consciousness.
“Shamanism is the practice of the Upper Paleolithic tradition of healing, divination, and theatrical performance based on natural magic developed ten to fifty thousand years ago. Mircea Eliade, author of ‘Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy’ and the foremost authority on shamanism in the context of comparative religion, has shown that in all times and places shamanism maintains a surprising internal coherency of practice and belief. Whether the shaman is an Arctic-dwelling Inuit or a Witoto of the Upper Amazon, certain techniques and expectations remain the same.” [2]
Alas, the Western mind has had a troubled history with the universal and profound phenomenon of shamanism. Early anthropologists called them "neurotic, epileptic, psychotic, hysterical, and schizophrenic." However, it appears that the Western mind is slowly discerning the contours of an archaic but universal human archetype characterized by ambiguity, plurality, contradiction, and postmodern mischief. It is a blending of “the numinous with the ludicrous” — a reality invisible to the analytic third-person perspective, only knowable through direct experience. Inaccessible to and forgotten by the rational mind, a vast experiential plane of existence is uncovered.
Central to shamanic cosmology are altered states of consciousness, allowing for a first-hand experience of transcendental reality.
“The sober waking state of consciousness represents but one mode of perception out of a vast array of other states. We peer through this lens of awareness and glimpse the consensus reality. This default state of consciousness, however, can only render a tiny subspace within a much richer and broader reality landscape. In effect, vast new reality terrains are accessible to the human mind. By silencing the sober waking state of perception and inducing altered states of consciousness — through meditation, trance, chemical substances, pain, brain trauma, sleep, or spontaneously — new planes of existence appear, transcending space and time.” [3]
Indeed, it is perhaps the Western mind that is now invited to reassess its conception of the cosmos and its own reality. Even after centuries of unprecedented success in decoding the workings of reality by utilizing formal thought systems and unleashing accelerated technological wizardry, the foundations of reality remain as enigmatic as ever. Remarkably, our quantum gravitational probes seemingly hint at a very alien ontology, radically different from any naïve metaphysics adhering to a material existence of phenomena and the fundamental reality of space and time. Perhaps now, the Western mind must face the cosmic irony and concede that its analytical and algorithmic powers are insufficient to grasp its own identity. Alternative modes of consciousness appear to have access to ineffable but reproducible experiences of existence and have the capacity to probe the mind and reality from a scientifically uncharted first-person perspective.
The Psychedelic Mind
By fetishizing the sober waking mode of consciousness the Western mind has deemed all other modes of being impure, trivial, or perilous, denying the legitimacy of non-rational knowledge generation. This is especially true for modes of sentience induced by intoxication.
This is another glaring blind spot in Western culture as it has forgotten humanity’s psychedelic legacy. In ancient India a psychedelic concoction called Soma was catalytic for the emergence of the oldest religion still practiced today.
"Whereas most hallucinogenic plants were considered merely as sacred mediators, Soma became a god in its own right. […] Of the more than 1,000 holy hymns in the Rig-Veda, 120 are devoted exclusively to Soma, and references to this vegetal sacrament run through many of the other hymns." [4]
However, perhaps the biggest omission of the psychedelic imprinting on Western culture is found in its exclusion in the history of philosophy.
“The key to the powerful transformation that the initiates experienced in the course of the Eleusinian mysteries [a great festival recurringly celebrated near Athens] was the sacred potion kykeon, capable of inducing visions of the afterlife so powerful that it changed the way participants saw the world and their place in it. […] In the telesterion, the giant initiation hall in Eleusis, more than 3,000 neophytes at a time experienced the powerful experiences of psychospiritual transformation. The cultural importance of these mysteries for the ancient world and their yet unacknowledged role in the history of European civilization becomes evident when we realize that there were many famous and illustrious figures of antiquity among the initiates. The list of neophytes included the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, and Epictetus […].” [5]
This seems like a remarkable and careless exclusion. Indeed, the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted that most of Western philosophy since Plato has been "footnotes on Plato." It is easy to imagine the Platonic realm of abstractions and the Allegory of the Cave being directly inspired by a first-hand psychedelic experience of transcendence.
The secret psychedelic history of Western philosophy continues with the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James. The philosopher Henri Bergson's metaphysics was adopted by Aldous Huxley, who constructed a philosophy around his experiences with mescaline. The idea is that the brain acts as a "reducing valve" constraining conscious awareness, which psychedelics break open. Jean-Paul Sartre claimed the inspiration for the novel that made him famous came from his experiment with mescaline. Unfortunately, the experience came at a cost.
"After I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time." [6]
The crab visions lingered in his peripheral vision for months, eventually driving him to a nervous breakdown.
Psychonauts like Stanislav Grof, Terence McKenna, Amanda Feilding, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, Christian Rätsch, Christopher Bache, James L. Kent, Daniel Pinchbeck, Martin Ball, and Andrew Gallimore have diligently been charting the transcendental multiverse. Until very recently, their accounts have been ignored as fabulations and delusions. In the wake of the psychedelic renaissance, rediscovering the therapeutic efficacy of many of the psychedelic substances banned globally at the end of the 1960s, things are slowly changing.
Now, a new figure has emerged within the Western mind: the philosopher of psychedelics, an academic shaman. As an extension of the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychedelics explores both the epistemological and ontological significance of the psychedelic state. It is concerned, among other topics, with the spiritual significance of entheogens, the structure of the transcendent multiverse known to the shamanic mind since the drawing of humanity, making sense of the contradictory findings coming from psychedelic neuroscience, and the nature of non-normal knowledge generation, often claimed to be mediated by sentient beings inhabiting the otherworldly multiverse. Perhaps the best illustration of the latter is given by the botanical wisdom of shamans, allegedly given to them by the "plant spirits."
“So here are people without electron microscopes who choose among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone [DMT], which they combine with a vine containing substances [MAOIs] that inactivate an enzyme of the digestive tract, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness." [7]
The Inquisitive Mind
It seems alarmingly careless that the Western mind has forgotten its psychedelic roots and heritage. The primacy of the sober waking mode of consciousness, and the enforced third-person perspective in science and philosophy, have excluded a wealth of knowledge only now slowly being rediscovered. Altered states of consciousness, induced chemically or otherwise, can help a society plagued by mental health issues and a spiritual disconnect — either nurtured by atheistic nihilism or religious dogmatism. Particularly ayahuasca ceremonies have the potential to instill a sense of deep appreciation for nature, highlighting the utmost urgency to conserve and protect it, a purpose that is otherwise mostly lacking in Western societies.
However, the psychedelic experience can be earth-shattering and deeply troubling. Users can be plagued by reoccurring flashbacks or a lingering sense of unreality. Panic attacks and anxiety can ensue. Psychosis and schizophrenia may be triggered. Psychonauts can also develop a misplaced and deluded feeling of transcendence. Self-proclaimed Western shamans are administering psychedelics to often vulnerable people with no training whatsoever, under dubious conditions. Indigenous communities have been disrupted by their shamans succumbing to greed induced by the sudden wealth amassed from the Western psychedelic tourists.
A seasoned psychonaut once wrote:
"Personally, I don’t think the pure DMT flash is a journey we should take too many times; it feels intuitively threatening. But certainly we are meant to go see for ourselves, at least once or twice. The fact is that the portal exists. Not to explore it would mean denying our heritage of human curiosity." [8]
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The above is a brief compilation of snippets taken from the 59 pages of Chapter 4 of a book I am currently writing about the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness. The working title is The Sapient Cosmos: What a Modern-Day Synthesis of Science and Philosophy Teaches Us About the Emergence of Information, Complexity, Consciousness, and Meaning. See this post for more information.
Previous posts include:
- Thinking about the Mind
- Physics and Philosophy
- The Philosophy of Science: An Idiosyncratic Primer
- The Information-Theoretic Universe
This new book is built upon the monograph Information — Consciousness — Reality: How a New Understanding of the Universe Can Help Answer Age-Old Questions of Existence, an open-access publication appearing in Springer’s Frontiers Collection.
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Sources:
[1] (Schmidt, 2011)
[2] (McKenna, 2021)
[3] (Glattfelder, 2019)
[4] (Schultes, Hoffman, and Rätsch, 2001)
[5] (Grof, 2019)
[6] (Jay, 2019)
[7] (Narby, 1999)
[8] (Pinchbeck, 2004)
