Chapter 7: Expanding Consciousness

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You ever feel like you're just on autopilot, just going through the motions day after day?

Caught in the grind?

Yeah, exactly.

And then, bam, something happens, a moment, an experience that just completely shifts everything.

Your whole perspective changes.

Yeah, those are the moments we're diving into today, these really transformative experiences,

the kind that can fundamentally change your deepest beliefs about reality, about yourself.

And lead to huge changes, right?

People dropping old habits overnight or suddenly not fearing death anymore.

Exactly, or finding this new focus on the greater good, something bigger than themselves.

And you said the core idea here is, it sounds almost strange, the dissolution of the self.

That's right.

It's this fascinating concept where the eye, the ego, even the feeling of having a body,

it just seems to melt away.

Sounds pretty out there.

But you're saying the insights are really valuable.

They are, absolutely.

It reminds me of the philosopher Schopenhauer.

He had this quote.

He said, the person who is involved in this perception is no longer an individual.

For in such perception, the individual has lost himself.

He is pure, willless, painless, timeless subject of knowledge.

Wow, okay.

Pure subject of knowledge.

That's a lot to unpack.

Definitely.

And that's what we're going to try to do for you today.

Connect that kind of philosophical idea to these very real human experiences.

Okay, so let's start with the basics then.

The self that dissolves.

What actually is it?

Because we tend to think of it as, you know, fixed.

Me.

Right.

But the sources suggest it's much more malleable.

It's really a collection of mental processes.

That sense of I that thinks and feels, remembers, plans.

Navigates the world.

Exactly.

And it has a neural basis, you know, connections in the brain.

Specific areas like the cingulate cortices, the medial prefrontal cortex, they're all involved.

And they actually keep developing well into middle age.

So this I is our constant companion.

Useful for thinking about ourselves, setting goals.

Crucial, yes.

Yeah.

But it also has a downside, doesn't it?

Oh, yeah.

The mental chatter.

That's it.

The negative thoughts, the worrying, going over and over things.

Obsessing, catastrophizing.

Yeah.

It can make life pretty miserable sometimes.

Totally.

Just thinking about some tiny thing someone said, like, three weeks ago, and it just loops.

Been there.

But you can escape it sometimes, temporarily,

like those flow states.

Yeah, exactly.

When you're just completely absorbed in something.

Like playing sport, or coding, or climbing.

Or even just, you know, getting lost in a really good piece of music.

You're just there, in the moment,

content.

That feeling of selflessness.

For a bit, yeah.

But then as soon as that intense folks drops.

Wham.

Back comes the chatter.

The self pops right back up.

And this is where the Buddhist perspective is really interesting.

They say, well, the experience of self is real, obviously.

Right.

But the idea that there's some permanent fixed true self underneath it all, that scene is more of an illusion.

Kind of shape -shifting myth, as one source put it.

Not something you have to find or perform.

So these big transformative experiences, they offer a more profound escape

from the gravitational field of the self, as the sources say.

That's the idea, that chattering monkey mind just vanishes.

And it's replaced by this herd silence.

A herd silence.

I like that.

And it creates this really clear dividing line in someone's life.

Absolutely.

A distinct before and a radically different afterward.

OK.

So the sources group these experiences into categories?

Yeah, basically three main types based on what triggers them.

First, you've got religious, mystical, and also aesthetic experiences.

Second, there are those induced by psychedelics.

And third, near -death experiences, NDEs.

And the thinking is, they might all share some common core, some underlying mechanism.

That's the hypothesis, yeah.

It is very likely.

So let's take that first group.

Religious and mystical journeys.

History's full of these, isn't it?

Absolutely.

Saints, sages.

Think of someone like Blaise Pascal, the 17th century philosopher.

After he died, they found this little piece of parchment sewn into his coat.

It described this incredibly intense divine experience he had back in 1654.

Wow.

What did it say?

It started with the word fire and then went on.

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and intellectuals.

Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace.

Certitude, feeling, joy, peace.

That's powerful.

And people coming out of experiences like that often use similar language, don't they?

Being bathed in cosmic light or feeling everything is love or becoming one with the universe.

Phrases that can sound a bit cliche sometimes.

They can, yeah.

But the point is, for the person experiencing it, it's not just a nice feeling.

It's like a fundamental reset.

It overrides years of conditioning.

So it can lead to those instant massive changes like quitting smoking just like that or losing weight without the usual struggle.

Exactly.

Things that normally take huge amounts of willpower.

Think of like the classic Pauline conversion story, Saul on the Road to Damascus.

Right.

Instant transformation.

These things often strike like lightning.

They're rare, but their impact is incredibly direct and powerful.

It reminds me of William James.

He talked about the noetic quality, right?

Yes.

That sense of profound knowing.

You've received some deep insight, a revelation that feels more true than just thinking something through.

And it carries this sense of authority afterwards.

Authority for after time, as James put it.

What's really interesting, too, is that it's not always explicitly religious, is it?

You mentioned astronauts.

Right.

The overview effect.

Edgar Mitchell, Seeing Earth from Space.

He talked about an overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness and ecstasy and epiphany.

Just from the view.

And Jane Goodall, the primatologist, described this moment in Gombe watching nature, where she felt completely merged with it.

And she said the self was utterly absent.

So poets, philosophers, scientists, they all seem to touch on the same kind of experience, this direct awareness of something bigger, love as a cosmic fact or union with the divine.

Suggests it's a kind of universal human potential, perhaps.

And it doesn't have to be those peak moments either, even just getting lost in music or feeling awe looking at a landscape.

Aesthetic experiences, exactly.

They can also pull you out of your everyday worries, your mundane concerns and give you that glimpse of something infinite.

Which brings us back to Schopenhauer again, doesn't it?

It does.

That idea that in appreciating beauty, the separation between you, the perceiver, and the thing you're perceiving, it just dissolves.

The two have become one.

So what triggers these things?

Is it always years of dedication like monks meditating?

Or can it just happen?

Well, it often seems to follow real commitment.

Yeah, but that doesn't guarantee it.

There's often this sense of almost like an unearned grace involved.

And what's fascinating is how many different ways cultures have found a trend in, well,

encourage these states to modify consciousness.

Like what?

Oh, a huge variety.

Social isolation, fasting, really long meditation retreats, certain martial arts, sensory deprivation tanks.

Like static dancing, like the whirling dervishes.

Exactly.

Or specific breathing techniques.

And then, of course, there are certain substances.

Which leads us neatly into the second category, psychedelic journeys.

Right.

And our sources point out this isn't new.

Throughout history, many cultures used what they called medicines.

Not like aspirin, I'm guessing?

No, definitely not.

Medicines to cure illness, maybe, but also to see the future or talk to spirits.

Participants would describe entering other realms, leaving their bodies, talking to gods.

And now we call these substances.

Psychedelics, generally.

From the Greek for mind manifesting.

Or sometimes entheogens, meaning they generate a feeling of the divine within.

And they come from plants, mostly, or animals?

Often, yes.

Mushrooms, cacti, vines, even toad venom in one case.

Or they can be synthesized in a lab, like LSD.

And they work by interacting with the brain's chemistry.

Primarily, yeah.

They bind to specific serotonin receptors.

And that has these profound effects on consciousness on the mind.

So we're talking things like psilocybin from magic mushrooms, mescaline from peyote, DMT, ayahuasca.

Right.

And LSD, 5 -meo -DMT.

The effects can last from just, you know, 10 minutes up to maybe 10 hours or more, depending on the substance.

And the experience itself varies a lot with the dose.

Hugely.

At lower doses, it's more like...

Your senses aren't impaired, you're still intelligent, but things seem different.

Brighter colors, maybe?

Enhanced appreciation for music or art?

Exactly.

A boost in aesthetic and spiritual feelings.

And crucially, that sense of self, that inner chatter,

it gets turned down.

The nagging voice just goes quiet.

It can, yeah.

That constant judging, complaining voice.

Gone.

And the world can feel incredibly vivid, hyperreal almost, like you're seeing it truly for the first time.

The opposite of feeling detached or unreal.

Right.

Though it's important to say they can also bring up difficult stuff.

Fear, anxiety, buried emotions.

It's not always easy.

Sure.

One of the sources described a first experience decades after first hearing about them.

Oh yeah, that was a powerful account.

This feeling of just deep contentment, wonder, gratitude.

Looking at a simple wooden bench and seeing its essence.

Yeah.

Feeling like the beating heart of the cosmos was right there in everything and the visions.

They felt incredibly real, even with eyes closed.

Astonishingly real, apparently.

More real than everyday reality sometimes.

One psychologist talking at Ayahuasca described seeing, well, everything.

Your whole life, everyone you know, nature, the cosmos, even journeys beyond the planet.

Wow.

Okay.

And then at higher doses,

it gets even more intense.

That's where you get the complete dissolution.

Ego, your sense of agency, memory, even your feeling of having a body or being in space and time.

It all gets stripped away.

That sounds terrifying.

It can be.

Absolutely.

Profoundly terrifying.

But the idea is that losing all those anchors ultimately frees consciousness for what's described as pure experience.

Very much so.

Divinity students given psilocybin reported experiences that were almost indistinguishable from classic religious or mystical accounts.

Ego loss, timelessness, unity.

It's fascinating to think about the history here.

These practices were around for ages, right?

Like the Eleusinian mysteries in ancient Greece.

Evidence suggests so, yeah.

But then they often got suppressed.

Christianity, for instance, really clamped down on them.

And European colonizers wiped out mushroom rituals in the Americas, calling them devil worship.

Tragically, yes.

One source makes this really poignant comparison,

having never felt anything profound from years of taking the Eucharist, but then having this overwhelming experience of mind at large drinking ayahuasca in Brazil.

Leading to an ontological shock.

Yeah, a fundamental questioning of the nature of reality and a deeper grasp of that Schopenhauer quote we started with.

So when people talk about these drugs expanding the mind, it's not just a metaphor.

Well, the sources suggest at least three ways to understand that expansion.

First, psychologically.

OK.

Moving from those closed states.

You know, anger, anxiety, obsession towards more open states.

Curiosity, connection, joy,

less self -consciousness.

And there's brain science behind that.

There is, actually.

Research by Judson Brewer maps these open and closed states.

The closed ruminating states correlate with activity in that posterior cingulate cortex and percuneus complex we mentioned earlier.

The self -obsessing bits.

Pretty much.

And mindfulness training, which quiets that self -scrutiny, actually reduces activity there.

So less activity in those self -related areas equals a more open mind.

OK, that's one interpretation.

What's the second?

The second is about increasing your cognitive bandwidth.

All this Huxley's idea, the reducing valve.

Ah, the doors of perception.

The brain usually filters out tons of information.

Exactly.

And maybe psychedelics open that valve, let more sensory data flood in.

Now, objective tests haven't really shown big boosts in all cognitive processing.

But maybe things like creativity.

Free association.

That seems plausible, yeah.

It might enhance that ability to connect disparate ideas, which is key for creativity.

Why some people microdose, perhaps.

And the third interpretation, you said it was the most intriguing.

Yeah, this connects to integrated information theory, or IIT.

The idea is that an expanded mind might literally mean a higher quantity of integrated information.

A higher A value.

Higher phi.

How?

The hypothesis is, when the self goes quiet, the sheer vastness of your perceptual experience, sights, sounds, feelings, takes over.

And the actual complexity, the number of distinctions and connections being experienced, might be greater than when yourself is busy filtering and narrating everything.

And that's testable.

In theory.

In principle, yes.

Measuring the complexity of brain states.

Very cutting edge stuff.

Wow.

Okay, let's shift to the third category, then.

New death experiences.

NDEs.

Right.

These happen during really life -threatening events.

Cardiac arrest, near drowning, major trauma.

Hemingway wrote about this, didn't he?

After being wounded in WWI.

Said dying was simple.

That he knew it.

He did.

And he fictionalized it, too, in the snows of Kilimanjaro.

The character's pain just stops, and he feels like he's flying towards this bright, symbolic mountain peak.

And the accounts from actual survivors, they share common themes?

Very much so.

Seeing a bright light is common.

Feeling like you're outside your body, looking down, meeting spiritual beings, sometimes deceased relatives.

Reviewing your life.

Time and space feel completely distorted.

It's often portrayed as blissful, right?

Peace, love, loss of ego.

Those positive NDEs definitely get more attention, yeah.

But it's crucial to remember terrifying ones happen, too.

Hellish experiences, full of anguish and despair.

And these NDEs, they stick with people, unlike just remembering a close call.

Apparently so.

They're often recalled with incredible clarity, decades later.

And they can trigger those same massive shifts in outlook and behavior we talked about earlier.

Reducing fear of death, even in terminal patients.

Are they universal across culture?

They seem to be reported everywhere, across all demographics.

And the common trigger often involves the brain being starved of oxygen hypoxia or reduced blood flow ischemia.

Okay, but what about those claims you hear sometimes?

People saying their EEG was flat, proving consciousness outside the brain, proof of an afterlife.

Yeah, that gets reported a lot in popular media.

But neuroscientists are, let's say, highly skeptical.

Why is that?

Well, the basic premise is no brain, never mind.

Consciousness, as we understand it, requires brain activity.

A truly flat EEG means no electrical activity, no causal power.

That doesn't support consciousness persisting.

And practically, it's hard to know exactly when the experience happened relative to the flat line.

Exactly.

Especially when someone might be confused or sedated for hours afterward.

Plus, the content of the visions often matches the person's own religious or cultural background.

Which doesn't really point to some objective universal afterlife.

It makes it less likely, certainly.

But the feeling of the experience, the phenomenology, it sounds similar to the psychedelic ones.

Very similar, yes.

That sense of the body dying, the self -dissolving, it happens in both.

The huge difference, obviously, is that psychedelics are generally physiologically safe when used carefully, whereas NDEs involve actual physical trauma.

One source even described a kind of psychic death on a powerful psychedelic.

5 -meo -DMT.

Ah, the toad, yes.

Described as awful intensity, space fracturing, being sucked into a black hole.

Immense terror mixed with ecstasy.

And it took years to integrate that.

Years for their inner life to recover, yes.

But it ultimately led to this profound,

tranquil acceptance of death.

So circling back, the idea is that all three types mystical psychedelic NDEs might share a common neural basis.

That's the leading hypothesis.

Some shared underlying neurobiological mechanism.

And one possibility involves the brain actually becoming quiet.

In specific areas, yes.

Particularly that posterior hot zone,

visual, auditory, sensory cortices, plus those self -related areas like the cingulate and precuneus.

A lull in activity there.

Which is weird for waking life, right?

Normally it's buzzing.

Very unusual.

But it fits perfectly with descriptions of a vast, empty expanse, timelessness, no story, no self.

And there's research supporting this, like with experienced meditators.

Exactly.

Melanie Belli's work with Buddhist monks achieving pure presence, just luminous emptiness, no self showed exactly that.

Minimal activity in the posterior hot zone.

The brain being as quiet as the mind is calm.

Beautifully put, yeah.

Okay, but here's a crucial distinction you mentioned.

A silent cortex versus a silenced one.

Yes, this is key.

Especially for theories like IAT.

Think of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn't bark.

That was significant because it could have barked but didn't.

Precisely.

A silent cortex is intact.

It has causal power.

It could be active, but it's currently quiet.

That quietness is a meaningful conscious state.

It represents something emptiness, peace, whatever.

Whereas a silenced cortex is one that's damaged or suppressed, like by anesthesia or injury.

It's lost its causal power.

It can't be active in the same way.

That state corresponds to unconsciousness.

So just seeing low activity on a brain scan is the whole story?

Not at all.

The potential for activity matters.

This idea challenges simpler models where consciousness just equals lots of processing.

Experience might persist even when the usual signals seem off.

Okay, so wrapping this all up.

After looking at mystics, psychedelics, near death, why are these extraordinary experiences so important?

Why should we care?

Well, the sources give us three main reasons, really.

First, they seriously challenge our everyday physicalist view of the world.

Oh, so?

Because in these states, fundamental things like space, time, even matter and energy can seem to vanish.

Yet experience continues.

Consciousness persists.

That's a profound puzzle.

Okay, that's big.

What's the second reason?

Second, they seem to reveal these hidden recesses of the mind.

They offer access to states or places, internal landscapes that feel incredibly real and deeply revelatory.

They offer new ways of seeing reality.

Not just interesting, but insightful.

Exactly.

And third, perhaps most practically,

their therapeutic value.

Right.

We touched on this.

Helping with depression, PTSD,

anxiety.

Addiction, end -of -life distress, suicidal thoughts.

The potential for healing and profound personal growth seems immense.

These aren't just fringe phenomena.

They could be powerful tools.

It really is a compelling area.

This whole exploration has shown such an incredible range of human potential, ways the mind can shift.

Absolutely.

It opens up so many questions.

So here's something to maybe leave you thinking about.

If that everyday sense of self really is optional, if it can dissolve, and if these profound transformations can emerge from a brain that's actually quieter in some ways,

what does that mean for us?

Yeah, what possibilities does that open up for how we understand our own consciousness, how we might cultivate it beyond our usual limits?

Could you maybe seek out ways to experience that mind at large for yourself in some form?

Lots to ponder there.

Definitely food for thought.

Well, thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into expanding consciousness.

We hope it gave you plenty to think about.

Keep exploring.

Keep questioning.

Thanks for listening.