![]() ![]() And as another philosopher, Bertrand Russell, explains, The philosopher William James tells of a similar problem with psychedelic experiences. This conundrum of being able to tell the difference between God and gobbledygook is not new. This unobservable nature of consciousness means that consciousness can only be known subjectively, from the ‘inside’ It’s not unreasonable to want to know whether you met God or whether it was just your bedroom lights flickering and your brain having gone funny. I, and many others, want to know if what they experienced on psychedelics was something truly transcendent, or ‘just’ a trick of the brain. The podcaster and psychonaut Joe Rogan has suggested he feels this way.īut a copy is not the original. That whether the experience was real or just a lightshow created by the brain, if the experience and its results are the same, then who cares about whether what you saw was ‘real’ or not. Some even argue that the distinction here doesn’t matter. Even two Beings – which matched the two Beings described by Carl Jung and John C Lily in their accounts of their (seemingly) transcendent experiences.įrom “the believer’s” perspective, it’s tempting to call what seemed to be transcendence, ‘transcendence’ and be done with it. To lay my cards on the table, I have had what at least seemed like a transcendent experience after taking psychedelics. An experience that’s valued so highly is surely worth exploring – even if we do think it’s ultimately all smoke and mirrors. Finally, whether we think these psychedelic experiences are worth exploring or not, what is certain is that many who have them rate them in the top 5 most meaningful experiences of their lives – up there with the birth of a child, or death of a parent. But this physicalist approach goes against the scientific work being done by the likes of Kings College London and Johns Hopkins that suggests it is the apparent experience of transcendence, rather than the brain chemistry changes, which is having an impact on the positive mental health outcomes reported in these studies.įurthermore, to call something a ‘hallucination’ does little to tell us of the reality of what is being hallucinated, especially given the popular line spun by neuroscientists today that even the empirical reality we perceive is itself a ‘hallucination created by the brain’. All there is going on is a chemical imbalance being created in the brain. Surely psychedelics only offer hallucinations, the result of what is essentially brain-poisoning – there’s nothing transcendent about that. Sceptics may be wondering why this is a question at all. SUGGESTED READING Transcending the self and finding reality By John Vervaeke The question is, do they offer the real deal are psychedelic experiences truly transcendent? Do they allow us to escape, if only momentarily, the bounds of material reality, and our own minds? Or is what passes as an experience of the profound, just a mesmerising lightshow created by the brain, a hallucination? One that can be life-changing, awe-inspiring and blissful, but one that remains very much anchored in this world, and one that remains a product of this mind? ![]() It’s unquestionable that psychedelics offer an apparent experience of transcendence. An experience is transcendent then if it somehow takes us out of this world, or out of ourselves. Is it possible to experience another world? Something transcendent? Is it possible to experience something outside normal human experience? Will I ever get on the plane?īy transcendent here I mean something beyond either our normal, consensus reality, or something beyond the boundaries of our self. The next plane was just cancelled, adding an extra 4-hour delay. I am currently sitting in an airport on an 8-hour lay-over. ![]() To learn more about the psyehcedlic revotion, tune in to next month's IAI Live event on The Psychedelic Revolution: A new renaisance in mental health? But a closer look at the philosophy of consciousness seems to suggest otherwise, writes Ricky Williamson. Sceptics are too quick to dismiss the whole thing as a hallucination, merely a disturbance of the brain’s chemistry. What is still unclear is what exactly the nature of that psychedelic experience is, and what makes it so powerful. An increasing number of studies are promising a transformation of mental health through their controlled use. There is a psychedelic revolution happening. ![]()
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