December 7, 2021 • 64 mins
We sat down with Philosopher of Mind, Author, and Lecturer Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes to discuss his new book “Modes of Sentience”. We will discuss the three main topics in his new book which are metaphysics, psychedelics, and panpsychism. We have had Peter on the show before and I will add that link below as well as his amazing Ted Talk on Philosophers using psychedelics throughout history.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome back to Micah Maurices might Escape.
Let us help you escape your mind.
(00:30):
All right, folks, welcome back to Mike and Maurice's mind
Escape. We have episode number 228
today. We're going to be discussing
psychedelics and pan psychism with our guest Peter stood
Hughes. This is the second time he's
been on. We had him on a couple years
ago, which we had a very interesting conversation about
(00:51):
philosophy of mind and psychedelics, kind of some
similar stuff going to be discussing today.
But before we get started, he has a new book coming out called
modes of Since I have the link down below, go check that out
and it's coming out. I think in two days, the
hardback and then it'll be fullyout on the 14th.
(01:11):
So again, I have a link down below and his website as well.
So go check that out. We are going to do a patreon
segment with them. So if you're interested head on
over to our patreon, at patreon.com slash mindscape
podcast, for just $2 a month, you'll get exclusive guest,
episodes and segments, tons of stuff on there.
Just put up one with Bob Davis and Daniel McQueen.
(01:36):
I mean we've got tons of stuff up there.
So go check that out. If you're interested.
Let's see here. Oh, we're also in Discord.
If you'd like to chat on there, also head on over to indras web
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So whether you want to speculatehypothesize, theorized the
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(01:59):
working on still. Getting that in the App Store.
So and if anybody's interested, we do have this mind Escape
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(02:22):
gmail.com that will enter you towin.
And again, thank you going to Cole who won last month.
So we really appreciate that. And without further Ado, welcome
back on the show. Peter.
How are you? Thank you.
Yeah, I'm well, thanks. Good to be here again.
Yeah, thanks for joining us course.
I saw your new book was coming out.
(02:43):
I know, we were trying to get you on before and things got
kind of chaotic, but I'm glad wewere able fit this in.
And, you know, pan psychism has been kind of a Hot Topic lately.
I know, I don't know if you knowPhillip golf, but I think he was
just on Joe Rogan. And I've seen a lot of uptick in
pants, like is some talk of late.
Especially not just pens, like General, but also within the
(03:07):
Psychedelic community. So I wanted to ask you, it means
slightly different things to different people, the way that
they interpret it. How do you think about it or how
do you define pan? Psyche is mmm.
Well, it's, I mean, okay. Well the etymology of the word
is from patrizia. See this Renee's, don't think a
(03:30):
and pan means all, and psyche means my soul or mind.
And so that's why some people don't like this idea of the
Soul, because it often means. So it implies that the soul and
the body are distinct as in dualism.
So for example, whiteheads version of pants, like isms
called pain experientialism. Because really sort of the the
(03:54):
mind is part of the body as it were and the environment.
But so I understand it not in a dualistic sense.
Some people that you can that isa version of it and also the
psyche, I don't understand necessarily as Consciousness by
which I mean awareness as opposed to subconsciousness.
I'm I generally mean by it when I use the term sentience.
(04:18):
That's my book modes of sentience and I think so.
He has useful words, it sort of incorporates, all forms of
experience, all forms of mentality, the conscious, as
well as the subconscious. And so on, you know, those
cognitive Concepts emotions rhythms of duration and so on is
just a sort of catch-all phrase.So when I say pan, psyche is my
(04:39):
mean pants sentience, really, and by that.
Have all units of subjectivity have a basic.
Well, there is then in all all things and it depends how you
(05:00):
define things. But there is essentially an all
things, a very basic at the least, the very basic form of
sentience than mentality experience, not Consciousness.
So it's a parent spends, sarcasm.
Doesn't generally mean that, youknow, like a plant has a
Consciousness like we have consciousness.
Thinking about, you know, last weekend, what I did last weekend
or something like that. Just means sort of plants, you
(05:22):
know, like the ancient Greeks believed thought about it.
A plant might have a sort of basic, you know, sort of basic
joy for sunlight and water, and whatnot, you know, not
necessarily with any kind of Concepts or memory or anything
like this, basic memory. Perhaps those actually gonna be
my next question about Aristotle, and his three levels
(05:43):
of consciousness, the plant Consciousness, and then the
animal Consciousness, which Which inhabited, the plan
Consciousness and then you humanconsciousness, which has all
three within it. Would you consider him an early
pan? Psychism to some level pants?
Like, it's some level to an extent.
Yeah. I mean, it was quite prevalent
throughout ancient Greece. This, I mean, IG Collingwood
(06:04):
wrote. This great book called the idea
of nature where and he distinguishes three periods.
It wasn't just Aristotle Plato as well.
If you read him, Plato talks about sort of vegetative, soul,
and so on, as Aristotle, did hisstudent, So - yeah, I think the
softest he has some pants. I kissed ideas in there and the
timaeuses. Well, I believe.
(06:24):
But yes, I calling with sort of distinguishes, this early period
with Aristotle, the Greeks in and Highland morphic period,
which is from Panasonic is really.
And then with the Renaissance, what calling would cause a
Renaissance, you have this shiftaway from believing that nature
was like an organism organic with, you know, embedded
sentience and rather it shifts to a view of nature as a
(06:46):
machine. Which obviously sort of
correlated to the technological Revolution that was to come.
And and then here's the third period which is based on history
and evolution which he wrote. He published in 1945 and I don't
think I don't think really that has come to pass.
I think we're still in the Machine Age generally speaking.
But anyway, yeah, there is, there is a lot of presidents in
(07:08):
ancient Greek thought for believing that, you know,
plants. For example, then yeah, had had
a basic form of psyche, soul. But it was really that well
developed. You know, it was yeah, it was
kind of almost taken for grantedjust as we take for granted in
the west today. That plants don't have any
sentience this way. And I think this this taking for
(07:29):
granted is very in is really interesting phenomenon.
Like why do people that I saw the parts of the Philip Goff
interview with Joe Rogan that you mentioned.
Joe Rogan wasn't really buying it.
He still said no, it's gonna be skeptical.
And I think one reason for people thinking of this as Kind
of a little bit crazy is that wehave this neuro essentialist
(07:53):
default belief in the West. In other words.
There's a belief that the brain is sufficient and necessary for
Consciousness or for mentality. And this is a belief that it's
never really questioned in the neurosciences and never really
questioned in in, you know, sortof everyday world, but it's
really hard to prove it in any way any in any way, you know,
(08:14):
you can't prove it empirically. You can't prove that.
Hasn't has or has not got Consciousness.
You can't prove that a brain is necessary for sentience.
You know, this is just assumed because of brain damage and so
on and you can't prove either it's efficient and other words
them, you know, the brain might rely on other external factors
that allow for that condition sentience, so these so so these
(08:41):
are very important metaphysical questions that are just simply
not real. I used as questions, but I
simply assumed like, we assume that the brain is necessary in
conscious necessary and sufficient for mentality,
therefore because of brains necessary for mentality a plant,
couldn't possibly be sentient. So that belief is generally
(09:02):
based on an axiom, that cannot be has not been proved.
It would be even questionable whether it can be proved, you
know, at all. Why is this come about?
Well, I mean the classic story is that Descartes of Galileo,
first of all, and then, you know, following that Descartes
really more so divided mind and matter in two very distinct
(09:26):
substances. So you have mind or the soul,
which has, you know, thoughts, emotions, what not.
And then you have matter, which is, you know, remember Descartes
was a mathematician matter then was purely geometric pure
extension and therefore could beunderstand through Understood
through mathematics. It didn't have sentience within
it. This was a division that
(09:47):
Descartes made goalie made otherpeople as well, which then sort
of Founded the scientific method.
This is Phillip Phillip cough was speaking about with Rogan
actually in the part. I saw it founded the scientific
method and therefore the site, the scientific method itself has
to exclude any forms of any formof its subject, matter rather
(10:09):
has to exclude any form of sentience.
It turns qualities into quantities, in other words, but,
but the, so with pants hikers. Immunity very interesting to
look at the history as to why people don't believe that
anymore. And also like, as you, You said,
you know, it was once. Believed you look at the
history, why? It's not believed and why it's
(10:29):
taken to be crazy. Then you understand that.
It's dependent upon beliefs thatare really not, haven't been
proved at all. So you then once you realize
that, it opens you up to more possibilities.
I'm not. So I'm not, you know, I'm not
extremely dogmatic about this pain psyche.
As I mean, I think it's just themost plausible parsimonious
(10:51):
view. Otherwise you get into other.
Because you know, but of course,I'm always open to new ideas and
new evidence. Do you think the building blocks
of reality or particles of a parent, subatomic particles,
things like that? Do you think that they have some
level of Consciousness and that not like what we were describing
but just some level of sentience, you know?
(11:13):
Yes. I mean the phasic basic form of
sentience, not Consciousness. So be more akin to a sub
Consciousness, you know, but it wouldn't be nothing.
It would be a basic form. What that would be like is would
be very, very difficult to determine just like it's very
(11:33):
difficult to determine, you know, how another person is
like, you know, to get it's almost impossible to get into
the mind of another person, let alone, let's say, you know, your
pet Let alone get the mouse in your house and so on so forth,
you get further away from Human organisms to, you know,
molecules, as you say, are sort of understanding of it, becomes
(11:57):
less and less I sympathy with it.
The parallels are lost certain extent.
That's not to say there are not parallels, you know, just as we
have a physical body so does a molecule, you know, so there but
of course, a molecules body is very distinct from our own body
and likewise, you know, be the same difference with a mine.
My mind is very distinct from that, you know, mind or mental
(12:18):
event at a better same event than my dream.
So yeah, we can't fathom it. But by the theory of pan, psyche
is emits a belief that in mind, was always part of the universe.
It didn't emerge. One day in evolution.
This is in my PhD of called thisand pink Pang.
The Big Bang Theory and I payingof Consciousness Consciousness.
(12:39):
And this goes so like, you know,if you don't believe in, you see
it's quite radical. If you don't believe.
Pants psychism, you'd have to believe that at some point in
the history of the universe. There was first of all, no
sentience at all, not the slightest, touch of driver
anything. But then one day or a one
moment, rather hang, there was suddenly basic basic form of
(13:02):
sentience that emerged maybe from a singular single-celled
organism something. That's well that of course, is a
radical conjecture. I mean, you know, you've got a,
that's all A radical break in the universe, you know, first of
all, you've got a purely objective universe as a worm and
suddenly you've got this intrusion of sentience and you
(13:24):
know, there's no evidence that that ever occurred and in fact,
it's questionable again, whetheryou one could gain such evidence
is pretty impossible thing to gain evidence for but
nonetheless, it's believed. It's like a faith position in
many ways that that Consciousness or some sentience
for Emerged historically, but also in the common way of
(13:48):
thinking about things as the belief that conscious sentient
submerges, you know, synchronously as well.
So when when a at some point fetus suddenly begins a form of
sentience, you know, suddenly from the from the physiological
matter, mind emerges how this happened.
Of course, is the great, you know, so cool hard problem of
(14:09):
Consciousness, David Jones coined in if I have is an old
problem there and it's like Like, you know how mind and
physical. A lot of people I realize don't
really can't don't easily get the head around there.
So it's just not it's just alienalien to them.
So I just I'll go through it a little bit if you like.
It's the notion that it's the Mind matter mystery.
It's like why do things that move if we understand things
(14:31):
just in this week? Why do neurons firing impulses,
you know, through their dendrites and axons of you
actually in a zoom in to EC molecules and neurotransmitters
passing between sign up. Is of neurons and stuff, you
know, maybe oscillated, maybe not but you get a very, you can
get gain a very physical pictureof this.
(14:52):
How do things moving make a merge something such as an
emotion, or a feeling or a thought, you know, this is the
hard problem of Consciousness. How do you get mind out of meat?
Basically, it this is huge. This is the huge problem soap
and cyclists will say the mind was always He's in there.
(15:15):
You know, it's weird. How can you have your pudding?
You know, you got to ask these articles if you can't eat your
meat. Yes, so I'm but it, of course.
Yeah, so, you know, it's very hard, in other words to get
mentality from Pure physicality.But the interesting thing there
(15:38):
is, we don't really understand what physical physical means,
you know, if you look at historyof the physical, Always looking
at history of these things always sort of a helps people,
you know, you look at what the physical means.
Well, I mentioned Descartes, andfor data, the physical was just
space 3D space extension. As he called it, you know, as
time went by we added forces impulse push-pull, you know, and
(16:00):
then later on, you know, Spin and charge and so on so forth,
you know, so you look at the history of matter and it's
constantly, we're constantly adding qualities to what it is,
but of course, we shouldn't assume that we've now Now,
reached a level where we fully understand it, you know, a few
hundred years are looking back at us as we did.
People few hundred years ago andsort of laugh at us.
(16:23):
So we should always be humble inin, in are realizing that we do
not understand the full extent of what matter is and it is my
belief that, you know, one of the qualities as it were of
matter or wouldn't shouldn't we speak that way?
But an aspect of matter is mind,you know, this is a think that
(16:43):
will be Subdued. Hopefully in the future, but we
haven't yet got there. Yeah, I mean there's definitely
things in the quantum world and things like superposition and
things that they're trying to figure out ways to predict or
quantify the way that these things operate and it seems like
you're right. It seems like they're just
trying to keep adding new thingsto the docket to kind of say.
(17:06):
Oh, it's this or oh it's that and yeah, I mean my nose.
Sorry. I was just gonna no no, sorry.
There's a slight delay. So that, you know, even
physicists don't agree with eachother as to the nature of
matter, you know, different. There are physics is there's not
just one physics fundamental, you know, about dimensions of
(17:28):
space and so on, you know, absolutely.
Yeah, so I would agree with, youknow, a lot of what you said
there. Personally.
I think that that's kind of, we're on the same page or same
track there in terms. I think we discussed this but
you think Consciousness is primary.
(17:48):
That's what we were just discussing.
Is that what do you think? Is there a difference between
pantheism and Spinoza's? God, because I know you're big
into Spinoza and I think I seen.I saw you tweet something
recently about pantheism. Yeah.
Well, you know, the words pantheism was coined by Joseph
(18:09):
raphson and it was coined by him20 years after Spinoza died.
To refer to Spinoza's philosophy.
So I think it's quite right to say that.
Spinoza was a pantheist. At least if you go by the words,
some people say it's a pantheist, but I don't really
accept that. Pantheist means that God is
nature and God is more than nature as well.
(18:31):
Pantheism. Simply as God is nature and
Spinoza says, you know God or nature in its he's quite
explicit about it. So it's quite right.
Cool. Spinoza a pantheist was also my
view of pants. I kissed.
Or parallel s doesn't Spinoza Scholars prefer to to say it.
It was a pantheist because so heequated this is what got him
(18:55):
into a lot of trouble. He's still in trouble.
Did you see that latest? I don't know.
If you saw that latest thing in the news last week about
Espinosa scholar being denied access to the synagogue complex
in Amsterdam in the hospital. Yes, you know, hundreds of
years. He died 1677 Spinoza.
And he was excommunicated in his20s by the his fellow Jews and
(19:19):
and still today is excommunication some rabbis
believe holds and so the spinnertiscali want to go to the, to
the complex for his film. He was making was denied access
because he, you know, he said hedevoted his whole life to the
study of a heretic. Basically.
It's still powerful and Spinoza was but one of the reasons
(19:42):
Spinoza was excommunicated and one of the reasons is Books were
banned by the church as well. Well, as that, he said, yeah,
that God was nature. And so, a lot of people accuse
him of atheism for that reason. They said, well, if you saying
that God is nature, you really saying that's just nature and no
God. So, therefore, you're an
atheist. And so, yeah, there was yeah.
(20:03):
It was very controversial view in the 17th and 18th centuries.
But, but by Nature, Spinoza didn't mean simply matter.
And this is what brings out the pantheism, I think.
So, Spinoza believed that space was infinite.
(20:23):
And space was infinite and that was an aspect of nature when
attribute of nature space extension and as humans had two
ways of accessing that nature orGod or substance, and that was
through the attributes of thought and extension.
So there's two ways of us seeingthe same thing, God or substance
(20:46):
or nature and that is one way isthrough the extensive world.
We see another one is our internal.
Sort of mind, but he said there's an infinite number of
attributes, you know. Other words expressions of that
same Soul substance God nature and but just humans haven't got
access to it interestingly. But so if the then There are
(21:12):
two, at least two ways. There are more than two.
But to human ways of accessing that Soul.
God, one is extension and that then refers to the Infinite
Space of nature. The other way, way, it is
thought. That means everything that is
extended has an element of thought to it.
That's his pants like is more parallelism that applies to
humans. It also then applies downwards
(21:32):
to plants and so on and and that's the kind of pants I Chasm
but upwards as well at also applies.
And so Infinite Space has its power.
Little infinite intellect as he calls it.
And so that's an in an aspect ofhis God, you know, there's
infinite intellect, like, but it's not a God who loves you or
hates. You is an indifferent God.
(21:54):
It's not a very consoling, God at all.
You know, you didn't send down Jesus and so, right, it's, it's
more, like, Aristotle's prime, mover God.
If you've read that the metaphysics.
It's just an indifferent God really.
But that, that God is the infinite intellect and and For
Spinoza. Our finite minds are part of
(22:15):
that infinite intellect. And this in this he was he was
kind of he was inspired by people like maimonides who
believes in this infinite intellect for which we are
apart. Just like our bodies are part of
Infinite Space. And so, this is really his, this
is the sort of outline of his pantheism.
Interestingly this in Flint elect was spoken of inspired,
(22:39):
the British idealist and they started speaking about Eternal
Consciousness, and this eternal,Consciousness turn sort of lend
lent itself to this time. Cosmic Consciousness.
That was a, I think coined by Edward Carpenter, but used by
our em back in his book, Cosmic Consciousness, 1901, and 1902.
(22:59):
William James used it in the varieties of religious
experience. And then of course, he linked it
to psychedelics, you know, nitrous oxide, which I included
a psychedelic Ethan, so on. And and then of course in the
mid-twentieth century Cosmic Consciousness became almost like
platitude is sort of cliche amongst the certain, you know,
(23:19):
him, maybe demographic and whatever.
But you know, and and in a way oldest actually, when he wrote
about in the doors of perception, you know, his book
about mescaline experience. He spoke about mind that Larch
that of course, also is related to this etiology of this
infinite. Intellect, this kind of
pantheous to God, which goes allthe way back to Spinoza, but
(23:40):
before that, And that has influence again in Aristotle,
you know, so always goes back toAristotle.
Plato seems, you know, yeah, we're going to be getting into
those other grandfather's. Yeah.
Einstein was a big Spinoza Stateand I know he had similar ideas
of God. Some people think, oh, Einstein
(24:02):
use, you know, hardcore scientist materialist, but he
actually had some pretty interesting takes as well on
that. He wrote to them too.
Poems about Spinoza and he always.
He said he believed in Spinoza'sGod and he was greatest.
Modern philosophy books. He brought mind and body
together and so on you, it was abig acolyte.
(24:23):
So how can psychedelics inform Us in regards to pants?
Like ism. Is it the feeling of being one
with something greater or is it the freedom freedom to look upon
the world without the burden of this built-in evolutionary?
Parried pareidolia? Like what do you think's going
on there? There's many interesting
connections for one reason. When I've looked started looking
(24:46):
into with them, some this Anthropologist Luis Eduardo,
Luna is the fact that American Indian cause indigenous
cosmology. He's they are animists and
animism and Panasonic is Amar really, you know, two sides of
the same coin. They believe, you know, the
(25:07):
trees have, you know, are embedded with souls and so on so
forth. So that's a type.
Another type of pain psyche is MM.
Really animism as a type of painpsyche is Amanda Ms. Mm,
originally was coined by toilet in a, in a negative sense, but
it doesn't have that connotationanymore.
I don't think. But so their cosmology the whole
(25:30):
life metaphysics of reality. Is this sort of Living World in
which they live going up to the sun Stars, whatnot, and their
cosmology. Up in completely intertwined.
With psychedelic use Ayahuasca, you know, so on.
And you know, by taking these psychedelics, they they gained
(25:52):
access but greater access to these.
This this kind of sentient worldaffairs.
So that's one interesting respect in which parents I Chasm
and psychedelics connect. I mean that its intrinsic to
those cultures. As I say something that I'm
beginning to look into, so don'tsay too much at the moment is
really fascinating. There's this great book, Book
called the Falling Sky by an indigenous Shaymin called Davy
(26:15):
cop an hour and that describes his shamanic journeys, you know,
with how you ask Yahoo, and and,and so on and it's just really
fascinating, you know, it doesn't talk about like, you
know, mystical experiences of unity as we would in the west
and the East. It's rather speaks about like,
especially the Shapiro, these little ancestral Spirits, like,
(26:37):
lilliputians actually, which Gide guide that world but that's
one interesting respect, anotherword.
Another thing. I'm looking at beginning to look
at as well, with regard to pants.
I Chasm is and psychedelics is this there's recent scientific
Studies by Sam Gandhi in and others to show that
(26:58):
psychedelics, Foster Kindle, a kind of nature connectedness.
So you take psychedelics with eyes open, you know, you see a
natural object and you feel moreone.
On with it as it were, you have to be careful with is where
Unity Oneness. Because, I mean, so many
different things. I realize, you know, through
trials. But in this sense you begin a
(27:20):
kind of sympathy and Intuition or connection then with nature.
Now, the interesting question for me, is this with regard
found psychism from a neuro essentialist point of view.
You know, that Consciousness really is just an epiphenomenon
of the mind or the brain, ratherthis nature connect connect.
(27:41):
The switch in these papers at least needs to create a mental
health. This this connectedness must be
some kind of Illusion must be a delusion because you know,
plants, let's say don't have anyform of sentience.
So you can't feel intrinsic connection with them.
They have no their mind at all. You know, they have no intrinsic
(28:04):
worth have no teleology. They have no sentience.
So any nature connectiveness, there must be some kind of
Strange hallucination, you having whereas, of course in
pound psychism, one can begin toexplain this nature
connectedness in a vertical manner.
In other words in what true manner as it were, you know, or
pause opens up the possibility that the empathy, you're feeling
(28:28):
with the natural world is not hallucination, but actually, as
some kind of prevention as Whitehead, would say some kind
of connection with another sentient being so, and Of
course, you know, on if you stepout of that, that if you accept
such, a metaphysic depends like ISM, then you would view such
(28:52):
nature, connectiveness through psychedelics, as of more value.
I think, you know, because if you consider it to be a
hallucination, you might feel itwhen you're under the influence
but afterwards you say, well that's weird.
Something strange that happened,you know, but of course, it's
complete rubbish. That would then probably I would
imagine I would guess Not be of as much used to your mental
(29:15):
health as if you believe that there's some kind of Truth.
Interesting hypothesis. I've been throwing around and
other people discuss this too. But I've been throwing us around
for the last few years. Is the idea that metaphysics are
at the core or psychedelics are at the core of all metaphysics.
(29:37):
Meaning like the Psychedelic experience, Altered States.
This is where we get these ideasfrom.
They don't if you just lived in day-to-day Consciousness, I find
it hard to believe that you would just come up with some of
these ideas given You know, yourbuilt-in evolutionary like pay
like I said, pareidolia and you're just surviving and
putting things together that way.
So, you know, you've Plato's theory of forms allegory of the
(30:02):
cave again, in the softest. He talks about pants.
Psyche is mmm. Socrates you have, Socrates, is
morals and ethics. And what happens when you come
down from a psilocybin trip, what happens when you come down
from an intense psychedelic trip, you have this, you know,
this this willingness and wanting this to become a better
person. You know, to Pythagoras and, and
(30:23):
Euclid, you know, maybe they were seeing geometry after their
loosening Mysteries experience, you know, like being able to see
the thing that you've been speculating on would be very
powerful, Parmenides. Our senses are lying to us, you
know, all these great thinkers were talking about ancient
Greece, you know, you can go back to the loosening mysteries
in a lot of these, you know, people came from, you know, that
(30:48):
time. But they also had similar
experiences. They all had to participate in
the greater Mysteries once in their life, I mean, but you
could even go back to like cave art like Selva pass koala that
in Spain that with the psilocybe.
He's painted in the cave wall and that Algerian cave, you know
art that Terence McKenna used ina lot of his stuff.
(31:10):
So I guess it's like a stone deep for metaphysics as opposed
to like evolutionary biology, something along those lines.
But I mean, how do you how do you feel about that?
Like, do you think there's something to that?
Yeah, I mean, I don't read booksand this great French
philosophy. I speak about a lot here in his
last book, two sources of morality and religion.
(31:30):
He talks about the orphic religion in ancient Greece,
inspiring, Pythagoras. And in turn as varying, Plato,
you know, we don't have any remnants of Pythagoras, his own
writings, but only his followersthat he was a big influence to
Plato. Yeah, and that, of course, as
you say and I play too undoubtedly went to the
eleusinian mysteries of common thing.
(31:51):
Religion and ritual Alaska two thousand years and engine grease
only 30 miles from Athens. But as well as that, I mean, you
had dionysian festivals. The wine in ancient Greece, was
psychoactive. There was had to tell you tip
water, you know, as much evidence for it and before that,
you know, you there's also, of course, you know, the Soma and
The Vedas and so on. And there's a lot of evidence
for ancient used. Not to mention what happened,
(32:13):
South America Middle America, soit's nothing new.
And in place. Those few do which is also
called on the soul. Where he first really introduces
the notion of dualism. He says, I want to be counted
amongst Mystics the dionysian and then after that he talks he
tries to rationally argue for dualism that somebody had
(32:35):
distinct. So I mean, you can speculate
that there was some kind of vision that I had.
He talked about his visions and futurist, for example, that that
that he that he intuited them through some kind of exceptional
experience. Whether And I think most people
will accept that he had exceptional experiences, whether
they were occasioned by something akin to psychedelics.
(32:57):
As another question. I think the likelihood is some
people just don't don't accept that but I think the likelihood
is, is there? And there's not, there's also a
pollute, the plutonian caves like, right there to near a
looser. So I keep thinking like, oh he
was having this experience. I walked over there and had this
kind of epiphany. I'm not saying that.
(33:19):
That's exactly what happened. But I could see that happening.
I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, and one of his dialogues is based on, you know, beginning
of the river which is part of the Lesser Mysteries is next,
the Lesser mystery. So there's a look, but you have
to remember, of course, you know, the Mysteries were called
that because partly because theywere it was forbidden to speak
about them. You know, right.
They arrested for so it's could buy these at the dinner party
(33:40):
getting. Yeah, right trouble.
Okay. So so anyway, but I think yeah,
there was there. There was an influence, I think
generally and with philosophy aswell.
I mean philosophy in the broad sense often one starts with an
intuition and then after that, you try to sort of make sense of
(34:03):
that intuition rationally because that's our prosaic
Consciousness, you know, which is good for practical life, you
know, finding out working out means of achieving an end, you
know, usually survival development Will To Power
whatever. There's this interesting.
There was a Poetry Man real and he spoke of the oceanic
(34:23):
experience, which he was corresponding with Freud.
I've written about this in my chapter on Spinoza and 5:00 a.m.
A Meo DMT and another book coming out called philosophy and
psychedelics, published by Bloomsbury and May June.
It's an edited volume. I got one chapter and the
introduction and her edited it well with Christine house color,
but in there, I talked about theconnection between Unreal.
(34:47):
And, and the oceanic feeling which some people is another
word for like the in the mystical experience.
He speaks about that to Freud who's very skeptical about it
all. And then Freud sort of writes
about in future of an illusion and so on and become staple
parlance and psychedelic circlesthereafter, but the interesting
(35:09):
thing is, when you look at this Oceanic strings from Roland, he
talks about it in terms of Spinoza.
So an and by that, I mean, an intuition of spinosum, he's got
this book, called The Flash of Spinoza, right?
I was the flash of Spinoza, brilliant and de leurs.
(35:29):
The French philosopher to. Let's read about this.
And he says, Spinoza's, something like this.
I'm paraphrasing. But he says, you know, Spinoza's
stands out amongst philosophers because his whole system is
pantheistic pants. Psychological system.
Metaphysics can be intuited in aFlash like this.
And but interestingly, it's you can sort of get it as Roman rule
(35:53):
and spoke of. In this flash about the same
time. You can understand it
rationally, as well, Spinoza himself.
Try to describe EPS explicate his whole system through the
geometric order, like following Euclid, very, very rational way,
but that whole rational way in the ethics is main book ends
(36:15):
with This notion of intellectuallove of God.
By m remember. I got him into nature in this
qualified sense and this again, then becomes like an intuition
of the whole rationale system. So I think psychedelics but not
only psychedelics, other other forms of intuition, as well can
provide for such flashes of intuition metaphysical
(36:37):
intuition, as you say, Patrick Lundberg, a really interesting
Swedish writer on psychedelics died.
A few years ago. He's got a book called
psychedelia. He says Pantheism.
And, and one is a Mahal is, mm are two of the main psychedelic
virtues, you know. Pantheism is core.
It seems to a lot of psychedelicexperiences.
(36:59):
But of course people might into it and then they come out of it
and if they haven't got sort of training and when you understand
any knowledge at all, about Spinoza apparent, what a
pantheism, even means to be veryhard for them to articulate that
and then justify it to themselves in.
This is why I believe personally.
And that's another thing. I'm getting into Exeter
University. Is when people talk about
(37:21):
integration of psychedelic experiences.
You know, how does that come about, you know, it's, I don't
think it's good enough just to speak to some counselor to where
these weird experiences one had and they said, well, you know,
how is it affecting your life? And so I mean, I think a more
solid form of integration would be to place such psychedelic
experiences into a philosophicalmetaphysical system, you know,
(37:44):
in other words, make sense of What you've experienced like the
unity of all ones. That means easier to say, how
does it relate to? For example, Spinoza's
philosophy or whiteheads for that matter, but complicate
things further looking at this like indigenous American, you
know, use of psychedelics these Notions of pantheism and unit
(38:06):
and sort of, you know, mystica. They're not really there.
You know, they do have like the West has lilliputians.
As I say little people. It's a real mystery.
They Don't Really report these sense of unity.
So then the next question comes up, then this is other really
interesting question of philosophy at about perennialism
as against contextualism, so is it the case like Aldous Huxley
(38:29):
believed in oh, that's William. James that all religious
fundamental experiences are the same regardless of culture and
the interpretations differ, according to a culture, this is
perennialism, it's always the same.
Or is it the case? The Other Extreme found found a
really by a guy called Steven Katz Jewish scholar.
(38:52):
Does context completely determine not just the
interpretation by the experienceas well.
So, you know, indigenous Americans might experience
Jaguars and snakes and so on, whereas westerners with that
sort of Christian judeo, Christian tradition will
experience, you know, the Oneness of the universe.
This interesting question. I'm somewhere in the middle
because For a start, the Westerntradition incorporates, a lot of
(39:18):
the East to not just Western, you know, especially the 20th
century, you know, it looked andBuddhism has brought brought in,
you know, with DT Suzuki, especially to inform the Western
World Views, is not really part of our culture became a very
quickly. Secondly, there are similarities
with Lilliputian ISM. Like I say little people
thirdly, obviously your own lifeand memories will have can Have
(39:44):
an impact on your psychedelic experiences.
That's part of therapy. You know, you go through lost
memories or whatever, right? So no one's doubting that that
your life and culture must have can have some influence but it
just seems to me that when you talk about very high level
psychedelic experiences, especially I'd say there's
induced by 5 m e0 DMT the so completely alien to your life
(40:08):
and your culture that it's very hard to argue.
They're conditioned by it. You know, there's nothing to do.
No memories there of your life and I am self-conscious.
There's there's mentality but there's not self consciousness
because there are no Concepts. There's nothing really to do
with your culture there. Afterwards.
Of course, you could interpret are seeing light of God or
something, but the experience itself.
(40:28):
I don't think can be said to be conditioned by culture, just
like I don't think heroin experience can be conditioned by
culture, really fully. Obviously.
The Heron has some kind of universal or at least some kind
of common effect on people regardless of where you are.
Same could be said of a paracetamol you.
Yeah, so, I mean if you read a lot of like trip reports, you
(40:48):
know, that's where you see a lotof this pantheism pants like
ISM. A lot of these people aren't
like you mentioned aren't even really aware of, you know, what
these with the terminology is what it specifically includes.
It's just like as anybody else experienced this.
And you know, that's the first time they've ever, you know,
known or experience something ofthat nature.
(41:09):
So I don't know if is your mentioning.
It's colored by previous. I know some things are because I
can speak from my own experience.
But I don't know if these like groundbreaking or break through
experiences are, as you mentioned, are really touched by
(41:30):
any of that stuff. I guess it's just something we
have to keep an eye on because Ican go back and forth with that
and I have we've had a lot of different people on the show
discussing these topics and kindof swung back and forth that
time. So yeah.
You have to be very careful about people's expectations,
which might Prime The Experienceitself, of course, and then the
interpretations afterwards as well, you know, they might have
(41:52):
an experience in. They just click get this word
pantheism whatever other people have spoken about.
So yeah, it was pantheistic without understanding what that
means. But then again, maybe not, but
it's, you have to really try to is very hard to distinguish the,
The Experience someone had from their report of it.
Right? And we've even looked at, I've I
(42:13):
asked a bunch of different people who have had, you know,
Ayahuasca experiences in the Amazon or in South America.
And then I've asked people that have had analog experiences with
the different, you know, like peganum harmala mixed with some
sort of phalaris grass or something like that.
Is there a difference? Because even maybe just those
(42:34):
the compounds within the actual plants might have my color, the
experience to, I've even looked at that but it seems to not
necessarily be the case. Is from everybody.
I've talked to so, but it is an interesting thought,
nonetheless. Yeah, I mean really low and
medium doses. It seems the type of drug has
effect on experience. I mean Salvia, divinorum, for
(42:55):
example, our hands to be quite different from psilocybin, but
then, you know, I hired a very high doses.
I mean, I've heard people speak about extremely high doses of
LSD, which were seem to be. It's very similar to 5 m, EO D
Mt. You know, this requires further
phenomenological analysis. Yeah, I was going to ask you,
(43:15):
what, what is the different substances have?
Like, what kind of effect would that have?
But I obviously, you guys are talking more about DMT, then,
you know, psilocybin LSD, but you would think that the
different drugs would have a different Outlook as well.
Yep, precisely. So if you take a standard DMT as
it were, it seems get a lot of people to my aliens.
(43:37):
And psilocybin seems to be go the other way towards instead of
Science Fiction towards fantasy and if fairies and elves and
stuff, you know. Me neither 10 grams, dried of
psilocybin and everything kind of just dissolved and pattern
Street patterns. That was pretty.
It was just almost like fractals.
So it kind of felt very primordial in a way.
(43:59):
But yeah, I wouldn't, I didn't actually encounter any like
entities and that experience. I've had other experiences where
I've had entities. But yeah, you can go pretty deep
on all these things and have transcended experiences.
Yeah, and of course, it differs not only the drug And the dose,
but also the mindset you're in at the time is Classics, you
know, says in setting, and then setting the environment you're
(44:20):
in. We'll have some kind of impact.
Usually, it's about Comfort there.
And, but when I say impact, obviously, with eyes open, it
will have profound impacts, you know, with eyes closed, which is
always the more interesting micein my view.
The question is, what is the real?
The environment seems have less of an effect, you know.
(44:41):
Well that's obvious in a way with the I suppose.
But yeah, determining how the environment can have in your
culture and your inculcation your life.
History can have an effect on eyes closed high dose
experiences. I think that is a really
interesting question that it's very hard to determine because
you know, when you do studies onthis you always rely on reports
(45:04):
and then psychologist psychiatrist always try to then
get the report and then quantifyher report and then put into
graphs and it will looks fancy and whatever.
But really The interesting question is, can you really
trust that report? Like I say how when people use
words like pantheism, do they even know what it means?
What do they understand their different versions of it?
So which one are they referring to, you know, and do they
(45:28):
actually mean that pantheism? For example, them the Stephen
Katz paper on criticizing a lot of mystical philosophy argued
that, for example, when we use the word Unity, For a lot of
psychedelic or mystical experiences saying the
experiences part can be better, that he said, the word Unity
(45:51):
could be used to translate sort of Zen Buddhist notion of the
Void, right? But at the same time, it can be
used to translate Jewish forms of Union.
Mystica. You said those, you know, you
know, experientially there's a two radically different forms of
experience, but we have one wordto sort of The Umbrellas
everything. And so when you have a report
(46:13):
that you know, you felt one witheverything.
I mean you can you can ramify that into lot of different
types. You know, there's often not
done. Just got Unity.
How far, how much did you feel Unity 1 to 10 and then that's
fed into graphs and stuff. And I mean, to be fair, to be
honest. A lot of these scientific
studies on psychedelics are quite poor.
They're really, they don't, theydon't distinguish.
(46:36):
It was this recent one. For example, I won't name names,
but it it was about Trying to show that now.
Now, I'm sure you know, which one, I mean, if you just Google
it, but it was, it was going to sort to show that psychedelics
change. One's metaphysical beliefs and
(46:57):
it was done by a questionnaire via email to people who went on
Ayahuasca, Retreats. Right?
First of all, I don't think that's a good way of
deciphering. The stuff, you know,
questionnaire was loaded with like, you know, Reputations of
experience for start. It was not followed up by actual
interviews or anything but the from a philosophical point of
(47:18):
view, the options didn't even even include pantheism on one of
them to find really strange because like, I say, lombok
said, these are two of the main psychedelic all virtues, you
know, so yeah, I think we have to psych, you know, we have to
take psychedelic studies scientific studies with a pinch
of salt. And also now, of course, there's
(47:38):
also this other ulterior motive to make money out of To them as
as therapy. And as a result, you know, you
might get skewed results. You get might get emphasis of
positive results and stuff like that, you know, not to say that
they're not useful for therapy. I believe they are.
But you have to be really skeptical when you look at the
details about how, it's how it'ssort of, a lot of these
(47:59):
conclusions are, are created. Yeah, like it all.
I mean, I like knowing the science, but I also appreciate
the mystical mysticism aspects of it as well.
That's what helped me. My issues my OCD and stuff.
But I also like the stuff we're talking about to the
philosophical points of view andphilosophical takes on it as
(48:20):
well. So I like all of it.
I think there's room for all of it.
But I agree with you. Some bleed into other sometimes
and creates kind of chaos at times.
That's good thing. You should look at old
perspectives. And with a critical eye though,
you know, philosophical perspectives as well, of course,
but I think it's just such an early.
(48:41):
The science and you know, we just don't know what's going on.
Also, there's an interesting phenomenon of really bad trips
that are not always, you know, needn't be positive even in the
long-term. So yeah much more to be be done
about it. But you know, it's good that
there's so much research. Now being done.
Hmm. It's a good thing.
(49:01):
Yeah, to point you're talking about, like that, that
experience I described I had wasactually in the woods.
It was opened. I normally prefer closed eye
dark meditation. This was Daylight in the woods
open-eyed and I must have ingested obviously, so much that
everything just kind of it was almost like clothes.
I had the experience. That's how intense and then
(49:24):
growls. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and I know people that go
we've had, you know, we have friends of the show and people
that comment and send us emails and stuff that have gone way
deeper. We're talking 30 40 and they I
can't even get into the some of the stuff that they're getting
into. So, I'm not that it's flat days
after setting. Yeah.
(49:45):
Yeah. I have you ever tried to find
them in. I have not.
We actually more recent. I that's the only psychedelic.
I mean, I can't speak for Maurice.
It's really the only psychedelicthat I haven't experienced.
One of the mainstream ones. I'm trying to think that and
I've never experienced ketamine.Those are the two that I've
never Academy's kind of borderline, psychedelic.
I don't even know if I would getsome interesting.
(50:06):
You say that? Because so we've teamed up with
the psychology department at Exeter University and It's that
there's a lab led by Professor Celia Morgan, who's one of the
world leading experts in Kettleman.
We've heard a lot about their research and there was as
qualitative paper that came out on it recently and it just
showed me that ketamine is a psychedelic, right?
(50:29):
It really is, people are high enough doses in the right
setting, people can have visions, you know, just like
psilocybin or whatever. And but then people some people
so no, it's not, it's a tranquilizer.
Kaiser. And it's not a doesn't act on
the serotonin receptors, like the classic, you know, classic
psychedelics. So it can't be a psychedelic.
However, they also exclude nitrous oxide for the same
(50:51):
reason and the effects of ketamine and nitrous oxide are
quite similar, interesting lie, but when you look at the word
psychedelic again, going back tothe history to understand that
fully fro who coined it that psychiatrist, humphry Osmond.
Friend of Aldous Huxley John smoothies, he coined it in a, it
(51:12):
was published in the paper 1957,all those spoke about it with
hexlen in correspondence, the year before.
But 1957. This paper came out where he
actually made it public this word psychedelic and in it.
He doesn't restrict it to, you know, those drugs hating on the
serotonin receptors. He included, nitrous oxide, and
related to William James. In fact, he was really, you
(51:35):
know, enthusiastic about All thephilosophical aspects of
psychedelics and that even though he's a psychiatrist in
that original paper. So when you look at that
original paper, you know, you realize how the word psychedelic
really. It means literally mind
manifesting of course, but it's very its Broad in scope and he
and thanks indigenous communities in around the world
(51:55):
says they never referenced. But you know, they've obviously
got a craft science and this, that we are just sort of hitting
to re To sort of get back in touch with as it were.
But when you read that and you really you read what he
describes, a psychedelic, certainly ketamine notes.
Sufficient doses is a kit. We should be he would include
(52:18):
that as a psychedelic. I consider it.
I just consider it, one of like the outlier ones like counting
on how you mentioned nitrous. Like we, we grew up in a
community like Grateful Dead andfish.
These bands were nitrous tanks. I mean, it sounds like an
airport when you're hanging out on shakes called Shakedown
Street outside the concert and we're talking like large large.
It's of nitrous. They called hippie crack.
(52:41):
And so yeah, I mean, we're I'm familiar with both and I've had
a lot of friends, you know, you know, the done both and I just
for me is I'm not going out there searching for things.
If things come to me I'm willingto try them but I'm not going to
I'm too old to be out there, youknow, looking for things.
So but yeah, then you must be very careful.
(53:02):
I mean, it's oh, absolutely. Yeah.
It's a very, very powerful. Okay, mate.
Combat, if you use the 10 grounds, okay, maybe not that
even compared to that. It's probably something else in
my younger years. We definitely used to push the
boundaries for sure. I would mix things and take
things, you know over the top and that's before I had
reverence. Now.
I don't need a ton and I can kind of get to those places
(53:24):
without a ton. So I want to Pivot here before
we wrap this up and get to the patreon segment, but I want to
talk about little bit about liketime and time and space.
I've heard you talk a little bitabout time.
I Get what I was listening to, but we have this time space
Dimension, right? And it seems to be somewhat
(53:45):
constant. And then we have our perception
of that time space, which can bealtered via psychedelic
experience, near-death experiences, Altered States Of
Consciousness. Almost like, you know, the
sometimes, if you're about to get in an accident, you have
that precog where everything slows down for a second, you
know, and I find that interesting.
(54:06):
So Do you think about that relationship?
Do you think something weirder? Is that play or do you think for
instance, we know time and spacethe more gravity.
There is the more time slows down.
But in terms of like re are we reacting to that?
Like is that is it? Our biology?
That's that's causing us to havea reaction of perception?
(54:27):
Or is it something weirder in connection there?
I mean these are deep Mysteries identify.
I'm really I can answer in any way but I philosopher.
Bro, you're the person to ask weknow, philosophy got more
questions than answers, right? So here you go, but I would say
this that. Yes, so I spoke about time.
(54:50):
I swear got timelessness, actually a recent illness and
it's like little lecture. I gave online the belief that in
this relates to, then psychedelic mystical States and
that, you know, you believe thatyou can experience timelessness.
Some people think that, you know, Condition of experiences
time and he kind of experience with that time, you know, going
(55:10):
on. But you know, it's less, as you
can have experience of timelessness basing on his
understanding of Spinoza and I would argue that Spinoza's.
Intellectual love of God is alsoan experience of timelessness.
Because essentially time as you intimating there.
It's multifaceted, but there's well, must make a distinction if
(55:30):
one can between subjective experience of time and any
objective reality of time. This is real.
This is very interesting. So as you were saying there's
what bugs and cause rhythms of duration in other words speeds
at which you experience time youlike and go in slow motion.
If you're about to have an accident for example or on
psychedelics that means. But is that wrong?
(55:53):
Is that hallucination? Or is it just another way of
Sing reality. Again.
It's very hard to say what time is, if it's not experienced.
In fact, it seems that experience must be a condition
of time, but time need not be a condition of experience, right?
(56:14):
At the speed of light. Of course, according to
relativity time stops. Is that perspective?
Wrong? Not necessarily.
If that were the case, then again, there's another case of
timelessness. Again.
I Design, according to Spinoza, from a different angle.
There are also of course, the speed of the.
Now I'm another big problem philosophy is this notion of the
(56:36):
specious present? The duration of now, how long is
that? You know, and how much is that
based on us humans? Other animals probably have
perhaps a longer now. Shorter.
Now it with its psychedelics as well.
It seems like the duration of now extends or contracts again.
What how can one therefore say that there's a real?
(56:56):
As it were mind-independent. Now present it seems even let
that the determination of the past and the future dependent on
your Consciousness, you experience as well, which means
that take away, the mind seems like you can't have the past and
the future and the present anymore as trichotomy as a
determined trichotomy. So there's a really interesting
(57:20):
aspect about how time relates tothe mind.
How much how much Each what we know it's dependent on my
iniquity. Interesting question is to what
extent if it's completely determined by the mind.
Then in reality. We have timelessness.
Which then one could then speculate that psychedelic
experiences takes one into this timelessness.
(57:41):
This other way of seeing reality.
Also, I mean if you say well time and sense is determined by
the brain and blah blah blah, ofcourse that then assumes this
neuro essentialism. That was speaking about before
which then has a lot of other issues, the main issues again,
Up, you know, it's hard problem of Consciousness upward
causation matter to mind. And also something I haven't
(58:03):
mentioned mental, causation mindto matter.
We believe that our intelligence, our conscious
calculations. Our desires have an effect upon
the world. This is logically incoherent
according to neuro centralism. But yet, it's If you deny, it is
anti evolutionary. Why we we have evolved over has
no purpose mentality at all. So you get into all these weird
paradoxes, right? In other words, our present
(58:25):
understanding. Standing of reality just leads
to paradoxes every way you look.So the interesting thing for me
is do psychedelics offer different ways of looking at
reality that might inform these paradoxes overcoming these
paradoxes, Mmm. Yeah.
I've had, I've heard philosopherdescribe, you know, the
(58:46):
mind-body thing is like, you know, the the mind is to the
brain is like, what a fist is toa hand.
You know, it's the same thing. It's just Two different form of
that thing if that makes sense. I don't know this one.
Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
It's just like a language thing really.
And I think that if you look at philosophy, a lot of the
(59:06):
evolution of philosophy is been broken down through like, you
know, parsing like what's what would in terms of language.
And what, you know, I think lasttime we had you on an example
would be liveness is law of indiscernibles and that for two
things to be exactly the same one must be true.
To the all they must all have the same properties so mind and
(59:30):
body are different. In the sense that like mind is a
completely different thing than material or body.
But if everything is 1, then they are the same thing, but you
said I think we you your response was that was like a
language thing that they figuredout or something.
Yeah. I mean, it's just I'm just
thinking now about I mean, this is a Spinoza would say mine
(59:51):
buddy are the same thing essentially to seek from to but
different perspectives and interestingly.
We got two dimensions of space-time, as you mentioning
it, looking at their one of the big problems about understanding
that the identity then of mind and matter.
Brain, and body is your brain. And mind, rather is that is
(01:00:12):
spatial dissimilarities. So like, if you think of a
triangle, it has certain properties, three angles, three
sides. Bubbeleh.
If you correlate that then to part of the except activity in
the occipital lobe, that will also have special properties by
they will, Not be the same spatial properties.
Obviously, a triangle doesn't manifest itself in your brain,
physically anything. All right.
(01:00:33):
So how can the same thing? Have two types of spatial
property. And yet be the same thing now to
understand this. So the last chapter in my book
modes of sentience is, is about this, really, and talks about
two types of space. So there's external space, and
is mental space. And then three, To fold space,
(01:00:57):
as Bertrand Russell called it. And then I speak about something
called threefold space, extending that.
And then we talked about how that relates to different
dimensions of space, understanding space, not just as
times the fourth dimension. But five, six, seven, dimensions
of space, and how this might be unified in theory.
That CD broad more and John Smith.
(01:01:19):
He's came sort of speculated. So the so understanding.
The relation of mind and matter actually part of that involves
looking at space. How does space and sentience
relate? This is really complex question,
that no one's really answered. No one's really aware of, you
know, but it's fundamental. Jake William James wrote this
(01:01:41):
great essay called does Consciousness exist.
Might've mentioned where he questions whether, as I was
saying before, you know, like whether the mind is purely
spatial, this is an assumption. So yeah.
That and then and This interesting relationships
between speciality and feeling that the pants I kissed, and
(01:02:01):
mathematician WK Clifford spoke off which are again mention in
my, in this forthcoming book modes of sentience.
It's very speculative sa, you know, and but nonetheless opens
up. It just makes it complicates
this whole my master of mystery even more.
Yeah, no interesting stuff and I'm looking forward to that one.
(01:02:24):
And yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time when we're
going to wrap it up here. I'm going to do a patreon
segment with you. I think in the patron segment,
maybe we'll talk about psychedelic entities and kind of
unpack that a little but everybody go check out Peters
book. I have the Linked UP below, it
comes out on the 9th for the hardcover.
And then I think you said the 14th for the paper-bound,
(01:02:48):
another 14. Paperback will come out a bit
bit later. Actually, it's later.
Okay, the hardback comes out from the printers on the ninth.
It will be sent you'll hopefullyget it before Christmas.
It's officially on the 14th paperback.
I think January and he Kindle versions while later shoutout to
psychedelic press as well. And yeah check out Peters
(01:03:08):
website over the link down belowthere as well.
And one more time. If you're interested head on
over to patreon patreon.com, slash my Escape pod cast for
just $2 a month, you'll get exclusive guest episodes and
segments. We're about to do one right now
with Peter. I will upload it later today and
we are also on this court as well.
So check that out. And yeah, also, we have a merch
(01:03:29):
store. If anybody's interested tons of
new stuff on there, put some newdesigns up there.
We've got the I designed a porter of naxos t-shirt and an
Anubis t-shirt as well. So go check those out.
But listen Peter, I really appreciate the time.
This has been a fun conversation, will definitely
have to have you back on in the future.
There's just so much. Stuff to discuss in this realm
(01:03:50):
of things and I really like yourtake and we need more
open-minded people that are willing to take chances and you
know, there's no harm in speculating or hypothesizing if
there's some basis to it, and I don't think enough people do
that. So I appreciate what you're
doing. Thank you, sir.
(01:04:11):
So, yeah, so check that stuff out.
We love everybody. Stay safe out there and we'll
catch you next time. Peace.
Peace. Peace.
Welcome back to Micah Maurices might Escape.
Let us help you escape your mind.
(00:30):
All right, folks, welcome back to Mike and Maurice's mind
Escape. We have episode number 228
today. We're going to be discussing
psychedelics and pan psychism with our guest Peter stood
Hughes. This is the second time he's
been on. We had him on a couple years
ago, which we had a very interesting conversation about
(00:51):
philosophy of mind and psychedelics, kind of some
similar stuff going to be discussing today.
But before we get started, he has a new book coming out called
modes of Since I have the link down below, go check that out
and it's coming out. I think in two days, the
hardback and then it'll be fullyout on the 14th.
(01:11):
So again, I have a link down below and his website as well.
So go check that out. We are going to do a patreon
segment with them. So if you're interested head on
over to our patreon, at patreon.com slash mindscape
podcast, for just $2 a month, you'll get exclusive guest,
episodes and segments, tons of stuff on there.
Just put up one with Bob Davis and Daniel McQueen.
(01:36):
I mean we've got tons of stuff up there.
So go check that out. If you're interested.
Let's see here. Oh, we're also in Discord.
If you'd like to chat on there, also head on over to indras web
dot-org. This is the social media
platform. We created a Kinect open mind.
So whether you want to speculatehypothesize, theorized the
perfect place to do it. Go set up a profile and we're
(01:59):
working on still. Getting that in the App Store.
So and if anybody's interested, we do have this mind Escape
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We only have larges. Are ya larges.
It mediums left if you're interested.
So if you're interested in getting a free one, all you have
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screenshot of it. Send it to - Cape podcast at
(02:22):
gmail.com that will enter you towin.
And again, thank you going to Cole who won last month.
So we really appreciate that. And without further Ado, welcome
back on the show. Peter.
How are you? Thank you.
Yeah, I'm well, thanks. Good to be here again.
Yeah, thanks for joining us course.
I saw your new book was coming out.
(02:43):
I know, we were trying to get you on before and things got
kind of chaotic, but I'm glad wewere able fit this in.
And, you know, pan psychism has been kind of a Hot Topic lately.
I know, I don't know if you knowPhillip golf, but I think he was
just on Joe Rogan. And I've seen a lot of uptick in
pants, like is some talk of late.
Especially not just pens, like General, but also within the
(03:07):
Psychedelic community. So I wanted to ask you, it means
slightly different things to different people, the way that
they interpret it. How do you think about it or how
do you define pan? Psyche is mmm.
Well, it's, I mean, okay. Well the etymology of the word
is from patrizia. See this Renee's, don't think a
(03:30):
and pan means all, and psyche means my soul or mind.
And so that's why some people don't like this idea of the
Soul, because it often means. So it implies that the soul and
the body are distinct as in dualism.
So for example, whiteheads version of pants, like isms
called pain experientialism. Because really sort of the the
(03:54):
mind is part of the body as it were and the environment.
But so I understand it not in a dualistic sense.
Some people that you can that isa version of it and also the
psyche, I don't understand necessarily as Consciousness by
which I mean awareness as opposed to subconsciousness.
I'm I generally mean by it when I use the term sentience.
(04:18):
That's my book modes of sentience and I think so.
He has useful words, it sort of incorporates, all forms of
experience, all forms of mentality, the conscious, as
well as the subconscious. And so on, you know, those
cognitive Concepts emotions rhythms of duration and so on is
just a sort of catch-all phrase.So when I say pan, psyche is my
(04:39):
mean pants sentience, really, and by that.
Have all units of subjectivity have a basic.
Well, there is then in all all things and it depends how you
(05:00):
define things. But there is essentially an all
things, a very basic at the least, the very basic form of
sentience than mentality experience, not Consciousness.
So it's a parent spends, sarcasm.
Doesn't generally mean that, youknow, like a plant has a
Consciousness like we have consciousness.
Thinking about, you know, last weekend, what I did last weekend
or something like that. Just means sort of plants, you
(05:22):
know, like the ancient Greeks believed thought about it.
A plant might have a sort of basic, you know, sort of basic
joy for sunlight and water, and whatnot, you know, not
necessarily with any kind of Concepts or memory or anything
like this, basic memory. Perhaps those actually gonna be
my next question about Aristotle, and his three levels
(05:43):
of consciousness, the plant Consciousness, and then the
animal Consciousness, which Which inhabited, the plan
Consciousness and then you humanconsciousness, which has all
three within it. Would you consider him an early
pan? Psychism to some level pants?
Like, it's some level to an extent.
Yeah. I mean, it was quite prevalent
throughout ancient Greece. This, I mean, IG Collingwood
(06:04):
wrote. This great book called the idea
of nature where and he distinguishes three periods.
It wasn't just Aristotle Plato as well.
If you read him, Plato talks about sort of vegetative, soul,
and so on, as Aristotle, did hisstudent, So - yeah, I think the
softest he has some pants. I kissed ideas in there and the
timaeuses. Well, I believe.
(06:24):
But yes, I calling with sort of distinguishes, this early period
with Aristotle, the Greeks in and Highland morphic period,
which is from Panasonic is really.
And then with the Renaissance, what calling would cause a
Renaissance, you have this shiftaway from believing that nature
was like an organism organic with, you know, embedded
sentience and rather it shifts to a view of nature as a
(06:46):
machine. Which obviously sort of
correlated to the technological Revolution that was to come.
And and then here's the third period which is based on history
and evolution which he wrote. He published in 1945 and I don't
think I don't think really that has come to pass.
I think we're still in the Machine Age generally speaking.
But anyway, yeah, there is, there is a lot of presidents in
(07:08):
ancient Greek thought for believing that, you know,
plants. For example, then yeah, had had
a basic form of psyche, soul. But it was really that well
developed. You know, it was yeah, it was
kind of almost taken for grantedjust as we take for granted in
the west today. That plants don't have any
sentience this way. And I think this this taking for
(07:29):
granted is very in is really interesting phenomenon.
Like why do people that I saw the parts of the Philip Goff
interview with Joe Rogan that you mentioned.
Joe Rogan wasn't really buying it.
He still said no, it's gonna be skeptical.
And I think one reason for people thinking of this as Kind
of a little bit crazy is that wehave this neuro essentialist
(07:53):
default belief in the West. In other words.
There's a belief that the brain is sufficient and necessary for
Consciousness or for mentality. And this is a belief that it's
never really questioned in the neurosciences and never really
questioned in in, you know, sortof everyday world, but it's
really hard to prove it in any way any in any way, you know,
(08:14):
you can't prove it empirically. You can't prove that.
Hasn't has or has not got Consciousness.
You can't prove that a brain is necessary for sentience.
You know, this is just assumed because of brain damage and so
on and you can't prove either it's efficient and other words
them, you know, the brain might rely on other external factors
that allow for that condition sentience, so these so so these
(08:41):
are very important metaphysical questions that are just simply
not real. I used as questions, but I
simply assumed like, we assume that the brain is necessary in
conscious necessary and sufficient for mentality,
therefore because of brains necessary for mentality a plant,
couldn't possibly be sentient. So that belief is generally
(09:02):
based on an axiom, that cannot be has not been proved.
It would be even questionable whether it can be proved, you
know, at all. Why is this come about?
Well, I mean the classic story is that Descartes of Galileo,
first of all, and then, you know, following that Descartes
really more so divided mind and matter in two very distinct
(09:26):
substances. So you have mind or the soul,
which has, you know, thoughts, emotions, what not.
And then you have matter, which is, you know, remember Descartes
was a mathematician matter then was purely geometric pure
extension and therefore could beunderstand through Understood
through mathematics. It didn't have sentience within
it. This was a division that
(09:47):
Descartes made goalie made otherpeople as well, which then sort
of Founded the scientific method.
This is Phillip Phillip cough was speaking about with Rogan
actually in the part. I saw it founded the scientific
method and therefore the site, the scientific method itself has
to exclude any forms of any formof its subject, matter rather
(10:09):
has to exclude any form of sentience.
It turns qualities into quantities, in other words, but,
but the, so with pants hikers. Immunity very interesting to
look at the history as to why people don't believe that
anymore. And also like, as you, You said,
you know, it was once. Believed you look at the
history, why? It's not believed and why it's
(10:29):
taken to be crazy. Then you understand that.
It's dependent upon beliefs thatare really not, haven't been
proved at all. So you then once you realize
that, it opens you up to more possibilities.
I'm not. So I'm not, you know, I'm not
extremely dogmatic about this pain psyche.
As I mean, I think it's just themost plausible parsimonious
(10:51):
view. Otherwise you get into other.
Because you know, but of course,I'm always open to new ideas and
new evidence. Do you think the building blocks
of reality or particles of a parent, subatomic particles,
things like that? Do you think that they have some
level of Consciousness and that not like what we were describing
but just some level of sentience, you know?
(11:13):
Yes. I mean the phasic basic form of
sentience, not Consciousness. So be more akin to a sub
Consciousness, you know, but it wouldn't be nothing.
It would be a basic form. What that would be like is would
be very, very difficult to determine just like it's very
(11:33):
difficult to determine, you know, how another person is
like, you know, to get it's almost impossible to get into
the mind of another person, let alone, let's say, you know, your
pet Let alone get the mouse in your house and so on so forth,
you get further away from Human organisms to, you know,
molecules, as you say, are sort of understanding of it, becomes
(11:57):
less and less I sympathy with it.
The parallels are lost certain extent.
That's not to say there are not parallels, you know, just as we
have a physical body so does a molecule, you know, so there but
of course, a molecules body is very distinct from our own body
and likewise, you know, be the same difference with a mine.
My mind is very distinct from that, you know, mind or mental
(12:18):
event at a better same event than my dream.
So yeah, we can't fathom it. But by the theory of pan, psyche
is emits a belief that in mind, was always part of the universe.
It didn't emerge. One day in evolution.
This is in my PhD of called thisand pink Pang.
The Big Bang Theory and I payingof Consciousness Consciousness.
(12:39):
And this goes so like, you know,if you don't believe in, you see
it's quite radical. If you don't believe.
Pants psychism, you'd have to believe that at some point in
the history of the universe. There was first of all, no
sentience at all, not the slightest, touch of driver
anything. But then one day or a one
moment, rather hang, there was suddenly basic basic form of
(13:02):
sentience that emerged maybe from a singular single-celled
organism something. That's well that of course, is a
radical conjecture. I mean, you know, you've got a,
that's all A radical break in the universe, you know, first of
all, you've got a purely objective universe as a worm and
suddenly you've got this intrusion of sentience and you
(13:24):
know, there's no evidence that that ever occurred and in fact,
it's questionable again, whetheryou one could gain such evidence
is pretty impossible thing to gain evidence for but
nonetheless, it's believed. It's like a faith position in
many ways that that Consciousness or some sentience
for Emerged historically, but also in the common way of
(13:48):
thinking about things as the belief that conscious sentient
submerges, you know, synchronously as well.
So when when a at some point fetus suddenly begins a form of
sentience, you know, suddenly from the from the physiological
matter, mind emerges how this happened.
Of course, is the great, you know, so cool hard problem of
(14:09):
Consciousness, David Jones coined in if I have is an old
problem there and it's like Like, you know how mind and
physical. A lot of people I realize don't
really can't don't easily get the head around there.
So it's just not it's just alienalien to them.
So I just I'll go through it a little bit if you like.
It's the notion that it's the Mind matter mystery.
It's like why do things that move if we understand things
(14:31):
just in this week? Why do neurons firing impulses,
you know, through their dendrites and axons of you
actually in a zoom in to EC molecules and neurotransmitters
passing between sign up. Is of neurons and stuff, you
know, maybe oscillated, maybe not but you get a very, you can
get gain a very physical pictureof this.
(14:52):
How do things moving make a merge something such as an
emotion, or a feeling or a thought, you know, this is the
hard problem of Consciousness. How do you get mind out of meat?
Basically, it this is huge. This is the huge problem soap
and cyclists will say the mind was always He's in there.
(15:15):
You know, it's weird. How can you have your pudding?
You know, you got to ask these articles if you can't eat your
meat. Yes, so I'm but it, of course.
Yeah, so, you know, it's very hard, in other words to get
mentality from Pure physicality.But the interesting thing there
(15:38):
is, we don't really understand what physical physical means,
you know, if you look at historyof the physical, Always looking
at history of these things always sort of a helps people,
you know, you look at what the physical means.
Well, I mentioned Descartes, andfor data, the physical was just
space 3D space extension. As he called it, you know, as
time went by we added forces impulse push-pull, you know, and
(16:00):
then later on, you know, Spin and charge and so on so forth,
you know, so you look at the history of matter and it's
constantly, we're constantly adding qualities to what it is,
but of course, we shouldn't assume that we've now Now,
reached a level where we fully understand it, you know, a few
hundred years are looking back at us as we did.
People few hundred years ago andsort of laugh at us.
(16:23):
So we should always be humble inin, in are realizing that we do
not understand the full extent of what matter is and it is my
belief that, you know, one of the qualities as it were of
matter or wouldn't shouldn't we speak that way?
But an aspect of matter is mind,you know, this is a think that
(16:43):
will be Subdued. Hopefully in the future, but we
haven't yet got there. Yeah, I mean there's definitely
things in the quantum world and things like superposition and
things that they're trying to figure out ways to predict or
quantify the way that these things operate and it seems like
you're right. It seems like they're just
trying to keep adding new thingsto the docket to kind of say.
(17:06):
Oh, it's this or oh it's that and yeah, I mean my nose.
Sorry. I was just gonna no no, sorry.
There's a slight delay. So that, you know, even
physicists don't agree with eachother as to the nature of
matter, you know, different. There are physics is there's not
just one physics fundamental, you know, about dimensions of
(17:28):
space and so on, you know, absolutely.
Yeah, so I would agree with, youknow, a lot of what you said
there. Personally.
I think that that's kind of, we're on the same page or same
track there in terms. I think we discussed this but
you think Consciousness is primary.
(17:48):
That's what we were just discussing.
Is that what do you think? Is there a difference between
pantheism and Spinoza's? God, because I know you're big
into Spinoza and I think I seen.I saw you tweet something
recently about pantheism. Yeah.
Well, you know, the words pantheism was coined by Joseph
(18:09):
raphson and it was coined by him20 years after Spinoza died.
To refer to Spinoza's philosophy.
So I think it's quite right to say that.
Spinoza was a pantheist. At least if you go by the words,
some people say it's a pantheist, but I don't really
accept that. Pantheist means that God is
nature and God is more than nature as well.
(18:31):
Pantheism. Simply as God is nature and
Spinoza says, you know God or nature in its he's quite
explicit about it. So it's quite right.
Cool. Spinoza a pantheist was also my
view of pants. I kissed.
Or parallel s doesn't Spinoza Scholars prefer to to say it.
It was a pantheist because so heequated this is what got him
(18:55):
into a lot of trouble. He's still in trouble.
Did you see that latest? I don't know.
If you saw that latest thing in the news last week about
Espinosa scholar being denied access to the synagogue complex
in Amsterdam in the hospital. Yes, you know, hundreds of
years. He died 1677 Spinoza.
And he was excommunicated in his20s by the his fellow Jews and
(19:19):
and still today is excommunication some rabbis
believe holds and so the spinnertiscali want to go to the, to
the complex for his film. He was making was denied access
because he, you know, he said hedevoted his whole life to the
study of a heretic. Basically.
It's still powerful and Spinoza was but one of the reasons
(19:42):
Spinoza was excommunicated and one of the reasons is Books were
banned by the church as well. Well, as that, he said, yeah,
that God was nature. And so, a lot of people accuse
him of atheism for that reason. They said, well, if you saying
that God is nature, you really saying that's just nature and no
God. So, therefore, you're an
atheist. And so, yeah, there was yeah.
(20:03):
It was very controversial view in the 17th and 18th centuries.
But, but by Nature, Spinoza didn't mean simply matter.
And this is what brings out the pantheism, I think.
So, Spinoza believed that space was infinite.
(20:23):
And space was infinite and that was an aspect of nature when
attribute of nature space extension and as humans had two
ways of accessing that nature orGod or substance, and that was
through the attributes of thought and extension.
So there's two ways of us seeingthe same thing, God or substance
(20:46):
or nature and that is one way isthrough the extensive world.
We see another one is our internal.
Sort of mind, but he said there's an infinite number of
attributes, you know. Other words expressions of that
same Soul substance God nature and but just humans haven't got
access to it interestingly. But so if the then There are
(21:12):
two, at least two ways. There are more than two.
But to human ways of accessing that Soul.
God, one is extension and that then refers to the Infinite
Space of nature. The other way, way, it is
thought. That means everything that is
extended has an element of thought to it.
That's his pants like is more parallelism that applies to
humans. It also then applies downwards
(21:32):
to plants and so on and and that's the kind of pants I Chasm
but upwards as well at also applies.
And so Infinite Space has its power.
Little infinite intellect as he calls it.
And so that's an in an aspect ofhis God, you know, there's
infinite intellect, like, but it's not a God who loves you or
hates. You is an indifferent God.
(21:54):
It's not a very consoling, God at all.
You know, you didn't send down Jesus and so, right, it's, it's
more, like, Aristotle's prime, mover God.
If you've read that the metaphysics.
It's just an indifferent God really.
But that, that God is the infinite intellect and and For
Spinoza. Our finite minds are part of
(22:15):
that infinite intellect. And this in this he was he was
kind of he was inspired by people like maimonides who
believes in this infinite intellect for which we are
apart. Just like our bodies are part of
Infinite Space. And so, this is really his, this
is the sort of outline of his pantheism.
Interestingly this in Flint elect was spoken of inspired,
(22:39):
the British idealist and they started speaking about Eternal
Consciousness, and this eternal,Consciousness turn sort of lend
lent itself to this time. Cosmic Consciousness.
That was a, I think coined by Edward Carpenter, but used by
our em back in his book, Cosmic Consciousness, 1901, and 1902.
(22:59):
William James used it in the varieties of religious
experience. And then of course, he linked it
to psychedelics, you know, nitrous oxide, which I included
a psychedelic Ethan, so on. And and then of course in the
mid-twentieth century Cosmic Consciousness became almost like
platitude is sort of cliche amongst the certain, you know,
(23:19):
him, maybe demographic and whatever.
But you know, and and in a way oldest actually, when he wrote
about in the doors of perception, you know, his book
about mescaline experience. He spoke about mind that Larch
that of course, also is related to this etiology of this
infinite. Intellect, this kind of
pantheous to God, which goes allthe way back to Spinoza, but
(23:40):
before that, And that has influence again in Aristotle,
you know, so always goes back toAristotle.
Plato seems, you know, yeah, we're going to be getting into
those other grandfather's. Yeah.
Einstein was a big Spinoza Stateand I know he had similar ideas
of God. Some people think, oh, Einstein
(24:02):
use, you know, hardcore scientist materialist, but he
actually had some pretty interesting takes as well on
that. He wrote to them too.
Poems about Spinoza and he always.
He said he believed in Spinoza'sGod and he was greatest.
Modern philosophy books. He brought mind and body
together and so on you, it was abig acolyte.
(24:23):
So how can psychedelics inform Us in regards to pants?
Like ism. Is it the feeling of being one
with something greater or is it the freedom freedom to look upon
the world without the burden of this built-in evolutionary?
Parried pareidolia? Like what do you think's going
on there? There's many interesting
connections for one reason. When I've looked started looking
(24:46):
into with them, some this Anthropologist Luis Eduardo,
Luna is the fact that American Indian cause indigenous
cosmology. He's they are animists and
animism and Panasonic is Amar really, you know, two sides of
the same coin. They believe, you know, the
(25:07):
trees have, you know, are embedded with souls and so on so
forth. So that's a type.
Another type of pain psyche is MM.
Really animism as a type of painpsyche is Amanda Ms. Mm,
originally was coined by toilet in a, in a negative sense, but
it doesn't have that connotationanymore.
I don't think. But so their cosmology the whole
(25:30):
life metaphysics of reality. Is this sort of Living World in
which they live going up to the sun Stars, whatnot, and their
cosmology. Up in completely intertwined.
With psychedelic use Ayahuasca, you know, so on.
And you know, by taking these psychedelics, they they gained
(25:52):
access but greater access to these.
This this kind of sentient worldaffairs.
So that's one interesting respect in which parents I Chasm
and psychedelics connect. I mean that its intrinsic to
those cultures. As I say something that I'm
beginning to look into, so don'tsay too much at the moment is
really fascinating. There's this great book, Book
called the Falling Sky by an indigenous Shaymin called Davy
(26:15):
cop an hour and that describes his shamanic journeys, you know,
with how you ask Yahoo, and and,and so on and it's just really
fascinating, you know, it doesn't talk about like, you
know, mystical experiences of unity as we would in the west
and the East. It's rather speaks about like,
especially the Shapiro, these little ancestral Spirits, like,
(26:37):
lilliputians actually, which Gide guide that world but that's
one interesting respect, anotherword.
Another thing. I'm looking at beginning to look
at as well, with regard to pants.
I Chasm is and psychedelics is this there's recent scientific
Studies by Sam Gandhi in and others to show that
(26:58):
psychedelics, Foster Kindle, a kind of nature connectedness.
So you take psychedelics with eyes open, you know, you see a
natural object and you feel moreone.
On with it as it were, you have to be careful with is where
Unity Oneness. Because, I mean, so many
different things. I realize, you know, through
trials. But in this sense you begin a
(27:20):
kind of sympathy and Intuition or connection then with nature.
Now, the interesting question for me, is this with regard
found psychism from a neuro essentialist point of view.
You know, that Consciousness really is just an epiphenomenon
of the mind or the brain, ratherthis nature connect connect.
(27:41):
The switch in these papers at least needs to create a mental
health. This this connectedness must be
some kind of Illusion must be a delusion because you know,
plants, let's say don't have anyform of sentience.
So you can't feel intrinsic connection with them.
They have no their mind at all. You know, they have no intrinsic
(28:04):
worth have no teleology. They have no sentience.
So any nature connectiveness, there must be some kind of
Strange hallucination, you having whereas, of course in
pound psychism, one can begin toexplain this nature
connectedness in a vertical manner.
In other words in what true manner as it were, you know, or
pause opens up the possibility that the empathy, you're feeling
(28:28):
with the natural world is not hallucination, but actually, as
some kind of prevention as Whitehead, would say some kind
of connection with another sentient being so, and Of
course, you know, on if you stepout of that, that if you accept
such, a metaphysic depends like ISM, then you would view such
(28:52):
nature, connectiveness through psychedelics, as of more value.
I think, you know, because if you consider it to be a
hallucination, you might feel itwhen you're under the influence
but afterwards you say, well that's weird.
Something strange that happened,you know, but of course, it's
complete rubbish. That would then probably I would
imagine I would guess Not be of as much used to your mental
(29:15):
health as if you believe that there's some kind of Truth.
Interesting hypothesis. I've been throwing around and
other people discuss this too. But I've been throwing us around
for the last few years. Is the idea that metaphysics are
at the core or psychedelics are at the core of all metaphysics.
(29:37):
Meaning like the Psychedelic experience, Altered States.
This is where we get these ideasfrom.
They don't if you just lived in day-to-day Consciousness, I find
it hard to believe that you would just come up with some of
these ideas given You know, yourbuilt-in evolutionary like pay
like I said, pareidolia and you're just surviving and
putting things together that way.
So, you know, you've Plato's theory of forms allegory of the
(30:02):
cave again, in the softest. He talks about pants.
Psyche is mmm. Socrates you have, Socrates, is
morals and ethics. And what happens when you come
down from a psilocybin trip, what happens when you come down
from an intense psychedelic trip, you have this, you know,
this this willingness and wanting this to become a better
person. You know, to Pythagoras and, and
(30:23):
Euclid, you know, maybe they were seeing geometry after their
loosening Mysteries experience, you know, like being able to see
the thing that you've been speculating on would be very
powerful, Parmenides. Our senses are lying to us, you
know, all these great thinkers were talking about ancient
Greece, you know, you can go back to the loosening mysteries
in a lot of these, you know, people came from, you know, that
(30:48):
time. But they also had similar
experiences. They all had to participate in
the greater Mysteries once in their life, I mean, but you
could even go back to like cave art like Selva pass koala that
in Spain that with the psilocybe.
He's painted in the cave wall and that Algerian cave, you know
art that Terence McKenna used ina lot of his stuff.
(31:10):
So I guess it's like a stone deep for metaphysics as opposed
to like evolutionary biology, something along those lines.
But I mean, how do you how do you feel about that?
Like, do you think there's something to that?
Yeah, I mean, I don't read booksand this great French
philosophy. I speak about a lot here in his
last book, two sources of morality and religion.
(31:30):
He talks about the orphic religion in ancient Greece,
inspiring, Pythagoras. And in turn as varying, Plato,
you know, we don't have any remnants of Pythagoras, his own
writings, but only his followersthat he was a big influence to
Plato. Yeah, and that, of course, as
you say and I play too undoubtedly went to the
eleusinian mysteries of common thing.
(31:51):
Religion and ritual Alaska two thousand years and engine grease
only 30 miles from Athens. But as well as that, I mean, you
had dionysian festivals. The wine in ancient Greece, was
psychoactive. There was had to tell you tip
water, you know, as much evidence for it and before that,
you know, you there's also, of course, you know, the Soma and
The Vedas and so on. And there's a lot of evidence
for ancient used. Not to mention what happened,
(32:13):
South America Middle America, soit's nothing new.
And in place. Those few do which is also
called on the soul. Where he first really introduces
the notion of dualism. He says, I want to be counted
amongst Mystics the dionysian and then after that he talks he
tries to rationally argue for dualism that somebody had
(32:35):
distinct. So I mean, you can speculate
that there was some kind of vision that I had.
He talked about his visions and futurist, for example, that that
that he that he intuited them through some kind of exceptional
experience. Whether And I think most people
will accept that he had exceptional experiences, whether
they were occasioned by something akin to psychedelics.
(32:57):
As another question. I think the likelihood is some
people just don't don't accept that but I think the likelihood
is, is there? And there's not, there's also a
pollute, the plutonian caves like, right there to near a
looser. So I keep thinking like, oh he
was having this experience. I walked over there and had this
kind of epiphany. I'm not saying that.
(33:19):
That's exactly what happened. But I could see that happening.
I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, and one of his dialogues is based on, you know, beginning
of the river which is part of the Lesser Mysteries is next,
the Lesser mystery. So there's a look, but you have
to remember, of course, you know, the Mysteries were called
that because partly because theywere it was forbidden to speak
about them. You know, right.
They arrested for so it's could buy these at the dinner party
(33:40):
getting. Yeah, right trouble.
Okay. So so anyway, but I think yeah,
there was there. There was an influence, I think
generally and with philosophy aswell.
I mean philosophy in the broad sense often one starts with an
intuition and then after that, you try to sort of make sense of
(34:03):
that intuition rationally because that's our prosaic
Consciousness, you know, which is good for practical life, you
know, finding out working out means of achieving an end, you
know, usually survival development Will To Power
whatever. There's this interesting.
There was a Poetry Man real and he spoke of the oceanic
(34:23):
experience, which he was corresponding with Freud.
I've written about this in my chapter on Spinoza and 5:00 a.m.
A Meo DMT and another book coming out called philosophy and
psychedelics, published by Bloomsbury and May June.
It's an edited volume. I got one chapter and the
introduction and her edited it well with Christine house color,
but in there, I talked about theconnection between Unreal.
(34:47):
And, and the oceanic feeling which some people is another
word for like the in the mystical experience.
He speaks about that to Freud who's very skeptical about it
all. And then Freud sort of writes
about in future of an illusion and so on and become staple
parlance and psychedelic circlesthereafter, but the interesting
(35:09):
thing is, when you look at this Oceanic strings from Roland, he
talks about it in terms of Spinoza.
So an and by that, I mean, an intuition of spinosum, he's got
this book, called The Flash of Spinoza, right?
I was the flash of Spinoza, brilliant and de leurs.
(35:29):
The French philosopher to. Let's read about this.
And he says, Spinoza's, something like this.
I'm paraphrasing. But he says, you know, Spinoza's
stands out amongst philosophers because his whole system is
pantheistic pants. Psychological system.
Metaphysics can be intuited in aFlash like this.
And but interestingly, it's you can sort of get it as Roman rule
(35:53):
and spoke of. In this flash about the same
time. You can understand it
rationally, as well, Spinoza himself.
Try to describe EPS explicate his whole system through the
geometric order, like following Euclid, very, very rational way,
but that whole rational way in the ethics is main book ends
(36:15):
with This notion of intellectuallove of God.
By m remember. I got him into nature in this
qualified sense and this again, then becomes like an intuition
of the whole rationale system. So I think psychedelics but not
only psychedelics, other other forms of intuition, as well can
provide for such flashes of intuition metaphysical
(36:37):
intuition, as you say, Patrick Lundberg, a really interesting
Swedish writer on psychedelics died.
A few years ago. He's got a book called
psychedelia. He says Pantheism.
And, and one is a Mahal is, mm are two of the main psychedelic
virtues, you know. Pantheism is core.
It seems to a lot of psychedelicexperiences.
(36:59):
But of course people might into it and then they come out of it
and if they haven't got sort of training and when you understand
any knowledge at all, about Spinoza apparent, what a
pantheism, even means to be veryhard for them to articulate that
and then justify it to themselves in.
This is why I believe personally.
And that's another thing. I'm getting into Exeter
University. Is when people talk about
(37:21):
integration of psychedelic experiences.
You know, how does that come about, you know, it's, I don't
think it's good enough just to speak to some counselor to where
these weird experiences one had and they said, well, you know,
how is it affecting your life? And so I mean, I think a more
solid form of integration would be to place such psychedelic
experiences into a philosophicalmetaphysical system, you know,
(37:44):
in other words, make sense of What you've experienced like the
unity of all ones. That means easier to say, how
does it relate to? For example, Spinoza's
philosophy or whiteheads for that matter, but complicate
things further looking at this like indigenous American, you
know, use of psychedelics these Notions of pantheism and unit
(38:06):
and sort of, you know, mystica. They're not really there.
You know, they do have like the West has lilliputians.
As I say little people. It's a real mystery.
They Don't Really report these sense of unity.
So then the next question comes up, then this is other really
interesting question of philosophy at about perennialism
as against contextualism, so is it the case like Aldous Huxley
(38:29):
believed in oh, that's William. James that all religious
fundamental experiences are the same regardless of culture and
the interpretations differ, according to a culture, this is
perennialism, it's always the same.
Or is it the case? The Other Extreme found found a
really by a guy called Steven Katz Jewish scholar.
(38:52):
Does context completely determine not just the
interpretation by the experienceas well.
So, you know, indigenous Americans might experience
Jaguars and snakes and so on, whereas westerners with that
sort of Christian judeo, Christian tradition will
experience, you know, the Oneness of the universe.
This interesting question. I'm somewhere in the middle
because For a start, the Westerntradition incorporates, a lot of
(39:18):
the East to not just Western, you know, especially the 20th
century, you know, it looked andBuddhism has brought brought in,
you know, with DT Suzuki, especially to inform the Western
World Views, is not really part of our culture became a very
quickly. Secondly, there are similarities
with Lilliputian ISM. Like I say little people
thirdly, obviously your own lifeand memories will have can Have
(39:44):
an impact on your psychedelic experiences.
That's part of therapy. You know, you go through lost
memories or whatever, right? So no one's doubting that that
your life and culture must have can have some influence but it
just seems to me that when you talk about very high level
psychedelic experiences, especially I'd say there's
induced by 5 m e0 DMT the so completely alien to your life
(40:08):
and your culture that it's very hard to argue.
They're conditioned by it. You know, there's nothing to do.
No memories there of your life and I am self-conscious.
There's there's mentality but there's not self consciousness
because there are no Concepts. There's nothing really to do
with your culture there. Afterwards.
Of course, you could interpret are seeing light of God or
something, but the experience itself.
(40:28):
I don't think can be said to be conditioned by culture, just
like I don't think heroin experience can be conditioned by
culture, really fully. Obviously.
The Heron has some kind of universal or at least some kind
of common effect on people regardless of where you are.
Same could be said of a paracetamol you.
Yeah, so, I mean if you read a lot of like trip reports, you
(40:48):
know, that's where you see a lotof this pantheism pants like
ISM. A lot of these people aren't
like you mentioned aren't even really aware of, you know, what
these with the terminology is what it specifically includes.
It's just like as anybody else experienced this.
And you know, that's the first time they've ever, you know,
known or experience something ofthat nature.
(41:09):
So I don't know if is your mentioning.
It's colored by previous. I know some things are because I
can speak from my own experience.
But I don't know if these like groundbreaking or break through
experiences are, as you mentioned, are really touched by
(41:30):
any of that stuff. I guess it's just something we
have to keep an eye on because Ican go back and forth with that
and I have we've had a lot of different people on the show
discussing these topics and kindof swung back and forth that
time. So yeah.
You have to be very careful about people's expectations,
which might Prime The Experienceitself, of course, and then the
interpretations afterwards as well, you know, they might have
(41:52):
an experience in. They just click get this word
pantheism whatever other people have spoken about.
So yeah, it was pantheistic without understanding what that
means. But then again, maybe not, but
it's, you have to really try to is very hard to distinguish the,
The Experience someone had from their report of it.
Right? And we've even looked at, I've I
(42:13):
asked a bunch of different people who have had, you know,
Ayahuasca experiences in the Amazon or in South America.
And then I've asked people that have had analog experiences with
the different, you know, like peganum harmala mixed with some
sort of phalaris grass or something like that.
Is there a difference? Because even maybe just those
(42:34):
the compounds within the actual plants might have my color, the
experience to, I've even looked at that but it seems to not
necessarily be the case. Is from everybody.
I've talked to so, but it is an interesting thought,
nonetheless. Yeah, I mean really low and
medium doses. It seems the type of drug has
effect on experience. I mean Salvia, divinorum, for
(42:55):
example, our hands to be quite different from psilocybin, but
then, you know, I hired a very high doses.
I mean, I've heard people speak about extremely high doses of
LSD, which were seem to be. It's very similar to 5 m, EO D
Mt. You know, this requires further
phenomenological analysis. Yeah, I was going to ask you,
(43:15):
what, what is the different substances have?
Like, what kind of effect would that have?
But I obviously, you guys are talking more about DMT, then,
you know, psilocybin LSD, but you would think that the
different drugs would have a different Outlook as well.
Yep, precisely. So if you take a standard DMT as
it were, it seems get a lot of people to my aliens.
(43:37):
And psilocybin seems to be go the other way towards instead of
Science Fiction towards fantasy and if fairies and elves and
stuff, you know. Me neither 10 grams, dried of
psilocybin and everything kind of just dissolved and pattern
Street patterns. That was pretty.
It was just almost like fractals.
So it kind of felt very primordial in a way.
(43:59):
But yeah, I wouldn't, I didn't actually encounter any like
entities and that experience. I've had other experiences where
I've had entities. But yeah, you can go pretty deep
on all these things and have transcended experiences.
Yeah, and of course, it differs not only the drug And the dose,
but also the mindset you're in at the time is Classics, you
know, says in setting, and then setting the environment you're
(44:20):
in. We'll have some kind of impact.
Usually, it's about Comfort there.
And, but when I say impact, obviously, with eyes open, it
will have profound impacts, you know, with eyes closed, which is
always the more interesting micein my view.
The question is, what is the real?
The environment seems have less of an effect, you know.
(44:41):
Well that's obvious in a way with the I suppose.
But yeah, determining how the environment can have in your
culture and your inculcation your life.
History can have an effect on eyes closed high dose
experiences. I think that is a really
interesting question that it's very hard to determine because
you know, when you do studies onthis you always rely on reports
(45:04):
and then psychologist psychiatrist always try to then
get the report and then quantifyher report and then put into
graphs and it will looks fancy and whatever.
But really The interesting question is, can you really
trust that report? Like I say how when people use
words like pantheism, do they even know what it means?
What do they understand their different versions of it?
So which one are they referring to, you know, and do they
(45:28):
actually mean that pantheism? For example, them the Stephen
Katz paper on criticizing a lot of mystical philosophy argued
that, for example, when we use the word Unity, For a lot of
psychedelic or mystical experiences saying the
experiences part can be better, that he said, the word Unity
(45:51):
could be used to translate sort of Zen Buddhist notion of the
Void, right? But at the same time, it can be
used to translate Jewish forms of Union.
Mystica. You said those, you know, you
know, experientially there's a two radically different forms of
experience, but we have one wordto sort of The Umbrellas
everything. And so when you have a report
(46:13):
that you know, you felt one witheverything.
I mean you can you can ramify that into lot of different
types. You know, there's often not
done. Just got Unity.
How far, how much did you feel Unity 1 to 10 and then that's
fed into graphs and stuff. And I mean, to be fair, to be
honest. A lot of these scientific
studies on psychedelics are quite poor.
They're really, they don't, theydon't distinguish.
(46:36):
It was this recent one. For example, I won't name names,
but it it was about Trying to show that now.
Now, I'm sure you know, which one, I mean, if you just Google
it, but it was, it was going to sort to show that psychedelics
change. One's metaphysical beliefs and
(46:57):
it was done by a questionnaire via email to people who went on
Ayahuasca, Retreats. Right?
First of all, I don't think that's a good way of
deciphering. The stuff, you know,
questionnaire was loaded with like, you know, Reputations of
experience for start. It was not followed up by actual
interviews or anything but the from a philosophical point of
(47:18):
view, the options didn't even even include pantheism on one of
them to find really strange because like, I say, lombok
said, these are two of the main psychedelic all virtues, you
know, so yeah, I think we have to psych, you know, we have to
take psychedelic studies scientific studies with a pinch
of salt. And also now, of course, there's
(47:38):
also this other ulterior motive to make money out of To them as
as therapy. And as a result, you know, you
might get skewed results. You get might get emphasis of
positive results and stuff like that, you know, not to say that
they're not useful for therapy. I believe they are.
But you have to be really skeptical when you look at the
details about how, it's how it'ssort of, a lot of these
(47:59):
conclusions are, are created. Yeah, like it all.
I mean, I like knowing the science, but I also appreciate
the mystical mysticism aspects of it as well.
That's what helped me. My issues my OCD and stuff.
But I also like the stuff we're talking about to the
philosophical points of view andphilosophical takes on it as
(48:20):
well. So I like all of it.
I think there's room for all of it.
But I agree with you. Some bleed into other sometimes
and creates kind of chaos at times.
That's good thing. You should look at old
perspectives. And with a critical eye though,
you know, philosophical perspectives as well, of course,
but I think it's just such an early.
(48:41):
The science and you know, we just don't know what's going on.
Also, there's an interesting phenomenon of really bad trips
that are not always, you know, needn't be positive even in the
long-term. So yeah much more to be be done
about it. But you know, it's good that
there's so much research. Now being done.
Hmm. It's a good thing.
(49:01):
Yeah, to point you're talking about, like that, that
experience I described I had wasactually in the woods.
It was opened. I normally prefer closed eye
dark meditation. This was Daylight in the woods
open-eyed and I must have ingested obviously, so much that
everything just kind of it was almost like clothes.
I had the experience. That's how intense and then
(49:24):
growls. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and I know people that go
we've had, you know, we have friends of the show and people
that comment and send us emails and stuff that have gone way
deeper. We're talking 30 40 and they I
can't even get into the some of the stuff that they're getting
into. So, I'm not that it's flat days
after setting. Yeah.
(49:45):
Yeah. I have you ever tried to find
them in. I have not.
We actually more recent. I that's the only psychedelic.
I mean, I can't speak for Maurice.
It's really the only psychedelicthat I haven't experienced.
One of the mainstream ones. I'm trying to think that and
I've never experienced ketamine.Those are the two that I've
never Academy's kind of borderline, psychedelic.
I don't even know if I would getsome interesting.
(50:06):
You say that? Because so we've teamed up with
the psychology department at Exeter University and It's that
there's a lab led by Professor Celia Morgan, who's one of the
world leading experts in Kettleman.
We've heard a lot about their research and there was as
qualitative paper that came out on it recently and it just
showed me that ketamine is a psychedelic, right?
(50:29):
It really is, people are high enough doses in the right
setting, people can have visions, you know, just like
psilocybin or whatever. And but then people some people
so no, it's not, it's a tranquilizer.
Kaiser. And it's not a doesn't act on
the serotonin receptors, like the classic, you know, classic
psychedelics. So it can't be a psychedelic.
However, they also exclude nitrous oxide for the same
(50:51):
reason and the effects of ketamine and nitrous oxide are
quite similar, interesting lie, but when you look at the word
psychedelic again, going back tothe history to understand that
fully fro who coined it that psychiatrist, humphry Osmond.
Friend of Aldous Huxley John smoothies, he coined it in a, it
(51:12):
was published in the paper 1957,all those spoke about it with
hexlen in correspondence, the year before.
But 1957. This paper came out where he
actually made it public this word psychedelic and in it.
He doesn't restrict it to, you know, those drugs hating on the
serotonin receptors. He included, nitrous oxide, and
related to William James. In fact, he was really, you
(51:35):
know, enthusiastic about All thephilosophical aspects of
psychedelics and that even though he's a psychiatrist in
that original paper. So when you look at that
original paper, you know, you realize how the word psychedelic
really. It means literally mind
manifesting of course, but it's very its Broad in scope and he
and thanks indigenous communities in around the world
(51:55):
says they never referenced. But you know, they've obviously
got a craft science and this, that we are just sort of hitting
to re To sort of get back in touch with as it were.
But when you read that and you really you read what he
describes, a psychedelic, certainly ketamine notes.
Sufficient doses is a kit. We should be he would include
(52:18):
that as a psychedelic. I consider it.
I just consider it, one of like the outlier ones like counting
on how you mentioned nitrous. Like we, we grew up in a
community like Grateful Dead andfish.
These bands were nitrous tanks. I mean, it sounds like an
airport when you're hanging out on shakes called Shakedown
Street outside the concert and we're talking like large large.
It's of nitrous. They called hippie crack.
(52:41):
And so yeah, I mean, we're I'm familiar with both and I've had
a lot of friends, you know, you know, the done both and I just
for me is I'm not going out there searching for things.
If things come to me I'm willingto try them but I'm not going to
I'm too old to be out there, youknow, looking for things.
So but yeah, then you must be very careful.
(53:02):
I mean, it's oh, absolutely. Yeah.
It's a very, very powerful. Okay, mate.
Combat, if you use the 10 grounds, okay, maybe not that
even compared to that. It's probably something else in
my younger years. We definitely used to push the
boundaries for sure. I would mix things and take
things, you know over the top and that's before I had
reverence. Now.
I don't need a ton and I can kind of get to those places
(53:24):
without a ton. So I want to Pivot here before
we wrap this up and get to the patreon segment, but I want to
talk about little bit about liketime and time and space.
I've heard you talk a little bitabout time.
I Get what I was listening to, but we have this time space
Dimension, right? And it seems to be somewhat
(53:45):
constant. And then we have our perception
of that time space, which can bealtered via psychedelic
experience, near-death experiences, Altered States Of
Consciousness. Almost like, you know, the
sometimes, if you're about to get in an accident, you have
that precog where everything slows down for a second, you
know, and I find that interesting.
(54:06):
So Do you think about that relationship?
Do you think something weirder? Is that play or do you think for
instance, we know time and spacethe more gravity.
There is the more time slows down.
But in terms of like re are we reacting to that?
Like is that is it? Our biology?
That's that's causing us to havea reaction of perception?
(54:27):
Or is it something weirder in connection there?
I mean these are deep Mysteries identify.
I'm really I can answer in any way but I philosopher.
Bro, you're the person to ask weknow, philosophy got more
questions than answers, right? So here you go, but I would say
this that. Yes, so I spoke about time.
(54:50):
I swear got timelessness, actually a recent illness and
it's like little lecture. I gave online the belief that in
this relates to, then psychedelic mystical States and
that, you know, you believe thatyou can experience timelessness.
Some people think that, you know, Condition of experiences
time and he kind of experience with that time, you know, going
(55:10):
on. But you know, it's less, as you
can have experience of timelessness basing on his
understanding of Spinoza and I would argue that Spinoza's.
Intellectual love of God is alsoan experience of timelessness.
Because essentially time as you intimating there.
It's multifaceted, but there's well, must make a distinction if
(55:30):
one can between subjective experience of time and any
objective reality of time. This is real.
This is very interesting. So as you were saying there's
what bugs and cause rhythms of duration in other words speeds
at which you experience time youlike and go in slow motion.
If you're about to have an accident for example or on
psychedelics that means. But is that wrong?
(55:53):
Is that hallucination? Or is it just another way of
Sing reality. Again.
It's very hard to say what time is, if it's not experienced.
In fact, it seems that experience must be a condition
of time, but time need not be a condition of experience, right?
(56:14):
At the speed of light. Of course, according to
relativity time stops. Is that perspective?
Wrong? Not necessarily.
If that were the case, then again, there's another case of
timelessness. Again.
I Design, according to Spinoza, from a different angle.
There are also of course, the speed of the.
Now I'm another big problem philosophy is this notion of the
(56:36):
specious present? The duration of now, how long is
that? You know, and how much is that
based on us humans? Other animals probably have
perhaps a longer now. Shorter.
Now it with its psychedelics as well.
It seems like the duration of now extends or contracts again.
What how can one therefore say that there's a real?
(56:56):
As it were mind-independent. Now present it seems even let
that the determination of the past and the future dependent on
your Consciousness, you experience as well, which means
that take away, the mind seems like you can't have the past and
the future and the present anymore as trichotomy as a
determined trichotomy. So there's a really interesting
(57:20):
aspect about how time relates tothe mind.
How much how much Each what we know it's dependent on my
iniquity. Interesting question is to what
extent if it's completely determined by the mind.
Then in reality. We have timelessness.
Which then one could then speculate that psychedelic
experiences takes one into this timelessness.
(57:41):
This other way of seeing reality.
Also, I mean if you say well time and sense is determined by
the brain and blah blah blah, ofcourse that then assumes this
neuro essentialism. That was speaking about before
which then has a lot of other issues, the main issues again,
Up, you know, it's hard problem of Consciousness upward
causation matter to mind. And also something I haven't
(58:03):
mentioned mental, causation mindto matter.
We believe that our intelligence, our conscious
calculations. Our desires have an effect upon
the world. This is logically incoherent
according to neuro centralism. But yet, it's If you deny, it is
anti evolutionary. Why we we have evolved over has
no purpose mentality at all. So you get into all these weird
paradoxes, right? In other words, our present
(58:25):
understanding. Standing of reality just leads
to paradoxes every way you look.So the interesting thing for me
is do psychedelics offer different ways of looking at
reality that might inform these paradoxes overcoming these
paradoxes, Mmm. Yeah.
I've had, I've heard philosopherdescribe, you know, the
(58:46):
mind-body thing is like, you know, the the mind is to the
brain is like, what a fist is toa hand.
You know, it's the same thing. It's just Two different form of
that thing if that makes sense. I don't know this one.
Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
It's just like a language thing really.
And I think that if you look at philosophy, a lot of the
(59:06):
evolution of philosophy is been broken down through like, you
know, parsing like what's what would in terms of language.
And what, you know, I think lasttime we had you on an example
would be liveness is law of indiscernibles and that for two
things to be exactly the same one must be true.
To the all they must all have the same properties so mind and
(59:30):
body are different. In the sense that like mind is a
completely different thing than material or body.
But if everything is 1, then they are the same thing, but you
said I think we you your response was that was like a
language thing that they figuredout or something.
Yeah. I mean, it's just I'm just
thinking now about I mean, this is a Spinoza would say mine
(59:51):
buddy are the same thing essentially to seek from to but
different perspectives and interestingly.
We got two dimensions of space-time, as you mentioning
it, looking at their one of the big problems about understanding
that the identity then of mind and matter.
Brain, and body is your brain. And mind, rather is that is
(01:00:12):
spatial dissimilarities. So like, if you think of a
triangle, it has certain properties, three angles, three
sides. Bubbeleh.
If you correlate that then to part of the except activity in
the occipital lobe, that will also have special properties by
they will, Not be the same spatial properties.
Obviously, a triangle doesn't manifest itself in your brain,
physically anything. All right.
(01:00:33):
So how can the same thing? Have two types of spatial
property. And yet be the same thing now to
understand this. So the last chapter in my book
modes of sentience is, is about this, really, and talks about
two types of space. So there's external space, and
is mental space. And then three, To fold space,
(01:00:57):
as Bertrand Russell called it. And then I speak about something
called threefold space, extending that.
And then we talked about how that relates to different
dimensions of space, understanding space, not just as
times the fourth dimension. But five, six, seven, dimensions
of space, and how this might be unified in theory.
That CD broad more and John Smith.
(01:01:19):
He's came sort of speculated. So the so understanding.
The relation of mind and matter actually part of that involves
looking at space. How does space and sentience
relate? This is really complex question,
that no one's really answered. No one's really aware of, you
know, but it's fundamental. Jake William James wrote this
(01:01:41):
great essay called does Consciousness exist.
Might've mentioned where he questions whether, as I was
saying before, you know, like whether the mind is purely
spatial, this is an assumption. So yeah.
That and then and This interesting relationships
between speciality and feeling that the pants I kissed, and
(01:02:01):
mathematician WK Clifford spoke off which are again mention in
my, in this forthcoming book modes of sentience.
It's very speculative sa, you know, and but nonetheless opens
up. It just makes it complicates
this whole my master of mystery even more.
Yeah, no interesting stuff and I'm looking forward to that one.
(01:02:24):
And yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time when we're
going to wrap it up here. I'm going to do a patreon
segment with you. I think in the patron segment,
maybe we'll talk about psychedelic entities and kind of
unpack that a little but everybody go check out Peters
book. I have the Linked UP below, it
comes out on the 9th for the hardcover.
And then I think you said the 14th for the paper-bound,
(01:02:48):
another 14. Paperback will come out a bit
bit later. Actually, it's later.
Okay, the hardback comes out from the printers on the ninth.
It will be sent you'll hopefullyget it before Christmas.
It's officially on the 14th paperback.
I think January and he Kindle versions while later shoutout to
psychedelic press as well. And yeah check out Peters
(01:03:08):
website over the link down belowthere as well.
And one more time. If you're interested head on
over to patreon patreon.com, slash my Escape pod cast for
just $2 a month, you'll get exclusive guest episodes and
segments. We're about to do one right now
with Peter. I will upload it later today and
we are also on this court as well.
So check that out. And yeah, also, we have a merch
(01:03:29):
store. If anybody's interested tons of
new stuff on there, put some newdesigns up there.
We've got the I designed a porter of naxos t-shirt and an
Anubis t-shirt as well. So go check those out.
But listen Peter, I really appreciate the time.
This has been a fun conversation, will definitely
have to have you back on in the future.
There's just so much. Stuff to discuss in this realm
(01:03:50):
of things and I really like yourtake and we need more
open-minded people that are willing to take chances and you
know, there's no harm in speculating or hypothesizing if
there's some basis to it, and I don't think enough people do
that. So I appreciate what you're
doing. Thank you, sir.
(01:04:11):
So, yeah, so check that stuff out.
We love everybody. Stay safe out there and we'll
catch you next time. Peace.
Peace. Peace.
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