April 25, 2019 • 44 mins
Why do sacred mountains exist in so many cultures and myths? To what extent could high altitude conditions contribute to the way our mind processes these breathtaking environments? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe explore the wonder and science of sacred mountains.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom
of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and the
gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of
nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
(00:22):
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and
the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like
autumn leaves as age comes on. One source of enjoyment
after another is closed, like nature's sources never fail. I
know that our bodies were made to thrive only in
pure air and the scenes in which pure air is found.
(00:52):
Welcome Stuff to blow your mind a production of I
Heart Radios How stuff works. Hey, Welcome to stuff to
blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And those quotes we just read were, of
course from the Great John. You're one of the great
priests of the religion of the Mountains. Absolutely a true
(01:14):
American hero. I say that without a shred of irony.
Uh an important individual in the natural preservation efforts of
the United States. And I like these two quotes because
he's he's getting into the power and the awe of
the mountains, and that first quote, and in that second
he's talking about the air of the wilderness. And we're
(01:35):
going to be discussing the air of the wilderness in
this our second episode on Sacred Mountains. But I suppose
we should we should, of course, refer you back to
the first episode. If you didn't listen to the first
episode on Sacred Mountains, go back. That is the uh
important first installment. But let's catch everybody up to speed
on what we chatted about last time. Sure, well, last
time we talked about holy mountains from religious and cultural
(01:58):
beliefs around the world, and common types of beliefs about
holy mountains. We talked about the idea of mountains as
the homes of the gods, or as the bodies of
gods themselves, as uh like entrances to other worlds, as
pillars that hold up the heavens, as places of pilgrimage,
as places where the gods once were or still dwell
(02:19):
or sleep. There's almost an infinite array of ways in
which mountains have been religiously significant, and so we talked
about some reasons that might be of course, there are
things having to do with perspective. When one climbs a
mountain and looks down at the earth. Uh, there are there.
There's just the sheer fact of its size, I mean,
(02:40):
in a pretty basic sense, and just how important natural
forms are and are the shaping of our cosmologies in
our sense of self. Uh. We discussed like the main
points along these lines in the last episode. We also, though,
talked about stories expressed by many mountain climbers, so certainly
(03:00):
not only by mountain climbers, of hallucinations during the journey
of climbing a mountain, including the very common third man syndrome. Uh.
The experience of sensing another person making a journey with you,
who in fact is not there right, And it's very
often um, I would say a neutral apparition. Uh, we're helpful,
(03:24):
not a beneficial one. So it's not like, oh, my goodness,
there's a monster beside me. It's more like, oh, well
there's Uh. I thought I was up here alone climbing
this mountain, but there's this this other fella, and that's
comforting to know that it's not just me. Yeah. We
read a section from an account by the mountaineer Frank Smythe,
who wrote of his experiences attempting and failing to summit
(03:45):
Mount Everest alone in nineteen thirty three, and he wrote
in one section of his account, quote, all the time
that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling
that I was accompanied by a second person. And then
later I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder. And once,
when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try
and eat some mint cake. I carefully divided it and
(04:07):
turned around with one half in my hand. It was
almost a shock to find no one to whom to
give it. And of course there are also plenty of
much more recent reports of the same thing, people having
strange experiences, delusions, hallucinations, or at least apparently to you know,
modern skeptical thinkers, hallucinations. It's very possible if people had
(04:28):
these experiences in the ancient world, or if they're just
less skeptically minded, they might think, you know, this was
a real presence with me on the mountain. There was
something supernatural happening up there, right. There was something revolting
about my mint cake that drove the spirit away. Now
it's clear that very high altitudes can have a number
of health effects that could have neurological and psychological implications.
(04:52):
These are generally thought to be caused by the lower
air pressure at higher altitudes. This is understood to be
the major cause, though I think it's worth emphasized that
there are things that are still not fully understood about
altitude sickness. Absolutely, and you know, there's a whole They
have been numerous studies over the years about individuals who
are climatized to a high altitude environments. Uh, that's something
(05:14):
we could potentially come back and do an entire episode on. Yeah,
But I think one of the interesting things about altitude
sickness that we still don't fully understand is why it
affects different people so differently, Like you can't always predict
whether a person will experience altitude sickness at a certain altitude.
And so the generally understood major cause of altitude sickness
seems to be the lower air pressure means less oxygen
(05:37):
is compressed in the atmosphere because you're up higher, so
there's less atmosphere sitting on the air you're breathing, right,
And that this was an idea that we initially explored
in the under Pressure episode. Yes, and so this means
you literally get less oxygen with each breath, and of
course you need oxygen to survive. If you're getting less
of it with each breath you take, you can begin
(05:59):
to suffer negative sequences in the body and the brain.
And meanwhile, you are perhaps climbing a mountain. Yeah, so
you're exerting yourself anyway, but it can happen even without exertion.
That that's important to note. And exactly what altitude it
sets in varies a good bit from person to person,
Like we were just talking about, a reasonable figure at
which a significant percent of people will display symptoms is
(06:22):
sometimes cited to be eight thousand feet or but for
each individual person, it's a toss up. You individually might
be affected at a lower altitude or a higher altitude.
It it's hard to know for sure if you haven't
been there before. Um it's usually said to be worse
if you ascend quickly and don't give your body time
to adapt to lower air pressure at higher altitude. So
(06:44):
that is one thing if you're expecting to be like
hiking at a high altitude, it's good to give yourself
time to hang out at high altitude without exerting yourself first,
Always be wary if you're aboard the starship Enterprise and
you teleport down to a mountain top, teleport to the
lower mountain area first. Yeah, base camps are still important, guys.
(07:06):
But some common symptoms of like mild to moderate altitude
sickness would be the kinds of things you would first
of all, the kinds of things you would expect with
less access to oxygen. So maybe shortness of breath, breathing
harder with less physical exertion, uh, faster heart rate. You
know your heart's beating hard, it's trying to oxygenate your tissues.
You're just not getting enough oxygen in each breath, and
(07:29):
so you know you'd expect those kind of things. But
also you can experience nausea, dizziness, or lightheadedness, and it
can mess with your natural drives such as for sleep
and for food. So you can have loss of appetite, headache,
and that kind of thing. In much more severe cases
of altitude sickness, you can have changes in the color
of the skin, you can have tightness in the chest.
(07:51):
You can have mental effects like you know, loss of
loss of awareness, loss of coherence, or confusion, there can
even be offing up of blood or loss of consciousness.
And there there are subsequent life threatening conditions that can
come out of altitude sickness. One is known as high
altitude pulmonary a DEMO or hape HPE, where altitude sickness
(08:13):
leads to a build up of fluid in the lungs. This,
if you experience it is life threatening and you should
act on this immediately. Another is high altitude cerebral adema
or HACE, when altitude sickness leads to swelling of the brain,
which is very dangerous and of course can cause all
kinds of mental disturbances. And so obviously one question we
might have is if people often report seeing things that
(08:37):
aren't there in the mountains, to what extent can these
be traced to known psychological or not psychological, known physiological
conditions like cerebral dima hece absolutely and and as we
mentioned in the last episode, you know we're not looking
at this is like this the soul uh cause or
(08:58):
the soul re in that one has mountain myths, but
it could certainly potential uh thing that augments them or
feeds them in some cases. No, as we mentioned previously
in the other episodes. There's no way that say, psychological
disturbances as a result of you know, less oxygen reaching
the brain or something like that could explain all the myths.
(09:20):
So one reason for that is that many holy mountains
aren't high enough to cause any altitude related symptoms. I mean,
there are holy mountains that are just a few hundred
meters high. So it's obvious that you know, these are
these are geographical landmarks and they serve, you know, they
represent things to people. It doesn't have to be that
somebody went up on there and had a hallucination that
(09:40):
caused them to found a religion or a myth around
the mountain. Though. We do want to point out that
it's possible that in higher mountains, people going up into
these altitudes could have contributed to beliefs, you know, strange
supernatural beliefs about some mountains, right, and or the idea
that in general, mountains provide some sort of uh, you know,
(10:03):
loosening of the veil between this world and the next. Yeah,
that's a great way to put it. So I want
to call attention to one recent paper, in particular in
the journal Psychological Medicine that deals with these phenomena of
people high up in the mountains having strange and anomalous experiences.
This was by Katerina Hoofner at All called isolated psychosis
during exposure to very high and extreme altitude characterization of
(10:27):
a new medical entity, and this was published in So
the authors here have examined about eighty three documented cases
among reports from alpine expeditions, and they believe they've identified
a new independent condition that's separate from altitude sickness and
separate from any existing mental disorder. It's called isolated high
(10:51):
altitude psychosis. Now, of course, psychosis is a set of symptoms,
and that would be I have, right, wait, what we
can call it? I have, I have, I have. Oh,
I didn't even think about an acronym I have. Yeah,
this is I have the International House of Psychosis. Yeah.
Psychosis is a set of symptoms including quote, hallucinations, delusions,
(11:13):
disorganized speech, abnormal psychomotor behavior, and negative symptoms, and additionally
impaired cognition, depression, and mania. So it's characteristic of of
underlying conditions like schizophrenia, but can also occur in isolation
due to a number of inciting stressors. You know, one
of the things is people often think that hallucinations can
(11:33):
only occur if somebody has an underlying mental illness, But
people who don't have an underlying mental illness sometimes experienced
hallucinations just depending on like fleeting, stresses and things that
are affecting them. Oh yeah, absolutely um. Oliver Sachs's book
Hallucinations is always a fabulous source on all of this
because he you know, he discusses hallucinogens a little bit
(11:53):
in there, but but for the most part, it's it's
all these various other causes that are in play. Right,
So the author's exam and a list of documented cases
of mountaineering, and they looked for signs of high altitude psychosis,
and then they cross reference this to see whether there
were always concurrent symptoms of physiological distress from high altitudes,
(12:15):
such as high altitude cerebral a DEMO or HACE. Obviously,
you can see why if the brain is swelling with fluid,
that might cause things like hallucinations and mental disturbances. So
from previous studies, we know that how often psychosis occurs
at high altitude seems to vary a lot, depending on
who's doing the counting and what criteria they use. So
(12:36):
this is unfortunately a case where the numbers are not
very solid. They seem to be all over the place,
like Woo at All in two thousand six found that
there were hallucinations in three percent of cases with Hace.
Wilson at All in two thousand nine reported hallucinations in
thirty two percent of climbers above seven thousand fives, which
(12:57):
is a totally different criterion than the last thing. Obviously,
so we're not going apples to apples here, we're just
seeing what there is to see about hallucinations at altitude.
Bruger at All in quote found hallucinatory experiences in seven
of eight, or eighty eight percent of world class climbers
who reached altitudes above eight thousand five hunds without supplementary oxygen. Obviously,
(13:21):
this is a pretty wild fluctuation, And I don't know
for sure, but I guess the discrepancy here has to
do with the methods they're using to select cases in
these different studies. Right, you'd probably get very different numbers
if you just check to see if climbers self reports
psychosis versus say, proactively asking them if they've had psychosis. Yeah,
(13:41):
this is one of those spreads of numbers that you know,
it brings to mind the whole like you know, it
just depends on how you torture the numbers, what kind
of story you're going to get out of them exactly.
I mean, I think one of the problems here is
that we don't have anything consistent to work with going
into the study. So so they had to try to
come up with with the method of their own, and
they know it's not perfect, but it's just to sort
(14:01):
of get a rough idea of where to start looking
at this problem. So in the present study, the authors
found first of all, that psychosis of some kind often
happens when you're at high altitude. Their sample, which they
did from consulting existing literature, yielded a result that found quote,
hallucinations occurred in forty two percent or thirty five out
(14:22):
of eighty three of the episodes that they surveyed at
a mean altitude of seven thousand, two hundred and eighty meters,
and of these episodes, thirty four percent or twelve out
of thirty five uh The hallucinations occurred at the same
time that there are signs that the person had a
cerebral demo or hace they determined that high altitude psychosis
(14:42):
can happen together with HACE or with other physiological effects,
or without them. Therefore, they concluded that isolated high altitude
psychosis or eyeap your coining should be considered an independent
psychological condition related to high altitude and not us as
a possible symptom of altitude sickness. And finally, they concluded
(15:04):
that high altitude psychosis is associated with an increased risk
of accidents or near accidents. That's kind of not surprising. Uh.
Now they propose some hypothetical causes for these non hece
cases of high altitude psychosis. One would be like social
and sensory deprivation in conjunction with psychological stress. Stress is
(15:25):
often a common inciting factor for people who don't otherwise
have him into illness to have hallucinations, right, And then
of course it's so varied depending on how much stress
an individual is going to have in a given circumstance,
and then how that stress is affecting their performance and
their mental capacity. Yeah, and then you add social and
sensory deprivation to that. They don't have anybody else there
(15:47):
to talk to if their climbing alone, or or they
have limited numbers of people there with them. Uh, the
their view of the world. You know, there might be
a lot less like color and stuff than they'd normally
be seen. Another potential, uh cause they side is quote
dysfunction of the temporal parietal junction and angular gyros due
to hypoxia, hypoglycemia and cold. And then finally they say, well,
(16:12):
another possibility is just that HASE is going on in
these cases and somehow it's being under diagnosed in the field.
Maybe a lot of these people experiencing psychosis do have
HASTE and just for some reason, the normal symptoms are
not showing up and being recorded. This is I mean
especially true if you're going it alone, right or or
even if you you have a climbing partner like you
(16:33):
you may not I guess be having um, just a
regular check in about your your your your feelings of
physical and mental health. Yeah. And of course cerebral adema
is like that. That's really dangerous. You know, like if
if you have this, you should be getting treated for it.
That's not like a time to say Okay, I'll just
power through and trying to go on up to the summit. Now,
(16:53):
this is interesting going back to what Frank Smythe and
the others have talked about with with their experience of
what's known as third man sent drome. The authors here
found that when climbers reported perceptual disturbances of various kinds,
the majority, though not all of them, but the majority
of them were either neutral or even helpful and comforting.
(17:13):
For example, a hallucinated climbing companion who protects and guides them,
or a voice encouraging them or warning them of danger. Now,
just because the majority of these perceptual disturbances and hallucinations
are positive in nature or at least neutral, doesn't mean
we shouldn't worry about them. Since hallucinations high altitude seemed
correlated with a risk of accidents, it's not hard to
(17:35):
see why that would be. Uh, Climbers high altitude should
be aware that psychosis is very possible and should develop
defensive strategies for what happens if it sets in if
you think you see somebody that you don't remember being there.
Otherwise you should have like procedures in place for that,
like reality testing. Now, on the other hand, about the study, obviously,
there appears to be some weakness in the selection criteria
(17:59):
for cases. But I guess in this kind of study
you're limited by the fact that you can't just stick people,
you know, random test subjects at the top of a
mountain and see if they undergo psychosis. Uh, they're they're
Also the authors point out, there is survivor bias at play, right,
We're hearing the stories of people who were able to
report their stories, some people who did not succumb on
(18:21):
the mountain or experience some sort of a fatal accident,
or didn't have somebody with them who got to report
what happened. Yeah, they say, for future studies, you you
could perhaps simulate some conditions like this in chambers that
simulate altitude with low oxygen or low atmospheric pressure. Also,
you don't need to have a huge or hugely random
number of cases if you just want to establish that
(18:43):
sometimes people report psychosis at high altitudes with no record
of altitude sickness or cute sickness like hace. Now we
mentioned already that that one of the other factors here
is that not all sacred mountains are enormous skyscraping um,
you know, monuments to the sky God. Right, not all
most sacred mountains are probably not even tall enough for
(19:06):
people to be reaching the same kinds of altitudes that
are in this study, though some are. The authors here
point out that most of these reports of symptoms reminiscent
of psychosis among mountain climbers come from very high and
extreme altitudes, so like thirty five to fifty ms or
even above. So there're gonna be tons of holy mountains
(19:27):
around the world that that do not even reach these altitudes.
Nobody could could climb high enough to be at the
altitudes like the ones being studied in this in this research,
so I'd say whether the physiological or psychological effects of
altitude contribute to these types of religious beliefs in some cases,
especially at higher peaks, It's hard to know for sure,
(19:49):
but absolutely it seems possible and even attempting origin story
for some holy mountains and sacred peaks around the world. Yeah,
one thing, and I may come back to this, the
whole idea that most of these reported cases of another
of this uh you know, this third man or what
have you, is going to be neutral or beneficial. And indeed,
(20:12):
when we look at all these different myths about holy mountains, um,
so many of them are about like the gods living there.
Um like I wanted to find more mountain monsters. I
truly did. I'm always looking for the monsters. And not
to say there are not mountain monsters, certainly there Um,
there are traditions of things coming down from the mountains, crampits, etcetera.
(20:35):
But it kind of seems like they're they're weighted in
favor of at least the neutral deities, neutral spirits and
what have you, uh and and even beneficial beings as
opposed to the monsters of say, uh Mount doom Um
or the lonely mountain and token. Well, maybe we can
(20:55):
We will explore mountain monsters a little bit today, but
maybe we can explore it more in the future. I'm
just I didn't think about this when we were preparing,
but I just now remembered the mountain trolls of Iceland.
All Right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick break.
When we come back, we'll look at another study and
we'll move on to a particular mountain creature that, yes,
you might qualify, you might describe as a monster. Thank
(21:18):
thank you, thank you. All right, we're back, all right,
What have we got next to? Robert? All right, So
I was looking at a study. This is one that
you found and then I ended up diving into it.
This was yeah, yeah, yeah, I was interested. I didn't
know about this one because it seemed like some of them. Well,
well you describe it and then we can discuss. Yeah.
This one was titled why Revelations have Occurred on Mountains
(21:38):
Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience. This was published in
Medical Hypotheses from Autoto back It, Old Land, SIB and
blank ep quote. Here's a quote from the piece. Quote.
Prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially in social deprivation, may
(21:59):
also lead to refrontal lobe dysfunctions such as low resistance
to stress and loss of inhibition. Based on these phenomenological, functional,
and neural findings, we suggest that exposure to altitudes might
contribute to the induction of revelation experiences and might further
our understanding of the mountain metaphor and religion. So they're
really going for it on this one, and they point
(22:21):
to the major revelations in the three major monotheistic religions.
UH in Judaism, the burning bush uh. This is where
God speaks through the burning bush. This is from Exodus, Christianity,
there's the Transfiguration from the Book of Matthew. This is
a in which Jesus's divine nature is revealed to onlookers.
(22:43):
And then in Islam there's also the point where Allah
speaks to the prophet Muhammad, and that is also like
a mountain revelation. Now, one of the problems here is
getting into the idea of insufficient altitudes, right yeah. So
I'd seen the study brought up on a science blog somewhere,
and I thought, um, it was interesting because it's touching
(23:04):
on this question we're asking. But I saw it in
the context of it being ridiculed because the main mountains
that it's talking about aren't really that hot, you know,
so they're not like super high mountains that would be
likely to cause altitude sickness, right right, Yeah, They're not
dealing with Himalayan peaks here, right. Um. This is what
the paper says though, about the idea of moderate altitudes.
(23:26):
They said, although the revelations discussed here had occurred in
moderate altitudes, it may be assumed that in subjects who
are prone to mystical experiences, already moderate altitudes are sufficient
to trigger revelation. Like experiences and revelations So the argument here, then,
I guess is is, first of all, you know, not
(23:47):
not everyone's going to have the same reaction to high
altitude like we've discussed, and that even moderate high altitude
they're arguing, could be sufficient. Potentially, this is one of
those more research needed areas, but it could be enough
to push people's minds toward mystical experiences, especially if those
(24:07):
minds are already uh susceptible to say, hallucination to voices
or to the experience of the supernatural. And then the
the the remembrance of supernatural experience. You know, it's funny
that they focus on like the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity,
(24:30):
and Islam, because in the last episode, you remember, we
had a discussion about how it seems to me that
um that actually sacred geography plays less of a role
in the Abrahamic religions than it does in many other
religions around the world, Whereas in in the Abrahamic religions,
it seems that when a place is wholly it's usually
because the idea something important happened there, whereas in many
(24:56):
other religions around the world, the place itself has some
religious significance the the land itself, the mountain is the
home of the gods, or is the body of a god,
or is sacred in its own right, and not just
because of something that happened there, right, you know, I
imagine there could be this is room for a lot
of theological discussion, uh, you know, in each of these
(25:17):
three religions. But but yeah, but all three of these
even as we as we were mentioning them, uh, we
were mentioning the event they were mentioning in the paper,
the event that took place, the meeting of of an
individual in the divine, for instance, in the case of
the the uh the Jewish and Islamic examples. So at
(25:37):
this point I want to turn to um a particular
mountain entity because I think it lines up with some
of what uh we were just discussing here. And that's
that entity is the YETI everybody's favorite cooler. No, not
the cooler, I mean, unless the cooler has an actual
YETI in it. That'd be a good trick discovered one
(26:01):
what was it the when there's somebody in Georgia who
claimed they had a big foot and like a beer
cooler and it was like a freezer. Right. Yeah, it
was a whole the whole thing about ten or eleven
years ago. Yeah. I remember it well because for one
fleeting second it made me wonder, are we about to
know that there is a sasquatch? And of course that
turned out to not be the case. It was like
(26:22):
a costume or something. Right now, the Eddie in modern
Western culture, it has become just kind of a Himalayan
variant of the sasquatch. You know, if I say yettie,
you may just picture a big foot or skunk ape,
whatever the regional variation of this creature is. And I
do think that is important as we're moving forward to
to think about the fact that there are variations of
(26:43):
the wild man uh being in various cultures. Basically like
a bipedal creature covered in hair that is seen all
around the world but has distinct origins in each case,
right right, yes, uh, But I was looking at I
wanted to get a little like a beetter snapshot the
this ape like beast um as far as like Himalayan
(27:03):
traditions go. So I ran across a very very insightful
piece titled Butanese Tales of the Yetti by Kunzang Codin.
Tales of the creature exist through the Himalayan region and Uh.
The author points to the different names that are given
to this entity. So into Tibet there's gangs Me or
(27:25):
glacier man. There's me Champo or strong man, and me
chin Po or great man. Um. The Sherpas Uh call
it Yetti, the lep Shaws call it chew moon or
snow goblin I like that one, or hell moon or
mountain goblin. And Nepal there's Nilemu or banmanche. He didn't
(27:46):
provide a translation translation for those, but I'm assuming some
treatment on these various ideas, you know. Uh. And then
the Mutanese Uh say me Goy or strong man or
also gred Po. So you know, we this idea of
some like figure of of savage cold strength with possible
um you know, god goblin qualities as well. So Childen
(28:11):
writes that the megoy idea here, it dates back to
the pre Buddhist Bond writings. The uh is the pre
Buddhist animist religion. I believe we mentioned this briefly in
the last episode. Yeah, the indigenous religion of Tibet. It
came up because Mount Kailash or Mount Kailassa in uh
in the Himalayas is a peak that is holy, not
just two Hindus who believe uh, some of whom believe
(28:34):
that the Lord Shiva and Parvati dwell on top of
Mount Kailash, but it's also holy to some Buddhists, chains
and members of the Bond religion, the Tibetan indigenous religion
and uh and apparently some Bond rituals call for the
blood of a Megoy slain with a sharp weapon. Wha, yeah,
so yeah, so this is a pre existing idea. But
(28:55):
then you get some Westerners involved, right, and then you
get this idea boarded and uh and and reignited in
the Western mind. Uh So. British traveler William Hugh, Knight
of the Royals the Royal Society's Club, recorded a Yeti
siding in nineteen o three on his way back to
India from Tibet. And then there was another siding in
(29:15):
eighteen twenty five by a Westerner by a Greek zoologist
in a Tombazi who described it like this. Unquestionably, the
figure in outline was exactly like a human being walking
upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some
dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow,
and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes.
(29:38):
And then later you had print sightings and uh and
so forth in the nineteen fifties that helped popularize the
idea of the Yetti in the West. UM. Various films
UH certainly television series like In Search of helped to
contribute to this idea, and today the interest interest in
the Yettie continues, but there remains no proof that the
(30:01):
creature exists. In fact, examination of preserved evidence of Yetti's
tends to lean toward the intentional or accidental misinterpretation of
of another animal or its handiwork. So DNA work from
the past few years, for instance, points uh you know,
directly to at Asian bears as the source of the samples.
(30:23):
So in all of this and any anytime we're talking
about a YETI sighting, even in like the Himalayan region,
you know, we can't discount hoaxes and various other reasons,
but we when we consider the potential effects of hypoxia
and uh uh and and these other like high altitude
situations which all I think in some degree or related
(30:44):
to hypoxia. You know, we we might be talking more
of a full blown hallucination, and then it lower altitudes,
the effect could just be enough to make the individual,
you know, see what they want to see when they
glimpse a normal animal or another human being. So, uh,
I found this idea of first of all, there is
I did see this idea echoed in um Searching for
(31:06):
the Yetty Mysterious Monsters two thousand fourteen, book by General
for rifkn. Now, this is a kid's book. I want
to tell you about this, so you normally we don't
cite a lot of of of of kids book, but
this one was. Actually I was reading through it. It's
pretty good. Uh. It seems to to to balance the
sort of mystical what if with a lot of of
legitimate skepticism. And then also I did see this idea
(31:30):
also echoed in a couple of journals and books such
as High Altitude Medical Science by Udah Kushma and Vocal
And I think there is a lot of you know,
there are a lot of similarities between for instance, that
that yetty account that I read earlier and accounts of
a third man right like here, there was some other
(31:51):
creature there and uh, you know it wasn't human, but
it was. It was hanging out, it was there. I
glimpsed it. And then once you have this and and
this is of course on top top of a pre
existing idea of there being some sort of a yetty
creature in the mountains. Uh. And then once this idea
gets becomes a part of of Western culture as well,
(32:11):
then there's more room to misinterpret the the evidence or
even uh, your senses. Now, I wonder if the if
like a psychological thing kind of like the the climbing companion,
the third man syndrome is going on here, what do
you think it might be that would cause people to
see a bipedal human like creature covered in hair as
(32:35):
opposed to seeing you know, another just another human dress
like them, or too seeing like a dead relative or something,
you know, one of these common hallucinations of comforting figures. Well,
on the hair thing, I think certainly of one glimpsed
a bear that could throw you off. I mean, if
you've ever seen a bear in the in the flesh,
(32:56):
you know it can be this weird, surreal and frightening experience.
I mean, hopefully a little frightening, because as far as
I'm concerned, if you encounter a bear and you don't
have like a certain amount of fear, you're doing it wrong. Oh.
I think there are good reasons why we see bears
as objects of prehistoric religions. I mean, I think it's
quite clear that that bear worship in various forms goes
(33:19):
back a long way. That's one of those where it's
kind of obvious why that would happen, you know, is
this kind of like too many people? The bear would
clearly seem to be like the king of nature. Yeah,
this beast that can also rise up on two legs
and stand like us, that is seemingly slow and lethargic,
but then full of energy and ferocity. That also we
(33:40):
got into this in our Winter People episode a couple
of years back. A creature then in some cases, uh
digs its own grave and seems to die and then
re emerge with life in the spring. Yeah, yeah, it
does seem quite mystical. You can totally see why a
bear would be a thing that you would be, you know,
afraid to speak its name. Speak it's it's dangerous holy name,
and uh and why if you saw one out in
(34:02):
the wild. Yeah, you you might think you'd had some
kind of other worldly encounter. All right, Well, on that note,
let's leave the jetty and take one more break and
we come back. We'll continue to discuss the topic. Thank you,
thank you. All right, we're back. Now. We've been discussing
our records of delusions, hallucinations, and other just various strange
(34:22):
sightings and encounters that seem to occur often at high altitude.
Some possible explanations for what might be going on physiologically, neurologically, psychologically. There,
but we're gonna continue with this now. Yeah. So, uh,
really a couple of other just examples of not mountain climbers,
but individuals encountering some sort of phantom stranger. Well, there
(34:43):
was a case of uh, Sir Ernest Shackleton um he
uh uh, he encountered such an apparition. Also, Antarctic explore
Peter Hillary Um actually encountered a presence that manifested as
the double of his dead there. Oh yeah, the whole
ancestors appearing. Yeah, which which is important to to think
(35:05):
to think of when when we're thinking about the mountains
as a potential uh, you know, place where one can
encounter the spirits of the departed. Um. So, as I
was reading around about about this, I ran across a
Scientific American article from on the since presence effect. And
this was from Michael Schermer. Always a great source to
(35:26):
turn to. Four discussions of paranormal experiences because he is
an individual who has has had paranormal experience. I didn't know. Yeah,
it was, if I am remembering correctly, it was like
a like a cycling marathon he was on. It was,
you know, it was like a strenuous exercise and then
he ended up like seeing an alien, but it was
(35:48):
because of like something he'd been watching previously. He's written
about it, um quite a bit. But you know, applying
the skeptical mindset and then understanding how hallucinations occur. Uh,
you know, how we think about hallucinations after they occur
takes all this into account. So um, he he touched
on all of this, and he pointed to four or
so scientific explanations. Uh that that that he says, really
(36:12):
really get to the heart of what's going on when
when people like this encounter um uh, some sort of
spectral apparition or a third man etcetera. First of all,
isolation triggers the mind to hallucinate the normal feeling we
get when we're working or traveling among other people, which
seems to be a standard here. Uh. Then the rational
(36:33):
cortical control over emotions shuts down due to oxygen deprivation,
sleep deprivation, or exhaustion, and this opens the door for
inner voices and imaginary companions. Next, he says, are temporal
low body scheme. Now, this is the brain's image of
our body, and what it's doing is tricked into thinking
you have a double um and ever up for a
game of rationalization and story making. The brain that constructs
(36:55):
a plausible explanation for this double's presence, Like there's another person. Uh,
there's another human being that's covered in furs. Uh, and
they're next to me. Oh, well, I guess that is
another mountain climber. Likewise, though, I could see where this
would be exactly the kind of thing that could be
misinterpreted as a yetti, right, because if you're climbing a
mountain in the Himalayas, you're probably bundled up head to toe.
(37:18):
You probably don't look like a low altitude human anymore. Then,
there's the mind schema. This is our psychological sense of self,
and it's simply coordinating independent neural networks to solve the
problem with survival and extreme situations. And the hallucination comes
out of its function of making this feel like we're
a single mind. Yeah. But then oh, on the on
(37:39):
the sleep deprivation, uh situation. He uh. He points to
Charles A. Lindbergh's Transatlantic flight UM and Shermer quotes his writings, quote,
the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences, vaguely
outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding waitless with me in this plane,
(38:00):
conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation,
reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.
UM Shermer also shared that his own brother in law,
man by the name of Fred zeal Or Zile, experienced
a sense presence on both of his everest climbs. The
(38:22):
first case involved frost bite and the lack of oxygen,
and the second entailed his collapse from dehydration and hypoxia.
Quote telling Lee, when I asked his opinion as a
medical doctor, impossible hemispheric differences to account for such phenomena.
Fred noted both times the sense was on my right side,
perhaps related to my being left handed. The sense presence
(38:44):
maybe the left hemisphere interpreter's explanation for right hemisphere anomalies. Oh,
this takes us back to our split brain episodes, exactly
the idea of the the interpreter. Now, normally this would
be the left hemisphere interpreter. This Michael Gazaniga's idea of
the interpreter being this function in the brain that sort
of ties together disparate neural phenomena into one experience that
(39:09):
that we sense as a single, unified whole and sort
of tells a story that makes it all part of
the same game. Where in fact, you know, the hemispheres,
as was shown in the Spilip brain experiments, can behave
quite independently of one another. Yeah, but but we've got
this thing that Gazaniga calls the interpreter, that says, no, no, no,
(39:30):
that's all you. It's just you. So two things come
to mind and discussing all of this. First of all,
is i'm alway, I'm anytime we discuss altitudes and pressure,
I'm reminded of the fact that human beings are not
a creature that evolved to thrive on the earth. They're
they're a creature that that evolved to thrive in a
very thin atmospheric layer on the Earth, and and then
(39:54):
only within certain ranges. And when we get out of
those ranges, when we get out of there are our
layer that we we thrive in, we can run into problems.
The other thing I'm reminded of is, Joe, have you
ever been to a like a children's musical performance, preferably
a band or an orchestra. I've been in that performance,
(40:14):
been to one too. So you know how ideally if
everybody's doing doing their job and the you know, the
conductors pulling it all together, Uh, there's a unity. You know,
they're performing this this piece sometimes, but in other cases,
things kind of drift and fall apart. And I feel
like like that's kind of what's what's being described here. Uh,
(40:36):
at at high altitude, like the the the orchestral performance
that is our mind state is is drifting a little bit.
It is like it is. It's it's not so much,
you know, a professional level of performance anymore. It is
a middle school band performance. And things are getting out
of sync, things are getting out of whack, and then
(40:57):
what does that mean when we are the performance. That's
a really good analogy because in that case, I mean
when you've got Even if Gazaniga's interpreter theory is not
exactly right there, there clearly is a way in which
the mind, that the human brain, is performing itself for
an audience of itself, like you in a way are
the audience of what your brain is doing. And so
(41:20):
you're there watching how the show is going and if
the show is not going right, you you are sensing
it even though you are also the thing that's messing up.
All right, So I'm not a mountain climber. I am
not a mountaineer. I've visited mountains. I've had I think
I discussed like maybe a very limited reaction to an
(41:40):
increase in altitude that was slightly noteworthy. But I know
we have to have some mountaineers out there who are
listening to the to these episodes or listeners regular listeners
to the podcast, So we would obviously love to hear
about your experiences at how high altitude? Have have you
ever experienced anything like what we've we're discussing here or
(42:01):
have you simply have you never experienced it, or or
perhaps you can just speak to the awe and majesty
of the mountains. Perhaps you've visited some of the sacred
mountains that we mentioned in the first episode, and you
have a particular favorite you wanted to discuss. We'd love
to hear from you. Another question I have is, so,
outside of Lord of the Rings, outside of skeletor Snake
(42:25):
Mountain and Masters of the Universe and the Traveling Mountain,
Fortress of the Beast and craull Um, are there evil
mountains in mythologies and folklore that we uh we neglected
to mention because I was I was looking around for him,
and I, like, I say, the mountains tend to be
uh you know, part of just a sacred uh ecosystem,
(42:45):
sacred geography, or you know, their home to various beings.
But like this idea of there being like a mountain doom,
a place of of evil, you know, or or or
a place that has been occupied solely by an evil force.
I just didn't see as much of that, like, aside
from a few mountain trolls and a few crampuses here
and there, umu and certainly a few things that could
(43:08):
maybe be classified as monsters that are thriving amid other
magical creatures and spirits at say Kunlan Mountain. Uh, you know,
what are some potential examples here? I don't know. That's
a good question. I'm sure there must be mountains that
are believed to be Hell or something like that, a
place of evil gods, and that our physical mountains on Earth.
(43:31):
But I didn't. I don't think I came across any.
So bring us your monsters, is what I'm saying. Bring
them unto us so that we might see them and
consider them. In the meantime, if you want to check
out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head
on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's the mother ship. That's where you find all the episodes.
You find links out to social media, and hey, if
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(43:53):
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Totally huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers
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(44:16):
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
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favorite shows.
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom
of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and the
gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of
nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
(00:22):
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and
the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like
autumn leaves as age comes on. One source of enjoyment
after another is closed, like nature's sources never fail. I
know that our bodies were made to thrive only in
pure air and the scenes in which pure air is found.
(00:52):
Welcome Stuff to blow your mind a production of I
Heart Radios How stuff works. Hey, Welcome to stuff to
blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And those quotes we just read were, of
course from the Great John. You're one of the great
priests of the religion of the Mountains. Absolutely a true
(01:14):
American hero. I say that without a shred of irony.
Uh an important individual in the natural preservation efforts of
the United States. And I like these two quotes because
he's he's getting into the power and the awe of
the mountains, and that first quote, and in that second
he's talking about the air of the wilderness. And we're
(01:35):
going to be discussing the air of the wilderness in
this our second episode on Sacred Mountains. But I suppose
we should we should, of course, refer you back to
the first episode. If you didn't listen to the first
episode on Sacred Mountains, go back. That is the uh
important first installment. But let's catch everybody up to speed
on what we chatted about last time. Sure, well, last
time we talked about holy mountains from religious and cultural
(01:58):
beliefs around the world, and common types of beliefs about
holy mountains. We talked about the idea of mountains as
the homes of the gods, or as the bodies of
gods themselves, as uh like entrances to other worlds, as
pillars that hold up the heavens, as places of pilgrimage,
as places where the gods once were or still dwell
(02:19):
or sleep. There's almost an infinite array of ways in
which mountains have been religiously significant, and so we talked
about some reasons that might be of course, there are
things having to do with perspective. When one climbs a
mountain and looks down at the earth. Uh, there are there.
There's just the sheer fact of its size, I mean,
(02:40):
in a pretty basic sense, and just how important natural
forms are and are the shaping of our cosmologies in
our sense of self. Uh. We discussed like the main
points along these lines in the last episode. We also, though,
talked about stories expressed by many mountain climbers, so certainly
(03:00):
not only by mountain climbers, of hallucinations during the journey
of climbing a mountain, including the very common third man syndrome. Uh.
The experience of sensing another person making a journey with you,
who in fact is not there right, And it's very
often um, I would say a neutral apparition. Uh, we're helpful,
(03:24):
not a beneficial one. So it's not like, oh, my goodness,
there's a monster beside me. It's more like, oh, well
there's Uh. I thought I was up here alone climbing
this mountain, but there's this this other fella, and that's
comforting to know that it's not just me. Yeah. We
read a section from an account by the mountaineer Frank Smythe,
who wrote of his experiences attempting and failing to summit
(03:45):
Mount Everest alone in nineteen thirty three, and he wrote
in one section of his account, quote, all the time
that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling
that I was accompanied by a second person. And then
later I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder. And once,
when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try
and eat some mint cake. I carefully divided it and
(04:07):
turned around with one half in my hand. It was
almost a shock to find no one to whom to
give it. And of course there are also plenty of
much more recent reports of the same thing, people having
strange experiences, delusions, hallucinations, or at least apparently to you know,
modern skeptical thinkers, hallucinations. It's very possible if people had
(04:28):
these experiences in the ancient world, or if they're just
less skeptically minded, they might think, you know, this was
a real presence with me on the mountain. There was
something supernatural happening up there, right. There was something revolting
about my mint cake that drove the spirit away. Now
it's clear that very high altitudes can have a number
of health effects that could have neurological and psychological implications.
(04:52):
These are generally thought to be caused by the lower
air pressure at higher altitudes. This is understood to be
the major cause, though I think it's worth emphasized that
there are things that are still not fully understood about
altitude sickness. Absolutely, and you know, there's a whole They
have been numerous studies over the years about individuals who
are climatized to a high altitude environments. Uh, that's something
(05:14):
we could potentially come back and do an entire episode on. Yeah,
But I think one of the interesting things about altitude
sickness that we still don't fully understand is why it
affects different people so differently, Like you can't always predict
whether a person will experience altitude sickness at a certain altitude.
And so the generally understood major cause of altitude sickness
seems to be the lower air pressure means less oxygen
(05:37):
is compressed in the atmosphere because you're up higher, so
there's less atmosphere sitting on the air you're breathing, right,
And that this was an idea that we initially explored
in the under Pressure episode. Yes, and so this means
you literally get less oxygen with each breath, and of
course you need oxygen to survive. If you're getting less
of it with each breath you take, you can begin
(05:59):
to suffer negative sequences in the body and the brain.
And meanwhile, you are perhaps climbing a mountain. Yeah, so
you're exerting yourself anyway, but it can happen even without exertion.
That that's important to note. And exactly what altitude it
sets in varies a good bit from person to person,
Like we were just talking about, a reasonable figure at
which a significant percent of people will display symptoms is
(06:22):
sometimes cited to be eight thousand feet or but for
each individual person, it's a toss up. You individually might
be affected at a lower altitude or a higher altitude.
It it's hard to know for sure if you haven't
been there before. Um it's usually said to be worse
if you ascend quickly and don't give your body time
to adapt to lower air pressure at higher altitude. So
(06:44):
that is one thing if you're expecting to be like
hiking at a high altitude, it's good to give yourself
time to hang out at high altitude without exerting yourself first,
Always be wary if you're aboard the starship Enterprise and
you teleport down to a mountain top, teleport to the
lower mountain area first. Yeah, base camps are still important, guys.
(07:06):
But some common symptoms of like mild to moderate altitude
sickness would be the kinds of things you would first
of all, the kinds of things you would expect with
less access to oxygen. So maybe shortness of breath, breathing
harder with less physical exertion, uh, faster heart rate. You
know your heart's beating hard, it's trying to oxygenate your tissues.
You're just not getting enough oxygen in each breath, and
(07:29):
so you know you'd expect those kind of things. But
also you can experience nausea, dizziness, or lightheadedness, and it
can mess with your natural drives such as for sleep
and for food. So you can have loss of appetite, headache,
and that kind of thing. In much more severe cases
of altitude sickness, you can have changes in the color
of the skin, you can have tightness in the chest.
(07:51):
You can have mental effects like you know, loss of
loss of awareness, loss of coherence, or confusion, there can
even be offing up of blood or loss of consciousness.
And there there are subsequent life threatening conditions that can
come out of altitude sickness. One is known as high
altitude pulmonary a DEMO or hape HPE, where altitude sickness
(08:13):
leads to a build up of fluid in the lungs. This,
if you experience it is life threatening and you should
act on this immediately. Another is high altitude cerebral adema
or HACE, when altitude sickness leads to swelling of the brain,
which is very dangerous and of course can cause all
kinds of mental disturbances. And so obviously one question we
might have is if people often report seeing things that
(08:37):
aren't there in the mountains, to what extent can these
be traced to known psychological or not psychological, known physiological
conditions like cerebral dima hece absolutely and and as we
mentioned in the last episode, you know we're not looking
at this is like this the soul uh cause or
(08:58):
the soul re in that one has mountain myths, but
it could certainly potential uh thing that augments them or
feeds them in some cases. No, as we mentioned previously
in the other episodes. There's no way that say, psychological
disturbances as a result of you know, less oxygen reaching
the brain or something like that could explain all the myths.
(09:20):
So one reason for that is that many holy mountains
aren't high enough to cause any altitude related symptoms. I mean,
there are holy mountains that are just a few hundred
meters high. So it's obvious that you know, these are
these are geographical landmarks and they serve, you know, they
represent things to people. It doesn't have to be that
somebody went up on there and had a hallucination that
(09:40):
caused them to found a religion or a myth around
the mountain. Though. We do want to point out that
it's possible that in higher mountains, people going up into
these altitudes could have contributed to beliefs, you know, strange
supernatural beliefs about some mountains, right, and or the idea
that in general, mountains provide some sort of uh, you know,
(10:03):
loosening of the veil between this world and the next. Yeah,
that's a great way to put it. So I want
to call attention to one recent paper, in particular in
the journal Psychological Medicine that deals with these phenomena of
people high up in the mountains having strange and anomalous experiences.
This was by Katerina Hoofner at All called isolated psychosis
during exposure to very high and extreme altitude characterization of
(10:27):
a new medical entity, and this was published in So
the authors here have examined about eighty three documented cases
among reports from alpine expeditions, and they believe they've identified
a new independent condition that's separate from altitude sickness and
separate from any existing mental disorder. It's called isolated high
(10:51):
altitude psychosis. Now, of course, psychosis is a set of symptoms,
and that would be I have, right, wait, what we
can call it? I have, I have, I have. Oh,
I didn't even think about an acronym I have. Yeah,
this is I have the International House of Psychosis. Yeah.
Psychosis is a set of symptoms including quote, hallucinations, delusions,
(11:13):
disorganized speech, abnormal psychomotor behavior, and negative symptoms, and additionally
impaired cognition, depression, and mania. So it's characteristic of of
underlying conditions like schizophrenia, but can also occur in isolation
due to a number of inciting stressors. You know, one
of the things is people often think that hallucinations can
(11:33):
only occur if somebody has an underlying mental illness, But
people who don't have an underlying mental illness sometimes experienced
hallucinations just depending on like fleeting, stresses and things that
are affecting them. Oh yeah, absolutely um. Oliver Sachs's book
Hallucinations is always a fabulous source on all of this
because he you know, he discusses hallucinogens a little bit
(11:53):
in there, but but for the most part, it's it's
all these various other causes that are in play. Right,
So the author's exam and a list of documented cases
of mountaineering, and they looked for signs of high altitude psychosis,
and then they cross reference this to see whether there
were always concurrent symptoms of physiological distress from high altitudes,
(12:15):
such as high altitude cerebral a DEMO or HACE. Obviously,
you can see why if the brain is swelling with fluid,
that might cause things like hallucinations and mental disturbances. So
from previous studies, we know that how often psychosis occurs
at high altitude seems to vary a lot, depending on
who's doing the counting and what criteria they use. So
(12:36):
this is unfortunately a case where the numbers are not
very solid. They seem to be all over the place,
like Woo at All in two thousand six found that
there were hallucinations in three percent of cases with Hace.
Wilson at All in two thousand nine reported hallucinations in
thirty two percent of climbers above seven thousand fives, which
(12:57):
is a totally different criterion than the last thing. Obviously,
so we're not going apples to apples here, we're just
seeing what there is to see about hallucinations at altitude.
Bruger at All in quote found hallucinatory experiences in seven
of eight, or eighty eight percent of world class climbers
who reached altitudes above eight thousand five hunds without supplementary oxygen. Obviously,
(13:21):
this is a pretty wild fluctuation, And I don't know
for sure, but I guess the discrepancy here has to
do with the methods they're using to select cases in
these different studies. Right, you'd probably get very different numbers
if you just check to see if climbers self reports
psychosis versus say, proactively asking them if they've had psychosis. Yeah,
(13:41):
this is one of those spreads of numbers that you know,
it brings to mind the whole like you know, it
just depends on how you torture the numbers, what kind
of story you're going to get out of them exactly.
I mean, I think one of the problems here is
that we don't have anything consistent to work with going
into the study. So so they had to try to
come up with with the method of their own, and
they know it's not perfect, but it's just to sort
(14:01):
of get a rough idea of where to start looking
at this problem. So in the present study, the authors
found first of all, that psychosis of some kind often
happens when you're at high altitude. Their sample, which they
did from consulting existing literature, yielded a result that found quote,
hallucinations occurred in forty two percent or thirty five out
(14:22):
of eighty three of the episodes that they surveyed at
a mean altitude of seven thousand, two hundred and eighty meters,
and of these episodes, thirty four percent or twelve out
of thirty five uh The hallucinations occurred at the same
time that there are signs that the person had a
cerebral demo or hace they determined that high altitude psychosis
(14:42):
can happen together with HACE or with other physiological effects,
or without them. Therefore, they concluded that isolated high altitude
psychosis or eyeap your coining should be considered an independent
psychological condition related to high altitude and not us as
a possible symptom of altitude sickness. And finally, they concluded
(15:04):
that high altitude psychosis is associated with an increased risk
of accidents or near accidents. That's kind of not surprising. Uh.
Now they propose some hypothetical causes for these non hece
cases of high altitude psychosis. One would be like social
and sensory deprivation in conjunction with psychological stress. Stress is
(15:25):
often a common inciting factor for people who don't otherwise
have him into illness to have hallucinations, right, And then
of course it's so varied depending on how much stress
an individual is going to have in a given circumstance,
and then how that stress is affecting their performance and
their mental capacity. Yeah, and then you add social and
sensory deprivation to that. They don't have anybody else there
(15:47):
to talk to if their climbing alone, or or they
have limited numbers of people there with them. Uh, the
their view of the world. You know, there might be
a lot less like color and stuff than they'd normally
be seen. Another potential, uh cause they side is quote
dysfunction of the temporal parietal junction and angular gyros due
to hypoxia, hypoglycemia and cold. And then finally they say, well,
(16:12):
another possibility is just that HASE is going on in
these cases and somehow it's being under diagnosed in the field.
Maybe a lot of these people experiencing psychosis do have
HASTE and just for some reason, the normal symptoms are
not showing up and being recorded. This is I mean
especially true if you're going it alone, right or or
even if you you have a climbing partner like you
(16:33):
you may not I guess be having um, just a
regular check in about your your your your feelings of
physical and mental health. Yeah. And of course cerebral adema
is like that. That's really dangerous. You know, like if
if you have this, you should be getting treated for it.
That's not like a time to say Okay, I'll just
power through and trying to go on up to the summit. Now,
(16:53):
this is interesting going back to what Frank Smythe and
the others have talked about with with their experience of
what's known as third man sent drome. The authors here
found that when climbers reported perceptual disturbances of various kinds,
the majority, though not all of them, but the majority
of them were either neutral or even helpful and comforting.
(17:13):
For example, a hallucinated climbing companion who protects and guides them,
or a voice encouraging them or warning them of danger. Now,
just because the majority of these perceptual disturbances and hallucinations
are positive in nature or at least neutral, doesn't mean
we shouldn't worry about them. Since hallucinations high altitude seemed
correlated with a risk of accidents, it's not hard to
(17:35):
see why that would be. Uh, Climbers high altitude should
be aware that psychosis is very possible and should develop
defensive strategies for what happens if it sets in if
you think you see somebody that you don't remember being there.
Otherwise you should have like procedures in place for that,
like reality testing. Now, on the other hand, about the study, obviously,
there appears to be some weakness in the selection criteria
(17:59):
for cases. But I guess in this kind of study
you're limited by the fact that you can't just stick people,
you know, random test subjects at the top of a
mountain and see if they undergo psychosis. Uh, they're they're
Also the authors point out, there is survivor bias at play, right,
We're hearing the stories of people who were able to
report their stories, some people who did not succumb on
(18:21):
the mountain or experience some sort of a fatal accident,
or didn't have somebody with them who got to report
what happened. Yeah, they say, for future studies, you you
could perhaps simulate some conditions like this in chambers that
simulate altitude with low oxygen or low atmospheric pressure. Also,
you don't need to have a huge or hugely random
number of cases if you just want to establish that
(18:43):
sometimes people report psychosis at high altitudes with no record
of altitude sickness or cute sickness like hace. Now we
mentioned already that that one of the other factors here
is that not all sacred mountains are enormous skyscraping um,
you know, monuments to the sky God. Right, not all
most sacred mountains are probably not even tall enough for
(19:06):
people to be reaching the same kinds of altitudes that
are in this study, though some are. The authors here
point out that most of these reports of symptoms reminiscent
of psychosis among mountain climbers come from very high and
extreme altitudes, so like thirty five to fifty ms or
even above. So there're gonna be tons of holy mountains
(19:27):
around the world that that do not even reach these altitudes.
Nobody could could climb high enough to be at the
altitudes like the ones being studied in this in this research,
so I'd say whether the physiological or psychological effects of
altitude contribute to these types of religious beliefs in some cases,
especially at higher peaks, It's hard to know for sure,
(19:49):
but absolutely it seems possible and even attempting origin story
for some holy mountains and sacred peaks around the world. Yeah,
one thing, and I may come back to this, the
whole idea that most of these reported cases of another
of this uh you know, this third man or what
have you, is going to be neutral or beneficial. And indeed,
(20:12):
when we look at all these different myths about holy mountains, um,
so many of them are about like the gods living there.
Um like I wanted to find more mountain monsters. I
truly did. I'm always looking for the monsters. And not
to say there are not mountain monsters, certainly there Um,
there are traditions of things coming down from the mountains, crampits, etcetera.
(20:35):
But it kind of seems like they're they're weighted in
favor of at least the neutral deities, neutral spirits and
what have you, uh and and even beneficial beings as
opposed to the monsters of say, uh Mount doom Um
or the lonely mountain and token. Well, maybe we can
(20:55):
We will explore mountain monsters a little bit today, but
maybe we can explore it more in the future. I'm
just I didn't think about this when we were preparing,
but I just now remembered the mountain trolls of Iceland.
All Right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick break.
When we come back, we'll look at another study and
we'll move on to a particular mountain creature that, yes,
you might qualify, you might describe as a monster. Thank
(21:18):
thank you, thank you. All right, we're back, all right,
What have we got next to? Robert? All right, So
I was looking at a study. This is one that
you found and then I ended up diving into it.
This was yeah, yeah, yeah, I was interested. I didn't
know about this one because it seemed like some of them. Well,
well you describe it and then we can discuss. Yeah.
This one was titled why Revelations have Occurred on Mountains
(21:38):
Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience. This was published in
Medical Hypotheses from Autoto back It, Old Land, SIB and
blank ep quote. Here's a quote from the piece. Quote.
Prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially in social deprivation, may
(21:59):
also lead to refrontal lobe dysfunctions such as low resistance
to stress and loss of inhibition. Based on these phenomenological, functional,
and neural findings, we suggest that exposure to altitudes might
contribute to the induction of revelation experiences and might further
our understanding of the mountain metaphor and religion. So they're
really going for it on this one, and they point
(22:21):
to the major revelations in the three major monotheistic religions.
UH in Judaism, the burning bush uh. This is where
God speaks through the burning bush. This is from Exodus, Christianity,
there's the Transfiguration from the Book of Matthew. This is
a in which Jesus's divine nature is revealed to onlookers.
(22:43):
And then in Islam there's also the point where Allah
speaks to the prophet Muhammad, and that is also like
a mountain revelation. Now, one of the problems here is
getting into the idea of insufficient altitudes, right yeah. So
I'd seen the study brought up on a science blog somewhere,
and I thought, um, it was interesting because it's touching
(23:04):
on this question we're asking. But I saw it in
the context of it being ridiculed because the main mountains
that it's talking about aren't really that hot, you know,
so they're not like super high mountains that would be
likely to cause altitude sickness, right right, Yeah, They're not
dealing with Himalayan peaks here, right. Um. This is what
the paper says though, about the idea of moderate altitudes.
(23:26):
They said, although the revelations discussed here had occurred in
moderate altitudes, it may be assumed that in subjects who
are prone to mystical experiences, already moderate altitudes are sufficient
to trigger revelation. Like experiences and revelations So the argument here, then,
I guess is is, first of all, you know, not
(23:47):
not everyone's going to have the same reaction to high
altitude like we've discussed, and that even moderate high altitude
they're arguing, could be sufficient. Potentially, this is one of
those more research needed areas, but it could be enough
to push people's minds toward mystical experiences, especially if those
(24:07):
minds are already uh susceptible to say, hallucination to voices
or to the experience of the supernatural. And then the
the the remembrance of supernatural experience. You know, it's funny
that they focus on like the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity,
(24:30):
and Islam, because in the last episode, you remember, we
had a discussion about how it seems to me that
um that actually sacred geography plays less of a role
in the Abrahamic religions than it does in many other
religions around the world, Whereas in in the Abrahamic religions,
it seems that when a place is wholly it's usually
because the idea something important happened there, whereas in many
(24:56):
other religions around the world, the place itself has some
religious significance the the land itself, the mountain is the
home of the gods, or is the body of a god,
or is sacred in its own right, and not just
because of something that happened there, right, you know, I
imagine there could be this is room for a lot
of theological discussion, uh, you know, in each of these
(25:17):
three religions. But but yeah, but all three of these
even as we as we were mentioning them, uh, we
were mentioning the event they were mentioning in the paper,
the event that took place, the meeting of of an
individual in the divine, for instance, in the case of
the the uh the Jewish and Islamic examples. So at
(25:37):
this point I want to turn to um a particular
mountain entity because I think it lines up with some
of what uh we were just discussing here. And that's
that entity is the YETI everybody's favorite cooler. No, not
the cooler, I mean, unless the cooler has an actual
YETI in it. That'd be a good trick discovered one
(26:01):
what was it the when there's somebody in Georgia who
claimed they had a big foot and like a beer
cooler and it was like a freezer. Right. Yeah, it
was a whole the whole thing about ten or eleven
years ago. Yeah. I remember it well because for one
fleeting second it made me wonder, are we about to
know that there is a sasquatch? And of course that
turned out to not be the case. It was like
(26:22):
a costume or something. Right now, the Eddie in modern
Western culture, it has become just kind of a Himalayan
variant of the sasquatch. You know, if I say yettie,
you may just picture a big foot or skunk ape,
whatever the regional variation of this creature is. And I
do think that is important as we're moving forward to
to think about the fact that there are variations of
(26:43):
the wild man uh being in various cultures. Basically like
a bipedal creature covered in hair that is seen all
around the world but has distinct origins in each case,
right right, yes, uh, But I was looking at I
wanted to get a little like a beetter snapshot the
this ape like beast um as far as like Himalayan
(27:03):
traditions go. So I ran across a very very insightful
piece titled Butanese Tales of the Yetti by Kunzang Codin.
Tales of the creature exist through the Himalayan region and Uh.
The author points to the different names that are given
to this entity. So into Tibet there's gangs Me or
(27:25):
glacier man. There's me Champo or strong man, and me
chin Po or great man. Um. The Sherpas Uh call
it Yetti, the lep Shaws call it chew moon or
snow goblin I like that one, or hell moon or
mountain goblin. And Nepal there's Nilemu or banmanche. He didn't
(27:46):
provide a translation translation for those, but I'm assuming some
treatment on these various ideas, you know. Uh. And then
the Mutanese Uh say me Goy or strong man or
also gred Po. So you know, we this idea of
some like figure of of savage cold strength with possible
um you know, god goblin qualities as well. So Childen
(28:11):
writes that the megoy idea here, it dates back to
the pre Buddhist Bond writings. The uh is the pre
Buddhist animist religion. I believe we mentioned this briefly in
the last episode. Yeah, the indigenous religion of Tibet. It
came up because Mount Kailash or Mount Kailassa in uh
in the Himalayas is a peak that is holy, not
just two Hindus who believe uh, some of whom believe
(28:34):
that the Lord Shiva and Parvati dwell on top of
Mount Kailash, but it's also holy to some Buddhists, chains
and members of the Bond religion, the Tibetan indigenous religion
and uh and apparently some Bond rituals call for the
blood of a Megoy slain with a sharp weapon. Wha, yeah,
so yeah, so this is a pre existing idea. But
(28:55):
then you get some Westerners involved, right, and then you
get this idea boarded and uh and and reignited in
the Western mind. Uh So. British traveler William Hugh, Knight
of the Royals the Royal Society's Club, recorded a Yeti
siding in nineteen o three on his way back to
India from Tibet. And then there was another siding in
(29:15):
eighteen twenty five by a Westerner by a Greek zoologist
in a Tombazi who described it like this. Unquestionably, the
figure in outline was exactly like a human being walking
upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some
dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow,
and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes.
(29:38):
And then later you had print sightings and uh and
so forth in the nineteen fifties that helped popularize the
idea of the Yetti in the West. UM. Various films
UH certainly television series like In Search of helped to
contribute to this idea, and today the interest interest in
the Yettie continues, but there remains no proof that the
(30:01):
creature exists. In fact, examination of preserved evidence of Yetti's
tends to lean toward the intentional or accidental misinterpretation of
of another animal or its handiwork. So DNA work from
the past few years, for instance, points uh you know,
directly to at Asian bears as the source of the samples.
(30:23):
So in all of this and any anytime we're talking
about a YETI sighting, even in like the Himalayan region,
you know, we can't discount hoaxes and various other reasons,
but we when we consider the potential effects of hypoxia
and uh uh and and these other like high altitude
situations which all I think in some degree or related
(30:44):
to hypoxia. You know, we we might be talking more
of a full blown hallucination, and then it lower altitudes,
the effect could just be enough to make the individual,
you know, see what they want to see when they
glimpse a normal animal or another human being. So, uh,
I found this idea of first of all, there is
I did see this idea echoed in um Searching for
(31:06):
the Yetty Mysterious Monsters two thousand fourteen, book by General
for rifkn. Now, this is a kid's book. I want
to tell you about this, so you normally we don't
cite a lot of of of of kids book, but
this one was. Actually I was reading through it. It's
pretty good. Uh. It seems to to to balance the
sort of mystical what if with a lot of of
legitimate skepticism. And then also I did see this idea
(31:30):
also echoed in a couple of journals and books such
as High Altitude Medical Science by Udah Kushma and Vocal
And I think there is a lot of you know,
there are a lot of similarities between for instance, that
that yetty account that I read earlier and accounts of
a third man right like here, there was some other
(31:51):
creature there and uh, you know it wasn't human, but
it was. It was hanging out, it was there. I
glimpsed it. And then once you have this and and
this is of course on top top of a pre
existing idea of there being some sort of a yetty
creature in the mountains. Uh. And then once this idea
gets becomes a part of of Western culture as well,
(32:11):
then there's more room to misinterpret the the evidence or
even uh, your senses. Now, I wonder if the if
like a psychological thing kind of like the the climbing companion,
the third man syndrome is going on here, what do
you think it might be that would cause people to
see a bipedal human like creature covered in hair as
(32:35):
opposed to seeing you know, another just another human dress
like them, or too seeing like a dead relative or something,
you know, one of these common hallucinations of comforting figures. Well,
on the hair thing, I think certainly of one glimpsed
a bear that could throw you off. I mean, if
you've ever seen a bear in the in the flesh,
(32:56):
you know it can be this weird, surreal and frightening experience.
I mean, hopefully a little frightening, because as far as
I'm concerned, if you encounter a bear and you don't
have like a certain amount of fear, you're doing it wrong. Oh.
I think there are good reasons why we see bears
as objects of prehistoric religions. I mean, I think it's
quite clear that that bear worship in various forms goes
(33:19):
back a long way. That's one of those where it's
kind of obvious why that would happen, you know, is
this kind of like too many people? The bear would
clearly seem to be like the king of nature. Yeah,
this beast that can also rise up on two legs
and stand like us, that is seemingly slow and lethargic,
but then full of energy and ferocity. That also we
(33:40):
got into this in our Winter People episode a couple
of years back. A creature then in some cases, uh
digs its own grave and seems to die and then
re emerge with life in the spring. Yeah, yeah, it
does seem quite mystical. You can totally see why a
bear would be a thing that you would be, you know,
afraid to speak its name. Speak it's it's dangerous holy name,
and uh and why if you saw one out in
(34:02):
the wild. Yeah, you you might think you'd had some
kind of other worldly encounter. All right, Well, on that note,
let's leave the jetty and take one more break and
we come back. We'll continue to discuss the topic. Thank you,
thank you. All right, we're back. Now. We've been discussing
our records of delusions, hallucinations, and other just various strange
(34:22):
sightings and encounters that seem to occur often at high altitude.
Some possible explanations for what might be going on physiologically, neurologically, psychologically. There,
but we're gonna continue with this now. Yeah. So, uh,
really a couple of other just examples of not mountain climbers,
but individuals encountering some sort of phantom stranger. Well, there
(34:43):
was a case of uh, Sir Ernest Shackleton um he
uh uh, he encountered such an apparition. Also, Antarctic explore
Peter Hillary Um actually encountered a presence that manifested as
the double of his dead there. Oh yeah, the whole
ancestors appearing. Yeah, which which is important to to think
(35:05):
to think of when when we're thinking about the mountains
as a potential uh, you know, place where one can
encounter the spirits of the departed. Um. So, as I
was reading around about about this, I ran across a
Scientific American article from on the since presence effect. And
this was from Michael Schermer. Always a great source to
(35:26):
turn to. Four discussions of paranormal experiences because he is
an individual who has has had paranormal experience. I didn't know. Yeah,
it was, if I am remembering correctly, it was like
a like a cycling marathon he was on. It was,
you know, it was like a strenuous exercise and then
he ended up like seeing an alien, but it was
(35:48):
because of like something he'd been watching previously. He's written
about it, um quite a bit. But you know, applying
the skeptical mindset and then understanding how hallucinations occur. Uh,
you know, how we think about hallucinations after they occur
takes all this into account. So um, he he touched
on all of this, and he pointed to four or
so scientific explanations. Uh that that that he says, really
(36:12):
really get to the heart of what's going on when
when people like this encounter um uh, some sort of
spectral apparition or a third man etcetera. First of all,
isolation triggers the mind to hallucinate the normal feeling we
get when we're working or traveling among other people, which
seems to be a standard here. Uh. Then the rational
(36:33):
cortical control over emotions shuts down due to oxygen deprivation,
sleep deprivation, or exhaustion, and this opens the door for
inner voices and imaginary companions. Next, he says, are temporal
low body scheme. Now, this is the brain's image of
our body, and what it's doing is tricked into thinking
you have a double um and ever up for a
game of rationalization and story making. The brain that constructs
(36:55):
a plausible explanation for this double's presence, Like there's another person. Uh,
there's another human being that's covered in furs. Uh, and
they're next to me. Oh, well, I guess that is
another mountain climber. Likewise, though, I could see where this
would be exactly the kind of thing that could be
misinterpreted as a yetti, right, because if you're climbing a
mountain in the Himalayas, you're probably bundled up head to toe.
(37:18):
You probably don't look like a low altitude human anymore. Then,
there's the mind schema. This is our psychological sense of self,
and it's simply coordinating independent neural networks to solve the
problem with survival and extreme situations. And the hallucination comes
out of its function of making this feel like we're
a single mind. Yeah. But then oh, on the on
(37:39):
the sleep deprivation, uh situation. He uh. He points to
Charles A. Lindbergh's Transatlantic flight UM and Shermer quotes his writings, quote,
the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences, vaguely
outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding waitless with me in this plane,
(38:00):
conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation,
reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.
UM Shermer also shared that his own brother in law,
man by the name of Fred zeal Or Zile, experienced
a sense presence on both of his everest climbs. The
(38:22):
first case involved frost bite and the lack of oxygen,
and the second entailed his collapse from dehydration and hypoxia.
Quote telling Lee, when I asked his opinion as a
medical doctor, impossible hemispheric differences to account for such phenomena.
Fred noted both times the sense was on my right side,
perhaps related to my being left handed. The sense presence
(38:44):
maybe the left hemisphere interpreter's explanation for right hemisphere anomalies. Oh,
this takes us back to our split brain episodes, exactly
the idea of the the interpreter. Now, normally this would
be the left hemisphere interpreter. This Michael Gazaniga's idea of
the interpreter being this function in the brain that sort
of ties together disparate neural phenomena into one experience that
(39:09):
that we sense as a single, unified whole and sort
of tells a story that makes it all part of
the same game. Where in fact, you know, the hemispheres,
as was shown in the Spilip brain experiments, can behave
quite independently of one another. Yeah, but but we've got
this thing that Gazaniga calls the interpreter, that says, no, no, no,
(39:30):
that's all you. It's just you. So two things come
to mind and discussing all of this. First of all,
is i'm alway, I'm anytime we discuss altitudes and pressure,
I'm reminded of the fact that human beings are not
a creature that evolved to thrive on the earth. They're
they're a creature that that evolved to thrive in a
very thin atmospheric layer on the Earth, and and then
(39:54):
only within certain ranges. And when we get out of
those ranges, when we get out of there are our
layer that we we thrive in, we can run into problems.
The other thing I'm reminded of is, Joe, have you
ever been to a like a children's musical performance, preferably
a band or an orchestra. I've been in that performance,
(40:14):
been to one too. So you know how ideally if
everybody's doing doing their job and the you know, the
conductors pulling it all together, Uh, there's a unity. You know,
they're performing this this piece sometimes, but in other cases,
things kind of drift and fall apart. And I feel
like like that's kind of what's what's being described here. Uh,
(40:36):
at at high altitude, like the the the orchestral performance
that is our mind state is is drifting a little bit.
It is like it is. It's it's not so much,
you know, a professional level of performance anymore. It is
a middle school band performance. And things are getting out
of sync, things are getting out of whack, and then
(40:57):
what does that mean when we are the performance. That's
a really good analogy because in that case, I mean
when you've got Even if Gazaniga's interpreter theory is not
exactly right there, there clearly is a way in which
the mind, that the human brain, is performing itself for
an audience of itself, like you in a way are
the audience of what your brain is doing. And so
(41:20):
you're there watching how the show is going and if
the show is not going right, you you are sensing
it even though you are also the thing that's messing up.
All right, So I'm not a mountain climber. I am
not a mountaineer. I've visited mountains. I've had I think
I discussed like maybe a very limited reaction to an
(41:40):
increase in altitude that was slightly noteworthy. But I know
we have to have some mountaineers out there who are
listening to the to these episodes or listeners regular listeners
to the podcast, So we would obviously love to hear
about your experiences at how high altitude? Have have you
ever experienced anything like what we've we're discussing here or
(42:01):
have you simply have you never experienced it, or or
perhaps you can just speak to the awe and majesty
of the mountains. Perhaps you've visited some of the sacred
mountains that we mentioned in the first episode, and you
have a particular favorite you wanted to discuss. We'd love
to hear from you. Another question I have is, so,
outside of Lord of the Rings, outside of skeletor Snake
(42:25):
Mountain and Masters of the Universe and the Traveling Mountain,
Fortress of the Beast and craull Um, are there evil
mountains in mythologies and folklore that we uh we neglected
to mention because I was I was looking around for him,
and I, like, I say, the mountains tend to be
uh you know, part of just a sacred uh ecosystem,
(42:45):
sacred geography, or you know, their home to various beings.
But like this idea of there being like a mountain doom,
a place of of evil, you know, or or or
a place that has been occupied solely by an evil force.
I just didn't see as much of that, like, aside
from a few mountain trolls and a few crampuses here
and there, umu and certainly a few things that could
(43:08):
maybe be classified as monsters that are thriving amid other
magical creatures and spirits at say Kunlan Mountain. Uh, you know,
what are some potential examples here? I don't know. That's
a good question. I'm sure there must be mountains that
are believed to be Hell or something like that, a
place of evil gods, and that our physical mountains on Earth.
(43:31):
But I didn't. I don't think I came across any.
So bring us your monsters, is what I'm saying. Bring
them unto us so that we might see them and
consider them. In the meantime, if you want to check
out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head
on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's the mother ship. That's where you find all the episodes.
You find links out to social media, and hey, if
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(43:53):
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Totally huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers
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(44:16):
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