The Mystery

Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup's 'Analytic Idealism' is 'a consciousness-only ontology' that has refocused attention, within the philosophical community and more broadly, on metaphysical idealism, that is, an idealism that is grounded in philosophical argument as opposed to promoted by religious tradition or spiritual belief. How to explain, under idealism, the correlation between inner experience and brain states? According to Kastrup, the brain and its patterns of neuronal activity are not the cause of inner experience, but the image, the extrinsic appearance of inner experience. In other words, brain activity is what inner experience looks like when observed from the outside. As such, he says, the correlations ordinarily observed between patterns of brain activity and inner experience are due to the trivial fact that the appearance of a phenomenon correlates with the phenomenon. And when this correlation is broken, as observed in the psychedelic state, the reason i...

Psychedelics and dreams share a profound neurological overlap, with states induced by substances like psilocybin often described as 'waking dreams'. Both states are characterized by unconstrained mental imagery, heightened emotional processing, and decreased activity in the brain's Default Mode Network. The Neurological Connection Shared Brain Activity : Neuroimaging studies show that the brain regions processing memory and emotion are highly active during both REM sleep and psychedelic trips. The Predictive Brain : Recent research on psychedelics indicates that the brain begins to override external reality and 'fills in' sensory information using its own internal memory banks, a process remarkably similar to partial dreaming. Lucid Dreaming Parallel : Psychedelic states most closely mirror lucid dreaming—a mixed state of wakefulness and sleep where you experience vivid, dream-like consciousness but retain a level of self-agency. Therapeutic Implications Fear Extinc...

We will explore the astonishing discovery that the human brain produces light; biophotons, measurable and real, and that this light may be the physical substrate of conscious experience. The bridge between the photon in the physics laboratory and the light that every mystical tradition describes as the essence of awareness. Your brain glows, not metaphorically, not symbolically, physically. Your neurons emit photons, particles of light at a rate of roughly 1 to 100 photons per second per square cm of neural tissue. These photons are not visible to the naked eye. They are ultra weak, a billion times fainter than the light you can see. But they are real. They are measurable. They are produced by every neuron in your brain. And a growing body of research suggests that these photons called biophotons may be the physical basis of consciousness itself. If this is true, then the ancient claim that consciousness is light, a claim made by Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and mystics of e...

Does space actually exist in your lucid dreams? Many of you may find this question strange. Once lucid, you fly around cities, go through walls and explore the dreamscape. In fact, some lucid dreams involve almost constant exploring. Space certainly seems to exist, since you perceive yourself moving through it. Yet as a lucid dreamer, you may notice that you could announce, “Let me see the Eifel Tower in Paris when I turn around!” And with a sense of positive expectation when you turn around, you now find yourself looking at the Eifel Tower. What does that say about the ‘space’ behind you? Or as a lucid dreamer, you may have ignored the dream figures and called out a request to the non-visible awareness behind the dream, “Show me something important for me to see!” Suddenly, the previous dreamscape vanishes, and you find yourself looking at an entirely new environment. What does that say about the ‘space’ in front of you? Or as an experienced lucid dreamer, you could stop in the lucid ...

Have you ever had a lucid dream about floating in a black space? If so, you've discovered the lucid void. Once you find yourself in the lucid void, all you need is the right mindset. This is one of calm lucidity, meditative alertness, peaceful stillness. The lucid void is a wonderous state, one of infinite creative potential. Instead of fearing it and doing all we can to escape from it, it makes so much more sense to learn how to navigate it and explore its marvelous gifts. This requires the same calm awareness you'd bring to stabilizing a lucid dream.     Practice calming breathing techniques or recall a moment in your life when you felt totally safe and loved. Allow this feeling of wellbeing to envelop you. Chant 'OM' in the void to create a sensation of calm.     Welcome the void. It's a place of contemplation, painlessness, and infinite creativity. If it bothers you that you can only see blackness, create some light! There is light everywhere in the void, just l...

The unconscious can be transformed only through awareness. It is difficult, but there is no other way. There are many methods for being aware, but awareness is necessary. You can use methods to be aware, but you will have to be aware.  Buddha has said, "Even in sleep try to be aware of breathing." It will be difficult in the beginning, but if you can be aware in the day, then by and by this will penetrate into your sleep. Anything penetrates into sleep if it has gone deep in the mind in the day. If you have been worried about a certain thing in the day, it gets into the sleep. If you were thinking continuously about sex, it gets into the sleep. If you were angry the whole day, anger gets into the sleep. So Buddha says there is no difficulty. If a person is continuously concerned with breathing and awareness of the breathing, ultimately it penetrates into the sleep. You cannot dream then. If your awareness is there of incoming breath and outgoing breath, then in sleep you cann...