Consciousness And The Universe

Modern physics has revealed that the common-sense world we perceive through our rational consciousness is not a true reflection of fundamental reality — a realm that appears to be a ghostlike, incoherent, intangible, contradictory, constrained, but fundamentally interconnected substrate beneath the veneer of the seemingly physical.

Finally, consciousness is unleashed. The many accounts of shamans, mystics, meditators, and psychonauts — all daring navigators of otherworldly realms accessible to consciousness — are investigated. A transcendental multiverse of pure experience is uncovered by these masters of consciousness, just waiting to be explored by anyone brave enough to go beyond the comforting familiarity of consensus reality. Moreover, a formidable blind spot in the modern Western mind’s understanding is revealed.

This is reflected in pervasive psychedelic illiteracy and hostility towards altered states of consciousness, ignoring the long and rich role psychedelics have played in human culture, from Soma in ancient India to Kykeon in Classical Greece. More recently, in the 19th Century, doctors and scientists routinely experimented with the mind-altering effects of nitrous oxide and ether. In a fateful turn, the Western mind deemed any deviation from sober waking consciousness a delusional hallucination. As a result, all substances modulating consciousness were stigmatized, demonized, and finally banned.

Today, in the wake of the psychedelic renaissance, the nascent philosophy of psychedelics is establishing its legitimacy in the philosophy of mind. The contours of the experiential realms of reality accessible to pure consciousness suggest the possibility of an empirical metaphysics.

James B. Glattfelder is a researcher at Zurich University. With a background as a physicist and then as a researcher at a Swiss hedge fund, James B. Glattfelder researches complex systems, a subject he holds a Ph.D in from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

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