“There are 9 billion different human realities roaming around the planet that are increasingly hard to reconcile. I wonder if we can all explore our respective realities so thoroughly, we see how common they are, after all?”
Default Mode Network
- Regions in the brain involved with modeling the world based on “priors” – aka past experiences and beliefs.
From a scientific standpoint, it is uncontroversial to say the reality we experience is a rendering of the brain, not just visually, but emotionally, sensationally. Also from a scientific standpoint, it is uncontroversial to say this reality is heavily manipulated beneath consciousness. How can one possibly sense this? Who are we, exactly?
Contents
- DMN as a Landscape
- Relaxed DMN Hypothesis
- The Notion of ‘Default Reality’
- Noticing ‘Default Reality’ and Hidden Influences
- An Overly Constrained Mind
- Relaxing the DMN
- Adjacent Psychology – Attention and Autopilot
- Adjacent Philosophy – Buddhism and Self-Illusion
- Who Cares?
- RDMN in Practice
- Potential Misunderstandings, Clarifications
- Open Mysteries
The DMN as a Landscape
Where within the neuroscientific landscape can a mental health hypothesis anchor itself? Ideally in research that seems most implicated in perception and wellbeing. Through this lens, there are two evolving topics that seem most relevant: First is the bayesian brain model (BBM) [44, 45, 2], which postulates how the brain models and predicts the world based on “priors” – aka past experiences. Second is the default mode network (DMN) [3] – a set of brain regions involved in how these “priors” are woven into the fabric of consciousness. [45, 4], and, whose activity correlates with distinct positive and negative states of mind. [23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32]
The default mode network, then, is the landscape of this hypothesis.
Science will refine or refute BBM and/or the DMN’s precise role in mental life. In any case, it seems parsimonious to claim the following: Our brains model the world and make predictions [18, 44, 24A], and further, the constraints, flaws, and biases of this model are nonobvious to us. [12, 13, 14, 15, 16] Specific computational theories and correlates aside, it benefits us to investigate who “we” really are within this condition. In this sense, BBM and the DMN serve as suitable doorways, which can be later substituted without compromising this premise.
Relaxed DMN Hypothesis
“Brain constraint”
…is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of being human.
Grow, learn, adapt, survive, repeat. This infinite loop shapes us into who we are – finely tuned creatures of reflexive habit – essential to survival. This is a feature, not a bug. However, how can one SEE constraint from the inside? Further, how might constraint cause invisible suffering inadvertently?
A relaxed DMN, both as a temporary state, and long-term trait, allows one to sense (subtly, and starkly), the true nature of conscious experience, or more immediately, that there are modes of consciousness beyond familiar constraints. It accomplishes this by softening hidden assumptions (aka priors) used by our brain to construct reality and sense of self. The benefits are:
- Immediate: relaxing of priors can feel expansive and relieving
- Medium/Long-term: felt insight into our how brain builds intelligence, identity, and constructs reality
- Medium/Long-term: reconstruction, or, the potential to adopt new priors (assumptions, habits, behaviors)
Such investigation, carefully undertaken, can culminate in insights that lend themselves to maximum wellbeing for self, humanity, and world. A critical mass of this investigation can foster a self-liberated and more empathetic society.
Since at least 1975 [7], science has intimated our perception of the world – and attitude toward it – are constructs of the brain – akin to a VR experience that colors and influences every aspect of our lives – including impulses, goals, aversion, and identity. This is the “default reality” of being human. This default reality is limited, frail, fallible, and biased. [12, 13, 14, 15, 16] Despite our affinity toward complex motivations and activities in life, the ostensible evolutionary thrust of our brain is survival.
Curiously, it is possible for our brain’s model to become aware of its own existence. In other words, it is possible for us to discover, turn-down, and modify our VR helmet. This widened perception has been referred to as “nonduality” [42] or “meta-awareness” [4], meaning, felt recognition of what our brain is doing to construct consciousness, and as a consequence, re-engaging our experience with a sort of lightness and skeptical wisdom.
Paradoxically, the radical implications of “default reality” are hard to penetrate by reading.
“It’s so counter intuitive.
Marcus Raichle [18]
It’s just like-
Oh, this can’t be true…”
Default reality, given its nature, does not readily show its constraints. Historically, this has been described mostly with esoteric language, in various cultural and/or spiritual contexts. [42, 43, 43A]
The aim here forward is to anchor this hypothesis in science and compatible ideas.
The Notion of ‘Default Reality’
“Each of us believes himself to live directly within the world that surrounds him, to sense its objects and events precisely, and to live in real and current time. I assert that these are perceptual illusions … Each of us lives within the universe – the prison of his own brain.”
Vernon B. Mountcastle, 1975 [7]
“The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”
Iris Murdoch [8]
“All you’ve got to go on is streams of electrical impulses which are only indirectly related to things in the world. Perception has to be a process of informed guesswork in which the brain combines these sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is to form its best guess of what caused those signals.”
Anil Seth [9]
“The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.”
Daniel Kahneman [10]
“We do not see reality as it is. We are shaped with tricks, and hacks, that keep us alive. The theory of evolution presents us with the ultimate dare: Dare to recognize that perception is not about seeing truth, it’s about having kids.”
Donald Hoffman [11]
“What should science of consciousness explain? Experiences of the world – sights, sounds and smells, the multisensory, panoramic, 3D, fully immersive inner movie. The conscious self – the experience of being you or being me. The lead character in this inner movie, and probably the aspect of consciousness we all cling to most tightly.”
Anil Seth [9]
If consciousness is (or is involved with), a brain movie, and this movie is composed of impoverished/manipulated sensory data and an illusory sense of self, feelings, and impulses, what is the neural basis of this movie? This is an open scientific question. That aside – there are multiple hypotheses about the DMN that suggest it’s highly implicated.
- “The sentinel hypothesis claims the DMN helps to monitor the external environment (i.e., the direct opposite of focused attention toward a specific task), fulfilling “the continuous provision of resources for spontaneous, broad, and exogenously driven information gathering” [6]
- “The internal mentation hypothesis claims the DMN plays a role in self-referential processes, i.e., internal mentation about social and emotional content, mental simulation, theory of mind-related considerations, and moral decision-making concerning personal moral dilemmas.” [6]
- “There are hints that structures like the default mode network are seen at the very top of a hierarchy of priors. But exactly how it’s fitting together, you know, that’s going to be developed over the next few years.” [4]
Noticing ‘Default Reality’ and Hidden Influences
“There are two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”
Daniel Kahneman [10]
Beyond claims above – how can anyone glimpse this themselves? That, we live within an educated guess manufactured by our own brain? We can start with science. The following evidence tends act as a “splinter in the brain” – i.e. unsettling clues that demand more reflection and cascade toward deeper inquiry.
Scientific Evidence
- Confabulation
- Our brain can subconsciously lie to us. It can construct plausible-yet-sometimes-bogus stories to explain apparent circumstances. We cannot see this confabulation process or control it. We merely experience the story as a thought. This has been demonstrated most vividly in split-brain patients. [12]
- Visual Manipulation
- Our brain can subconsciously warp colors, based on what it estimates they are as opposed to what they actually are in objective reality. [13]
- Sugar Cravings
- Our brain will crave sugar long after eating food – not because of the pleasurable taste we experience and consciously want more of, rather, because neurons in the gut detect the presence of glucose (fast energy) – and urge us toward more. [14]
- Physical Pain Perception
- Our brain can subconsciously alter how painful something feels based upon what consciousness is focused on – even when the pain stimulus is constant. [15]
- Broad Scientific Evidence of Self Illusion
- Above examples demonstrate how we’re unknowingly manipulated or influenced by subconscious processes. Neuroscientist Bruce Hood explores this comprehensively in – The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity. [16]
Each example reinforces apparent truth: everything we see, feel, think, and understand about self and world – is created and manipulated by the brain in ways that are completely hidden and unintuitive – and therefore – demands investigation.
Next, the most consequential hidden influence as it pertains to this hypothesis – brain constraint.
Brain Constraint
Informationally speaking, the brain is in constant tug of war with itself – deciding how to “weight” new information or stick with it knows – aka its “hierarchy of priors” – past assumptions and beliefs. This “precision weighting” can become heavily biased towards priors – and all of this happens subconsciously – or “in the dark”. [50]
An Overly Constrained Mind
In the top half, the DMN is heavily biased toward past assumptions or priors. The red ball in the top right represents inhibited brain signals, i.e. emotions, memories, sensory data – having little influence on our reality. Conversely, in the bottom left, the DMN relaxes inhibition. Reality is then composed of more signal – memory, emotions, sensory data – symbolized by the red ball splashing in consciousness.
How can anyone get a felt sense of their own constraint? Relative states of mind can change the opacity-of, and influence, the predictive mind. Subtly and starkly.
Relaxing the DMN
The DMN was discovered in 2001 by Marcus Raichle, and since then, there have been 3000+ studies [5] attempting to precisely understand its function. To paraphrase Marcus Raichle, without the DMN “we could not wake up and get dressed in the morning”. [18] On the other hand, the DMN is conspicuously relaxed during certain states of mind, which tend to feel pleasant and/or insightful – sometimes subtly, sometimes radically. The most prominent evidence below:
Incidental Relaxing of the DMN
Flow state [20], exercise [21], awe [22]. While not obvious from the first-person experience, science shows the DMN is quiet, or altered, during these states. Who are we exactly, when we’re immersed here? Why in these moments are we apparently free from life’s myriad neuroses?
The name “default mode” (formerly “task-negative”) stems from the observation that the DMN is conspicuously active when we aren’t doing anything. [26] According to one Harvard study, this is when we tend to feel agitated. [23] Conversely, in the various states above, we tend to feel pleasant, or at least fully absorbed. Why?
Might this motivate staying busy/distracted to avoid irritation? What if rather than distraction, it were possible for our “default mode” baseline to feel better?
Meditative Relaxing of the DMN
Whether or not the meditator is aware, while meditating, they are quieting the default mode network. This has been discovered and rediscovered [25, 26, 27].
Crucially, in terms of this hypothesis, the meditating (or “mindful”) person intentionally observes their mind without attaching, or identifying-with, contracting-around, or feeling-synonymous-with, whatever arises. “You are not your thoughts” among the most famous meditation cliches [29]. This is not to suggest embodying some sort of emotionless robot, rather, someone who can engage consciousness fully, and simultaneously, be curious and wise in reaction. In more esoteric language, this is referred to as “nondual awareness”. [4, 24A]
“If you ask me what I think meditation is doing, I think it is enabling greater control of precision weighting [priors vs. info]. You can allow sensory information to speak for itself, as opposed to getting sucked in to [abstract thought].”
Andy Clark [50]
Often, meditation is construed as a way to “destress” – which is partially true, but misses a more radical insight into the nature of mind [Harris – “the point of…”]. Many people “bounce off” [28] meditation before noticing this deeper potential.
High-Dose Pharmacological Relaxing of the DMN
Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Yale, Stamford, universities, among many others around the world, have studied psychedelic experiences involving ego depletion and a loss of the sense of self. In the most extremes cases, terminally-ill cancel patients peacefully reconcile with their impending death, or, treatment-resistant depressive patients start feeling better [30]. Psychedelic experiences involve deactivation of the DMN, which are consistent with observation of high-level meditators. [31]
High doses, sometimes called “heroic doses” of psychedelics essentially guarantee that conscious experience will change radically [32] – typically involving hallucinations and self dissolution. While the temporary loss of familiar reality has been described as “difficult” or “challenging”, and involve perceptual experiences that are highly unusual, it also often results in deep notions of love, feeling unity with all things, and peace, even long after the experience is over. [30]
Low-Dose Pharmacological Relaxing of the DMN
Smaller doses of psychedelics similarly impact the DMN:
“Microdosing psychedelics which generally involves taking sub-hallucinogenic doses, has been reported to lead to decreased mind-wandering (Polito and Stevenson, 2019), which at the neural level is reflected by reduced DMN activity.”
DMN Modulation – A Systematic Review [33]
While research on low dose psychedelics is nascent, if we take seriously the hypothesis that a relaxed DMN softens our grip on default reality, and, that this softened grip is where relief and insight springs from, then it reasonable to infer the potential here. Anecdotally, this would appear to be the case. [34, 35, 36]
Hybrid – Low-Dose Pharmacology and Meditation
As low dose psychedelic research is nascent, so is research on the synergy between psychedelics and meditation [36]. Anecdotally, glimmers of potential are being recognized on science’s frontlines:
“I will confess to having done a week-long meditation retreat and three days in taking a low dose of LSD, not sub perceptual, but barely perceptual. In my experience it just supercharged the retreat experience. It was beautifully intensified, but there was nothing discontinuous from straight out meditation.”
Roland Griffiths [28]
“As a clinical scientist it’s not my job to say whether microdosing is good or bad but rather to find ways to walk alongside this group as they find their own path to wellness. Our study asked the question: why are you microdosing? And the resounding response: to be more mindful.”
Joseph Rootman [36]
Here too, if we take seriously the idea that a relaxed DMN softens our grip on default reality, and in conjunction, meditation helps deidentify with the contents of conscious experience, it is reasonable to infer the synergistic potential.
Summary
Without emphasizing any context specifically, the overarching theme is, a relaxed DMN seems correlated with a subjective feeling of ease, insight, and in more extreme cases, the cessation of debilitating anxiety or habits.
Two key ideas underly this potential:
First, meditation is a tool that helps anyone observe their mind with curiosity, and second, conscious experience appears to change – both subtly and radically – when the DMN is quiet. Taken together, one can pay close attention to changes in consciousness without fully identifying with them, and in doing so, gradually appreciate how their mind works. This might involve meditation, psychedelics, exercise, awe – but none of them exclusively. Each has potential perspective to offer. Science must do additional work here. Additionally, science may identify novel tools and approaches to explore the DMN or more specific neural correlates, yet to be identified.
In the meantime:
This preponderance of correlation is compelling. Hidden assumptions and habitual worries appear to be diminished with the DMN is relaxed. From a curious position – one might start to wonder how those hidden assumptions and worries came to be in the first place. From a curious position – one might start to say – good riddance. This “curious position” is the ultimate suggestion of this hypothesis.
Adjacent Psychology – Attention and Autopilot
“Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.”
William James [37]
While not explicitly linked to the DMN, there are models in psychology completely compatible-with and supportive-of brain modeling and the consequence of accumulating hidden priors.
Child “Lantern” – vs – Adult “Spotlight” Attention
An excerpt from “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan: [38]
Psychologist Allison Gopnik compares “spotlight consciousness” of adults and “lantern consciousness” of young children. Spotlight consciousness allows adults to narrowly focus attention on a goal. Lantern consciousness allows children to take in information from virtually anywhere in their field of awareness. Being inexperienced in the way of the world, the mind of the young child has comparatively few priors, or preconceptions, to guide them down the predictable tracks. Instead, the child approaches reality with astonishment. Gopnik believes that both young children and the adult on a psychedelic have a stronger predilection for wide-attention; in their quest to make sense of things, their minds explore not just the nearby and most likely but “the entire space of possibilities.” Gopnik validated this on children in her lab – there are learning problems that four-year-olds are better at solving than adults. These are precisely the kinds of problems that require thinking outside the box, those times when experience hinders rather than helps problem solving. [38, 39]
Dual Process Theory and Autopilot
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded a Nobel prize for characterizing two general modes of thinking – fast/automatic, vs slow/considerate. In short, our fast thinking, while useful, can be error prone. [40, 41]
Since has hypothesized a potential link between this fast thinking and the DMN.
“Potential similarities exist between the dual-process theory of thought and the DMN. For example, fast thinking reflects conditions of cognitive ease, which is congruent with the premise of “spontaneous cognition” in DMN literature.”
Giorgio Gronchi, Fabio Giovannelli [6]
Even without explicit correlation, dual process theory depicts our tendency toward habits, or fast/automatic behavior.
Summary
As we accumulate experiences in life, our habits or autopilot tends to become more deeply engrained and invisible. On the plus side this is a evolutionary feature: the brain saves energy, and routine feels effortless. On the potential down side, our awareness forms a tunnel, and paradoxically, it is hard to notice. (Noticing and counteracting this, of course, is the precise suggestion of this hypothesis).
Adjacent Philosophy – Buddhism and Self-Illusion
For centuries, humanity had only concept and empirical proof to investigate mind and wellbeing. Although it’s impossible to completely reconcile these “systems” and the respective “truths” they allege, there are prominent themes convergent with this hypothesis. Namely, meditation and reality-illusion. An example of this overlap can be seen in Buddhism specifically. We can lean on two minds who have studied it extensively, and crucially, speak in non-Buddhist terms.
In an short presentation, Michael Taft distills one of Buddhism’s most core insights – one he suggests we can all freely see for ourselves. [42]
- Self and reality can be seen as a construction
- The construction can be deconstructed
“The picture you have of all the people in the room around you right now is a brain generated construction that’s arriving in perception. It’s not the room, it’s not the people in the room, it’s a movie you’re watching in your mind.”
Michael Taft [42]
In his expansive book – Life Without a Self [43], and more concisely a conversation with Tricycle.org [43A], Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield explores the nature of self. Here, he uses a garden cart as a metaphor to describe our sense of identity.
“Consider a heap of garden cart parts – you don’t have a garden cart. We know when you assemble them, you’ve got one, but if you look at it, it’s not identical to those parts. If there’s a defective wheel and you send it back and get a new one, you’ve still got the same garden cart, just another wheel. Similarly, we are neither identical to our components, nor are we different from them. We’re not something that stands by and owns them. We’re not something that you somehow find in them. Rather, we’re a whole network of social and biological relations that determine and constantly affect those parts and our identity.”
Jay Garfield [43A]
Summary
Buddhism, among other centuries-old ideas, have intuited and suggested that “self” and reality broadly are not as concrete as they seem. This is not a suggestion to be taken on faith, rather, an explicit invitation to investigate for ourselves, for the sake of our wellbeing. This hypothesis invites the exact same, merely using neuroscience and psychology as context, in addition to concept.
Who Cares?
So – a relaxed DMN seems highly-correlated with expansiveness, insight, relief, and at the extremes, a radical change in attitude. Yet – all of this begets a question: so what? If Buddha, science, Michael Pollan, and countless meditation teachers have all offered “How to change your mind” (or how to explore it), the obvious question is, “Why?”
Why, Candidate 1: Know Thyself
“To be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.”
Socrates
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom”
Tao Te Ching
The time will come
Derek Walcott
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Urges to “know thyself”, have been around for centuries. If we take modern science seriously – how can anyone possibly claim to have a grasp on this? Again, fortunately, it would seem we have this great capacity to explore. Knowing oneself is one of the greatest privileges of human intelligence – this is not a scientific claim but a self-evident one. What other organism has the freedom to wonder: Who am I? Who are we? What is this?
Why, Candidate 2: Hold Compassion for Others
“In our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy [48]
Returning to the WHO report [1], the upward trajectory of depression and suicide is disconcerting for two reasons. First, the direct toll of those who suffer, and second, that this phenomenon must somehow be a consequence of the way our society functions. How can we help? Have we found durable inner peace ourselves? If not, can we? If yes, can we serve by example? Can we be so thoroughly humbled by our own ignorance that universal empathy is the only rational conclusion?
Conversation
Of course, “Why” can only come from within. “Why” cannot be imposed no matter how exact the science or alluring the reason. The invitation here is not merely to consider exploring this hypothesis individually, but engage in conversations around these ideas for societal wellbeing. Generating conversation is the highest aim of this hypothesis.
RDMN in Practice
The holy-grail of neural correlates, tools, formulas, recipes, “stacks”, rituals, techniques, therapies, medicines, does not exist. Then again, will it ever? For the average person, what more needs discovery?
This hypothesis illustrates a landscape of evidence, potentials, and tools, as opposed to a prescriptive GPS route through them. In summary:
- Physical Health
- Conceptual understanding
- Default Reality
- Brain Constraint
- Relaxing the DMN
- Meditation
- Nondual awareness
- Flow, Exercise, Awe
- Psychedelics
- Other?
- Meditation
- Complementary ideas
Each angle has something to teach about the nature of reality, and each has something to teach about the other angles. For instance, meditation experience can ground psychedelic experience, and psychedelics can deepen meditation. [28] Additionally, both can be paired with understanding of how the brain functions to understand why it all seems the way it does. Conversely, meditation in isolation can feel pointless, and psychedelics in isolation can feel disorienting and unhelpful. [28]
Big Idea – Context PLUS Tools
Experimenting with habits and tools see what happens is one thing. It is another thing to consider how our brains create reality, using all of humanity’s latest science as a clue (Context), and then use tools to investigate this understanding. This is like possessing a compass, versus, being in remote wilderness with the compass in the context of that journey. Suddenly, the compass is profoundly important. The journey in this case, is understanding of self. The compass might be meditation, but more broadly, any of these tools and ideas.
No Panacea
No individual tool, practice, or expert is being emphasized to support this hypothesis. The invitation is to consider the entire landscape, and the overlapping and synergistic potential within.
State and Trait
It is often said, meditation doesn’t stop when you “leave the cushion”. While meditation might induce a specific feeling of peace (state), it gradually influences everyday life, moment to moment (trait). Perhaps over time, state and trait become more indistinguishable. It may prove helpful to consider RDMN investigation in this frame.
Potential Investigative Outcomes
- Immediate-term relief
- Gradually notice unhelpful habits/biases
- Gradually reconcile trauma
- New understanding of reality
- Rekindle wonder
- Reconstruct self with new values
- Awareness and insight expand, indefinitely
Potential Misunderstandings, Clarifications
The DMN
20 years after its discovery, Marcus Raichle has this to say:
“I think we have more questions than we have answers in this business right now, but it’s a fascinating business.”
Marcus Raichle, 2021 [51]
This hypothesis strives to be rigorous and respectful to scientific evidence. It employs the DMN mostly as a doorway to this “fascinating business”, and a means to introduce a tapestry of correlations. Although there is much to establish scientifically, the evidence discovered since 2001 is sufficient to be seriously considered.
Neither Novel Ideas nor Novel Tools
Scientific evidence and ideas are linked to their respective authorities. The distinction of this hypothesis is unifying them using the DMN as a landscape – a bridge between philosophy, computational brain theory, neuroscience, psychology, first-person experience, and practical application – with citations to resources – to be refined and evolved as research unfolds.
The DMN is No Villain
To paraphrase a quote from Marcus Raichle, were it not for the DMN we wouldn’t be able to get dressed in the morning. The brain’s ability to perceive reality and perform based on past experience is mysterious, miraculous, and essential. The DMN, then, is useful doorway into this mystery, based on it’s hypothesized role in the predictive brain.
The DMN Is Not “The Ego”
A popular idea is the DMN is synonymous with ego. While the DMN seems implicated in self-referential processing and likely contributes to our sense of identity – seeing it strictly as an “ego” undermines scientific hypotheses for potential role.
Of Course We Have a Self!
The idea of “no self” can cause allergic reaction. [49] The essence is simply this: The more we consider our true identity, the more we find it is impossible to pin down to any specific thing – as Jay Garfield alludes to with the garden cart. Even so, we are undeniably a collection of memories, experiences, personality, and so, always uniquely “us”. A living mystery within a living mystery. How’s that for identity?
Psychedelic Science Is Nascent
Psychedelic science is nascent and prone to sensation. Psychedelics in the most simple and conservative sense, prove instantaneously, that there are modes of consciousness beyond familiar experience. In other words, default reality goes away, which appears to be in collaboration with a relaxed DMN. This can serve as a catalyst toward relief and insight whether or not one ever uses them. Third-person understanding of psychedelics is a gift itself – helping illuminate nature of mind and the capacity to shift perspective.
Work In Progress
This hypothesis is a living document – containing placeholders and areas to be refined and reinforced or removed. All comments, criticism, and new evidence will be sympathetically and scrupulously considered – and this hypothesis updated accordingly.
Open Mysteries
Mystical and Spiritual Experiences
“The mystical experience may just be what it feels like when you deactivate the brain’s default mode network.”
Michael Pollan [38]
In 1902, William James, one of the most influential minds in the history of psychology, explored the many “varieties” of mystical or spiritual reports among the general population. In 2022, David Yaden, resumes James’ expedition, except is now able to overlay 100 years of modern psychology and neuroscience. [52]
Mystical and spiritual experience is a common component of the psychedelic experience, yet, mystical and spiritual experience often has nothing to do with psychedelics. What do these experiences mean?
The Hard Problem (of Consciousness)
Probing the nature of mind invariably might lead one to wonder where consciousness it comes from. Scientist and philosophers cannot satisfyingly explain the origin of consciousness [53] (some argue there is nothing to explain, others argue there is, and doing may prove impossible). Surely we all know we are conscious, but why? Perhaps for now, this open mystery is a gift – that – despite all advances in human intellect, we still don’t know what’s going on… even from the deepest position of our own mind.
Dear MDs and PhDs
I beg your pardon and also beg your help and conversation. A pardon for inadvertent mis- or under-representation within this vast body of research and concepts. Help and conversation to get it right (or reasonably plausible), which is the ultimate commitment of this project.
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Mary Midgley - Predicting Reality
Andrew Clark - Demystifying the Default Mode Network
Anish Mitra, Marcus Raichle, Stanford Psychedelic Science - The Varieties of Spiritual Experience
David Yaden - Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?
Julia Mossbridge
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