Issue Three — Elevator

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This issue we are diving into the most inevitable part of life: death. We wish to prolong our lives, age with grace or have no need to do so, and there is a growing body of research now dedicated to this.

But given that as of now, as far as we know, we are going to die, what does death mean from an Idealist perspective? If consciousness is primary then maybe we are not merely material ‘things’ which cease to exist the moment our body ceases to function. What can near death experiences, AI and psychedelics tell us about this, if anything? Is reincarnation actually a thing and how could that work in practice?

We have shared some links here but of course there is much more that could be said about this subject and its relationship to consciousness, so it’s one we will probably return to in future issues.

We are not currently sponsored for any of the links we post here; however we are open to it so if you’d like to sponsor us please get in touch. We promise to clearly label sponsored or promoted content should we end up accepting sponsorship in the future.

One final note: we are privileged to have permission to feature art created by an actual human being this month, the very talented Camilla Carlsen. Please follow her on Instagram if it resonates with you.

“Wyrd is the Anglo-Saxon concept for the interconnected web of all things, and was very familiar to the people who lived in Yorkshire, the home for the event. As the latest science is demonstrating and ancient wisdom traditions have long stated, interconnectedness is a fact and we humans are deeply connected to the world around us. … Bridging the traditionally polarised worlds of consciousness and science is critical if we are going to bring holistic understanding and practice into the mainstream.”

Illuminating the Brain’s ‘Utter Darkness’ | Alec Wilkinson | The New York Review of Books

Review of a new biography of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish neuroanatomist who is known for his work on the structure of the nervous system. Cajal was interested in dreams and believed that they could help him understand how the brain works. He also discovered the pyramidal cell, which he came to believe was related to mental function, and led him to create the theory that consciousness resides within cells. He also took issue with many of Freud’s theories and called them out as pseudoscience, however this may have been mainly motivated by professional jealousy. Overall a fascinating biography of someone who's physicalist ideas may not have stood the test of time, but who illuminates a great deal about contemporary thinking related to consciousness and the mind.

‘I took part in a radical psychedelic clinical trial and it changed my life forever’ | Evening Standard

Alexander Beiner discusses his involvement in a clinical trial at Imperial College London that explored the effects of the psychedelic drug DMT on healthy volunteers. The study aimed to understand what happens in the brain and mind when we're on DMT for an extended period, and how the experience might be used as part of personalized mental health treatments in the future. He shares his own transformative experiences on the trial, including encountering strange entities and having personal revelations.

Catherine Oxenberg on How Ketamine Helped Her Overcome NXIVM Trauma

Ex-Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg describes her experience using ketamine to overcome trauma from her involvement in the NXIVM cult. She describes the treatment as a "miracle".

The Psychedelic Industry Grew Too Fast—And Now is Getting a Reality Check

The psychedelic industry experienced a boom in recent years, with startups and investors rushing to gain an early market advantage. However, the industry is now experiencing a downturn, with companies contracting or collapsing due to a wider downturn in the biotech market, a lack of federal legalization, and concerns about misinformation and conflicts of interest in psychedelic research. Investors claim that a shakeout was long overdue, and that startups were getting indiscriminately bankrolled by investors eager to cash into the "shroom boom." The industry is now in a stage of disillusionment, with investor interest waning and bad press abounding.

Could Trauma Healing Be The Solution To Our Toughest Social Challenges?

Trauma healing could be the key to addressing many of society's toughest social challenges, argues Thomas G. Bognannor. He believes that trauma is the root cause of many social ills, and that addressing it could significantly improve the effectiveness of social programs. His suggestion is that leaders in business, government, academia, and philanthropy should incorporate trauma treatment into their initiatives and allocate at least 20% of their budgets to proven trauma intervention.

How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist - BBC Future

A dose of MDMA given to a white supremacist named Brendan during a research study helped him realize the importance of love and connection, leading him to renounce his extremist beliefs. MDMA and other psychedelics are increasingly being used as therapeutic agents for addressing trauma and other mental health conditions.

Psychedelics and polyamory: an open marriage

Jules Evans discusses the potential connection between psychedelics and polyamory, exploring whether psychedelics can shift people's attitudes towards monogamy and make them more open to polyamory. He notes that this topic is not currently on the research agenda and is not widely discussed, as understandably advocates for psychedelics want to avoid the controversies of the 1960s and focus solely on the positive effects of psychedelics.

Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too - Scientific American

While some studies have suggested that our brains may make decisions before we are consciously aware of them, this does not necessarily mean that free will does not exist. Free will may only apply to decisions that matter to us, and that our brains may behave differently when we care about a decision and its outcome, leaving less important decisions to a more instinctual part of the brain.

Brain scans tell us nothing about consciousness | Bernardo Kastrup » IAI TV

Kastrup argues that the mainstream reductionist expectation that psychedelic substances stimulate neuronal activity and light up the brain like a Christmas tree is incorrect. Instead, modern neuroimaging shows that the foremost physiological effect of psychedelics in the brain is to significantly reduce activity in multiple brain areas, while increasing it nowhere in the brain beyond measurement error. Physicalist neuroscientists have proposed that an increase in brain noise explains the subjective richness of a psychedelic experience, but he argues that this is implausible.

Eastern philosophy says there is no "self." Science agrees - Big Think

Dr. Chris Niebauer, author of the book "No Self, No Problem," discusses the difference between the Western and Eastern views of the self. While Western philosophy sees the self as a stable, controlling entity, Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism argue that the self is an illusion, a byproduct of our thought processes. Modern neuroscience provides evidence that aligns with the Eastern view, revealing that the left hemisphere of the brain constantly creates narratives to interpret reality, leading to a mistaken identification with these self-narratives. This false sense of self contributes significantly to human mental suffering.

New Tool Reveals How AI Makes Decisions - Scientific American

This article is about the development of an algorithm called AtMan, which allows large AI systems to explain their outputs and become more transparent. The development of AtMan is seen as a significant step in making AI more transparent and accountable, particularly in areas such as medical diagnosis and creditworthiness calculations.

Artificial Intelligence Isn't Real

The consistently insightful Adam Something explains in this short video essay how Artificial intelligence is not real intelligence, and why computers with today's technology cannot produce intelligence. Laypeople and journalists sensationalize the term "AI", yet their apparent intelligence is not comparable to that of humans. He uses the ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment to explain how large language models can give the impression of having understood, while in reality they haven’t, and cannot.

The Psychedelic Scientist Who Sends Brains Back to Childhood | WIRED

This is the story of Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist who became interested in the idea of reopening critical periods, which are finite windows of time when the brain is especially impressionable and open to learning. She believes that if she can crack the code of critical periods, vast possibilities await, such as people who lost their vision or hearing regaining those senses, stroke patients recovering movement or relearning to speak, and adults learning a new language or musical instrument with the ease of a child. Dölen believes that psychedelic drugs might be the "master key" for reopening critical periods, and she is the co-author of a research study into their therapeutic power to provide healing and growth. This is the study in question.

Esotericism & Transhumanism in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY | Film Analysis

This excellent video essay explores the themes of transhumanism and esotericism in the movie "2001 A Space Odyssey". It discusses the contrasting views of evolution represented by the Monolith and HAL 9000, as well as the concepts of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the expansion of human capabilities through technology.

The subject beyond the 'I': On structural psychoanalysis | Essentia Foundation

There are three registers of structural psychoanalysis: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. Dr. Ludwig Sachs argues that a careful investigation of our inner life reveals a self that is indistinguishable from the world and others, and yet impossibly beyond both. His article explores the paradoxical nature of the unconscious and the interconnectedness of the three registers, which are irretrievably intertwined.

The Heart Can Sway Our Perception of Time - Scientific American

Two new studies suggest that our heartbeat can influence our perception of time. The experiments, conducted by separate research groups, found that the heart's activity can cause time to feel like it is either dragging or flying. The researchers suspect that pressure sensors in blood vessel walls send signals to the brain, which can affect how we perceive time.

Escaping Our Mental Prisons: What Psychedelic Movies Are Really About

This video discusses how movies such as ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ portray psychedelic experiences and highlights the effects of psychedelics on perception, emotions, cognition, and sense of self. It also delves into contemporary hypotheses on the nature of consciousness and the brain's predictive function. It explores the idea that our conscious experience is a construct influenced by our beliefs and expectations.

Kylea Taylor on the Woman Who Lost Everything

Kylea Taylor shares a story of a therapist who lost everything due to ethical violations in a breathwork session. She argues that traditional ethics education does not adequately address the unique challenges of working with altered states of consciousness. She has developed InnerEthics®, an approach to ethics education that emphasizes alignment of values and actions, and helps practitioners become more self-aware and better able to manage their own triggers.

Focus on Death, Aging, and Longevity

Why Strange Things Sometimes Happen as Someone Is Dying

Strange experiences around the time of death can be categorized into two types: hallucinations and paranormal experiences. Hallucinations are caused by the brain's reaction to the dying process, while paranormal experiences are believed to be caused by spiritual or supernatural entities. The article cites various studies that have explored the relationship between paranormal experiences and belief in the paranormal. “As I observed the light, there was a feeling of stillness and spaciousness inside me. I felt as if a portal had somehow opened and I had entered a different reality. Then a nurse knocked at the door and entered the room, and I quickly switched back to a more normal state of consciousness.”

Why Dying People Often Experience a Burst of Lucidity - Scientific American

In the phenomenon of terminal lucidity people with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia suddenly regain their memories and personalities just before death. The article also explores research into brain activity near or at the time of death, which has revealed a surge of organized brain activity in some comatose people who were undergoing cardiac arrest after being removed from life support. The surge of gamma waves in dying subjects was particularly intense in a brain region related to visual, auditory, and motion perception. Research into the conscious experience of dying is revolutionizing our understanding of the dying process.

What it is to die (as I'm seeing it)

Shortly before his own passing, the spiritual teacher Barry Long wrote this first person account of what it means to die.
“The disorientation and pain that accompanies dying is the slow shedding of the body of flesh and experience. The old zest for living disappears. Appetite and interest in the world diminish and vitality drains from the body. Weakness and need of sleep increase. Time on earth is coming to an end. As the attachment or karma of the particular recurrence is lived out, the hold on the free spirit is weakened. As well, the spirit now resonates more and more at the speed of the eternal spirit of which it is an inseparable part. The incredible swiftness of the resonance dislodges and shakes off increasing amounts of the cloying biological body. This causes the final sickness of the body, with the debilitating side effects of the drugs and treatments being part of the whole process.”

'The clouds cleared': what terminal lucidity teaches us about life, death and dementia

Terminal lucidity, in which people with severe dementia suddenly regain their mental faculties right before death is a relatively common phenomenon. This article cites various studies that have explored the relationship between terminal lucidity and dementia. The US National Institute on Aging (NIA) invited experts in neuroscience, geriatrics, and other related fields to a workshop on “paradoxical lucidity,” an umbrella term covering terminal lucidity and other unexpected periods of lucidity in people with dementia. The primary goal was to figure out what was known about paradoxical lucidity so far and identify the best targets for further study. There are various theories about the causes of terminal lucidity, including the possibility of network-level return of cognitive function.

Living to 1,000: The man who says science will soon defeat aging

Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation, believes that the first person to live to 1,000 years of age has already been born. His foundation explores the use of regenerative medicine to repair the damage underlying the diseases of aging, with the aim of improving our "healthspan" - the length of time for which we enjoy good health. De Grey argues that if we can reduce the process of degradation to the point where it never crosses the threshold of causing a life-threatening disease, we could effectively defeat aging and live to 1,000 or perhaps longer. He believes that the first therapies could be available within humans in 15 years, and that the first person to live to be 1,000 will probably only be 10 years younger than the first 150-year-old.

The Longevity Sceptic

Charles Brenner, a biochemist from City of Hope National Medical Center, is critical of the idea that we can manipulate genes to extend human lifespan. Brenner argues that aging is a fundamental property of life and that we cannot stop it. He is skeptical of claims made by researchers and companies in the field of anti-aging science, including David Sinclair, a Harvard biologist who is working on therapies to slow human aging. Brenner believes that the best we can do is to develop therapies that maintain the health of older people and help keep them out of the hospital.

Alzheimer’s, Medical Ethics, and Choosing Life | Mind Matters

In this podcast, memory-loss expert Stephen Post joins neurosurgeon Michael Egnor to discuss Alzheimer’s, bioethics, and the intrinsic dignity of human beings.

Short daytime naps may keep brain healthy as it ages, study says | Neuroscience | The Guardian

Taking a short nap during the day may help to protect the brain’s health as it ages: “We found an association between habitual daytime napping and larger total brain volume, which could suggest that napping regularly provides some protection against neurodegeneration through compensating for poor sleep.”

How intestinal viruses could help you live to be 100 - Big Think

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found that people who live past age 100 have a greater diversity of bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) in their intestines than younger people. These viruses alter bacterial metabolism in such a way that may support mucosal integrity and resistance to pathogens. The researchers compared fecal samples of healthy centenarians with samples from younger patients and found that the centenarians had a more diverse virome, including previously undescribed viral genera. They also revealed an enrichment of genes supporting key steps in the sulfate metabolic pathway, which may lead to health-promoting outcomes.

AI algorithms find drugs that could combat aging | The University of Edinburgh

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have discovered three drugs that could help combat aging using AI. The drugs target senescent cells, which are linked to a range of age-related conditions, and can safely remove them without damaging healthy cells. The drugs were discovered using a machine learning model that was trained to recognize the key features of chemicals with senolytic activity. The researchers hope that this work will open new opportunities to accelerate the application of AI in drug discovery.

Anti-Aging Injection Boosts Memories in Monkeys, Scientists Find

A new study has found that injections of klotho, a naturally-occurring protein that declines in mammals with age, can improve the cognitive function of aging monkeys. The study shows promise that restorative klotho treatments might achieve similar cognitive results in aging humans. The researchers tested klotho treatments in older rhesus macaques and found that after receiving a klotho injection, they correctly located their treats 60 percent of the time, a small but significant cognitive improvement that lasted for about two weeks after injection. The researchers say they're hoping to see the protein soon make its way to human clinical trials, and that klotho treatments may one day play a role in treating cognitive diseases like Alzheimer's.

Can psychedelics help patients with dementia? - Penn Memory Center

Researchers are studying whether psychedelics can be used to treat neuropsychiatric diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs). The therapeutic effects of psychedelics for ADRDs remain unproven, but researchers believe psychedelics could impact neurological causes of ADRDs or associated psychiatric symptoms. However, there are concerns about the impact of psychedelics on autonomy and consent of persons living with dementia and how psychedelics might impact caregiving.

This is your brain on death: a comparative analysis of a near-death experience and subsequent 5-Methoxy-DMT experience

This fairly in-depth and technical article presents a comparative analysis of a near-death experience (NDE) — possibly one of the most well-known ones ever, that of Eben Alexander, author of the bestseller Proof of Heaven — and his subsequent experience with the endogenous psychedelic drug 5MeO-DMT. The study found a high level of comparability between the NDE and psychedelic experiences in general, including shared characteristics such as entering other worlds, meeting entities, experiencing synesthesia, perinatal regression, and lucid dreamlike properties. However, there were also a few unique themes that emerged in the NDE that were not present in the 5MeO-DMT experience or other psychedelic experience studies, suggesting that these themes may be more unique to the NDE.

Evidence for the Afterlife- Induced After Death Communication

Induced After Death Communication (IADC) is a therapy developed by Dr. Allan Botkin that involves patients experiencing communication with deceased loved ones. The therapy has been successful in treating PTSD, grief, and trauma, with many patients reporting feeling the presence of the deceased person, hearing their voice, or even smelling them. Despite its success, IADC so far remains on the outskirts of the mental health community and has not been widely adopted in hospitals or treatment centers.

Spacetime is not fundamental | Donald D. Hoffman » IAI TV

Modern physics argues that spacetime is not fundamental. Hoffman argues that quantum field theory and gravity suggest that spacetime has no operational meaning below the Planck scale, and that it is not fundamental. Therefore a new theory is needed to explain what lies beyond spacetime, and this theory must project onto spacetime. He suggests that evolution by natural selection has shaped our senses to report truths about objective reality, but that our senses are not a window on reality. Instead, they are an adaptive fiction, like virtual reality, or a computer interface.

A Perinatal Interpretation of Frightening Near-Death Experiences: A Dialogue with Kenneth Ring by Christopher M. Bache, Ph.D.

Chris Bache, the author of the psychedelic classics Dark Night, Early Dawn and LSD And The Mind of the Universe talks to the NDE researcher Ken Ring about the possibility of a link between Stan Grof’s idea of perinatal matrices and frightening NDEs: “..all three forms of frightening NDEs —inverted, hellish, and meaningless void experiences — are better understood as rooted in the perinatal level of consciousness.”

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Nuggets From The Archive

Explore AI like Robert Frank Explored America

This post from Charlotte Dune explores the idea of artificial intelligence as a landscape or topography. She discusses various types of AI, including machine learning, neural networks, and large language models, and compares them to different types of landscapes. The idea of using AI to create new sensory realms, such as a soundworld or touchverse is also discussed.

The Guy Predicting Stocks With An Army of App-Based Psychics

This is about an app called Remote Viewing Tournament, which allows users to test their psychic abilities by visualizing targets from afar. The app's creator, Michael Ferrier, is running an experiment predicting stocks with users' answers to test his theories, and has ideas for a gig economy platform where paying clients could tap into his army of remote viewers to unravel the mysteries of the future on-demand. The app has attracted 10,000 downloads on Apple's App Store since its launch in February 2019. There is also background on the history of remote viewing, which was a psychic spying technique used by the U.S. Army's Stargate Project during the Cold War and a discussion of the ethics of using remote viewing for these purposes.

Looking Over The Edge – Sapient Capital

Tom Morgan shares his harrowing personal experiences and the resulting confrontation with a new perspective on reality that deeply challenged his worldview and forced him to consider the value of open-mindedness. He discusses the concept of psi phenomena and the evidence supporting it, and argues that closed-mindedness can limit growth and vitality. “...the more open you make yourself, the more you’ll receive in return. It’s why open-mindedness correlates so closely with wisdom and general human flourishing.”

Prophetic AI: A Lucid Dreaming Wearable

Twitter thread about a new headband device which will use “a combination of ultrasound and machine learning models (created using EEG & fMRI data) that allow us to detect when dreamers are in REM to induce and stabilize lucid dreams.”

2022's Most Thought-Provoking Brain Discoveries - Scientific American

While the hard problem of consciousness remains unsolved, and indeed may never be solved, there were still many incremental discoveries made in the field of neuroscience last year. These included a study on a molecular switch in rodents that flags an experience as either good or bad, research suggesting that innate facial expressions do not exist, and the idea that children may be psychological mixes rather than just sensitive or resilient. Additionally, a study found that a curriculum emphasizing spatial skills can improve both spatial and verbal abilities in students.

The power of insight: How psychedelics solicit false beliefs

This is a research paper about how we solve problems and the 'aha' moment when we find a solution. It also talks about how our brain networks work and how memory functions. Some studies mentioned explore the feeling of increased "connectedness" and "acceptance" that some patients have reported after undergoing treatment with psilocybin for severe depression.

While psychedelics can help reorient beliefs and have therapeutic potential, they can also lead to the formation of false or maladaptive beliefs. This is because the feeling of insight that psychedelics induce does not necessarily prefer accuracy and is not necessarily adaptive from a clinical perspective.

The acute plasticity associated with psychedelics increases the quantity and precision of insights and beliefs, including false ones. This means that during a psychedelic experience, the mind becomes more flexible and open to new ideas and beliefs, which can include both true and false beliefs.

Fascinating Story About A Meditator Who Could Stop His Consciousness (and related research paper)

“I was meditating intensely for a few months and I underwent something very odd. A gap in my conscious experience occurred. Nothing happened but something reset in my brain… no, at the centre of my consciousness. Everything was as if brand new. Quite literally all my problems disappeared (for a while).”

The study discusses a phenomenon known as "cessation" that some meditation practitioners experience. This is described as a total absence of consciousness that can last up to 7 days and can be consistently induced by the practitioners.

This state, known as nirodha samāpatti in Buddhist meditation practice, is said to be different from sleep. Practitioners in this state are completely impervious to external stimulation, meaning they cannot be 'woken up' like one might be from a dream.

In simple terms, the study is exploring a deep state of meditation where people experience a complete absence of consciousness, different from sleep, and emerge with a sense of clarity and insight. The researchers are trying to understand how this happens and what it can tell us about the mind and brain.

Secular Ecstasy: Mystical States Without the Supernatural Element

Is it possible to have mystical experiences without a supernatural element? Mystical states of consciousness have been accessible since ancient times and can feature elements such as ecstasy and the experience of the divine, sacred, or holy. Sam Woolfe argues that it is possible to experience the qualities of religious ecstasy without the religious or supernatural element, suggesting that the experience of the divine can be interpreted as an enlargement of the self and that the divine can connect us to positive emotions in a new and extraordinary way.

We are going to be providing brief summaries here of the winning entries in the Bigelow Prize for essays arguing for the reality of human survival of bodily death.

We’ll start at the top and work down, so this is a summary of the winning entry by Jeffrey Mishlove:

Beyond The Brain

Mishlove manages a rounded and comprehensive exploration of the concept of life after death, including several interesting, and sometimes moving, personal anecdotes to help draw the reader into the more in-depth material. He begins by challenging the idea that consciousness is solely a product of the brain, introducing alternative theories such as the quantum soul and the concept of hyperspace. The essay then presents a wide range of evidence supporting the idea of postmortem survival, including near-death experiences (and how almost all people who have had NDEs report being convinced that consciousness survives death), after-death communications (including some personal examples), and the differing views of various religions on reincarnation.

Mishlove makes the case that these different lines of evidence, when considered together, form a compelling case for the survival of consciousness after death, emphasizing that this belief is not only widespread across cultures and historical periods but is also supported by a significant body of research. He concludes with a discussion on the price of ignoring the evidence for postmortem survival. The evidence for survival is massive and consistent, and ignoring this evidence comes at a cost.

“The pulse of the Soul is the pulse of reincarnation, our awareness narrowing at birth and expanding at death. Reincarnation is a dance in which our earthly lives emerge from and return to our Soul, the larger consciousness that preserves every thought, every tear, every joy we experience on Earth and in-between our earthly lives, folding all our experiences elegantly into its expanding radiance. ”

— Chris Bache, Diamonds From Heaven

A semi-naked woman with a sword, captioned 'when privacy permits, outdoor rituals are better'

cakes for when you die and get brought back but there's something wrong with you and everyone can tell

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Table of Contents

Focus on Death, Aging, and Longevity

Nuggets From The Archive

We are going to be providing brief summaries here of the winning entries in the Bigelow Prize for essays arguing for the reality of human survival of bodily death.

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