Out of Your Head
August 26, 2024 at 05:28PMThere’s no question that hallucinogenic drugs can grant people life-changing experiences. However, as Steve Paulson investigates, unanswered questions persist about that those experiences actually are. It’s a given that our brains deliver the visions—but could something be happening outside the tangles of neurons and synapses? Something that connects humans to something larger? A fascinating question that demands an open mind.
It’s not just neuroscientists and psychiatrists studying psychedelics. There’s a new generation of researchers—including philosophers, religious scholars, and anthropologists—who believe psychoactive experiences crack open deep questions about the nature of reality. They’re exploring ideas that have obsessed psychonauts for decades but until recently have largely been written off by scholars as fringe questions. Do psychedelics reveal a deeper dimension of the mind? Not just an altered state of consciousness—that’s obvious to anyone who’s ever tripped—but experiences that don’t begin and end in the brain? Do psychedelics open a pathway to theories about consciousness like panpsychism and animism—belief systems in which everything in the world—animals, plants, even rocks—are conscious or have some spiritual essence?
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/08/26/out-of-your-head/
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