Chasing Consciousness

Why are religious and mystical experiences important to our sense of meaning and purpose in life? What is a spiritual emergency and how can it actually help us in the long run? Are transpersonal experiences illusions of the mind or can they tell us anything about the nature of reality? In this episode, we have the extraordinary topic of Transpersonal Psychology to learn about. With the steady rise...

What do machine learning, physics and biology have in common? What maths emerges when we apply learning dynamics to physics, and can it reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity? If we see all nature as neuroplastic and constantly learning, like a neural network, what can this tell us about the fine tuning in the universe and the emergence of life and observers? In this episode we have th...

How Can Ultrasound destroy cancer cells and even increase immune response elsewhere? Are there any implications for a resonant field based understanding of matter? In this episode we have the fascinating invention of Histotripsy (https://histotripsy.umich.edu/), the non-invasive destruction of cancer cells using ultrasound to look into. Alongside the other headline news that bioengineers are also...

What are the benefits and risks of transhumanist technologies, and why are they so taboo? How do we legislate to avoid existential risks, without holding back too much the enormous possible benefits? How do we secure the mental health, rights and equal access of the public as it inevitably rolls out? So today we have the tricky and somewhat taboo topic of how to ethically guide the ever-increasing...

What evidence is there for quantum effects in biological systems? What are the implications for life in general? Today we’ve got the relatively new field of quantum biology to assess. For years the idea of quantum effects in biological cells was dismissed because live cells were ‘too warm and wet’ to host these sensitive quantum phenomena. But new research into quantum coherence in avian navigatio...

What are the implications of Jung’s theories about the Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, Synchronicity and Individuation? What can they suggest about the nature of reality and the anomalies of modern science? In this episode we have the fascinating topic of the metaphysics implied by Carl Jung’s theories to discuss. Jung is one of the great hero’s of this podcast, we covered the collective uncon...

What exactly are time and space? What are the implications of them not being as they seem? What is the relational interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? What are the implications of its leading to no universal laws of nature?   In this Episode we have the non-linearity of space and time to get our heads around. In Episode #28 with physicist Paul Davies we talked about the implications of Einste...

What theory of reality could accommodate a phenomena of remote viewing? What are the implications of its success? In this episode we have the extraordinary phenomenon of Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) to get our heads around. Thanks to declassification of US government documents and several freedom of information act requests, enough official paperwork and declassified accounts about the top secr...

In this episode we have the fascinating proposition that what we call reality is in fact a hallucination we all agree on, to consider. We’ve already heard in this second series in Episode #28 from physicist Paul Davies on ‘The implications of Einstein’, that indeed matter is energy and as such the world we see as solid objects with space between them, isn’t truly like that. We’ve also heard from c...

Is our subjective experience of Free Will, supported by the experimental evidence? If not, how do we take moral responsibility for our actions? Why do meditators, who’re used to watching their thoughts arise and pass without identifying with them, find this data easier to integrate? In this episode, we have the tough job of evaluating the experimental evidence for the existence of Free Will. The d...

In this episode we explore a User Interface Theory of reality. Since the invention of the computer virtual reality theories have been gaining in popularity, often to explain some difficulties around the hard problem of consciousness; but also to explain other non-local anomalies coming out of physics and psychology, like ‘quantum entanglement’ or ‘out of body experiences’.  As you will hear t...

What are the implications of Einstein’s predictions? Has our understanding of reality integrated the implications of this thinking? His General and Special theories of relativity have completely changed the way we see gravity, energy, mass, space and time, even size - but how? Physicists may find it easy to understand what his ideas mean; like this quote “The distinction between the past, the pres...

How can out of body experiences be explained? What theory of reality could accomodate such a phenomenon? Today we have the extraordinary topic of the science and physics of Out of Body Experiences to get our head around! Many brain scientists have reduced this common experience to a mix of physiological and brain chemical effects, maintaining that no perceiving consciousness actually leaves the bo...

Why is Panpsychism gaining popularity? Is it coherent to say consciousness emerged out of non-consciousness? What can we deduce from a universe fine tuned for life? In this episode we have the important job of finding out what Panpsychism is all about, and why the philosophical position is gaining more and more traction in philosophy, but even with physicists and other scientists. The idea that co...

In this episode we learn everything we need about how food relates to our mood and state of mind. We’re going to lay out the fundamentals of how different food groups and qualities of food influence directly our mental and physical health; how the gut species depletion and inflammation are key consequences of the changes we’re seeing in western industrial diet, and we can counter that tendency wit...

Audio Note: There’s a short background sound at 10 mins, it only lasts for 5 mins and it was during an important a point about the role of feelings in reasoning, which was too crucial to the topic to cut out. In this episode we have the fascinating topic of understanding how feelings play a part in reason and consciousness. We’re also going to be learning how feeling is different from sensing, and...

Can we have conscious experiences after clinical death? In this episode we have the bizarre phenomena of Near Death Experiences to examine. The intense experience reported by about %25 of patients whose hearts are restarted after a short time of clinical death, has fascinated researchers for many years going right back to Plato. However, advances in cardiology techniques in the last 50 years have...

How do we integrate the intense experiences of psychedelic therapy for long term benefits? Can we apply those learnings to existential exploration in general? In this episode we have the fascinating topic of ‘psychedelic integration’ to get our head around. Integration is a crucial part of any psychotherapy process, but perhaps even more so when those suffering experience psychedelic compounds in...

This episode covers the fascinating science of mindfulness meditation. The massive explosion in popularity of meditation, has brought about a quiet revolution to the frantic western mind with the result of a complete change in our societies approach to stress management, happiness and well being. Today we’re going to get to the bottom of what happens to the brain when we meditate and why it’s so b...

In this episode we have the challenging job of getting our head around the psychology of altered states of consciousness or ‘exceptional human experiences’ as today’s specialist calls them. Are they mere illusions of the mind? Does their ability to radically change our world view and sense of meaning in the world give them a special status in psychology and mental health? And how do we talk scient...

In this episode we have the extraordinary theory of Biocentrism to consider: the hypothesis that the space, time and matter arose from life, and not the other way around. This theory obviously flies completely in the face of material science’s Darwinian view that life and consciousness evolved slowly out of ever more complex systems of matter. Now we’ve heard in multiple interviews on the show so...

In this episode we look at an alternative child psychology approach to parenting and care-giving, than perhaps the one we’re used to from our own childhoods: one based on connection rather than threat based motivations. This episode is a little closer to home than usual, as a few years ago we hit the wall with our eldest boy, who after the birth of our second child when he was 6, became extremely...

In this episode, we have the tough task of examining the evidence that our society is losing its ability for prolonged attention, focus and concentration. We talk about what are the main factors leading to this, and what we can do to mediate it individually, but also collectively through regulation if necessary, before it becomes intergenerational. Is this also another symptom, like depression and...

How likely is it that we live in a simulations? Are virtual worlds real? In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, onl...

What would a post physicalist world look like? So in this episode we’re going to evaluate the evidence presented by psychiatrist and author Dr. Iain McGilchrist, from his extensive analysis of split-brain studies, that support a broader understanding of the mind and reality. One that pushes beyond the traditional reductionist materialist worldview, to include the implicit, the context dependent an...