Mystics and Muons

Rieki Master Valentina Marulli joins us today to describe the beginnings of Reiki, and its similarities with the concept of the priesthood within mormonism. We discuss Mikao Usui's mystical experience after fasting and meditating for 21 days, how Reiki compares with the priesthood, and which one has clinical evidence supporting its effectiveness. Please leave a review, share with a friend, and...

This is the reading of a written piece making a case for increasing entropy as an artifact of the way conscious agents apply serial lossy downsampling of an infinitely complex reality, rather than as a trait inherent in the universe. Essentially, entropy is a measure about the information we have about a system, which is always subject to the bandwidth constraints of consciousness. These bandwidth...

During this episode we listen to a portion of a lecture by Terence McKenna and provide commentary. We discuss the impact of the Judeo-Christian belief that man is fallen. McKenna discusses how this contrasts with esoteric teachings that we are co-creators of reality with the divine. He also discusses how bizarre of a case John Dee was, though it will be quite familiar for Mormons. John Dee was an...

Glenn Ostlund of Infants on Thrones joins us for a wide-ranging discussion. We cover psychology, attachment theory, complex trauma, neuroscience, and how understanding our brain helps us heal. Glenn has a long history in podcasting and overlaps with many of the topics we feature on Mormons, Mystics, and Muons. He also shares our perspective of claiming the positive truths in Mormonism while growin...

On this episode we talk about Yuval Noah Harari's popular book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. This book has become somewhat of a guide for many seeking meaning in an agnostic or atheist framework. We discuss its focus on the myths that unite us as well as society's trend towards unity. We also discuss its shortcomings, which include a lack of discussion of materialism and idealism,...

Professional Mormon historian Alex Criddle brings his background with psychedelics as a researcher, psychonaut, and integration guide, to discuss the role substances and non-ordinary states of consciousness played in early Mormonism. We also discuss the light and dark sides of Joseph Smith, analyzing him as a multidimensional character shaped by trauma, unintegrated shadow, and mystical experience...

Gabe dives into how we never arrive at Truth, but approach it asymptotically, due to the limitations of the constructs of language. He discusses idealism versus materialism. While materialism has not made progress on the hard problem of consciousness, this problem doesn't exist within idealism. Using the framework of dreams, its relatively simple to conceptualize how matter is created from con...

Bill Reel and I continue our conversation on reality, consciousness, and what that has to do with Mormonism's origins. We discuss Donald Hoffman, Carl Jung, the filter theory of consciousness, psychedelics, and mystical states of consciousness as defined by research. We also discuss automatic writing and its similarities to AI. With the groundwork finally set, I review some of the evidences th...

Bill Reel and I discuss the fractal nature of reality, and how we speak in myths and constructs. We talk about how to define truth, and how science and spirituality interpret truth. Then we explore how to define consciousness and whether science supports idealism or materialism. We discuss Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup's theories of reality, and how dreams, dissociative identity disorder...

In this episode we review a study published in Frontiers in Psychology about the phenomenon of Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings and Spontaneous Kundalini Awakenings and hear about Gabe's experience of the latter. This is a cross-cultural phenomenon involving a period of spontaneous altered states of consciousness mirroring psychedelic experiences and those of religious mystics. As it is not ea...

We discuss the phenomena of paranormal encounters from the lens of consciousness and idealism as well, whether aliens are allowed to drink coffee, and whether "God" would be bound by space/time as he appears to be within Mormon cosmology. We dive into Joseph Smith teaching reincarnation at the end of the Nauvoo period due to influence from Kabbalah, and how Heber C Kimball and Orson Prat...

Gabe discusses how an elder on his mission later started a cult, and gives his thoughts on criticism of new age spirituality. We continue analyzing the Plan of Salvation from an esoteric perspective. We explore Joseph Smith's use of the Kabbalah in formulating his view of the nature of God, how eternal progression compares to Tibetan Buddhism and the movie Inception, as well as how the premort...

In this episode we start to tackle the Plan of Salvation from an esoteric and Jungian-informed perspective. We discuss the correlation between Gnostic and Mormon views on the fall, Gnosticism's interpretation of this physical incarnation as the Matrix, the fall as an allegory for both psychedelics and Jung's concept of individuation, and the idea of Satan as our shadow self. Link: Adam and...

This episode is a reading of the initial post from the Mormons, Mystics, and Muons' Substack which gives a comprehensive overview of a new narrative on Mormonism's origins. It integrates consciousness, philosophy, psychedelics, and quantum physics to show how Mormonism arose out of an amalgamation of esoteric traditions and expanded or altered states of consciousness, and how science integ...

In this episode, Gabe and Elden embark on a profound exploration of mystical experiences and their intersection with Mormonism, psychedelics, and altered states of consciousness. They delve into the psychological definition of mystical experiences and discuss Joseph Smith's experiences, highlighting the potential connection to psychedelic experiences and automatic writing. The conversation ext...