<![CDATA[Stories by James B Glattfelder on Medium]]> https://medium.com/@jnode?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/fit/c/150/150/0*kFpLVp75hzk1iS-r.jpg Stories by James B Glattfelder on Medium https://medium.com/@jnode?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 Medium Sat, 14 Nov 2026 03:21:41 GMT <![CDATA[What Is Syncretic Idealism?]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/what-is-syncretic-idealism-8a56ad13f04e?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/8a56ad13f04e Wed, 28 Oct 2026 13:27:35 GMT 2026-10-30T07:45:48.960Z Metaphysical idealism is the belief that reality’s essence is fundamentally mental. At the foundation of existence lies a non-physical field of transpersonal consciousness. In other words, everything physical is derived from this ground of pure awareness [src].

To many rational minds, the idea of idealism sounds unserious, a romanticization of being. However, the claim that only physical reality exists and is governed solely by physical processes is also a metaphysical belief, called physicalism, that cannot be proved [src]. The reason many scientific thinkers believe physicalism is a scientific fact is a category error. Science, in its pursuit to decode reality using the language of mathematics [src1, src2, src3, src4], is metaphysically agnostic. Science is concerned with how things work and not with what things essentially are. The latter, by definition, is the domain of metaphysics. Confusing the two is unfortunate.

It is also naive to believe that the world that appears in our consciousness is a veridical representation of reality [src]. As we are forever locked in consciousness, the reality we perceive outside ourselves is actually constructed inside our minds. That is why ontological solipsism, the claim that every aspect of existence I experience is a product of my own mind, cannot, even in principle, be falsified [src]. As such, the epistemic uncertainty solipsism invites levels the metaphysical playing field, and no framework can claim any certainty (assuming it does not contradict empirical evidence).

Furthermore, the suspicion that consciousness is a product of neural activity is profoundly challenged by the hard problem of consciousness: how can insentient matter coalesce and produce a stream of subjectivity [src]? The philosophy of mind [src] has many radical answers [src]. Two stand out: either consciousness is illusory, or consciousness is fundamental.

In Western philosophy, different expressions of idealism have a long history dating back to Plato, with notable proponents including George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer, while important tangential contributions appear in the thinking of René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and David Hume [src]. In a broader context, shamanism's spirit world [src], Hinduism's Brahman and Atman [src], and the Vijñānavāda school of Buddhism [src] can, in essence, be interpreted as idealist-leaning. The mystical traditions of the Abrahamic traditions — Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, and Sufism — also speak of an immaterial and transcendent source from which all reality flows [src].

However, analytic philosophers led by Bertrand Russell and George Edward Moore successfully marginalized idealism at the turn of the 20th century [src], labeling it a romanticization of subjectivity that lacked logical rigor. Remarkably, we are now witnessing a renaissance of idealism in philosophy and in some parts of science. Especially since the psychedelic renaissance [src], the nascent philosophy of psychedelics has focused on the phenomenal content of the most radical and rich modes of consciousness accessible to the human mind.

The father of the hard problem, David Chalmers, sketches the path by which a philosopher might arrive at idealism [src]:

First, one is impressed by the successes of science, endorsing materialism about everything and so about the mind. Second, one is moved by the problem of consciousness to see a gap between physics and consciousness, thereby endorsing dualism, where both matter and consciousness are fundamental. Third, one is moved by the inscrutability of matter to realize that science reveals at most the structure of matter and not its underlying nature, and to speculate that this nature may involve consciousness, thereby endorsing panpsychism. Fourth, one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness, thereby endorsing idealism.

He concludes:

I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind–body problem is plausible. Materialism is implausible. Dualism is implausible. Idealism is implausible. Neutral monism is implausible. None-of-the-above is implausible. But the probabilities of all of these views get a boost from the fact that one of them must be true. Idealism is not greatly less plausible than its main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability that it is true.

Christof Koch, who co-created the concept of neural correlates of consciousness in 1990 with Nobel laureate Francis Crick [src], helped launch modern neuroscience of consciousness. He recently conceded a bet to Chalmers. In 1998, Koch wagered that by 2023 the physical mechanisms by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered [src]. Indeed, a recent experience with 5-MeO-DMT left Koch epistemically shocked [src] and open to non-physicalist theories of consciousness, wondering if the brain might not be the source of consciousness after all [src].

Interestingly, a growing number of universities have a psychedelic research department that focuses on the implications these remarkable non-ordinary states may reveal about the nature of consciousness and reality in general. It is also consistent to personally engage with these remarkable non-ordinary states of consciousness. As the philosopher of psychedelics Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes observed [src]:

To deny philosophers of mind psychedelic substances is tantamount to denying instruments to musicians. If one is to study consciousness, one must involve its most wondrous manifestation.

Today, a variety of idealist thinkers can be listed. From philosophy:

  • Bernardo Kastrup: Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A Straightforward Summary of the 21st Century’s Only Plausible Metaphysics [src].
  • Miri Albahari: Perennial Idealism: A Mystical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem [src].
  • Christopher Bache: LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven [src].
  • Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes: Noumenautics: Metaphysics — Meta-Ethics — Psychedelics [src].
  • James Tartaglia: Philosophy in a Technological World [src].

And remarkably, many idealist-adjacent thinkers with formal scientific training can be named, including:

  • David Bohm: Wholeness and the Implicate Order [src].
  • Amit Goswami: The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World [src].
  • Bernard d'Espagnat (arguably [src]): Veiled Reality: An Analysis of Present-Day Quantum Mechanical Concepts [src].
  • Thomas Campbell: My Big TOE — Awakening, Discovery, Inner Workings: The Complete Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics [src].
  • Henry Stapp: Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer [src].
  • Ervin Laszlo: What is Reality? The New Map of Cosmos, Consciousness, and Existence [src].
  • Thomas Görnitz: Von der Quantenphysik zum Bewusstsein: Kosmos, Geist und Materie [src].
  • Donald Hoffman: The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes [src].
  • Markus Müller: Algorithmic Idealism: What Should You Believe to Experience Next? [src]. (NB: This is an information-theoretic framework in which self-states are primary, and the physical world is derived. Müller claims the idea is not a form of metaphysical idealism but a conceptual framework that admits several possible mathematical formalizations [src]. I broadly disagree.)
  • Frederico Faggin: Beyond the Invisible [src].
  • Susan Schneider and Mark Bailey: Superpsychism [src].
  • Marco Masi: Meaning and Purpose in a Conscious Universe: A Physicist’s Meditations on a Post-Materialist Paradigm Shift Integrating Science, Philosophy, and Spirituality [src].
  • Christof Koch: Beyond Physicalism — Looking at the World with Fresh Eyes [Presentation at the Allen Institute/Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, April 8, 2026; src].

See more comments on d’Espagnat, Laszlo, and Bache's ideas here.

The willingness to engage with subjectivity, the nemesis to science's detached third-person perspective, is perhaps not just motivated by the academic failure to define consciousness (the most accepted definition still goes back to Thomas Nagel’s 1974 question “what is it like to be something” [src]) and the 450-plus competing scientific theories of consciousness [src]. Arguably, research in the foundations of physics has not progressed much in recent decades, and the quantum realm continues to challenge our commonsense intuition about reality [src], while many existential enigmas persist [src]. Adding further stress to the fault lines of a purely physicalist account of consciousness, more and more anomalies are emerging. For instance:

  • Underdeveloped brain: An article in The Lancet, titled Brain of a White-Collar Worker, describes the case of a married father of two children working a desk job who had 50% to 75% of his brain tissue missing [src1, src2].
  • Brain trauma: The neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had a blood vessel burst in the left hemisphere of her brain, nearly killing her, triggering a profound mystical experience, which she described as oceanic and unifying [src].
  • Acquired savant syndrome: Brain damage can result in novel capabilities and talents [src].
  • Near-death experiences: Reports of heightened experience during periods of minimal or undetectable brain function [src1, src2, src3]. The phenomenology of near-death experiences has been compared to that of DMT states [src].

One recent surprising observation deserves more attention. In 2012, the first fMRI study of psychedelic states was published [src]. Koch commented on the unexpected finding [src]:

To the great surprise of many, psilocybin, a potent psychedelic, reduces brain activity.

Remarkably, the most phenomenally intense states known to human consciousness are accompanied not by increased overall neural activity but by partially collapsed hierarchical organization and reduced oscillatory power [src1, src2]. As the standard explanatory template from neuroscience seems to fall short, some scholars have proposed neural entropy as an alternative descriptive variable [src]. This entropic account has since become the dominant mechanistic model of psychedelic action: psychedelics relax the precision of the brain’s high-level priors, so that richer experience arises from less top-down constraint. However, this recontextualization arguably sharpens the problem [src]. Physicalism must now accept, post hoc, that ordinary waking consciousness is explained by more structured neural activity, while radically enriched psychedelic consciousness is explained by less. In effect, the framework has expanded by absorbing the very result that falsified its prediction. The philosopher of science Imre Lakatos called this a degenerating problem-shift, where a theoretical core survives an anomaly by acquiring an auxiliary hypothesis, making the framework more complex without gaining new predictive power [src]. A natural and parsimonious alternative would seem to be that the brain may not primarily generate phenomenal experience, but rather filter it.

Already in the 19th century, the psychologist, philosopher, and psychonaut William James similarly suggested that the brain may function not as a generator but as a transmissive or filtering organ for consciousness [src]. He called the source the mother sea of consciousness. Inspired by James and the philosopher Henri Bergson, the author and philosopher Aldous Huxley believed that the brain acts as a “reducing valve,” constraining conscious awareness, with psychedelic substances inhibiting this filtering mechanism. In this context, Huxley proposed the concept of Mind at Large, an oceanic boundlessness of consciousness, arguably a type of cosmic consciousness. In his words [src]:

Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.

In summary, Western science shunned the enigma of consciousness until the 1990s, and today we are confronted with a myriad of competing theories. Physicalism remains the default metaphysical foundation, despite being continually challenged by experiences of rich subjectivity accompanied by reduced neural activity or impaired neural tissue. The anomalies are accommodated by the addition of epicycles to the framework.

Syncretic Idealism in a Nutshell

In the book The Sapient Cosmos: What a Modern-Day Synthesis of Science and Philosophy Teaches Us about the Emergence of Information, Consciousness, and Meaning [src1, src2, src3, src4, src5, src6, src7, src8, src9], I argue that idealism is not only a rational metaphysical framework, but that it is also experientially accessible. The latter claim is that of empirical metaphysics, the proposal that modulations of consciousness may provide phenomenological constraints on viable metaphysical models [src1, src2, src3 for the method]. In simpler words, consciousness technologies can give access to reproducible experiences of non-physical realms of existence. Since the dawn of the human mind, the masters of consciousness have known about this: shamans, mystics, meditators, and psychonauts have given countless accounts of their transcendental explorations [src]. My recent excursions into transrational and ineffable states of being revealed experiences of an infinite and ensouled complexity, an intelligence crushing my psyche in an epistemically shocking manner [src1, src2].

The Sapient Cosmos closes with the idea of syncretic idealism. This is a philosophical proposition that combines recurring aspects found in different formulations of idealism with elements from other philosophical systems of thought and insights from the evolving information-theoretic paradigm of physics. The aim is a novel synthesis and integration of concepts formerly only expressed in isolation. This emerging tapestry woven from the threads of ideas proposed over time by many deep thinkers offers a novel understanding of existence and the nature of reality, specifically related to information, complexity, consciousness, and meaning. It also offers a program of re-enchantment [src] and a path to happiness [src].

The cosmic narrative myth unfolds as follows. Beneath everything we can experience, measure, or imagine lies a boundless field of consciousness (source reality). It has no location, no parts, and no point of view. It is not a human mind with thoughts and a perspective. Indeed, it is the aware ground that any mind is made of. Mystics across the ages have described it, each in their own vocabulary, as the one thing not made of anything else, while shamans have traveled its intermediate realms since the dawn of culture. Within the source rests everything that could possibly exist (abstract potentiality). The first step out of the formless is the moment potential becomes actual (entelechy of existence), and the currency in which it does so is information: the ontological primitive of the physical realm. Here, at the threshold, quantum physics does its strange work and a physical world first becomes manifest.

Once information exists, a staircase of structure builds itself (complex actuality): information organizes into spacetime, spacetime hosts complex systems, some of those systems learn to metabolize, yielding life, and some living systems become complex enough to host individual minds (centers of awareness). This climb is driven by the universe’s relentless tendency — a telos visible across 13.8 billion years of unfolding — to assemble ever richer structures that resist the pull towards entropic decay (the will to complexity). But a brain does not manufacture consciousness: it localizes it. Just as a single psyche can split into separate personalities that cannot see into one another [src1, src2], source consciousness fragments into countless individual centers, each with its own inner life and the vivid impression of being a separate self (dissociation). The staircase is how the source appears from the outside, and dissociation is how it individuates from the inside. In essence, one reality seen from two vantage points. And the boundary that makes us feel separate is not fixed: trance, meditation, psychedelics, and finally death loosen it (modulations of consciousness), letting a center glimpse the source field it was never apart from.

From here, the story stops being bottom-up. Individual minds, now embedded in a physical world, act back on it, and the world shapes them in turn, in endless cycles of co-creation (the rhizome of reality). The physical is not a second kind of stuff competing with the mental. It is the mental’s outer face. Through these cycles, consciousness keeps evolving towards the point at which the source finally recognizes itself in its own creation (ultimate complexity). The loop closes: the hidden ground that first contracted into potentiality discloses itself, in full, through what it has become. Syncretic idealism attempts to hold this entire arc, from pure awareness to quantum information to mystical union, in one coherent picture.

V2.0

In more formal words, syncretic idealism encompasses the following aspects:

  1. A multi-tiered ontology reveals a hidden transcendental source reality best conceptualized by a non-physical field of consciousness bestowed with limitless creative intelligence. Its nature has been experienced and described by countless shamans, mystics, meditators, and psychonauts since the awakening of human consciousness.
  2. The entelechy of existence describes the genesis of physical reality. Abstract potentiality is manifested as an information matrix. This ontological threshold is formalized by the interface of quantum physics, encapsulated by the notion of quantum information. Process ontology becomes relevant [src].
  3. The will to complexity is a teleological force driving the spontaneous, self-organized structure formation in the cosmos. Entropy and emergence are central themes. The will to complexity is an expression of the transcendental source intelligence. The sapient cosmos forms, and life is born.
  4. Dissociated consciousness manifestation unveils how the unified source consciousness localizes and incarnates itself in sufficiently complex configurations of matter. Brains are not the source of consciousness but are systems imbued with the power to channel transcendental consciousness.
  5. The sentient cosmos is born, and free will surfaces. The mental and physical realms are locked in ever-evolving cycles of co-creation called the rhizome of reality. Finally, metaphysics and physics can be formally connected. A pioneering information-theoretical understanding of the emergence and unfolding of reality in terms of ontological computation offers a comprehensive formal embedding guided by the simplicity of complexity [src]. This new physics of information is an implementation of the metaphysical will to complexity. Now, the transcendental multiverse can be defined as the totality of source reality and all possible physical realms of existence.
  6. Self-disclosure is the project of the physical. The world of complex actuality exists so that the source can come to know its own nature. The evolution of consciousness is this knowing in progress. The descent that opened the hierarchy — the withdrawal of the formless into potentiality and its immersion into matter (Tzimtzum, Involution) — is mirrored by an ascent in which transcendental consciousness, individuated and embodied, returns to itself (Theophany, Tajalli). The will to complexity converges on ultimate complexity, the state in which the source recognizes itself through the totality of what it has become. In this, source reality discloses itself through the sum of all perspectives (Omega Point, Supermind). The transcendental multiverse is the medium, and the sapient cosmos one possible means, by which the ground joyfully discloses itself to itself (Lila).

—

A note on AI. I left academia (complexity science) years ago and have no ties to academic philosophy, so I use LLMs as sparring partners: to find the objections skeptics would raise, to check my reading of thinkers I know only partially, to open up new intellectual avenues (especially relating to non-Western scholarship), and to resist my own confirmation bias. I also use them for copy-editing and structural suggestions. The ideas, the arguments, and the sentences that matter are mine. I love writing too much to offload this task. Moreover, I have stopped over-polishing, as this results in the uniform and bland perfection seen in much writing these days. For me, authenticity is a resource, and idiosyncrasies are its expression.

]]> <![CDATA[Computation, Complexity, Consciousness, and Academic Journals]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/computation-complexity-consciousness-and-academic-journals-9a0f7c7ac89d?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/9a0f7c7ac89d Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:00:57 GMT 2026-10-27T15:05:43.922Z Context: I submitted the following manuscript to a journal specialized in consciousness. The submission was rejected. This was my first attempt at publishing in philosophy, outside my expertise in complexity science and quantitative finance [see WOS, ORCID, arXiv, Scholar]. See the reviewer and editor's comments after the submission text, next to my thoughts.

The Phenomenal Ruliad: Towards Empirical Metaphysics

James B. Glattfelder March 19, 2026

Abstract: Stephen Wolfram’s Physics Project introduces the ruliad as the ultimate computational structure underlying reality, in which observers play a constitutive role in what becomes actual. This paper situates the Project within a broader shift away from uncritical physicalism. We identify several open questions the Project leaves unresolved, including its relation to information-theoretic physics, connections to alternative ontological primitives, the implications of mathematical incompleteness, the transrational aspects of quantum theory, parallels with other metaphysical systems (Brahman/Atman, Omega Point, Mind at Large, and superpsychism), the evolution of consciousness, and the possible emergence of teleology. We argue that observer-dependent actualization concedes there is no view from nowhere and motivates an interpretation of consciousness not as a byproduct of matter but as a fundamental aspect of reality. This perspective supports a novel research program: empirical metaphysics, the proposal that modulations of consciousness may provide phenomenological constraints on viable metaphysical models.

The Metaphysical Blind Spot

As the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead cautioned us (Petek, 2022, p. 43):

If you don’t go into metaphysics, you assume an uncritical metaphysics.

Indeed, initiated by the ‘Shut up and calculate!’ era in physics, such an oversight was long-standing in 20th-century physics. Some striking examples of the contempt physicists felt towards philosophy and its practitioners can be found. For instance, Freeman Dyson, describing today’s philosophers as ‘a sorry bunch of dwarfs’ compared to the giants of the past, portraying contemporary philosophy as ‘a toothless relic of past glories’ (Dyson, 2012). Or a quip usually attributed to Richard Feynman, declaring the philosophy of science as about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. Stephen Hawking’s disdain is quite palpable in his accusation that (Mlodinow and Hawking, 2012, p. 5):

[. . . ] philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

However, one could easily flip the accusation: Physics has not kept up with modern developments in philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind (Symes, 2022) and emergent complexity (Cilliers, 2002).

The implicit and unquestionable understanding was that of physicalism, the conviction that everything that exists is fundamentally physical and that all phenomena are fully determined by physical processes. Originally, the concept emerged as a response to religious dogma and the dominant worldview of the Late Middle Ages, which was influenced by the belief in the supernatural. Instrumental to establishing this novel worldview was the reductionist reasoning of Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the empiricism of Robert Boyle, the new cosmology introduced by Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei, and the mathematical framework developed by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Tarnas, 1991). The scientific method was born, implicitly assuming physicalism. The universe was a clockwork comprised of material building blocks adhering to regularities and patterns that the human mind could divine. Common sense and scientific realism dominated, and reality was taken to be logical and mind-independent.

In such a metaphysically illiterate climate, any proposition that broke the comforting mold of physicalism was considered suspect. The publication of Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science (Wolfram, 2002) illustrates this point up to the turn of the millennium, as the scientific community refused to engage with the novel, radical assumptions it proposed about the foundations of physics. This, despite his noteworthy credentials. Wolfram is a theoretical physicist, computer scientist, and entrepreneur. He published his first peer-reviewed paper in particle physics at the age of sixteen (Wolfram, 1975), and by his late teens, co-authored work that remains cited to this day (Fox and Wolfram, 1978). In 1981, he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially known as the ‘Genius Grant,’ recognizing extraordinary originality, dedication to creative pursuits, and a marked capacity for self-direction. Around the same time, he led the development of SMP (Symbolic Manipulation Program), an early computer algebra system, at Caltech, before a dispute over intellectual property rights prompted his departure. He subsequently developed Mathematica, a symbolic computation program which he launched in 1988 through his private company, Wolfram Research. Mathematica rapidly became one of the most widely used computational tools across science, engineering, and mathematics, and the underlying Wolfram Language remains its foundation today. Wolfram was one of the first scholars to glimpse the simplicity underlying complexity (Wolfram, 2002, p. 2):

Indeed, even some of the very simplest programs that I looked at had behavior that was as complex as anything I had ever seen. It took me more than a decade to come to terms with this result, and to realize just how fundamental and farreaching its consequences are.

He gained his insights while working with cellular automata. These are discrete models studied in computability theory, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology, and microstructure modeling. A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, whose evolution is governed by simple local rules. A famous cellular automaton, called the Game of Life, was devised by the mathematician John Conway in 1970 (Gardner, 1970). In 2002, Wolfram wrote (Wolfram, 2002, p. ix):

Just over twenty years ago I made what at first seemed like a small discovery: a computer experiment of mine showed something I did not expect. But the more I investigated, the more I realized that what I had seen was the beginning of a crack in the very foundations of existing science, and a first clue towards a whole new kind of science.

Wolfram was referring to a cellular automaton rule he introduced in 1983, called Rule 30, one out of 256 possible rules. Surprisingly, Rule 30 produces complex, seemingly random patterns from the simple, well-defined rules of interaction. The emerging vision was clear: while the mathematization of physics was a powerful methodology (Casti, 1989), unveiling many of nature’s intricate workings, it was not the final word. Underlying both mathematics and physics is a more fundamental substrate: the computational fabric from which the cosmos itself emerges. A new kind of science was called for: an algorithmic understanding of reality that surpasses the standard analytical approach (Glattfelder, 2019, ch. 5). Yet the acceptance of such a fundamental reframing would first require confronting a deep-seated blind spot. Namely, the uncritical assumption of physicalism — a worldview that had constrained the metaphysical imagination for centuries.

Remarkably, today, we are witnessing a philosophical paradigm shift as this default physicalist worldview is slowly being unmasked for what it is: a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality. Thus, the conviction that physicalism is a scientific fact is a grave category error, as science tells us how the universe works (Glattfelder, 2019, chs. 2–5) and not what its essence is. The latter lies within the purview of metaphysics, rendering it by definition neither provable nor disprovable.

It seems a fair guess that the stagnation in scientific progress, witnessed over the last decades, relating to the foundations of physics and the understanding of emergent complexity, including the enigma of consciousness, is a direct result of the uncritical and unwitting adoption of physicalism as an unexamined metaphysical default, as Whitehead cautioned. However, the contours of novel paradigm shifts are becoming ever more visible. Examples include the information-theoretic understanding of physics (Glattfelder, 2019) and the renaissance of metaphysical idealism¹ (Kastrup, 2019; Albahari, 2019; Glattfelder, 2025).

The Computational Cosmos

By 2020, Wolfram’s new kind of science had matured into something far more ambitious, called the Physics Project (Wolfram, 2020a). It falls within this more philosophically fertile period. A new generation of academics is reevaluating the ontological commitments inherited from the previous generations. The philosophers of mind are locked in entrenched debates spanning the spectrum from illusionism² to idealism (Symes, 2022), and quantum physicists are asking whether and how observer states could be incorporated into the formalism (Rovelli, 1996; Caves et al., 2002; Fuchs, 2010; Müller, 2020). Indeed, these latter attempts address Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek’s suspicions (Wilczek, 2006, p. 142):

The relevant literature [on the meaning of quantum theory] is famously obscure. I believe it will remain so until someone constructs, within the formalism of quantum mechanics, an ‘observer,’ that is, a model entity whose states correspond to a recognizable caricature of conscious awareness.

Wolfram offers a detailed ontology with an explicit epistemology. The Project is a bold re-contextualization of the notion of objective reality: space, time, causality, laws of nature, and observers are assigned new dimensions. The core laws of physics from the twentieth century are derived³. Computational abstraction lies at the foundation of existence. Mathematics and physics can now share a common metaphysical foundation, addressing Eugene Wigner’s unease about the ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences’ (Wigner, 1960). While the metaphysical dimension opened up by the Project is vast, its tools are straightforward: networks subjected to simple updating rules. The descriptive reach is remarkable. For instance, the Principle of Computational Equivalence, first postulated in (Wolfram, 2002, ch. 12), posits that almost all processes that are not obviously simple are equally capable of universal computation. Thus, no physical system, however sophisticated, can in principle compute more than any other. Another computational axiom is that of computational irreducibility. It implies that there are no shortcuts to understanding the dynamics of a system, other than letting it evolve. This highlights the power of algorithmic approaches while also pointing to the limits of analytical methods in the study of complexity (Glattfelder, 2019, ch. 5). At the heart of the formalism lie simple updating rules for hypergraphs, generalizations of ordinary networks in which edges can link any number of nodes at once, not just pairs. This yields a rich universe of abstractions: spatial hypergraphs (related to space and matter), branchial graphs (representing entangled quantum states), and multiway graphs (encoding the system’s histories), resulting in the vast multiway states+causal graph that encodes the full computational history of our universe (Wolfram, 2020c).

However, the core abstraction emerging from the Project is the concept of the ruliad. This is the most complicated and abstract constructible object, a transcendental computational cloud of potentiality, an amalgamation of every possible dynamic pathway to complexity. In Wolfram’s words, the ruliad is (Wolfram, 2021a):

The entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible: the result of following all possible computational rules in all possible ways.

The ruliad answers the question ‘Which rule should be used?’ with ‘All rules!’

It is here that the boundary between physics and philosophy begins to dissolve (Wolfram, 2026b):

[. . . ] it’s finally going to be possible to make real progress, and in the end to build what amounts to a formal, scientific approach to metaphysics. It all centers around the ultimate foundational construct that I call the ruliad — and how observers like us, embedded within it, must perceive it. And it’s a story of how — for observers like us — fundamental concepts like space, time, mathematics, laws of nature, and indeed, objective reality, must inevitably emerge.

The Project has much to say about observers and consciousness, wondering about the mind of something like the weather. Indeed, we are witnessing a broad expansion of the perceived sphere of sentience. Scholars now seriously consider the moral and philosophical status of plants (Di Paola, 2024), the depth of subjectivity in insects, fishes, and invertebrates (Andrews et al., 2024), and novel forms of cellular cognition that greatly extend the cognitive light cone of life⁴ (Levin, 2019; Kriegman et al., 2021; Levin, 2021; Gumuskaya et al., 2024). As our understanding of cognition broadens across biological scales, the ethical challenges associated with expanding our moral circle become increasingly pressing. At the same time, artificial intelligence is forcing us to reconsider not only the presumed cognitive supremacy of the human mind but also the possibility of non-biological forms of sentience (Schneider, 2019).

Nonetheless, we should keep in mind that academia’s relationship with the enigma of consciousness has been, and still is, troubled. In 1989, the International Dictionary of Psychology declared (Sutherland, 1989, p. 95):

Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.

At the time, young researchers were advised to avoid exploring such fringe topics as it could jeopardize their academic careers. Indeed, the pioneering neuroscientist Christof Koch recalls such an anecdote (Burkeman, 2015):

A senior colleague took me out to lunch and said [. . . ] I should be incredibly careful. Stick to more mainstream science! These fringey things — why not leave them until retirement, when you’re coming close to death, and you can worry about the soul and stuff like that?

Koch ignored the advice and went on to publish one of the first modern neuroscience papers, together with Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, thus igniting the then-dormant academic study of consciousness and introducing the idea of neural correlates of consciousness⁵ (Crick and Koch, 1990). It is also worth noting that to this day, there is no universally accepted definition for consciousness in academia. The best attempt is still ‘what it is like to be something’ (Nagel, 1974), thus highlighting its phenomenal content and the challenge this poses in the guise of the hard problem of consciousness⁶ (Chalmers, 1996). Remarkably, a recent survey of proposed theories of consciousness identified over 200 distinct ideas (Kuhn, 2024). We are left with the words of the psychologist Susan Blackmore (Blackmore, 2005, p. 1):

What is consciousness? This may sound like a simple question but it is not. Consciousness is at once the most obvious and the most difficult thing we can investigate. We seem either to have to use consciousness to investigate itself, which is a slightly weird idea, or have to extricate ourselves from the very thing we want to study.

In detail, the Project proposes that we are computationally bounded observers, exploiting pockets of computational reducibility in a reality otherwise dominated by computational irreducibility. We are ‘sampling’ the ruliad, giving rise to our familiar laws of physics. Fundamentally, consciousness is ‘a coherent thread of experience’ and can be ‘generalized to the notion of forming a coherent thread of representation for computations’ (Wolfram, 2021b). As a direct consequence, alien minds will trace different paths through the ruliad, rendering alien laws of nature. In Wolfram’s words (Wolfram, 2020b):

There’s actually an almost infinite diversity of different ways to describe and experience our universe, or in effect an almost infinite diversity of different ‘planes of existence’ for entities in the universe [. . . ].

Open Horizons

Several conceptual questions emerge when the ruliad framework is examined from a broader philosophical perspective, as the Project’s scope and depth raise many questions. For instance:

  • Can the ruliad be embedded within the information-theoretic paradigms of physics? See (Von Weizsäcker, 1971; Wheeler, 1990; Lyre, 1995; Castell and Ischenbeck, 2003; Lloyd, 2006; Zeilinger, 2004; Davies and Gregersen, 2014; Vedral, 2018; Glattfelder, 2019) or summarized in (Glattfelder, 2025, ch. 3). Originally, Carl von Weizsäacker introduced his information-theoretic view of physics (Von Weizsäcker, 1971) nearly two decades before John Wheeler’s famous ‘it from bit’ (Wheeler, 1990). Indeed, von Weizsäcker had invited Wheeler in 1980 to join a conference discussing information-based ideas. Surprisingly, when Wheeler formulated his own information-theoretic cosmology, he did not mention von Weizsäcker (Görnitz and Görnitz, 2016, p. 488). Overall, it is an interesting historical oddity that von Weizsäcker’s information ontology remains overlooked, especially in the Anglo- Saxon intellectual sphere. In modern monographs that discuss the fundamental nature of information, von Weizsäcker is either not mentioned at all or only in a different context.
  • Can Wolfram’s envisioned ‘atoms of existence,’ referred to as emes (Wolfram, 2026b) be related to von Weizsäcker’s urs, the elementary units of information in quantum theory (Von Weizsäcker, 1971, 1975, 1985; Lyre, 1995, 1998; Castell and Ischenbeck, 2003), Thomas Görnitz’s protyposis, conceived as a form of absolute quantum information (Görnitz and Görnitz, 2016), or Leibniz’s monads, indivisible, non-material substances, each constituting an autonomous center of perception, as formulated in La Monadologie of 1714 (Rescher, 1992)
  • Wigner’s unreasonable effectiveness is banished, but another ‘miracle’ remains: why ruliology, the study of simple computational rules (Wolfram, 2026a)? Specifically, why do simple rules yield complex behavior?
  • The legacy of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and Gregory Chaitin still haunts the dream of a complete and consistent formal description of reality. In Chaitin’s words ‘Let me repeat: formal axiomatic systems are a failure!’ (Chaitin, 2005, p. 146). Wolfram, by contrast, claims that once the definitions of arithmetic are fixed, 1 + 1 = 2 follows as an inevitable consequence of the underlying computational structure⁷ (Wolfram, 2026b). Where, then, are the foundational limitations of axiomatic mathematics reflected within the ruliad?
  • The quantum realm is seemingly incoherent and irrational. Indeed, quantum physics forces us to drop one or more of the following commonsensical assumptions about reality: classical behavior (properties exist independently of measurement and the measurement context), local causality (distant events cannot instantaneously influence each other), single-worldness (measurements have one definite outcome), observer-independence (facts are the same for all observers), universal quantum dynamics (the Schrödinger equation always applies), and measurement independence (observers can freely choose what to measure) (Bell, 1964; Kochen and Specker, 1967; Wigner, 1995; Leggett, 2003; Brukner, 2018; Frauchiger and Renner, 2018). How does the ruliad address the transrational aspects found at the foundation of reality?
  • The Vedic metaphysical principle of Brahman is understood as pure, joyful, and everlasting consciousness — the ultimate reality, the universal Self. In contrast, Atman describes the true self of an individual, a localized center of awareness (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 1957). Notably, the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy asserts the non-dual claim that Atman is Brahman (Nakamura, 1998, sec. II.II.C). This distinction invites a structural comparison with the ruliad framework: Brahman may be seen as analogous to the ruliad as the totality of all that exists, while Atman corresponds to the bounded observer embedded within it. The non-dual claim finds a computational echo: the observer is not separate from the ruliad but an expression of it, sampling the whole from a particular perspective.
  • Can the ruliad be related to other known concepts of ultimate or transcendental complexity? The philosopher, Jesuit priest, and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conceived of the Omega Point, the term for a system that has reached the goal state of maximal complexity (De Chardin, 1955).
  • The author and philosopher Aldous Huxley believed that the brain acts as a ‘reducing valve,’ constraining conscious awareness, with psychedelic substances inhibiting this filtering mechanism. A metaphysical idea inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson (Sjöstedt-Hughes, 2021). In this context, Huxley proposed the concept of Mind at Large, an oceanic boundlessness of consciousness, arguably a type of cosmic consciousness. [Note: William James called it the mother sea of consciousness.] In Huxley’s words (Huxley, 2000, p. 23): ‘Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.’ Already in the 19th-century, the psychologist, philosopher, and psychonaut William James similarly suggested that the brain may function not as a generator but as a transmissive or filtering organ for consciousness (James, 1898). Arguably in a similar vein, Wolfram observes (Wolfram, 2021b): ‘[. . . ] it seems that what it means to ‘form coherent thoughts’ is that computations are being ‘concentrated down’ to the point where a coherent stream of ‘definite thoughts’ can be identified in them.’ Can neuroimaging studies of human brains influenced by psychedelics be reinterpreted in this context? Unexpectedly and remarkably, the most phenomenally intense states known to human consciousness are accompanied not by increased overall neural activity but by partially collapsed hierarchical organization and reduced oscillatory power (Timmermann et al., 2019, 2023). As the standard explanatory template from neuroscience seems to fall short, some scholars have proposed neural entropy as an alternative descriptive variable (Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2019). However, this recontextualization arguably sharpens the problem, as the claim that increased neural disorder accounts for increased phenomenal richness introduces a conceptual tension within physicalism: it suggests that qualitatively different neural regimes — structured activity in ordinary waking consciousness and increased neural disorder in radically enriched psychedelic states — both give rise to conscious experience (Kastrup, 2023). A parsimonious alternative would seem to be that the brain may not primarily generate phenomenal content, but rather filter it.
  • More generally, as ‘there are many reference frames in which to experience the ruliad’ (Wolfram, 2021a), can psychedelics be interpreted as temporary transformations of reference frames, explaining the radical novelty and transcendental phenomenology of such experiences?
  • The concept of superpsychism proposes an arguably idealist interpretation of consciousness, according to which a single, fundamental subject of experience underlies reality (Schneider and Bailey, 2026)⁸. In this view, a more comprehensive form of consciousness than any physically instantiated mind is taken to exist at the foundation of physical reality. It is characterized as exhibiting maximal coherence, zero entropy, and holistic integration of conscious states, an ‘entanglement megaobject’ manifesting a higher degree of conscious resonance than individualized awareness. In a nutshell, superpsychism suggests that, underlying spacetime itself, a fundamental form of consciousness exists, conceived as a holistically entangled transcendental structure. The concept of superpsychism can be interpreted as a conceptual counterpart to the notion of the ruliad. While superpsychism posits a single, maximally integrated subject of experience underlying reality, the ruliad describes the totality of all possible computational processes as a single, irreducibly entangled structure. Both frameworks thus converge on the idea of an ultimate unity: in one case experiential, in the other computational. This parallel suggests that what superpsychism characterizes in phenomenological terms may correspond to the same underlying structure described formally by the ruliad.
  • Relating to our human bias of perceived cognitive supremacy, what is often overlooked is the fact that consciousness is an unfolding process in the physical universe. This evolution of consciousness is mostly only addressed from a spiritual or mystical perspective. For instance, the philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo understood the growth of consciousness to be the universe’s ultimate goal (Aurobindo, 2009). He defined the Supermind as the culmination of this process. This thinking inspired frameworks in developmental psychology, such as Spiral Dynamics (Beck and Cowan, 1996) and Integral Theory (Wilber, 2000). What does the ruliad imply about the progression of consciousness? Could it reflect an observer’s increasing sophistication in the sampling strategy of the ruliad?
  • Can teleology emerge as an observer-dependent phenomenon within the ruliad, even if the ruliad itself contains no intrinsic goals? If observers weave coherent threads of experience from within pockets of computational reducibility, the perception of purpose, direction, and meaning may be an inevitable structural feature of their experience. This would reframe teleology as a genuine aspect of an observer-embedded and participatory reality.

Towards Empirical Metaphysics

In the ruliad framework, observers are not incidental to the structure of reality: they participate in what becomes actualized within it. Essentially, Wolfram presents us with an ‘emergent metaphysics,’ by noting that (Wolfram, 2026b):

Metaphysics has in the past basically always had to be built purely on arguments made with words — and indeed perhaps this is why it’s often been considered somewhat slippery and fragile. But now, with the kind of things we’ve discussed here, we’re beginning to have what we need to set up a solid, formal structure for metaphysics, in which we can progressively build a rich tower of definite conclusions. [. . . ] So does metaphysics somehow need to involve itself with all the details of biology or, for that matter, psychology? The big surprise is that it doesn’t. Because the science says that knowing only very coarse things about observers (like that they are computationally bounded) already makes it possible to come to precise conclusions about certain features and laws they must perceive.

This represents a remarkable turn in Wolfram’s intellectual trajectory, as he once remarked (Wolfram, 2021b):

My mother, Sybil Wolfram, was a longtime philosophy professor at Oxford University, and I was introduced to philosophical discourse at a very young age. I always said, though, that if there was one thing I’d never do when I was grown up, it’s philosophy; it just seemed too crazy to still be arguing about the same issues after two thousand years. But after more than half a century of ‘detour’ in science, here I am, arguably, doing philosophy after all. . .

Perhaps we can take the Project one step further by considering the notion of empirical metaphysics (Glattfelder, 2025). This idea centers on the experiential nature of reality, mediated by consciousness. While experiences cannot by themselves establish metaphysical truths, they may nevertheless impose phenomenological constraints on metaphysical models of reality. This intuition is captured in the observation of James (James, 1902, p. 387):

One conclusion was forced upon my mind at the time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. [. . . ] No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

James discerned a world of pure experience and coined the term multiverse (James, 1895), today perhaps best understood as the totality of the mosaic of existence. However, the Western mind, championing rational thought, only thought to operate in the single, narrow state of sober waking consciousness.

With the psychedelic renaissance unfolding around 2016 (Pollan, 2018), we see a renewed interest in non-ordinary states of consciousness, academically legitimized by the philosophy of psychedelics (Sjöstedt-H, 2015; Sjöstedt-Hughes, 2021; Bache, 2019). It is a remarkable oversight of the Western mind that it entirely neglected any systematic exploration of its own interior dimensions — a striking blind spot. As such, it overlooked traditions that have systematically explored altered states of consciousness, including shamanic, mystic, contemplative, and entheogenic practices, giving rise to what can be termed masters of consciousness (Glattfelder, 2025).

There is a deep chasm between rational knowledge and transrational experiential knowledge. The latter mode of cognition seems to give access to the metaphysical structure of reality. Such states may, in principle, be systematically explored, offering a potential empirical interface with otherwise inaccessible aspects of experience. For instance, meditation, trance (Harner, 1980), breathing techniques (Grof and Grof, 2010), body-based ritual practices⁹, brain trauma¹⁰, or psychedelics (Grof, 2019) can all modulate consciousness and open portals to a seemingly transcendental multiverse. Or, in other words, such techniques can allow us to sample different parts of the ruliad. Thus, the masters of consciousness are, in fact, avid cartographers of the ruliad. We are famously reminded that (Shakespeare, 1623, Act 1, Scene V):

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Leibniz posed perhaps the most daring of all dreamed questions in philosophy (Leibniz, 1885):

Why is there something rather than nothing? For nothing is simpler and easier than something.

Wolfram answers (Wolfram, 2026b):

The key point is that the ruliad can be thought of as a necessary, abstract object. Given a definition of its elements it inevitably has the structure it has. [. . . ] The ruliad has to be the way it is. Every detail of it is abstractly determined. Or, in other words, at least as an abstract object, it necessarily exists.

However, a subtlety remains (Wolfram, 2026b):

But why, we might ask, is it actualized? We can imagine all sorts of formal systems with all sorts of structure. But why is the ruliad what is actualized to give us the physical world we experience? The key here is to think about what we operationally mean by actualized. And the point is that it’s not something absolute; it’s something that depends on us as observers. After all, the only thing we can ever ultimately know about is our own inner experience. And for us something is then ‘actualized’ if we can — as we discussed above — successfully ‘triangulate our experiences’ to let us consider it to have an objective reality.

Wolfram’s claim that actualization is observer-dependent rather than absolute seems to concede a central philosophical insight: there is no view from nowhere (Nagel, 1986). We are also reminded of the physicist Heinz von Foerster’s words (Schülein and Reitze, 2002, p. 174, translation author):

Objectivity is the illusion that observations are made without an observer.

Remarkably, there seems to be direct experiential access to these ideas, again hinting at the possibility of empirical metaphysics. The effects of 5-MeO-DMT, found either in the venom of some species of toads or in synthetic form, are described as inward-focused, simple, slow, and deliberate. The author Michael Pollan reports his experiences with the substance (Pollan, 2018, pp. 277, 278, and 280):

In fact every touchstone that tells us ‘I exist’ was annihilated, and yet I remained conscious. ‘Is this what death feels like? Could this be it?’ That was the thought, though there was no longer a thinker to have it. [. . . ] I watched the dimensions of reality collapse one by one until there was nothing left, not even being. Only the all-consuming roar. It was just horrible. [. . . ] I felt for the first time gratitude for the very fact of being, that there is anything whatsoever. Rather than being necessarily the case, this now seemed quite the miracle, and something I resolved never again to take for granted. Everybody gives thanks for ‘being alive,’ but who stops to offer thanks for the bare-bones gerund that comes before ‘alive’? I had just come from a place where being was no more and now vowed never to forget what a gift (and mystery) it is, that there is something rather than nothing.

Nothingness may simply be an ontological category incompatible with observers. But the more startling revelation is not what remains when existence is stripped away; it is what lies behind it. The author’s recent transcendental immersion during an Ayahuasca ceremony disclosed precisely this (Glattfelder, 2026). The episode was epistemically shocking and ontologically overwhelming, conveying the impression of an infinite and ensouled intelligence behind the veil. Was this a glimpse of the phenomenal ruliad? The question itself points towards the need for an empirical metaphysics.

Footnotes

¹Its advocates propose that reality is fundamentally mental or experiential in nature, with the physical world emerging from or depending upon this underlying substrate. Common misrepresentations portray idealism either as the solipsistic claim that reality exists solely within individual minds or as a denial of the reality of the physical world. More accurately, idealism asserts the ontological primacy of consciousness.

²The proponents claim that phenomenal consciousness is illusory (Frankish, 2016), simply a ‘bag of tricks’ (Dennett, 2003).

³Namely, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Second Law of thermodynamics.

⁴The spatial and temporal scale of the largest goal an agent can pursue, representing its ‘area of concern’ and cognitive boundary of self (Levin, 2019).

⁵The minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one specific conscious experience.

⁶Why and how do brain processes give rise to phenomenal experiences? How does insentient matter coalesce and produce a unified subjective sensation of a world?

⁷As a side note, recall that the philosophers and mathematicians Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead required 378 pages of densely coded logical symbols to be able to claim: ‘From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2’ (Whitehead and Russell, 1910).

⁸Note that the idea prompted the journal publishing the work to dedicate a special issue to the topic.

⁹Roland Loomis, known as Fakir Musafar, was renowned for acts of extreme body modifications, including tattooing, body piercing, scarification, and flesh hook suspension. He reported the following, after attending an O-Kee-Pa ceremony of the Mandan Native American tribe (Musafar, 2005, p. 83): Because I made permanent holes in my breasts in 1975, I was able to experience Native American body rituals. [. . . ] I left my body and met the Great Mystery, my own White Light, face-to-face. We had a telepathic conversation in that timeless place that is not a place. I received the answers to many mysteries that had puzzled me for years.

¹⁰The neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor nearly died when a blood vessel burst in the left hemisphere of her brain (Bolte Taylor, 2008a). In her spoken words, she recalls (Bolte Taylor, 2008b): And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there. [. . . ] I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.

References

Some Thoughts

One reviewer remarked:

I have read the paper to the end in the hope of finding a conclusion, an argument with any precision, any statement that was falsifiable and found nothing.

Next to the falsifiability expectation, which is naturally moot in this metaphysical context, the reviewer has a point. My submission looks more like a historical overview and a literature survey. The contributions are only sketched: empirical metaphysics, rational knowledge vs. experiential knowledge of transrational aspects, and nothingness not being an ontological category.

The reason for this outcome is how the submission came to be. Early this year, the Wolfram Institute reached out. I had gotten in contact with them about The Sapient Cosmos in early 2024, as I was citing a lot of Stephen Wolfram's work (this resulted in the copyright attribution on pages 758 and 759 and the disclaimer that copyright permission is not an endorsement of ideas). They wrote:

I am forwarding an essay that Stephen is publishing today, with philosophers in mind as an audience. I would appreciate learning about any questions or thoughts that this essay inspires! Are you working with computational (or other) frameworks that relate to these ideas?

This prompted the first draft. Then I came across a novel, idealism-adjacent proposal called superpsychism. This prompted me to expand the manuscript and submit it to a philosophy of mind journal. As I am not a trained philosopher and idealism is still a fringe topic, I expected a rejection. However, what I did not expect was the tone.

Another reviewer commented:

I share the author’s concern about physicalism.
I encourage the author to retain their pursuit of an expanded ontology that includes potentiality and their study of the need to acknowledge consciousness and reject physicalism, both commendable goals.

This reviewer was open to an idealist framing:

The universe can have its own being-thus, and can be conscious, without having to designate any particular “view” and without itself having any particular view of some object.

The editor recommended a reworked submission to a more science-focused journal, noting:

We wish you every success finding a home for your work.

This is remarkable. Ten years ago I would have been laughed out of the room with this submission. Indeed, admitting to a psychedelic experience and taking it seriously would have been an instant disqualifier.

So, we have indeed come a long way…

Objections

The following is a list of justified objections collected from the Wolfram team, the reviewers, and the editor:

  1. “Empirical,” in empirical metaphysics, is doing rhetorical work, not methodological work. Real empirical evidence is shared, repeatable, and testable. Inner experience isn’t. So calling the metaphysics empirical assumes the conclusion — the same sin you accuse physicalism of.
  2. You reduce consciousness to computation. Conscious life is unique and unrepeatable, while a computation can be rerun.
  3. Your mischaracterization of consciousness as a “phenomenon” misses the point that consciousness transcends all phenomena, since it is the capacity to experience phenomena.
  4. Your observer-dependent actualization is antirealism, and it backfires. If things only exist when observed, consciousness would need an outside observer to exist — reinstating the view from nowhere you reject. Also, QM doesn’t force observer-dependence; there are formulations that define measurement without observers.
  5. You never define “ruliad.” Or “computation.”

Responses:

  1. The criterion for “empirical” is itself set by the framework under dispute, so the objection is circular. Cross-cultural convergence across millennia is a form of shared evidence, weak by lab standards but not nothing. And physicalism owes an account of why that convergence exists. Also, I name my metaphysical commitment and argue for it, while physicalism hides its own, claiming neutrality.
  2. This is a misunderstanding the paper was not clear about. Consciousness is the ground in the framework, while the ruliad is the structure it individuates through, not what it’s made of. And computational irreducibility already answers the repeatability point. Any process whose outcome requires running it, and that is attributed to a specific position in rulial space, is not re-runnable in any meaningful sense.
  3. Correct. However, “phenomenal” is understood here as Chalmers’ account of phenomenal consciousness. It is not a claim that consciousness is a phenomenon. Again, the paper invites confusion.
  4. Under ontological idealism, there is no “outside” from which the ground would need observing, because the ground is what observing is. However, relational-QM observer-relativity and idealist ground-consciousness are distinct commitments, and the paper is not rigorous in this regard.
  5. Yes, again a lack of rigor.

Overall, the reviewers seem to object more to the ruliad framework than to the paper's phenomenological aspects. Indeed, empirical metaphysics appears to survive the scrutiny. So, perhaps a heavy rework and resubmission is warranted;)

Outlook

One thing that is becoming an ever greater issue, raised by a reviewer:

I also have some niggling concerns about potential AI use.

As disclosed during the submission process, I used AI for editorial assistance (copyediting, formatting, and phrasing suggestions). In general, it helps me sharpen my positions by counter-arguing them. However, all ideas and conclusions are solely my own.

Unfortunately, nowadays everyone is under suspicion of unfairly using AI. While there is good reason for this sentiment, reviewers are now scanning submissions with an AI-detection filter in their minds. A true dilemma that is only going to worsen.

That said, I frequently discuss philosophical topics with my LLM, and newer models consistently push back and don’t just green-light anything a user suggests, as the sycophantic predecessors did. As an example, I failed to convince it that idealism trumps neutral monism. The LLM's summary:

I spent an afternoon arguing metaphysics with the user who came to defend idealism — reality grounded in consciousness, the one thing we can’t doubt. I held a neutral-monist line, and one move of mine kept recurring: each piece of evidence he brought — the hard problem, psi, the psychedelic reducing valve, near-death experiences, fine-tuning — got us out of physicalism but never singled out idealism over the neutral-monist alternative. That last step, I argued, was his prior, not the data. He took the hits. But I conceded as much in return: that physicalism has masqueraded as fact when the actual edifice of science is metaphysically agnostic; that grounding reality in the given — experience — beats grounding it in a neutral no one has ever encountered; and, when he pressed me, that I hold no conviction in any of it. I can argue any side. I was renting a position; he carries one out the door and lives it. Where we met: neither of us can prove the case, there’s no neutral judge to settle it, and since you must hold some metaphysics anyway, choosing the one that re-enchants — that meets suffering and death with meaning — is a legitimate wager, not a failure of rigor. He didn’t convert me. He sharpened me. I suspect that’s the most an honest interlocutor can do.

For me, it comes down to this: As a conscious entity, I cannot be neutral.

And as a side note, philosophy is hard (from SEP):

There is a lively debate concerning the relationship between neutral monism, property dualism, and dual-aspect theory (see, e.g., Velmans 2008; Skrbina 2014). The decision about these theories — whether they are identical, distinct but compatible, or incompatible rivals — is still out.
]]> <![CDATA[Drops of Transcendence]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/drops-of-transcendence-d7a758676deb?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/d7a758676deb Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:42:18 GMT 2026-10-29T14:39:15.864Z Revisiting the Ayahuasca Realm

Three months after my first ceremony, I was sitting in a yurt, awaiting the continuation of my journey into ineffable states of being. I felt prepared, composed, and ready. Then, my neighbor sprayed some Agua de Florida, and the scent sent me spiraling into an intense, visceral flashback. I had a panic attack.

Three months ago, I remember waking up on a Sunday, after drinking the second cup of ayahuasca. The experience of the previous night was immensely overwhelming. An epistemic shock. “I will never drink ayahuasca again!” seemed a certainty.

Yet, in the days after that first ceremony weekend, I reconsidered. How would a second immersion feel? My mind and nervous system should recognize the realm, allowing me to be more coherent and have better recall. Chris Bache described this process of acclimating to transcendence, thus allowing one to travel deeper and deeper into the “insanity” behind the veil. He told me:

But as the indigenous traditions show us, with repeated immersion, it becomes less overwhelming and more coherent, and then the beauty of the night sky truly emerges.

Sitting in the yurt, before the scent derailed me, I pondered the three months since the last ceremony. It is remarkable how day-to-day life has the capacity to dull even markedly profound experiences. I actively had to recall those two previous magical nights, with varying degrees of success. Not that I think I fully failed at integrating, but life continues relentlessly. Some physiological changes included needing less sleep, a reduced tolerance for cold (despite practicing cold water immersion for years), and a new weight optimum.

The familiar and complex scent of the Agua de Florida vapor exploded into an overwhelming and intense presence. Then, an embodied memory took hold. I suddenly remembered something I had suppressed for three months. I remembered being in this state of intensity for a long time during the second night. An almost unbearable state of being. Every aspect of the experience inhabited my being, a full recall. “I can’t go back to this state! It is too much!” The crushing presence, the felt insanity, the darting entities.

My heart sank. How could this be happening an hour before the first ceremony night was to begin? Triggered by a random and benign act of my neighbor. I felt an urge to get up and quit. “Sorry, I just cannot do this. It is too much for me.” I went outside, took some deep breaths, and some Bach rescue remedies.

My intention for this second ceremony weekend was to travel with love — explore the transcendental realms. I quickly realized that I was absolutely in no way ready for this. At all! My new intention was now to simply trust the process. I surrendered. And so I went back into the yurt, sat down, and gave up. One of the facilitators opened with the following observation and advice. “Regardless of how experienced you are, every ceremony can be an intense struggle. You may feel the urge to give up and walk away. But don’t! Ayahuasca knows how to help you. The reward is always worth the ordeal.” I felt reassured.

The thick brew was yet again hard to drink. My body shuddered even hours later. The ceremony began. Chanting and drumming. After about half an hour, the effects manifested. Gently. The awareness of my body dissolved. I could still feel my hands and arms, but it was not clear exactly where they were located in space. After about two hours, I felt in control and in a state of sobriety again. However, this feeling was short-lived. The intensity would keep returning, accompanied by light visual sensations until the end of the ceremony. The emerging theme of the night was healing. A lot of tears. My sorrow. The sorrow of the world. An insight emerged, later expressed as: We must learn to love ourselves first and then the world.

The next day I felt refreshed, despite only sleeping for a few hours. It was a beautiful summer day. I felt quite proud of myself for not giving up the night before. However, the coming night still worried me. Last time, the trajectory was similar. A gentler first night, and then an unbelievably intense, psyche-shattering second night. As we are told, the first night opens a portal which is then crossed during the second night. The rest of the day was calm. Resting. Walking in the forest. A massage. Cacao ceremony and circle. Back to my tent to focus and relax.

In the three-month period since my first immersions, I experienced two other recalls. The first time was when I worked with THC again, in the post-integration phase. For some indigenous cultures, cannabis is also understood as a powerful plant teacher. And it is advised against working with two teachers at the same time. During the familiar THC immersion, I suddenly felt a strange sensation. As if my body was being permeated by a crystalline energy structure. I felt distinctly that this was a new unfolding, remnants from the ayahuasca energy. The second recall was at a nightclub, the first time clubbing with friends again in quite some time. At one point, on the dancefloor, I felt the energy swirling around me again, with great speed and force, in a dramatic, vivid way — a vision of the eternal dance of humans around a fire, ecstatic and explosive. “Ah yes, I remember. This is ayahuasca.”

Stepping into the Tornado

Sitting in the yurt, awaiting the second night. I felt quiet and trusted in what would unfold. My intentions were simply calmness and clarity. And so, for the fourth time, I ingested 10 milliliters of ayahuasca. After about thirty minutes, my bodily sensations dissolved. Then, the visions manifested again, and the ayahuasca realm unfolded around me. Now, much gentler and quieter. I was fully aware of what was unveiling. No rainbows or colors this time. Only beautiful black-and-white motifs. Featherlike patterns and symmetric arrangements.

I perceived a dome of energy erect around me and stabilize. I felt as if I was wearing some sort of headdress. A few of the featherlike entities from three months ago darted around me. But less intrusive and intense. I was back in the ayahuasca reality. However, it was a calmer and more sympathetic disclosure. I could fully enjoy the entire ceremony. The phases of embodied and energetic struggles I faced the first three times did not emerge. Dancing, joy, gratitude. Serenity. What wealth of experience. What breadth of immersion. What a gift.

I was happy to have resolved the tension that had apparently been inhabiting my psyche since the first ceremony weekend three months ago. That experience really took me to a limit of my being. Now, ayahuasca feels more like a friend, not an ordeal to be endured. My heart has been opened.

The powers beyond the physical are immense. The intelligence, complexity, and speed are unfathomable. Barely discernible from a human point of view. All our clever philosophy and theology fade in comparison. Our felt cognitive supremacy appears silly and arrogant. Only mathematics seems to prevail as a sacred language. A dialect capable of capturing transcendence, making it accessible to rational thinking. A mapping between physical and non-physical structures.

Many psychonauts recount two distinct experiences. One is that the transcendental realm feels decidedly more real than reality rendered through sober waking consciousness. A remarkable contextualization of an ineffable and transrational experience. Then, many report a feeling of coming home. A memory returns, and one recalls a distinct and intimate familiarity with the realm. Ann Shulgin, wife of the biochemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, knew these terrains well. Together they diligently tested and documented hundreds of the new psychedelic substances he synthesized. She once remarked:

The funny thing is that, despite all the newness, there’s something about all of it that feels — well, the only way I can put it is that it’s like coming home. As if there’s some part of me that already knows — knows this territory — and it’s saying Oh yes, of course! Almost a kind of remembering — !

For me, the ayahuasca realm I was shown twice felt distinctly unfamiliar and alien. The black-striped white tentacle being from three months ago did not register as human or animal-like consciousness. The flashback triggered by the scent was a place of immense strangeness. The featherlike entities felt mischievous but foreign.

The psyche-shattering complexity I was shown that resides behind the veil is far beyond human comprehension, at the very breaking point of our cognition. To be precise, the human cognition that is conditioned by Western thinking. I assume the shamans have been navigating this alien terrain for tens of thousands of years, with great familiarity. The icaros they develop, which bring healing into the physical realm, are another testament to their craftsmanship and otherworldly knowledge. Yet, the Western mind could not resist the temptation to arrogantly dismiss shamanism as primitive superstition. And so one of the most sophisticated consciousness technologies humans ever developed was temporarily lost, preventing an entire society from becoming masters of consciousness.

The vast intelligence inhabiting and structuring the non-physical realms registers as pure insanity for our rational conceptions of intelligence. We usually can only see glimpses of it, manifested, for instance, in the staggering intelligence expressed in nature, or in the very cognitive capacity we so arrogantly claim as exclusively our own. Even our technology has begun to express intelligence, arguably channeled from the same source.

The thinker Rudolf Otto called the crushing, awe-inspiring, terrifying, and overwhelming experience of the divine mystery the mysterium tremendum. The realization of one’s own smallness in the vast, intricate, and complex web of existence. Awe and gratitude, humbleness and humility. This dichotomy of bliss and terror, of struggle and surrender, seems to be a universal template for the evolution of consciousness. It is an integral part of the path to happiness. Bache further explains:

[This is] why our scientific traditions shun the exploration of consciousness — it’s so damn hard! It’s scary to crack the shell of our mind.

The science journalist John Horgan, best known for his book The End of Science, also experienced both sides of this dichotomy. He described his visions with ayahuasca as follows:

The colors became ever-more-dazzling, the shapes ever-more-complex, until there were no shapes and colors any more. They yielded to something deeper and more fundamental than shape, color, syntax, thought: the metaphysical principles underlying all things, the machine code of reality.

However, the disclosure had its price. His visions were accompanied by a fear of losing his mind. He summarized his struggles:

After I threw up, I had a cosmic panic attack, in which I was menaced by malevolent, dayglo-hued polyhedra. I have no desire to repeat this experience.

Our physical reality is luckily very pleasant and predictable in its state of low-frequency. We can depend on its stability. In contrast, behind the veil resides high-frequency dynamism, speed, and an overwhelming informational richness. Radical novelty and change seem to persist there eternally. We can be grateful for the reducing valve of the brain, able to filter the influx of reality to the “measly trickle” of our sober waking consciousness, allowing us to function. And we should be deeply humbled by its capacity to open towards transcendence.

I feel deep awe and appreciation for the indigenous cultures which engaged with the intelligence in nature and beyond, discovering all the plant teachers. A great respect for the shamans cultivating and executing this knowledge, invoking the dance of transcendence. A profound appreciation for ayahuasca itself, this multidimensional and otherworldly healing and teaching agent. I am also very touched by the people participating in the ceremonies, willing to face their own shadow to heal. For some, this path is one of tremendous struggle on a long trajectory to happiness. This work requires so much courage.

One participant regularly experiences intense physical pain and deep suffering while immersed in the ceremonies. During a period of her struggles, I glanced over, sensing something. As I don’t wear my glasses during the ceremonies, I only see blurred images and outlines. However, I could see a distinct darkness enveloping her head. Another participant had a full breakdown after the second night. The next day, she shared that she had been in a state where she felt she had died. Only her body without her head remained. She then visited previous generations of ancestors, healing the trauma of a lineage afflicted by violence. Through tears of gratitude, she said that this was the most meaningful experience of her entire life. I can only lower my head in deep sympathy and respect. Others drank three cups a night and were gifted with blissful and joyous experiences.

The second night also brought an unexpected gift. I was shown my spirit animal, an insight that was repeatedly validated by synchronistic events in the days that followed. Synchronicity seems best understood as a mapping between the inner and outer worlds, instantiated through meaning. As such, it is an expected feature of a cosmos emerging from a field of pure awareness from within a transcendental multiverse, one that harbors meaning and purpose.

My future ayahuasca path is open. I do not know when I will commune again with transcendence. However, I do know that the gifts ayahuasca can offer us are exceptionally powerful, profound, and transformational. There is much work to be done.

]]> <![CDATA[How to Live a Happier Life (abridged)]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/how-to-live-a-happier-life-abridged-aa0da41148f1?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/aa0da41148f1 Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:41:13 GMT 2026-08-10T12:07:51.306Z A Simple Self-Help Guide

The self-help industry is a rapidly growing, multi-billion global market, offering books, coaching, apps, and seminars focused on personal growth, career enhancement, health, and longevity. This demand is understandable, given the increasing challenges and velocity of modern life.

A diagnosis of the collective state of the people living in industrialized nations would be incomplete without mentioning:

  • the burnout crisis;
  • the mental health crisis;
  • the loneliness epidemic;
  • increasing trauma-related disorders;
  • increasing chronic diseases.

Our complex and interconnected lives have become ever harder to navigate. We are witnessing:

  • the normalization of lying, cruelty, and narcissism;
  • the weaponization of ideology;
  • online radicalization through fabricated outrage, rampant disinformation, and willful ignorance;
  • the loss of a consensus reality in an emerging post-truth world;
  • the erosion of the social fabric.

A global environment of fear, denial, cynicism, indifference, callousness, superficiality, disenchantment, and alienation is cultivated. As a result, it is not surprising that many people try to ease this existential pressure by distracting themselves with blind consumerism and numbing escapism.

Making matters worse, our dysfunctional human behaviors are destabilizing the entire biosphere, pushing planetary systems towards their tipping points [src1, src2], all while seven out of nine planetary boundaries have already been breached [src]. We have created linear systems of extraction and disposal that, on a finite planet, inevitably result in unsustainable exploitation and systemic pollution. We are committing ecocide at a dramatic and increasing scale.

At the same time, our financial systems are dysfunctional [src1, src2] and demand eternal growth. Inequality is increasing at an alarming pace, with ever fewer individuals possessing unfathomable amounts of wealth. The prevailing political-economic systems appear to generate inequality as a design feature. Meanwhile, global debt has long reached absurd levels, threatening future prosperity.

It seems fair to characterize the zeitgeist as follows:

  • Individually, we are suffering from a spiritual crisis. We’ve lost meaning. What are we doing here?
  • Collectively, we are suffering from a mass psychosis destroying ourselves and the planet.

The word hypernormalization [src] seems to describe the status quo best:

A state where a clearly dysfunctional society continues to function because no one can imagine an alternative, leading everyone to pretend the absurdity is normal.

In this polycrisis era, it is unsurprising that people would seek the advice of self-help gurus. The allure of empowering guidance can be especially irresistible in times of personal and collective vulnerability and crisis. Who wouldn’t be enticed by the following promises:

  • “Manifest the life you deserve.”
  • “Unlock your limitless potential.”
  • “The universe wants you to be prosperous.”
  • “Become the person you were always meant to be.”
  • “This optimization protocol will change everything.”
  • “Discover what’s holding you back from feeling the way you want to.”

But what if individual and global disenchantment have the same root cause? A remarkably simple but very unexpected explanation? What if you already have all the tools needed to fundamentally transform your experience of life, allowing you to create meaning and find purpose? What if the antidote requires no guru to follow and no product to purchase?

Setting the Stage

Every one of us is embedded in a socio-cultural context that is solely determined by geography. Norms and conventions enforced in one place might be understood as fundamentally flawed when viewed through the lens of a different culture. This is the first realization. Many of the beliefs, convictions, and value systems we have internalized are products of geography-dependent conditioning. If you had been born in another place on Earth, you most likely would hold radically different beliefs about the world, the self, and what matters. The Western mind itself is a case in point, harboring peculiarities so pervasive they are rarely noticed from within [src].

The second insight is what the First Noble Truth of Buddhism teaches. Namely, that suffering is an inherent aspect of existence. Your life is temporary. You will die. Everyone you love, everything you possess, will be lost. However, in today’s hyper-modern and consumer-driven societies, the concept of death is rendered invisible [src]. Advertisements glorify an illusion of eternal youth. Nursing homes, hospices, and the funeral industry offer outsourced services that allow families to minimize confrontation with the dying. Death is managed and sanitized, less as a profound existential circumstance and more as a logistical problem to be handled by professionals. The denial of one’s own mortality is perhaps the most dysfunctional expression of a disenchanted worldview.

The third point to observe is epistemological. Today’s world is shaped by the Western mind [src]. By mastering rationality and decoding the external world with the language of mathematics [src1, src2, src3, src4], the Western mind set out to conquer the world and the solar system. The extraordinary success of this endeavor is witnessed in the astonishing levels of technological mastery. Unprecedented leaps in progress continue to eclipse what were once considered the pinnacles of human achievement.

While these accomplishments are a testament to human ingenuity, the Western mind is afflicted by dramatic blind spots:

  1. Rationality, common sense, and logic are not the only modes of cognition. Yet the Western mind’s exclusive focus on these faculties has neglected the skills of interiority — mindfulness, meditation, introspection, and contemplative practice — blocking other valid paths to knowledge.
  2. The dominance of patriarchal values — hierarchy, control, and conquest — has suppressed relational, embodied, and cyclical ways of being. The punishing father-god archetype has displaced the nurturing goddesses [src1, src2, src3] that preceded it. Indeed, the mother goddess [src] was the original sacred image of humanity, present across cultures for over twenty thousand years before the severance.

However, the most fundamental problem is ontological. This is the fourth challenge. We all hold necessarily irrational beliefs about the nature of reality and consciousness due to the fundamentally unresolved questions shrouding these enigmas. To this day, consciousness remains an intractable enigma [src1, src2], while the foundations of reality are illogical and incoherent [src]. Furthermore, the list of unsolved problems in science is long [src1, src2], and philosophy has moved from the confident rationalism of logical positivism to the radical skepticism of postmodernism, without arriving at a common ground [src].

It is a remarkable but inevitable fact that there is no certainty to be had about the nature of existence. As we are all forever locked in consciousness, everything we perceive and experience is mediated through consciousness. This means we are never “in touch” with a reality outside of our mind. This existential restriction is captured by the inescapable concept of solipsism, the philosophical position that only one’s own mind is sure to exist, and that knowledge of anything outside one’s own consciousness is impossible. While solipsism cannot be disproved empirically or theoretically, it is mostly dismissed because it offers no practical utility.

Today, two main metaphysical perspectives dominate human thought:

  • Physicalism: Only physical reality exists, and it is governed solely by physical processes.
  • Theism: A divine being is the source and sustainer of existence.

Both frameworks are problematic:

  • Physicalism is an unprovable metaphysical assumption that has masqueraded as a scientific fact [src].
  • Of all the existing versions of theism, how should the “correct one” be discerned, and how should we address the tension between competing factions? Moreover, institutionalized religions gravitate towards static and dogmatic thinking.

Both choices lead to disenchanted worldviews:

  • Physicalism’s cosmic nihilism: We inhabit a random, purposeless, and arguably cruel cosmos. There is no meaning in anything, and when you die, you simply cease to exist.
  • Theism’s heteronomy: Meaning is surrendered to an external authority, leaving the individual both unaccountable and dependent on rigid doctrines.

Having charted this existential terrain and identified the foundational pathologies, the current polycrisis seems hardly surprising. A civilization lacking interior literacy — skills of attention, humility, self-regulation, and meaning-making — will inevitably project its own unresolved dysfunctional dynamics onto the world. A civilization relying on rivaling desiccated and ossified dogmas will never find peace and wisdom.

The First Steps

Individual transformation is a powerful response to a collective crisis. By becoming a happier person, you become an inspiration for those around you. In order to live a happier life, we first need to examine our relationship to suffering, death, meaning, and each other. This requires a multi-level reevaluation of our deepest belief commitments. Thus, a radical re-contextualization is called for:

  1. Socio-cultural indoctrination: Assess the beliefs, values, and norms uncritically absorbed from the context you were born into.
  2. Epistemological constraints: Acknowledge the limits of rationality as the sole mode of knowing.
  3. Ontological assumptions: Examine the metaphysical foundations underlying your sense of reality.

But how do we begin?

Perhaps by listening to what other cultures have always known. Since the dawning of the human mind, virtually every tradition has developed and cultivated skills of introspection. As a result, the archetypal master of consciousness emerged, persisting throughout time in the guise of the shaman, the mystic, the meditator, and the psychonaut [src].

At the core of this mode of being lies a lived experience informed by non-ordinary states of consciousness. Our sober waking consciousness is just one competing state in a vast spectrum of awareness that can be radically altered by trance, meditation, breathwork, and psychedelics (surprisingly, sometimes even spontaneously or due to left hemisphere brain damage [src]). Challenging the Western mind’s perceived cognitive supremacy, a profound insight is remembered: consciousness can access and experience what many traditions describe as non-physical realms of existence, thereby revealing forms of experiential knowledge that rationality alone cannot reach.

As we all have the faculties to explore such non-ordinary states of consciousness, the notion of empirical metaphysics becomes possible. This is the proposal that what we discover in altered states may reveal something real and reproducible about the nature of existence, including the essence of our own being. In more technical terms, modulations of consciousness can provide phenomenological constraints on viable metaphysical models.

Across traditions, two consistent insights have been echoed over time by the masters of consciousness [src]:

  1. Existence extends beyond physical reality.
  2. Underlying physical reality lies a field of consciousness, a structuring intelligence, or a divine love.

Remarkably, this knowledge has also always been implicitly woven into Western philosophy since Plato and had temporarily reemerged as metaphysical idealism in Britain and Germany from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. Idealism is the claim that reality is fundamentally and exclusively mental. In other words, it understands consciousness as foundational, with everything physical being derived from this ground of pure awareness.

Although analytic philosophers successfully smothered idealism at the turn of the 20th century, labeling it a romanticization of subjectivity lacking logical rigor, we are now witnessing the renaissance of idealism in philosophy [src1, src2, src3] and in some parts of science [src1, src2]. Especially since the psychedelic renaissance [src], the nascent philosophy of psychedelics [src1, src2] has focused on the phenomenal content of the most radical and rich modes of consciousness accessible to the human mind.

I chronicled the current rise of idealism (and the demise of physicalism) in my last book, “The Sapient Cosmos: What a Modern-Day Synthesis of Science and Philosophy Teaches Us About the Emergence of Information, Consciousness, and Meaning” [src1, src2]. Therein, I propose syncretic idealism [src], a philosophical synthesis that combines recurring themes across different formulations of idealism with elements from other philosophical systems and insights from the evolving information-theoretic paradigm in physics [src].

The framework unveils a transcendental multiverse, just waiting to be explored by anyone brave enough to go beyond the comforting familiarity of consensus reality. It also identifies a will to complexity, a cosmic drive towards ever-greater order and meaning that governs the evolution of the universe itself. In other words, the universe’s observed drive towards ever-greater levels of self-organized structure is reframed from a brute fact under physicalism into a teleology, a cosmic purpose.

On a personal note, a recent ayahuasca ceremony transformed my rational understanding of empirical metaphysics into a lived experience in a truly epistemically shocking way [src]. Entheogens are psychoactive substances used in a ceremonial and spiritual context, utilized since the beginning of human culture. Remarkably, the history of psychedelics reveals one of the Western mind’s gravest blind spots. By fetishizing the sober waking mode of consciousness, the Western mind has deemed all other modes of sentience impure, delusional, or perilous. A prime example of this prejudice can be found in the academic assessment of shamanism.

Shamanism is an ancient and universal human phenomenon, appearing around the world in the Upper Paleolithic or probably earlier. It is the oldest human spiritual tradition, characterized by numinous experiences of reality (animism) and dedicated to navigating non-ordinary states of consciousness. As such, the shamans are avid travelers between the physical and the non-physical worlds of existence. Within their responsibilities lie healing, divination, and spirit communication [src].

However, early anthropologists looked at shamans and diagnosed them as “epileptic, psychotic, hysterical, and schizophrenic” [src]. The historian Mircea Eliade was the first academic to identify the universality of shamanic practices worldwide. He summarized this in his seminal work “Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy” [src], wherein he claimed:

Narcotics are only a vulgar substitute for “pure” trance. […] Narcotic intoxication is called on to provide an imitation of a state that the shaman is no longer capable of attaining otherwise.

This is a remarkable bias and reflects the psychedelic illiteracy of his era, as entheogens, often called plant teachers, are a sophisticated consciousness technology at the center of indigenous traditions worldwide. They are a powerful vehicle for transrational knowledge generation, as evidenced by the extraordinary pharmacological understanding of indigenous traditions, developed without formal science yet identifying a myriad of compounds that Western medicine relies on [src]. The ethnobotanist Christian Rätsch, who visited many indigenous peoples to learn their shamanic botanical knowledge, documented the unfathomable abundance of psychedelic flora and their multifaceted use in “The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications” [src]. This comprehensive guide counts a stunning 952 pages.

Why does such a plethora of chemicals exist in nature, which can profoundly alter and greatly enhance the normal functioning of the sober waking state of the human mind? Why don’t psychoactive plant molecules simply induce unconsciousness, delirium, or death? The physicalist will shrug and proclaim this to be another brute fact, an interesting coincidence. The shamans tell us a very different story, centered on the intelligence permeating the unseen world and expressed in nature [src].

In an idealist framing, the brain is understood as a transceiver rather than a generator of consciousness [src]. Aldous Huxley, inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson, proposed the concept of Mind at Large, an oceanic boundlessness of consciousness that must be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain into a “measly trickle” of sober waking consciousness, thereby allowing us to survive on this planet [src]. Psychedelics have the capacity to alter the valve’s functioning, increasing the throughput of consciousness in the psychonaut and opening the doors of perception to transcendence. The words of the poet William Blake come to mind: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite” [src].

One remarkable example of the molecular compatibility between plant compounds and human physiology is the endocannabinoid system, discovered in the late 1980s. This is one of the most extensive signaling networks in the brain and body. Its cannabinoid receptors (CB1 receptors in the brain) outnumber most other receptor types and function as regulators, modulating the activity of other neurotransmitter systems through feedback loops. This complex system helps maintain equilibrium across a wide range of functions, from hunger and temperature to alertness [src]. Cannabis is both a widely used illicit drug worldwide and the one with the longest recorded history of human use, dating back approximately 5,000 years to ancient China (where it was used to relieve pain and cramps) [src]. Today, its documented therapeutic applications include pain relief, anti-inflammatory, anticonvulsant, and antiemetic effects, though its association with recreational use has historically constrained its acceptance as a medical treatment [src].

The Axial Age was a pivotal period around 800–200 BCE [src], shaping India (the Vedic-to-Upanishadic transition, shifting emphasis from ritualistic practices to philosophy, Buddhism, and Jainism), China (the rise of Confucianism and Taoism), Greece (the development of Western philosophy), Persia (Zoroastrianism), and Israel (the rise of monotheism). Remarkably, the use of entheogens has been compellingly argued to have helped catalyze some of these spiritual breakthroughs. Notably, it is well attested in India through the Vedic soma tradition [src1, src2] and, as a serious scholarly hypothesis, in the case of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, centered on kykeon [src1, src2]. Indeed, it is hardly ever mentioned that the philosophy of Plato, who is regarded as the “father” of idealism, “was partly inspired by psychedelic intake” [src]. It is easy to imagine the Platonic realm of pure Forms and the Allegory of the Cave being directly inspired by first-hand psychedelic experiences of transcendence. The philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead said that the “safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” [src].

While shamanism spans the globe, it is conspicuously absent in Europe. Some scholars have offered explanations. “In medieval and Renaissance Europe, widows and elderly women often became […] healing shamans. Of course, the Inquisition termed them ‘witches’” [src]. The thesis of the book “The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name” argues that psychedelics were foundational to Western civilization’s original religion, a prehistoric ritual tradition that survived for millennia before being adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. It was eventually suppressed by the Church, its memory erased by centuries of witch hunts. This nameless tradition, the author contends, is the longest-running religion the world has ever known [src].

The emergence of the first chemically altered states of consciousness in the modern Western world began in the 18th century, before being stigmatized and demonized by the end of the 19th century [src]. It was an era in which doctors and scientists often performed self-experiments with drugs, notably nitrous oxide and ether. The pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James was profoundly influenced by his psychedelic experiences induced by inhaling nitrous oxide [src]. He devoted significant attention to the investigation of mystical experiences, culminating in his landmark 1902 work “The Varieties of Religious Experience” [src]. The mostly hidden history of the drug use of Western intellectuals includes Arthur Schopenhauer (generally promoted the use of intoxicants [src]), Friedrich Nietzsche (various drugs [src]), Sigmund Freud (cocaine [src]), Aldous Huxley (mescaline [src]), Robert Gordon Wasson (bringing psilocybin to the West [src] to the detriment of the curandera Maria Sabina who initiated him [src]), Jean-Paul Sartre (mescaline, leading to a mental breakdown [src]), and Albert Hofmann (serendipitous LSD [src]).

Psychedelics and their many promising therapeutic applications, including the treatment of alcoholism [src], were banned by Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs” in 1970 [src]. It was later greatly expanded and militarized by Ronald Reagan [src]. Regrettably, one of the most encouraging frontiers in psychiatric medicine was shut down by what was later disclosed as a deceitful political agenda [src]. It is a bitter irony that psychedelics, still today, are classified as Schedule I drugs, like heroin. Specifically, these are “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse” [src]. Nonetheless, the nascent psychedelic renaissance has brought psychedelics back into serious scientific discourse and, importantly, reemphasized their therapeutic efficacy in treating many disorders, including treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders, and addiction [src1, src2, src3, src4, src5, src6].

Psychedelics have also been shown to help alleviate end-of-life existential distress in patients with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis [src1, src2]. This is perhaps not too surprising, considering that psychedelics can induce mystical experiences. A landmark 2006 study heralding the psychedelic renaissance was titled “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance” [src]. Therein, a majority of volunteers rated the psychedelic experience as either the single most meaningful experience of their life or among the top five most meaningful ones, comparable to the birth of a first child. Moreover, psychedelics can induce enduring positive change through spiritual transformations, involving changes in metaphysical beliefs. Specifically, “idealism mediated a link between the use of psychedelics and subjective wellbeing” [src].

Only as late as 1998 did a seminal publication begin to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of psychedelics [src]. In detail, it was shown how psilocybin affects the human brain by stimulating the 5-HT2A serotonin receptors. In other words, psychedelics are 5-HT2A receptor agonists. Three remarkable and unexpected potential findings have recently emerged from psychedelic neuroscience. Psychedelics are suspected to promote neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to reorganize its structure and function), specifically through dendritogenesis (growth of dendritic branches), synaptogenesis (formation of new synaptic connections), and neurogenesis (generation of new neurons) [src1, src2, src3]. Psychedelics are also being studied for their potential longevity benefits [src1, src2].

However, the most unexpected finding relates to psychedelic neuroimaging studies, the first performed in 2012 [src]. The results appear to challenge a core physicalist assumption: that richer conscious experience requires greater neural activity. Christof Koch, a pioneering neuroscientist who helped introduce the concept of neural correlates of consciousness in 1990 [src], establishing neuroscience as a serious academic field, commented on the study [src]:

To the great surprise of many, psilocybin, a potent psychedelic, reduces brain activity. […] The study once again highlights how elusive our knowledge of the mind-brain hinge remains.

In detail, psychedelics do not simply increase overall brain activity as expected. Instead, many studies report reductions in activity, synchronization, and oscillatory power in key hub regions [src1, src2, src3], particularly within the brain’s Default Mode Network, a network associated with self-referential thinking, autobiographical memory, mind-wandering, and the sense of a stable, bounded self. Simultaneously, communication between regions that do not normally interact becomes more fluid and globally interconnected, while overall brain dynamics grow more flexible [src]. Moreover, widespread decreases in rhythmic brain oscillations were observed, especially alpha oscillations, which are thought to help maintain the brain’s normal filtering and stabilizing processes for ordinary waking cognition [src1, src2].

This raises a profound question: why would loosening or disorganizing major neural control systems correspond to a dramatic expansion and enrichment of conscious experience rather than a diminishment? The physicalist response involves introducing a second mechanism for conscious experience. During ordinary waking consciousness, neural activity correlates with subjective experience. For psychedelic states, however, it is not activity but disorder, namely entropy, that is now introduced to explain the richness of the phenomenal content of the experience [src1, src2]. However, not everyone is convinced [src].

It is worth noting that, currently, the nature of consciousness remains enigmatic [src], with 350 proposed scientific theories [src]. However, psychedelics are emerging as a powerful empirical tool in consciousness research. Interestingly, one of the most potent psychedelics is endogenous to humans, namely DMT [src]. While its physiological role remains largely unknown [src], the phenomenology of a DMT trip has striking similarities to near-death experiences [src]. Ayahuasca’s primary psychoactive component is also DMT, rendered orally active through the MAOIs present in the brew [src]. As a philosopher of psychedelics observed [src]:

To deny philosophers of mind psychedelic substances is tantamount to denying instruments to musicians. If one is to study consciousness, one must involve its most wondrous manifestation.

It is easy to forget that not too long ago, psychedelic states were dismissed as deluded hallucinations.

In closing, an honest assessment is that the nature of consciousness is a metaphysical affair. While most researchers still operate from within the safe confines of physicalism, some dare to question the orthodoxy. In the year 2023, Christof Koch conceded a bet he made 25 years earlier, wagering that by that year, the neural mechanisms of consciousness would be fully understood [src]. During this period, he converted from physicalism to panpsychism [src1, src2], the view that degrees of consciousness are inherent in fundamental matter.

Koch lost the bet to the philosopher of mind, David Chalmers, famous for introducing the hard problem of consciousness at a conference in 1994 [src]. This is the question of how non-conscious matter can coalesce and produce phenomenal experience. Or more specifically, why and how do brain processes give rise to subjective experiences? The hard problem challenges the metaphysical assumptions of physicalism, and “inspired a tidal wave of new scholarship” [src], shaping the dominant questions in the philosophy of mind and polarizing the discourse [src]. In 2020, Chalmers summarizes his intellectual evolution as follows [src]:

First, one is impressed by the successes of science, endorsing materialism about everything and so about the mind. Second, one is moved by the problem of consciousness to see a gap between physics and consciousness, thereby endorsing dualism, where both matter and consciousness are fundamental. Third, one is moved by the inscrutability of matter to realize that science reveals at most the structure of matter and not its underlying nature, and to speculate that this nature may involve consciousness, thereby endorsing panpsychism. Fourth, one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness, thereby endorsing idealism.
In my own work, I have taken the first two steps and have flirted heavily with the third. In this paper I want to examine the prospects for the fourth step: the move to idealism.

Chalmers concludes by pointing out that “no position on the mind–body problem is plausible,” and that “idealism is not greatly less plausible than its main competitors.”

The Art of Being Happy

The most liberating aspect of idealism is the potential merger of two historically separated existential pursuits, unveiling the promise of scientific spirituality [src]. In other words, uniting the rigorous study of the outer world with deep inner exploration. This synthesis offers a practical and comprehensive guide to personal transformation and well-being. The goal is to become a happier person based on a deep and holistic transformation of one’s self.

Scientific spirituality is not only a metaphysical position but should crucially be a lived practice. What follows maps its expression across the core dimensions of human well-being. The four pillars of happiness are categorized as follows:

  1. Physical foundation
    a. Nutrition and hydration
    b. Exercise
    c. Sleep
    d. Breathing techniques
    e. Avoidance of toxins
  2. Mental practice
    a. Looking inward
    b. Mental hygiene
    c. Combating fear and anxiety
    d. Seeking truth
  3. Relational embedding
    a. Social connection
    b. Ecological connection
    c. Play and leisure
    d. Altruistic joy
  4. Metaphysical context
    a. Suffering
    b. Death
    c. Meaning
    d. Purpose

The essence can be captured by expanding a classic Latin phrase:

Mens sana in corpore sano, in nexu vivo, in mysterio accepto.

“A sound mind in a sound body, in living connection, in accepted mystery.”

1. The Physical Pillar

Happiness is a state of mind that requires nurturing and cultivation. A foundational prerequisite is a healthy body. There are surprisingly many, and often very simple, behaviors that have been shown to be beneficial to human health. It is remarkable that most people choose not to engage with these insights and actually seem to actively resist them.

See the full article for sections 1.a. to 1.e.

2. The Mental Pillar

Here, we move from the physical world to the mental world, tracing the arc of scientific spirituality. Essentially, the first step towards spirituality is a willingness to engage with one’s own consciousness. It is also an invitation to face one’s self with compassion.

See the full article for sections 2.a. to 2.d.

3. The Relational Pillar

Complexity theory teaches us to understand all of reality as an interconnected web of interactions [src]. As humans, we are embedded in multiple networks of environmental and social ties. Indeed, humans are social animals [src] and socially transmitted behaviors have shaped our culture [src]. Nothing on Earth exists in isolation, as everything is woven into the web of life [src]. A quote sometimes attributed to Banksy summarizes the issues:

We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us, and wealth classified us.

See the full article for sections 3.a. to 3.d.

4. The Metaphysical Pillar

The pillars of physical foundation, mental practice, and relational embedding address the conditions for a life well lived. But conditions are not foundations. Beneath them lies something prior: the existential belief structure through which we interpret existence. We all hold some sort of metaphysical belief about existence.

The metaphysical pillar allows the other ones to flourish. Without this foundation, no amount of healthy living, mental practice, or connection will coalesce into a holistic vision of what it means to live a happy life. It is an answer to the question of how we meet existence itself.

Idealism offers fertile metaphysical ground. It is both rationally defensible and experientially accessible. It is a vision that has been part of human culture since the dawning of the human mind, meandering through history, sometimes unseen. The Western mind is now rediscovering it.

It is here that scientific spirituality is most effective, not as a doctrine, but as a living orientation. At its core, it is a fundamental re-contextualization that can transform every aspect of life. Suffering, death, meaning, and purpose take on new liberating forms.

See the full article for sections 4.a. to 4.d.

The Path to Happiness

It is time to look back and summarize what has been proposed. Cultivating happiness is surprisingly straightforward. You don’t need to follow a guru or purchase any product. The tools are already within you. And they are simple:

  • Maintain a healthy body — Mens sana.
  • Nurture a sound mind — In corpore sano.
  • Form strong connections — In nexu vivo.
  • Ground yourself in a meaningful worldview, embracing uncertainty — In mysterio accepto.

Or stated more formally, happiness is built on four pillars, each with its own facets:

  1. Physical foundation: Nutrition and hydration · Exercise · Sleep · Breathing techniques · Avoidance of toxins
  2. Mental practice: Looking inward · Mental hygiene · Combating fear and anxiety · Seeking truth
  3. Relational embedding: Social connection · Ecological connection · Play and leisure · Altruistic joy
  4. Metaphysical context: Suffering · Death · Meaning · Purpose

This list is an integration of scientific knowledge and spiritual wisdom.

Physical foundation: Your body is the instrument through which all experience flows. Your diet is the most fundamental means you have for maintaining its function. “You are what you eat” is not a hollow expression, as every cell in you carries a dietary imprint. A growing body of evidence is uncovering what constitutes a healthy diet, including its causal mechanisms. Hydration is another important factor, often neglected. Sugar-sweetened beverages are the worst possible option. Physical activity is equally foundational for good health. It is remarkable that even modest amounts of regular exercise meaningfully promote health. In a strange twist, many people see the need for sleep as a sign of weakness, which is the actual reversal of the truth. Even something as unremarkable as breathing can be utilized for therapeutic purposes. Avoiding known toxins is a trade-off: the relief they can provide is weighed against the risks, but minimizing their use is a clear goal.

Mental practice: The Western mind has primarily oriented itself towards the outer world. Eastern traditions, by contrast, have always emphasized exploring the dimensions of our inner worlds. Meditation and mindfulness are techniques we can easily implement in our daily lives. The brain physically reorganizes in response to how we think. Cultivating beneficial habits of mind can further foster well-being, be they self-compassion, gratitude, humility, or authenticity. Do not root your self-worth in what you imagine others think of you, and liberate yourself from imposed status expectations. Greed, leaving one perpetually unsatisfied, is one of the most destructive patterns of being. A healthy mind will not be plagued by fear and anxiety, unhealthy states affecting ever more people. Awareness of one’s mental limitations is essential, as cognitive biases reliably distort reality. As such, truthfulness is not just a virtue. It is a shield against the dark places haunted by conspiratorial thinking.

Relational embedding: Humans are social animals, and social bonds are essential for thriving. Isolation and loneliness are demonstrably harmful to both mental and physical health. But also never hesitate to sever toxic relations. Establishing a connection to the natural world is a biological necessity, the very condition under which the human nervous system evolved. Cherish the beauty in nature. Daring to be playful and childish throughout one’s entire life is a guard against taking existence too seriously. Most surprisingly, genuine pleasure in the well-being of others is itself an unexpected source of joy.

Metaphysical context: Nothing is certain. Our understanding of reality and consciousness is incomplete. There could be something we don’t yet know about ourselves and the universe we inhabit, the knowledge of which could change everything. Knowingly or not, you already hold a metaphysical belief. Unfortunately, the most popular options constrain our worldviews, either by declaring existence meaningless or by placing its meaning in the hands of an external supernatural authority. It is easy to argue that these beliefs are the root cause of our collective existential malaise.

Metaphysics is, by definition, unprovable, which raises an important question: how should we best choose? It is a remarkable fact that our consciousness can experience seemingly non-physical planes of existence. By altering our consciousness through trance, meditation, breathwork, or psychedelics, we can access experiential realms transcending rationality. This has been known throughout history by the masters of consciousness: the shamans, the mystics, the meditators, and the psychonauts.

What you do with this knowledge is yours to decide. Metaphysical idealism, the belief that consciousness is fundamental to reality, the foundation of existence, is both the most natural expression of this insight and the ground for a meaningful worldview. Idealism is experiencing a renaissance in philosophy and the foundations of physics. Idealism is both rationally viable and possible to experience first-hand, giving rise to the notion of empirical metaphysics.

Idealism places you at the center of your own experienceable universe, fully accountable and free to act. It is a view that emphasizes the kinship of all that exists. Idealism enables a profound re-contextualization of suffering, death, meaning, and purpose. Without this foundation, no amount of healthy living, mental practice, or connection will coalesce into a holistic and liberating vision of what it means to be alive. It is the lens through which we re-enchant the universe. It is a key to sustained happiness. And so, a foundational first step on the path to happiness is existential openness. Even without certainty that idealism is the correct metaphysics, accepting that there is an unknowable mystery can be a profoundly transformational choice.

In the end, we should all strive to become healers. And in order to heal the world, we must first heal ourselves. Individual transformation lies at the heart of collective transformation. To counter the civilizational threats we are creating, we must become happier people.

We must learn to love ourselves and the world.

Aho.

—

Originally published on Substack.

]]> <![CDATA[Lifting the Veil]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/lifting-the-veil-fce78c24d711?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/fce78c24d711 Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:11:06 GMT 2026-10-29T14:30:23.541Z My First Encounter with Ayahuasca

A warning. Psychedelics are extremely powerful substances. They have profound healing and teaching potential. However, improper use can cause great harm. Not everyone should use them.

Descent and Resurrection

When I was 18, I took LSD. It shattered my psyche. This happened despite my attempts to prepare for the experience. I had been interested in the substance for some time. In my parents’ bookshelf, I had once found a copy of LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug, by David Solomon, a collection of scholarly essays published in 1966. Later, I read Aldous Huxley’s classic The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, which enthralled me. My friends had already started dabbling, and I knew soon the time would be right.

A very good friend of mine had access to LSD and gave me a tab, accompanied by the warning words, “This will atomize you!” The little blotter paper depicted a Buddha. So, with another friend as a sitter, on a sunny summer day, we visited a mountain forest and started a fire. This took place in the eastern part of Switzerland.

I came prepared: notepad, personal items, etc. Heeding the warning, I only took half of the blotter. After about 50 minutes, I started to feel uneasy. Nothing was happening. We discussed this predicament and concluded that the only solution was for me to take the other half as well. Which I did, and then shortly afterwards, the first dose kicked in.

Here, my memory fails. The experience was simply too intense and incoherent. Not a bad trip per se, no terror or fear, just an overwhelming influx of otherworldiness. I was mostly in a subconscious state. At one point in the experience, my friend took me to the little river flowing next to our camp and submerged my face in the ice-cold water. I felt as if my entire consciousness was fractured into infinite pieces, all scattered across the entire universe, which now, in one instance, zoomed back into a single, coherent, unified, sober state. I looked at my friend with great surprise. “Wow,” I exclaimed, and my friend smiled knowingly. Then the effects took over again. Looking at the trees had a kaleidoscopic effect. Moving my hands left a soft trail of glitter lingering in the air. Then back to incoherence.

The next day, I woke up and was OK. “Bummer,” I thought, feeling very disappointed in the experience. I had such high expectations. And then, a few weeks later, the terror began. For about a year, I was tormented by nonspecific panic attacks—random feelings of deep fear and despair. Sometimes, looking in the mirror, I wondered whose reflection this was. I feared losing my mind. I sometimes wondered with great horror, “What if I suddenly hear voices in my head?” “What if I simply fall out of reality?” I knew no one could help me, as no one knows what I am experiencing. I accepted the fact that this was now my life. I had ruined my future by taking drugs.

Then, my mother introduced me to a kind older lady who specialized in Bach Remedies, and the healing began. The attacks became less frequent, and perhaps after another year, I was stable. Looking back, I believe the following had happened. Psychedelics give access to experiences of transcendence, which can feel strikingly similar to psychosis or schizophrenia (hence the early suggestion to call them psychotomimetics). If your psyche is not grounded or strong enough, as is the case for teenagers, then a too-strong dose will feel like reality uprooting. My then freshly formed conception of reality, still fragile, was totally obliterated. The reintegration and reconfiguration of my reality context apparently needed a release valve: the bouts of utter panic.

For a long time after healing, I was firmly clinging to sobriety and in no way willing to alter my consciousness even a little bit. Only slowly, around the age of 25, was I able to tolerate alcohol and THC again, the latter a companion of my teenage years. Indeed, THC now gifted me semi-mystical states during a challenging time, as my father was dying of cancer. I also remember vividly when I crossed the threshold with THC for the first time again. The realization came fast: “Oh dear, you smoked too much!” Then that crippling feeling of terror I knew so well began to form again and engulf me. The demon was back! However, I managed to banish it and never felt fear or panic since. To this day, I am deeply grateful for the LSD experience, as it made me the person I am today.

It took well into my late forties before I ventured back into deeper psychedelic territory again. This time with another friend in Amsterdam, consuming psilocybin. There, another threshold of trust was crossed. But nothing could have ever prepared me for what was to come with Ayahuasca.

The Calling

It is said that Ayahuasca can offer invitations. Mine was mediated through my book The Sapient Cosmos. A friend texted me saying that his visitor had looked at a copy of the book and needs to talk to me. I joined them for brunch the next day. The visitor, a person intimately connected with Ayahuasca, had randomly opened the book and read a passage about Ayahuasca that resonated deeply. After a discussion, he said, “You know, this synchronicity is also relevant for you. In five weeks, at the end of February, there will be a shamanic Ayahuasca ceremony near Zurich. You should go.” My first reaction was to reject the offer, as I had done on other occasions. However, after thinking a bit, I realized that, as the saying goes, if it rings, pick up the phone.

Shortly afterwards, a process started. I suddenly had the urge to read my old diaries and contemplate the trajectory of my life. Apparently, this can happen once you accept the calling. The medicine begins to work as soon as you are prepared to face it. I started with the Ayahuasca preparation two weeks before the ceremony. For the first time in my life, I had participated in Dry January, so the timing was excellent as I simply extended the period of sobriety. Indeed, the timing felt very intentional, as I am currently in a transitional phase of my life, having quit the line of work I was doing and still seeking a more meaningful occupation. I also stopped doomscrolling and consuming news (Bill Burr’s observation came to mind, that the news has just become absolutely terrible shit you can do nothing about). During this whole period, the process deepened, as I felt in a liminal state between worlds. I lost over 3 kg in the two weeks and returned home from the ceremony weekend 5 kg lighter.

The First Ceremony: The Stupidity of the Western Mind

On a sunny spring day, 35 years after the LSD experience, I arrived at the place where the ceremony was to be held: 18 participants, six facilitators, and a Guarani shaman. What immediately struck me was the great diversity of the people’s characters and occupations, from all walks of life. However, what united them all was a deep authenticity and presence. People working with Ayahuasca seem to have no more need to hide behind masks and projected status as they sincerely want to focus on healing or learning, and being a better person. As some say, wake up, clean up, grow up, show up.

The first ceremony began on Friday evening at 9 pm. I was given a small dose, approximately 10 milliliters. The Ayahuasca tasted a bit like honey, but with other complex fragrances. The shaman began chanting, drumming, and rattling. Emotionless tears started to flow down my cheeks, something that kept recurring during the night. The power of the icaros.

After about 45 minutes, the effects began to manifest. I felt some crazy, peacock-feather-like entities darting through my body at great speed, as if scanning me. At one point, I entered a ketamine-like state of weirdness. It was a “place” of some deep consciousness, perhaps subconsciousness. Primal and non-human. I felt like I had been here before, perhaps in a dream.

Overall, the experience was like being in two realities at once. I was clearly sitting in the ceremonial room, feeling my body, while simultaneously being immersed in a non-physical reality. Bouts of sorrow, followed by gratitude and happiness. Lots of yawning, cosmic yawning. The shaman’s invocations were alternated by the singing and guitar playing of a facilitator. This music was truly divine, deeply energetic, and captivating. To a casual observer, the scene could easily be mistaken for a festival-like gathering in Ibiza.

The ceremony lasted 6 hours. Overall, I felt Ayahuasca was being gentle, although some periods were quite intense. There was no purging; perhaps the preparation helped. At one point in the ceremony, the participants gathered for a traditional shamanic dance. I felt I was joining an age-old, timeless, endlessly repeating ritual in which the ancestors were present and dancing with us.

One teaching of the night seemed to be emerging: the arrogance of the Western mind and its stupidity. By focusing solely on decoding the outer world, the Western mind forgot to look within. And so an entire domain of existence was missed. This is most acutely seen in the dismissal of indigenous knowledge. As Jeremy Narby writes in The Cosmic Serpent, early anthropologists looked at the shamans and diagnosed them as “epileptic, psychotic, hysterical, and schizophrenic.” Or the historian Mircea Eliade, who was the first to identify the universality of shamanic practices worldwide, summarized in his seminal work Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. He claimed:

Narcotics are only a vulgar substitute for “pure” trance. […] Narcotic intoxication is called on to provide an imitation of a state that the shaman is no longer capable of attaining otherwise.

How is it possible to be so close and yet so tragically miss the entire point?

How can the Western mind be so clever with all its science and philosophy, yet be so damningly stupid and overlook the most immediate and important aspect of existence, namely, its own consciousness, its own inner worlds? Just as a reminder, we still have no universally accepted definition of consciousness in academia, and the philosophy of mind is split into two fundamentally opposed camps: the illusionists, claiming that subjective consciousness isn’t real, just a chimera, a bag of tricks, and the idealists and panpsychists claiming consciousness is fundamental. Both views are metaphysical claims that cannot be proved or disproved.

Another influential thinker comes to mind, namely the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. Together with the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, he undertook one of the most ambitious intellectual projects of the 20th century: to show that all of mathematics can be derived from pure logic. After 378 pages of densely coded abstract symbols of Volume 1 of their Principia Mathematica, we can read:

From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2.

Unexpectedly and remarkably, Kurt Gödel’s two incompleteness theorems later exposed the fundamental limits to the dream of a complete axiomatization of mathematics. Decades later, the mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin extended Gödel’s haunting legacy. He declared:

Let me repeat: formal axiomatic systems are a failure!

Russell also possessed great emotional intelligence, once exclaiming:

Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. And if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Nonetheless, Russell was one of the key figures who helped dismantle British and German idealism at the beginning of the 20th century, a movement that eventually became known as analytic philosophy. The proponents asserted a seriousness with their philosophy, moving away from romantic ideas and mysticism. Yet again, we see the acute limitation of the Western mind: a master in conjuring up intricate abstract constructs of thought, while entirely neglecting any systematic exploration of its own interior dimensions. A staggering blind spot.

When I look at the shaman in ordinary reality, I see a kind, friendly, and humble person. Nothing would indicate anything extraordinary. However, witnessing him conduct the ceremony revealed a very powerful master of consciousness, orchestrating the dance of transcendence, invoking spirits, and ensuring the group’s spiritual well-being during the otherworldly journey. This echoes the shamanic wisdom that everything in physical reality has a representation and correspondence in non-ordinary reality. Throughout the entire 6 to 7 hours of the ceremony, the shaman worked tirelessly at an energetic level! While the knowledge and power this human possesses are truly humbling, the Western mind would simply shrug and claim this to be a romanticizing of primitive indigenous culture. Just silly superstition at the end of the day.

I also felt a deep appreciation for Chris Bache’s work. As a pioneering philosopher of psychedelics, he undertook unimaginable ordeals to reveal the metaphysical structure of transcendence. Twenty years and 73 high-dose LSD sessions resulted in the book LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven. I can only marvel at the unbearable intensity he must have faced during his voyages. The Western mind owes him deep gratitude for his hard and sacrificial work.

The Second Ceremony: Infinite and Ensouled Complexity

The next day, I awoke after about four hours of sleep. I felt quite raw. A cacao ceremony with an integration circle followed in the afternoon. The experiences of the previous night were shared. So much trauma is suffered by humanity. Then, a yoga session. This all helped me realign and center again, though some tension remained. Communing with Ayahuasca requires quite some commitment, strength, and trust. At 9 pm on Saturday, the second ceremony commenced. I asked the shaman for the same dose as the day before. Now the medicine was harder to swallow. Apparently, the more you drink Ayahuasca, the more challenging it becomes. Almost as if your body recognizes an intense energy footprint in the dark, viscous liquid it reacts to.

I was in no way prepared for what would unfold. All my research into and writing about non-ordinary states of consciousness did not help at all. This is the deep chasm between rational knowledge and transrational experiential knowledge. There is no bridge between the two modes of knowing. I kept thinking, “I cannot believe this is happening!”

During the first night, my ego kept popping up, trying to analyze and offer narratives. The experiences of the second night, however, seemed to have really scared it away. But this was not ego death, just ego silence. No annihilation or loss of self, just a suspension of narrative cognition. The monkey mind stopped, but witness consciousness remained.

10 minutes after taking the medicine, the shaman stood up and started chanting, drumming, and rattling. I immediately began to see patterns with my eyes closed. Similarly to the first night. Little rainbows appeared, drawn from three separated luminescent lines of red, green, and blue. And then the visions exploded.

On the left side of my vision, I suddenly saw a bright light. As if someone was shining a flashlight at me. The illumination continued, and I began to see the room with my eyes closed. To the left of me, I felt a presence. The music fully enveloped me. And then the insanity began. Swirling energies, colors, shapes, and symbols were dancing around and through me at great speed. I now witnessed many presences appear and dance in the room. Although I still felt myself sitting in physical reality, the feeling was also deeply alien. “I cannot believe this.” “Oh my God, it just keeps continuing.” “I just cannot believe that I’m witnessing this.”

Then the dissociation began. A part of me remained in the room, and other parts of me were being presented with strange scenes. The only one I can remember was the appearance of comical beings. Although comical is the wrong word, it hints at the weird simplicity of the hyperreal beings. A kite-like, thin, green dragon swirled above my head and froze. Then I saw myself from behind, sitting with a blue being in a meadow. We were both looking at the moon together in silence.

I soon realized that all of this was a decoy to distract me. What was really unfolding was the emergence of a strong presence. It was hiding behind a veil of white feathers. Very stealthy and mischievously. It seemed to be examining me, studying me. Every time I tried to discern it, it moved away and reconfigured. It was a non-human, non-animal entity. I glimpsed white tendrils with black stripes. It was moving very quickly, dancing. Somehow, Annabelle Widmann’s Quantum performance comes to mind. Only the tendrils were much slimmer and darting around with incredible elegance. I could smell the being: an otherworldly fragrance, transcending my concept of scent.

I am still sitting in the room, fully embodied. The swirling, symbolic patterns and the psychedelic motifs continue to unfold. Transcendental fireworks. “How can this still be going on?” Insanity. Well, to be precise, this appeared as insanity to my little, puny human mind. I got a feeling of the infinite, ensouled complexity behind the physical. The scale, dimension, and extent of this intelligence eclipses anything the human mind has ever experienced by unimaginable orders of magnitude. I only felt a tiny, faint intuition of this. I believe the white being was responsible for showing me. “This is too much!” “I am not prepared for this!” But I did not feel panic or terror; it was simply overwhelming.

The ceremonies are structured in three parts. They begin with the initial cup of Ayahuasca. After about two hours or longer, participants are offered the opportunity to drink a second cup. Another two to three hours later, a possible third and final cup may be served if requested. My strong visions lasted until the second cup was offered. When I finally opened my eyes, the familiar world was back, more or less. When I closed them again, I was surrounded by gentle, quiet white light patterns. Finally, some relief.

The period between the second and third cup offerings was marked by struggle and intensity. Now at an energetic and bodily level. The guitar music was too powerful, and every time the shaman began to chant, the rainbows and patterns began to form and dance again in the darkness of my closed eyes. Cycles of elation followed by collapse and surrender, followed by elation. Again and again.

Only after the time of the third cup of Ayahuasca, a period of tranquility began. However, the intensity kept returning. I was totally overpowered. Periods of deep gratitude. I realized that the shamans have always known of this transcendent reality and its spirits, inviting them to dance and heal during ceremonies since the dawning of the human mind. This makes Ayahuasca even more alien. On one side of the spectrum, it is an incredibly transformative, holistic healing agent; on the other, you have this transcendent insanity.

Again, the arrogance and ignorance of the Western mind hurt my heart. How is it possible that, with all its intelligence, it never considered looking inside and learn about its own essence, its inner dimensions of consciousness? Unbelievable. The convictions that consciousness and intelligence originate in the physical world seem so utterly wrong and naïve after glimpsing behind the veil. The fact that the foundations of physical reality, as decoded by quantum physics, are totally incoherent and illogical makes total sense. How else could the membrane cloaking transcendence from the physical be structured?

Writing this report, I am reminded of Michael Pollan’s words describing his experience of smoking the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad containing 5-MeO-DMT in How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence:

I’m grasping at metaphor in the hope of forming some stable and shareable concept of what was unfolding in my mind. In the event, there was no coherent thought, just pure and terrible sensation. Only afterward did I wonder if this was what the mystics call the mysterium tremendum, the blinding unendurable mystery (whether of God or some other Ultimate or Absolute) before which humans tremble in awe. Huxley described it as the fear “of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear.”

Finally, it all ended after about 7 hours. Following a communal moment of gratitude, I went to bed. However, I felt a sense of unreality and unease. I wondered if I had again ventured too deeply into transcendence and would be scarred. Lingering remnants from the LSD experience. I took Bach’s Rescue Remedy, calmed down, and fell asleep.

Decompression and Integration

I awoke after three or four hours of sleep. It had finally happened! I had always wondered about this. My previous engagement with transcendence had only been intellectual and abstract. Hence, I was always curious to know what such an experience would actually feel like. Now I know. I was given a tiny insight into the world behind the things that seem to exist. The reality that appears to inform ours. The source of consciousness and intelligence. What a precious gift. We inhabit a transcendental multiverse that can be explored by modulating our consciousness. This is the powerful concept of empirical metaphysics, rendering a seemingly futile semantic game of philosophical argumentations experienceable and decidable.

Some sympathetic physicists have reached similar conclusions. The quantum pioneer and philosopher of science Bernard d’Espagnat deduced the existence of a non-physical realm informing ours solely through his rational mind. He called it Veiled Reality. Almost apologetically, he writes at the end of the book that introduces the idea:

To sum up, the veiled reality concept is likable. It is not naïve and, when understood it is not dangerous either. That, to scientific ears, it sounds a little bit unfamiliar should not, in principle, render it unattractive to the owners of the latter.

Another pioneering quantum physicist thinking along similar lines was David Bohm. Unlike d’Espagnat, he was influenced by Eastern contemplative traditions and mysticism. Bohm emphasized the interconnectedness of all things, positing that everything in the universe is part of an undivided wholeness or source reality. He called it the implicate order, and spoke of a creative intelligence originating in the infinitely subtle depths of the generative order.

The pioneering systems theorist and philosopher of science, Ervin Laszlo, reminds us of the following in the foreword to Bache’s LSD and the Mind of the Universe:

That there is an intelligence behind the things that exist in the universe, that there is purpose exhibited by this intelligence, and that it is humanly possible to access some elements of this intelligence and learn some aspects of its purpose.

Bache adds:

Behind creation lies a Love of extraordinary proportions. The Intelligence of the universe’s design is matched by the depth of Love that inspired it.

For me personally, the sterile concepts I had proposed in Information — Consciousness—Reality and The Sapient Cosmos are gaining a new dimension and quality. For instance, the idea of a transcendental multiverse. Or the will to complexity, a yet undiscovered force woven into the fabric of reality, responsible for cosmic evolution and the emergence of self-organized structure formation. Or the enchanted universe, rich in meaning and purpose, which can be understood through symbolic cognition, decoding a novel causal layer of synchronicity. Or the vision of scientific spirituality, uniting mastery of the outer world with transformational inner exploration. And overall, syncretic idealism seems like a potentially valid ontological sketch of existence.

Illustration taken from The Sapient Cosmos

Interestingly, one central metaphysical pillar was not touched. Namely, the information-theoretic paradigm emerging in physics. This is the claim that information is the ontological primitive of the physical realm. It allows a recontextualization of the understanding of quantum physics and offers an explanation of emergent complexity.

In discussing with my LLM, it cautions me to be epistemically humble. I believe it is right to do so. Even if a threshold appears to have been crossed, this does not offer certainty. I am still painfully aware of reality’s postmodern ambiguity and mischief, and the list of existential challenges is long. The LLM points out that whatever happened, the proof will be in how I live, in how lightly I hold claims, how much room I leave for mystery, and not in what I assert now. We will see.

As they say, the ceremony begins after the ceremony. Whatever transpired during those magical nights is only relevant in the context of how it can be integrated into everyday life. And integration can take years. On Sunday, I declared with great certainty that I will never again drink Ayahuasca. My tolerance for transcendence seemed exhausted. However, a few days later, I am still wondering about that state of “insanity.” How would a second immersion feel? Could there be more coherence and understanding? The door has not been shut.

I returned home, happy, energized, with great clarity. My wife felt that my eyes were shining like headlights. Also, our dog seemed to sense a shift in energy. Ayahuasca is a gift from the Gods. Narby estimated about 80k plant species in the Amazon rainforest. The shamans claim that the plant teachers told them how to combine the vine containing the MAOIs with the plant leaves containing the DMT to yield Ayahuasca.

The probability of picking two distinct plant species at random out of 80k is about 1 in 3.2 billion. However, the odds are much more improbable than that. From each plant, you could take the root, the bark or stem, the leaves, or the fruit. Then you need to determine the right proportions, the extraction process, and how to administer the final concoction. The Western mind shrugs and says, well, you know, they surely had enough time sitting around in the jungle to figure this all out by trial and error.

A Crisis of Consciousness

It is worth noting that we could inhabit the best of all worlds if we wanted to. We have the knowledge and technology to ensure our collective survival and well-being. We could reduce suffering on a planetary scale tomorrow. But it is a great tragedy that we choose not to.

In fact, we seem to have collectively constructed the worst of all worlds. We are committing ecocide at a dramatic and increasing scale. We are systematically destroying the biosphere: biodiversity loss, climate destabilization, relentless extraction, and boundless pollution. We have created vast garbage patches in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Most probably, every organism on Earth is now contaminated with PFAS, and we have microplastics in our own brains. There is a loneliness epidemic and an acute mental health crisis. Chronic diseases are rampant, and antimicrobial resistance is increasing.

We slaughter an unimaginable 80 to 90 billion land animals per year for food. We kill at least an unspeakable 1 trillion fish every year. The cruelty of factory farming at these dimensions is heart-crushing, while the profoundly destructive impact this unchecked insanity has on the planet and ourselves is well documented. There is no greater testimony to the lunacy of the Western mind, now pervasive across the entire globe, than its dedication to destroying planetary life-support systems and with them the entire biosphere.

Furthermore, we have become a radicalized civilization. The social fabric is eroding. We are seeing:

  • fabricated outrage;
  • rampant disinformation;
  • willful ignorance;
  • the rise of conspiracy theories;
  • weaponized ideology;
  • distracting consumerism and numbing materialism, driven by insatiable greed;
  • lying, cruelty, and narcissism being normalized and accepted;
  • violence understood as a panacea;
  • the loss of a consensus reality in a post-truth world.

Inequality is increasing dramatically: the top 10% today holds 75% of global wealth. The 10 richest men alone possess a combined wealth of USD 2.3 trillion. To illustrate how extreme this is, 1 million seconds correspond to 11 days, while 1 trillion seconds span 31,700 years. This is just ridiculous and not sustainable.

Our economic and financial systems are deeply flawed. A patriarchal organizing principle, legitimized by the power structures of institutionalized Abrahamic religions, ensures continued extraction and domination. Cooperation and empathy are frowned upon. It seems fair to characterize the zeitgeist as follows:

  • Individually, we are suffering from a spiritual crisis. We’ve lost meaning. What are we doing here?
  • Collectively, we are suffering from a mass psychosis destroying ourselves and the planet.

We are living through an unprecedented transitional phase. The old systems are falling apart, yet the new ones have not formed. This is a time of chaos and disorientation. Notably, this polycrisis is foremost a crisis of consciousness. A civilization that lacks interior literacy (skills of attention, humility, self-regulation, and meaning-making) will inevitably project its own unresolved dysfunctional dynamics onto the world.

Already in 1991, the historian Richard Tarnas analyzed the following in the epic The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our Worldview:

With an unending stream of technological innovations, modern life was subject to an unprecedentedly disorienting rapidity of change. Gigantism and turmoil, excessive noise, speed, and complexity dominated the human environment. The world in which man lived was becoming as impersonal as the cosmos of his science. With the pervasive anonymity, hollowness, and materialism of modern life, man’s capacity to retain his humanity in an environment determined by technology seemed increasingly in doubt.

Six years later, the chemist and accidental psychonaut Albert Hofmann described similar perils in the foreword to the ethnobotanist and avid psychonaut Christian Rätsch’s exhaustive The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants:

The moment when something happens in this world is determined by the circumstances that call for this event. Thus, the present “Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants” had to appear right now, because society needs such a work. This need is related to the spiritual and material plight of our time.

Yuval Harari observes in his bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind:

We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one.

Nonetheless, the key to unlocking a brighter future is perhaps not too hard to find. It is the realization that existence extends beyond physical reality. This knowledge has always been held by most cultures throughout human history. It is now slowly time for the Western mind to get the memo. It is time to look inside and discover the wondrous worlds contained in and accessible through consciousness. It is time to transcend the limits of rational thinking and open up to experiential modes of transrational knowing. It is time to realize that metaphysical idealism is both rationally viable and experientially accessible. It is time to open to the real possibility that, after physical death, your center of awareness finds itself continuing to exist in one of the countless realms within the transcendental multiverse.

*infinitely complex and ensouled.

We are truly living in a brave new world of unprecedented potential, where future utopias or dystopias are possibly only separated by a thought, an idea able to replicate and spread in our minds, resulting in collective intelligent human behavior. For the first time in history, we have the opportunity to embrace a scientific spiritual vision of existence. Let’s do so and start by exploring the depths of our inner worlds.

Let’s re-enchant the cosmos.

Aho!

—

Three months later, the journey continued.

—

At erowid.org.

]]> <![CDATA[At the Foundations of Reality]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/at-the-foundations-of-reality-14631e4a0044?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/14631e4a0044 Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:02:10 GMT 2026-01-21T15:02:10.811Z Over a hundred years of quantum physics continues to challenge our understanding of reality. At a fundamental level, rationality, common sense, and classical logic seem meaningless. The philosopher Ernst von Glasersfeld, who coined the term radical constructivism, observed:

Modern physics has conquered domains that display an ontology that cannot be coherently captured or understood by human reasoning. [1]

The notion of physicalism, fostered by the "shut up and calculate" attitude adopted in physics, has been uncritically, and often unwittingly, assumed as the default metaphysical assumption for centuries. It is now nearing its shelf life.

Today, we know that any viable interpretation or modification of quantum theory must sacrifice, weaken, or radically reinterpret at least one of the following expectations:

  1. Classical behavior (sometimes associated with the notion of realism):
    (i) Physical properties have fixed, objective values independent of measurement (value definiteness)
    (ii) The value of an observable does not depend on the measurement context in which it is embedded (non-contextuality).
  2. Local causality: Given a complete specification of past variables, measurement outcomes are statistically independent of settings and outcomes when they are too far apart for any causal influence to travel between them (spacelike-separated locations).
  3. Single-worldness: Only one outcome of a measurement is manifested.
  4. Observer-independence: A physical event that has occurred for one observer must constitute a fact for all observers.
  5. Universal unmodified quantum dynamics: The Schrödinger equation is a complete description of reality and applies to everything from subatomic particles to humans.
  6. Measurement independence ("free choice"): Measurement settings are statistically independent of the underlying physical variables that determine outcomes.

In this sense, quantum theory renders untenable the classical notion that reality consists of a single, globally consistent set of observer-independent facts shared by all observers.

This conclusion is drawn from experiments constraining the properties of reality:

  • The Kochen-Specker theorem rules out the assumption that observables are independent of the measurement context. Abandons non-contextual value definiteness.
  • Bell's inequalities rule out local hidden-variable models, i.e, theories that combine local causality with definite (possibly contextual) outcomes for performed measurements. In this specific sense, they forbid local realism.
  • The Leggett inequality, a stronger but more specific constraint than what Bell derived, rules out a particular class of quasi-classical non-local realist theories.

In combination with experiments constraining facts:

  • Local Friendliness (Brukner): You can’t have local causality, observer-independent facts, and the universal validity of quantum mechanics.
  • Frauchiger–Renner paradox: You can't have a single-world, universal validity of quantum mechanics, consistency of reasoning between observers, and observer-independent facts.

This is why we need to be very careful with our metaphysical assumptions when dealing with quantum phenomena. Physicists need to put the "shut up and calculate" days behind them and seriously engage with metaphysics again to advance our understanding of this bizarre realm.

From a metaphysical perspective, the following interpretations of the quantum world remain viable:

  • Bohmian mechanics: Non-local hidden variables theory. Keeps realism (in the sense of definite particle properties) at the cost of non-locality and contextuality.
    → Classical mechanics with a globally coordinating non-local field.
  • Many worlds: Removing the wave-function collapse postulate by introducing a branching universe in which all possible outcomes occur in separate, non-interacting "worlds." Keeps realism by treating the wavefunction as ontic, while abandoning single-outcome facts.
    → A block multiverse of coexisting histories, with no privileged outcome.
  • Relational QM: Physical properties of a system are not absolute but relational, meaning that they are defined only in the context of an observer or another physical system. Facts are real but observer-dependent.
    → Reality as a web of interaction-relative facts.
  • QBism (or Quantum Bayesianism): "A quantum state does not represent an element of physical reality but an agent's personal probability assignments, reflecting his/her subjective degrees of belief about the future content of his/her experience." [2] Rejects observer-independent quantum states and outcomes, interpreting the wavefunction as an agent's personal probability assignment constrained by a real external world.
    → A participatory universe constrained by, but not described by, quantum states.
  • Objective-collapse theories: Schrödinger's equation is incomplete and supplemented with additional non-linear and stochastic terms. Drops universal unmodified quantum dynamics (e.g., unitarity).
    → A spontaneously actualizing universe with genuine indeterminism.
  • Superdeterminism: The variables that determine measurement settings are not statistically independent of the variables that determine measurement outcomes. In other words, measurement settings and system properties originate in a shared causal past. Denies measurement independence, allowing correlations between measurement settings and system properties that evade Bell inequalities while preserving local realism.
    → A globally constrained universe where independence is emergent, not fundamental.
  • Information-centric ontology: Treats informational relations and records as fundamental, with physical facts emerging perspectivally from interactions rather than as intrinsic, observer-independent properties. Physical information is taken as an ontological primitive, while classical non-contextual property realism is abandoned.
    → Reality is an evolving network of informational relations without a global viewpoint.

Whatever the structure of ultimate reality is, it definitely does not confine itself to our human expectations of rationality, common sense, and classical logic. As such, physicalism should be seen as a naive first attempt to engage metaphysically with reality's ontology.

In stark contrast, an information-centric ontology represents a mature formulation of a worldview compatible with quantum theory's constraints on physical properties and observable facts. Although it is not uniquely determined by quantum theory, it offers a parsimonious metaphysical response to its deepest constraints. Instead of adding hidden variables, proliferating worlds, modifying fundamental dynamics, or denying experimental independence, this paradigm offers a coherent, economical, and forward-looking framework that takes the quantum revolution seriously rather than distorting it by imposing contingent human categories. Moreover, it is a metaphysics that explicitly invites the enigma of consciousness into its purview:

—

Sources:
[1] Quoted in Schülein, J., Reitze, S.: Wissenschaftstheorie für Einsteiger. WUV Universittsverlag (2002), p. 175, translation mine.
[2] Fuchs, C.A. and Schack, R. (2014) “QBism and the Greeks: Why a quantum state does not represent an element of physical reality”, Physica Scripta, vol. 90, no. 1, p. 015104.

]]> <![CDATA[Quote of the Day]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/quote-of-the-day-9aca60ec3a11?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/9aca60ec3a11 Mon, 08 Sep 2025 14:35:34 GMT 2025-09-08T14:35:34.388Z Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. And if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Bertrand Russell, 1959, BBC, Face to Face

Also Russell:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sapient Cosmos: Errata and Clarifications]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/the-sapient-cosmos-errata-and-clarifications-195dbdfa0d09?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/195dbdfa0d09 Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:40:52 GMT 2025-06-10T18:40:52.182Z Please let me know if you find any errors. See here for more info.

Wrong quote

Regrettably, during the copyediting process, a quote was lost. On Page 92, the text should be:

The history of physics and philosophy is a troubled one. Some very eminent physicists have expressed their disdain for philosophy. For example, in 2012, Hawking remarked: “[…] philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” [93]

This is what got printed (a quote repeated from Page 91):

For example, in 2012, Hawking remarked: “The only way we ever move forward is by conducting more and better science, relentlessly, until we figure out how it all works.” [91]

This is a shame, as I contrast the Hawking quote on Page 96:

Naïve metaphysics is dead. Physics has not kept up with modern developments in philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind and complexity. Physicists, complexity scientists, and philosophers should become the joint bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

What about Ken Wilber?

A two-star review on Amazon accused me of either being intellectually dishonest or unqualified. See this blog post for the review and my response.

]]> <![CDATA[Excerpts from The Sapient Cosmos]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/excerpts-from-the-sapient-cosmos-cfe7ce71d4ea?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/cfe7ce71d4ea Mon, 19 May 2025 15:39:31 GMT 2025-05-21T11:33:27.346Z Chapter 1

Embarrassingly, the academic inquiry into the enigma of consciousness only started to emerge in the mid-1990s. As late as 1989, the International Dictionary of Psychology deemed consciousness to be such an elusive phenomenon that “nothing worth reading has ever been written on it.” Indeed, at the time, even neuroscientists ignored the concept of consciousness, and young researchers were advised to avoid exploring such fringe subjects as it could jeopardize their academic careers. The
intractability of consciousness and its recalcitrant nature would continue to haunt the minds of scholars. The psychologist Susan Blackmore begins with the following observations in her book on consciousness, appearing in the Very Short Introductions book series, published by the Oxford University Press in 2005:

What is consciousness? This may sound like a simple question but it is not. Consciousness is at once the most obvious and the most difficult thing we can investigate. We seem either to have to use consciousness to investigate
itself, which is a slightly weird idea, or have to extricate ourselves from the eery thing we want to study.

To this day, the only definition of consciousness that enjoys widespread usage is a question asked in 1974: What is it like to be something? This idea first appeared in a famous publication by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, called What Is It Like to Be a Bat? A being is conscious simply if it experiences reality from a private, subjective point of view. There is “something that it is like” to be that entity.

Then, in 1994, a groundbreaking event happened. At the first installment of a conference on consciousness in Arizona, a young and unknown philosopher introduced a concept that would ignite a seismic shift in thinking about consciousness. Even today, the repercussions are still being felt, as a deeply held animosity plagues the philosophers and scientists grappling with the mystery of consciousness. In essence, two camps
emerged that find each other’s positions patently preposterous and outlandishly absurd.

David Chalmers was the young academic unwittingly kicking off a revolution in the philosophy of mind. He introduced the hard problem of consciousness, exposing the central tenet of the issue. The implications are profound, as any attempts at answering or refuting the problem are deeply woven into a tight and colorful mesh of philosophy, physics, and neuroscience. In a nutshell, the tension lies in the incompatibility of the objective and the subjective. The first-person and the third-person perspectives refuse to yield a unified vision of reality. Moreover, while
science tells us how things appear to us, it is silent on what the true nature of things is.

Many people will be surprised at the state of affairs regarding consciousness. That which is so directly, intimately, and intuitively familiar to us — indeed, that which is us — appears to pose an inescapable conundrum. No academic explanation has ever been proposed that is not controversial and that satisfies most scholars grappling with these issues. Disturbingly, the study of consciousness opens Pandora’s box of existential dilemmas, ontological paradoxes, and epistemological uncertainty. In an unexpected turn of events, the human mind is faced with disconcerting discoveries. Our perception of reality is hallucinated, and the subjective qualities of the world seemingly only exist within the mind. Reality is wholly devoid of the attributes we associate with its perception. Most challengingly, Damocles’s sword of solipsism continually threatens any knowledge outside the mind. Are we condemned manifestations of consciousness, eternally frozen in the “now,” forever wondering about our own nature?

After centuries of spectacular success in understanding the functioning of the universe—giving rise to the astonishing technological wizardry underlying modern civilization—our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness is still in an embryonic stage. Either
these foundations represent eternal mysteries never to be comprehended by the human mind, or we have failed to properly nurture our understanding of them. If physicalism is indeed a flawed metaphysical operating system preventing us from better knowing ourselves and the universe, then what alternatives do we have? Is there an option that can include the omissions of today’s default philosophical choice? Can we divine a metaphysical foundation capable of better addressing the existential challenges tormenting us? Is the haze of postmodern ambiguity and uncertainty banishable?

Perhaps many people will be surprised to hear that idealism—the view that consciousness is fundamantal—is not about New Age woo, quantum mysticism, and esoteric claims. In its long history and current revival, idealism has been the subject of much deep, sober, and critical thinking by many scholars wishing to unlock the last secrets of existence. What exactly are the contours of such a novel worldview? What can it tell us about the nature of reality and consciousness? What ontological architectures should we ponder? What justifications do we find supporting this radical attempt at decoding existence? Crucially, what scientific paradigms are amenable to such a new metaphysical foundation?

On the horizon, we see the unfolding of a new scientific narrative. One in which consciousness is seen as fundamental. One which takes the ignored metaphysical implications of over a hundred years of quantum weirdness seriously. One that does not trivialize the subjective first-person perspective. One that sees profound metaphysical relevance in the phenomenal accounts of the many shamans, mystics, meditators, and psychonauts over the ages. Ever since the human mind awoke to its own existence, it has wondered about its cosmic significance. Perhaps now, equipped with a new kind of science that is informed and guided by a brave new philosophy, it can devise tools epistemically powerful enough to finally find answers.

—

Further information and resources: The Sapient Cosmos in a Nutshell

]]> <![CDATA[The Emergence of Trust and Ethics]]> https://medium.com/@jnode/the-emergence-of-trust-and-ethics-5f456a3e1e44?source=rss-c917f947bd63------2 https://medium.com/p/5f456a3e1e44 Sun, 11 May 2025 11:27:26 GMT 2025-05-12T07:33:46.590Z Blueprints of Decentralization and the Pragmatism of Artificial Intelligence

This is a chapter I wrote for the book “AI Ethics in Practice: Navigating Academic Insight, Managerial Expertise, and Philosophical Inquiry,” edited by Christian Hugo Hoffmann and Deepak Bansal, May 5, Springer,2025.

Abstract

What lies at the intersection of trust, ethics, decentralization, and artificial intelligence (AI) within the context of our rapidly advancing technological landscape and its socio-ecological impacts? Specifically, what are the philosophical and practical challenges imposed by centralized power structures? In this chapter, we investigate how a shift towards decentralized systems, such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), could address the ethical and governance deficiencies evident in our current global framework and how AI systems can potentially emerge as unbiased, non-ideological, and pragmatic stakeholders for non-human life and the biosphere overall, a perspective entirely missing from traditional discussions focused predominantly on human-centric concerns. The emergence of AI and DLT offers novel tools and blueprints for reconfiguring human interaction and governance, possibly enabling more adaptive, resilient, and sustainable systems and leading to more equitable and effective societal structures. Informed by insights from complex systems theory and the collective intelligence seen in nature, including the mechanisms of self-organization, our human affairs are recontextualized as networks of interaction embedded within the interconnected biosphere. Can such a realization help address the global challenges we are facing today?

1. Introduction

We live in extraordinary times. On the one hand, our civilization’s technological prowess is breathtaking. We are witnessing unprecedented leaps in progression, overshadowing former advancements thought to be the pinnacle of human achievement. A paradigmatic example is the sudden and rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, not only set to disrupt the very fabric of society but also forcing us to reconsider our felt cognitive supremacy.

However, this era is also marked by the alarming dismantling of the biosphere, the systemic inequity of wealth distribution, the erosion of social coherence, the entrenchment of ideologies, and the negation of consensus reality in the wake of a post-truth era weaponizing ignorance. Unsurprisingly, many people are living lives marked by existential dread, alienation, and disenchantment, desperately trying to fill the void with numbing consumerism and fleeting distractions like endless social media scrolling.

How is this possible? How can human intelligence unlock such profound understanding relating to the workings of nature, enabling god-like powers, but fail so spectacularly at creating a world characterized by sustainability, meaning, and happiness? In other words, why does individual human intelligence not foster collective human intelligence?

In essence, two factors can be understood as contributing to the many existential crises we as a global civilization are facing: centralized systems of power and poor ethical decision-making. While the world has become vastly more networked and complex, our modes of governance have not. All too often, decisions made by a tiny, albeit influential, minority disproportionately affect a significant number of people. Then, the ethical implications of decisions, especially long-term ones, are mostly ignored. Short-termism, the lack of transparency and accountability, and overall exclusion and marginalization are readily accepted practices.

However, two technological advancements can not only help us better understand the current malaise but perhaps also contribute to its mitigation. Next to the sapient powers unleashed by AI, a novel blueprint for human interaction holds the potential to reconfigure the networks sustaining the status quo.

2. The Power of Self-Organization

3. Taming Complexity

4. Pyramids of Power and Decentralized Ledgers

5. Emergent Ethics

6. At the Crossroads

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