Where can you read, hear and see me in 2016?

Photo by Bernardo Kastrup, hereby released into the public domain.

As I sit outside today under glorious spring weather, enjoying a glass of my favorite Weiße with the warm sun shinning on my face, it feels as though 2016 has only just begun. Yet, in the dark months of winter we now leave behind my philosophical productivity was in overdrive. My ideas have congealed with more clarity and robustness, and more of their implications in a number of fields of knowledge have revealed themselves. So where will you be able to read, hear and see something about it in 2016? Here is a complete overview, as of today's status.

First and foremost, of course, the paperback edition of my new book More Than Allegory is now immediately available from at least Amazon US, over a month before the official publication date. I have been discussing what this latest book is about for some time now, so I won't repeat myself here. For more, you can have a look at the following recent essays:

Upcoming book: More Than Allegory
Overview of More Than Allegory
Religion, reason, time and space: Introducing More Than Allegory

In addition, I am contributing lengthy and elaborate chapters to two other books slated for publication later this year. One is The Neurotic Turn: Inter-disciplinary Correspondences on Neurosis, a collection of scholarly essays by a variety of authors, exploring, re-thinking and trying to revive the significance of the term 'neurosis' for the 21st century. My contribution explores the idea that the physicalist/materialist narrative is an expression of deeply-ingrained, yet culturally-sanctioned neurotic impulses. Here is a selected paragraph:

To sum it all up, by denying our felt sense of existence and identity, the physicalist narrative attempts to clear our egos of ultimate responsibility. By denying the fundamental reality of our emotions, it attempts to protect our egos from a confrontation with far more powerful forces. By denying the symbolic meaning of nature, it attempts to circumvent the need for our egos to recognize a grander message than their own pedestrian models. It even opens up a Promethean door to immortality that, unlike religious beliefs, invests the ego—not deities—with the power to control transcendence through technology. Clearly, the attempt to protect and invest the ego with authority is the perennial theme discernible in every implication of the physicalist narrative. This betrays it as an egoic defense mechanism—whatever else it may also be—and is, by definition, neurotic.

My second contribution is a chapter for a very timely and much needed anthology on the theological theory of Pandeism. The book is suitably titled Pandeism: An Anthology. As a teaser, here is also a selected paragraph from my contributed chapter:

My project with this essay is to rigorously articulate a metaphysics that is both consistent with Pandeism and preserves ontological space for what the spirit of the word ‘God’ denotes. In other words, I intend to argue for an interpretation of the facts of reality that renders Pandeism both genuine as a theology and metaphysically sound.

In addition to these three books, I have very recently updated and improved my freely-available white paper containing a rigorous, analytic summary of my philosophical ideas. It is available for viewing and downloading, in PDF format, from scribd via this link. In the future, I plan to take this white paper and elaborate much more on it, as well as on its implications, in the format of a short book. In fact, I am already writing this book and here is a selected passage from the manuscript, which puts the white paper in the context of my earlier books:

Prior to the present work, I’ve written six books elaborating extensively on my ontology and views on the underlying nature of reality. Particularly in Why Materialism Is Baloney and More Than Allegory, not only have I conveyed my message at a conceptual level, I’ve also made liberal use of metaphors to help readers develop a direct intuition of the ideas expressed. It was not enough for me to simply win a technical argument in a court of philosophical arbitration; I sought to evoke in my readers a felt sense of the world described in my argument. As such, my work has had the character of continental—rather than analytic—philosophy.

I have no regrets about it. Yet, I’ve also come to recognize the inevitable shortcomings of the approach. Some readers have misinterpreted and others over-interpreted my metaphors, extrapolating their applicability way beyond their intended scope and thereby creating straw men of my position. Yet others have simply become overwhelmed or confused by the richness of metaphorical images, losing the thread of my argument. Perhaps most importantly—given my goal of providing a robust alternative to the mainstream physicalist metaphysics—some professional philosophers and scientists felt they needed to see an analytic formulation of my ontology before they could take it seriously.

The present work addresses all this. Starting from canonical empirical facts—such as the correlations between subjective experience and brain activity, the fact that we all seem to share the same world, the fact that the known laws of physics seem to operate independently of our personal volition, etc.—it develops a complete and unambiguous ontology based on parsimony, logical consistency and empirical honesty. It re-articulates my views in a more rigorous, explicit and precise manner. It avoids metaphors—except when absolutely harmless—opting instead for direct and succinct elaboration. To prevent ambiguity, it explicitly and precisely defines its terms whenever such terms are not used according to their ordinary English language denotations, and wherever such ordinary denotations are too vague. Its arguments are constructed according to strict formal logic. I’ve strived to make every step in them explicit and sufficiently substantiated.

Clearly, thus, this [white paper] can be seen as my first work of analytic philosophy. It represents a delicate trade-off: On the one hand, its analytic style prevents it from reaching the depth and nuances that metaphors can hint at. Parts II and III of my earlier book More Than Allegory, for instance, use metaphors to suggest profound philosophical ideas that cannot be tackled or communicated in an analytic style, for they transcend linear reasoning, language and even spacetime. Therefore, the ontology elaborated upon here is not an expansion, but in fact a subset of the ideas I have tried to convey in earlier works. On the other hand, the present [white paper] articulates this subset in a rigorous analytic style that was lacking before. And to offer a viable alternative to physicalism, an ontology must be presented in the same precise manner in which physicalism itself is presented today. This is what this [white paper] does.

Incomplete as the subset of ideas presented here may be in the context of my earlier output, it is still more complete than the precarious metaphysics that informs our cultural narrative today. This subset alone—as I argue in [its] pages—can explain more of reality, in a better way, than physicalism, thereby being sufficient for this [work's] purposes. By articulating its ideas very precisely, my intent is to deny the cynics and militant physicalists an excuse to dismiss the body of my work simply because it hasn’t had, up to now, an analytic formulation. If the price to achieve this is to write a [white paper] as if one were arguing a case in a court of law, then this [work] represents my case. You be the judge.

That's about it as far as written work in concerned, except of course for the many blog posts I will continue to write and make available here throughout the year, as inspiration strikes me. There might as well be one or two other surprises, but I will remain tight-lipped about those for now, for I don't want to create expectations and then disappoint you.

Of course, there will also be public presentations where you will be able to hear and see me this year. There are a couple already confirmed. Early in May I will be visiting the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, by invitation of Edward Kelly, main author of Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism. But because this isn't really a public presentation, I mention it here just for completeness, not as an open invitation.

On July 31st, in London, UK, I will be presenting at the Psychedelics and Nonduality event together with Peter Russell. The venue is great and the tickets cost only 10 pounds, so if you are in the UK, it's a great opportunity.

From the 24th to the 28th of August, I will be giving three different 'presentations' at the psy-fi festival in the Netherlands. I'd rather describe these 'presentations' as guided tours to seldom-explored mental landscapes, where I'll be inviting you to come along and rove through the antipodes of mind. For an impression of the festival, check out the video below.

Then, from September 9th to 11th, I will be speaking at the Sages and Scientists Symposium 2016, organized by the Chopra Foundation in Beverly Hills, California, USA. I participated in this event's 2014 edition and loved it. It's a fantastic gathering of smart people from all walks of life, leading to an alchemy of mind and spirit with the potential for great synergies. The admission price is very spicy for most people, since the costs of the event itself are also very high. Videos are made freely available later, which is always an option. But if you are around and have the means to attend, I highly recommend it. The atmosphere of the event itself is unique.

Next to all this, it is possible that one or two feature-length documentary films will become available this year featuring me. I won't promise this because I have no control over what happens in editing rooms or production schedules. But the chances are good. If and when they materialize, I will make announcements in my social media pages.

I hope you enjoy all the material that is coming down the pike in 2016!

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Sacred trees and rituals by... Chimps?

Photo by Bernardo Kastrup, hereby released into the public domain.

In a new study recently published in Nature's Scientific Reports, scientists discovered that chimpanzees perform what seems to be 'sacred rituals' at chosen 'sacred trees.' One of the scientists published a blog post with footage of the chimps' strange behavior and some of her own speculations. She wrote:

We found the first evidence of chimpanzees creating a kind of shrine that could indicate sacred trees. Indigenous West African people have stone collections at “sacred” trees and such man-made stone collections are commonly observed across the world and look eerily similar to what we have discovered here.

Quoted in the Daily Mail, renowned primatologist Jane Goodall said:

If the chimpanzee could share his feelings and questions with others, might these wild elemental displays become ritualised into some form of animistic religion? Would they worship the falls, the deluge from the sky, the thunder and lightning—the gods of the elements?

Many other instances of ritualistic behavior in chimpanzees have been cited in a more cautious New Scientist article on this new finding.

The jury is still out, but the observations are extremely suggestive and intriguing. As discussed in my new book More Than Allegory: On religious myth, truth and belief, the symbolic mind is far older and deeper-rooted than the intellect, anchored in natural realities that transcend our linear logic. Religious myths are the natural expression of this primordial umbilical chord our contemporary culture fears and represses, not a wish-fulfillment maneuver. There are truths about ourselves we are deeply afraid to confront. To many, even the belief in final oblivion—death according to materialism—is preferable to the vertigo of eternity.

Pre-order now.

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The Symbolic Big Bang

Screen capture of the animation shown below.

In anticipation of the release of my new book, More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth and Belief, I have been publishing a different quote from the book every day, for the past 40+ days, in my social media sites. In the last couple of days, the quotes have been about a crucial concept introduced and elaborated upon in the book: that of the cognitive big bang. The idea is that time and space aren't objectively real, but myths conjured up by thought. The cognitive big bang allows us to replace the notion of an objective big bang in some far distant past with that of subjective projections of mental contents experienced now. Here are the three most recent quotes, at the time of writing this essay:

The present moment is the cosmic egg described in so many religious myths. … It is a singularity that births all existence into form. It seeds our mind with fleeting consensus images that we then blow up into the voluminous bulk of projected past and future. These projections are like a cognitive ‘big bang’ unfolding in our mind. They stretch out the intangibility of the singularity into the substantiality of events in time. (pp. 102-103)

The cognitive ‘big bang’ is not a process unfolding in time. Rather, it’s a qualitative pattern of distribution of mental contents across the map of human cognition. This complete pattern exists now and only now. … Each of [its] mental contents is a particular reflection of the central singularity on the mirror of human awareness. (p. 103)

The past and the future are thus projected images—symbols, icons—of the intrinsic, timeless attributes of the singularity [that we call the present moment]; of the intangible essences contained in the cosmic egg. There is nothing else the past or the future could consist of. Myths are the form taken by these symbolic projections of intangible essences. (p. 103)

           

This theme of the big bang has thus been in the foreground of my mind. It occurred to me that in my older book Dreamed up Reality, from 2011, I explore the same theme. In that work—an atypical book for me, in which I openly discuss my own transcendent experiences and speculate freely about their possible meaning—cosmogony is a dominating subject. One of the experiences I describe at length in the book gave me profound insights into the origin of the universe and the dynamics of its unfolding. From Dreamed up Reality:

Suddenly it was completely clear. I could understand it! It was an unbelievably complex, yet self-explanatory evolution of concentric patterns growing out of concentric patterns; like self-generating, hyper-dimensional mandalas recursively blossoming, like flowers, out of the centers of previous hyper-dimensional mandalas, ad infinitum, but with a single point of origin from where it all emanated. This point of origin, this Source of it all, however, remained elusive: hidden behind the layers of wonders growing outwards from it. Somehow, the way new patterns unfolded and evolved was already entirely encoded in, and determined by, the very shapes, angles, and proportions entailed by previous patterns, so that no new primary information was ever added to the thing as it evolved. The entire story was already fully contained in it from the very beginning, and it was simply unpacking and manifesting itself in all its indescribable glory. It was a thing of startling power and beauty, yet put together with a level of sophistication and perfection that goes way beyond anything I could compare it to. ... This was the answer to the question that haunted me my entire life: ... One simply needed to “look” at it with the mind’s eye to know that this is how reality came to being; this is how nature was formed. ... All of reality seems to be the unfolding of a thought pattern in the imagination.

It was not lost on me that this very visual and powerful experience somehow echoed ideas expressed in ancient cosmogonic myths, such as Sacred Geometry, Kabbalah, etc. And neither were the significant implications of this surprising similarity lost of me, as I discuss in the book.

Shortly after the experience itself, I sat contemplating its significance. Suddenly, a strong and very precise intuition seized me about a way to capture what I had intuitively sensed: a very simple algorithm, based on a so-called cellular automaton, that could symbolically represent some of the properties of what I had seen. I even 'stumbled' on a particular cellular automaton rule—1 out of 4096 different possibilities!—that turned out to be precisely the one able to reflect some of what I had experienced. The result was a computer-simulated symbolic representation of the origin of the universe—the (cognitive) big bang—in geometrical form. It starts with a single active pixel in the center of the screen. Then, through the recursive application of a very simple construction rule, amazing complexity is generated out of that single starting pixel and this very simple rule. See the video below.

Dreamed up Reality explains this simulation in details and even provides the complete computer source code for it in its appendix.

I find this animation startling, not only for the peculiar way its underlying algorithm spontaneously popped in my mind. The images display profoundly symbolic elements at multiple levels: nested triangles and squares—archetypal forms that symbolize harmony and completeness—arise spontaneously and intermingle. Fractal mandalas—so significant in mystical traditions the world over—underly the entire evolution of the structures. Multiple layers of unfolding can be discerned, as though the animation were a projection of a pattern wrapping around itself in a higher dimension. The evolution of the pattern forms a self-perpetuating loop that seems to symbolize eternity; etc. The symbolic significance of this simple algorithm, which came to me apparently by pure 'chance,' is inexhaustible. I often use this video during my own meditation sessions, for it seems to have soothing, almost hypnotic properties. I invite you to watch it more than once, shifting the focus of your attention each time to a different area of the pattern, observing small local details as they unfold. You will realize how many subtleties and nuances can be found, and how each of them seems to carry a symbolic message of its own.

I realize today that Dreamed up Reality and More Than Allegory have something significant in common: they both stress the importance of symbols for conveying insights that transcend language and linear logic. In Dreamed up Reality, I simply used these symbolic metaphors to try and convey my own transcendent experiences. In More Than Allegory, I attempt to make rational sense of the way in which such symbols can carry actual truth, as well as review and interpret their historical usage across the world's religious myths. The books are complementary in ways I never explicitly intended them to be. While More Than Allegory discusses religious myths, Dreamed up Reality relates my own personal myth, derived from my own contemplative practices.

I hope you enjoy and find value in both books.

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How militant atheists stole your sense of meaning to enhance theirs

(Update: a revised, extended and much improved version of this essay has been published in the academic journal SAGE Open and is freely available here.)

The Church Militant, by James Gillray. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

This is the amazing story of how militant atheo-materialists—those who doggedly promote the twin narratives of atheism and materialism—have managed to rob many of us of meaning in life so to safeguard and nurture their own sense of meaning. Like greedy capitalists, they enrich themselves with life's most valuable currency at the expense of the majority. You are about to be amazed at how cleverly they've pulled this off, for the secret behind their exquisitely disguised maneuver has never—as far as I am aware—been laid bare before. The disclosure that follows has more than a few controversial twists, but it is also well-substantiated at both theoretical and empirical levels. To make this clear, I've put in the effort to document this essay with all the relevant references and footnotes. So take a deep breath and follow me down this never-talked-about but sobering rabbit hole.

Meaning—in the sense of significance and purpose—is probably the greatest asset any human being can possess. Psychotherapist Victor Frankl, who practiced and led groups while detained in a concentration camp during World War II, asserted that the will-to-meaning is the most dominant human drive, in contrast to Nietzsche’s will-to-power and Freud’s will-to-pleasure.¹ Meaning is so powerful that, as Jung remarked, it ‘makes a great many things endurable—perhaps everything.’² Philip K. Dick’s alter ego Horselover Fat, in the novel Valis, embodies the essence of this drive: ‘Fat had no concept of enjoyment; he understood only meaning,’ wrote Dick.³  Like Fat, many of us—myself included—see meaning as a higher value than power or pleasure. Our motivation to live rests in there being meaning in our lives. Indeed, today we need meaning more than ever. After all, as Paul Tillich lucidly observed, the greatest anxieties of contemporary culture are precisely those of doubt and meaninglessness.⁴

And here is where proponents of atheo-materialism claim the high-ground: as a worldview that seems to drain the meaning out of life and existence, it can only represent—or so the story goes—a courageous acknowledgement of reality by ‘tough people who face the bleak facts.’⁵  It must embody an objective assessment of reality, not an emotional, irrational wish-fulfillment maneuver akin to religion. Otherwise, it wouldn’t deny meaning, would it? Compelling as it may seem at first, this argument falls apart upon careful analysis, because its very premise is fallacious.

Indeed, according to the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM) of social psychology,⁶ people can derive a sense of meaning from four different sources: self-esteem, closure, belonging and symbolic immortality.  In other words, we can find meaning in life through (a) developing a sense of self-worthiness; (b) resolving doubts and ambiguities; (c) being part of something bigger and longer-lasting than ourselves; and (d) leaving something of significance behind—such as professional achievements—in the form of which we can ‘live on’ after physical death. A society’s mainstream cultural narrative conditions how meaning can be derived from each of these four sources.

Available for pre-ordering.

The key idea behind the MMM is that of fluid compensation as a self-defense mechanism: if one of the four sources of meaning is threatened, an individual will tend to automatically compensate by seeking extra meaning from the other three sources. For instance, threats to self-esteem may cause the individual to reaffirm his or her model of reality, thereby bolstering closure. Whatever the case, the goal of fluid compensation is always to restore the sense of meaningfulness after a threat to one’s meaning system.

As Van Tongeren and Green have shown, a transcendent source of meaning, such as religiosity, plays the same role in fluid compensation as the other four sources.⁷  For instance, individuals tend to reaffirm their religious beliefs following disruption of their meaning system, in an effort to protect the latter. Van Tongeren’s and Green’s experiments have also shown that even subliminal threats to meaning trigger fluid compensation.

With this as background, my hypothesis is that atheo-materialism is a reflection of fluid compensation. In other words, instead of a threat to meaning,  atheo-materialism is actually an attempt to protect and restore meaning by bolstering closure, self-esteem and symbolic immortality.

I submit that an ontological trauma was the original threat that triggered the congealment and mainstream adoption of atheo-materialism. At some point in the nineteenth century, we lost our ability to spontaneously relate to religious myths without linear intellectual scrutiny. From that point on, the myths that had hitherto offered us meaning through the promise of actual immortality and metaphysical teleology became untenable.⁸  No one has captured this transition better than Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Science: ‘“Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. We are his murderers.”’ Left with the prospect of physical deterioration without the path to transcendence offered by an immortal soul, the intellectual elite of the time was forced to face the inexorability of their own mortality. And as we know today from Terror Management Theory (TMT), mortality is a formidable threat to meaning.⁹  On this basis, I hypothesize that the loss of our ability to relate spontaneously to religion caused an ontological trauma that, in turn, triggered fluid compensation and ultimately led to the adoption of the atheo-materialist narrative.

Indeed, many studies have shown that a confrontation with one’s own approaching death—‘mortality salience,’ as it is called in psychology—leads to a heightened need for closure.¹⁰  This is fluid compensation in action. Notice also that atheo-materialism is humanity’s most committed attempt yet to increase the certainty of our worldview. It embodies an unprecedented effort to produce a complete, causally closed, unambiguous model of reality that stresses consensual agreement. Nothing else in millennia of preceding history came anywhere near it. Is this just coincidence? I dare to suggest it isn’t: atheo-materialism reflects our attempt to regain, through heightened closure, the meaning we lost along with religion. Moreover, other modes of fluid compensation are likely at play here as well: by distinguishing themselves as a specialized elite, uniquely capable to understand facts beyond the cognitive capacity of other mortals, the scientists and academics who militantly promote atheo-materialism stand to gain much in self-esteem. The esoteric scientific work they produce and leave behind upon their deaths can also be seen as a significant boost to symbolic immortality. Finally, recall Tillich’s observation: doubt and meaning anxiety dominate the contemporary mindset. Is it humanly plausible that our mainstream cultural narrative would have evolved to tackle only doubt and leave meaning anxiety unaddressed?

All in all, atheo-materialism doesn’t represent a net loss of meaning for the intellectual elite that produced and continues to promote it. The transcendent meaning lost along with religion is compensated for by a significant increase in closure, self-esteem and symbolic immortality. Unfortunately, this compensatory strategy doesn’t work for most ordinary people: the men and women on the streets don’t have enough grasp of contemporary scientific theories to experience an increase in their sense of closure. Neither do they gain in self-esteem, since they aren’t part of the distinguished elite. Finally, insofar as they are not producing groundbreaking scientific work of their own, no particular gain in symbolic immortality is to be expected either. In conclusion, atheo-materialism serves the meaning needs of the intellectual elite that develops and militantly promotes it, but constitutes an enormous threat to the sense of meaning of the average person on the streets. This is the world we live in today.

It must be changed. The religious impulse is a deeply-rooted intuition intrinsic to the human condition. It far precedes thought and theory, being symbolically closer to the truths of nature. As Jung put it, 'The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe.'¹¹ But in order to restore our relationship with religious transcendence, thereby rescuing our sense of meaning from the clutches of the thieves, we must rationally understand why and how religious myths can carry truth. Even more importantly, we must understand why religious myths are the only honest way to frame the transcendent truths upon which the meaning of our lives is conditioned. This is what I've tried to achieve with my new book More Than Allegory. See an overview of the book here.

More Than Allegory is my attempt to restore balance to the cultural debate by denying atheo-materialism its illegitimate claim to rational high-ground. Religion doesn't contradict linear logic, it simply transcends it. Religion doesn't contradict empirical evidence, it just looks at dimensions of experience that atheo-materialism arbitrarily ignores. Religion isn't composed through linear steps of reasoning, but intuitively sensed in the obfuscated trans-personal depths of the human psyche, which are anchored in primordial truths. Religion isn't wish-fulfillment, but intuitive realization. And it is atheo-materialism that constitutes an engineered attempt to safeguard one's sense of meaning, not religion. Religion had already sprung spontaneously from the depths of the human psyche since much before the perceived threats to meaning that motivated our first wish-fulfillment maneuvers.

Let us restore the legitimacy of the human religious impulse. It deserves no less. And so do we.

Over the years I have felt that the limitations of mainstream religion increasingly outweigh its potential benefits, but More Than Allegory sees into its heart, enabling us to consider religion with fresh perspective and redeeming it for our generation.
Rupert Spira

Notes:

1. Frankl, V. E. (1991). The Will to Meaning, Expanded Edition. New York, NY: Meridian.
2. Jung, C. G. (1995). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London, UK: FontanaPress, p. 373.
3. Dick, P. K. (2001). Valis. London, UK: Gollancz, p. 92.
4. Tillich, P. (1952). The Courage To Be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
5. Watts, A. (1989). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. New York, NY: Vintage Books, p. 65.
6. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T. and Vohs, K. D. (2006). The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations. In: Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), pp. 88-110.
7. Van Tongeren, D. R. and Green, J. D. (2010). Combating Meaninglessness: On the Automatic Defense of Meaning. In: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10), pp. 1372-1384.
8. Kastrup, B. (2016). More Than Allegory. Winchester, UK: Iff Books, pp. 14-60.
9. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J. and Solomon, S. (1997). Why do we need what we need? A terror management perspective on the roots of human social motivation. In: Psychological Inquiry, 8(1), pp. 1-20.
10. See, for instance: Landau, M. J. et al. (2004). A function of form: Terror management and structuring the social world. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), pp. 190-210.
11. Jung, C. G. (1956). Symbols of Transformation. London, UK: Routledge, p. 231.

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Religion, reason, time and space: introducing More Than Allegory

Photo by Bernardo Kastrup, hereby released into the public domain.

The video below introduces and discusses my new book More Than Allegory: On religious myth, truth and belief. It argues that religious mythology is an extraordinary psychosocial phenomenon that cannot be simply dismissed under the label of delusion. Its appeal throughout the ages arises from the fact that religious myths do convey truth, but truth that is neither literal nor merely allegorical. Religious myths embody, instead, a transcendent form of truth that cannot be captured in conceptual schemas or language narratives. The video also discusses the three key roles religious myths can, and must, play in contemporary society. Finally, it touches on the delicate challenge -- addressed head-on in the book -- of hinting at a worldview according to which time and space are constructs generated by the intellect, having no autonomous reality of their own. This is a challenge I have carefully avoided in my earlier five books, but whose time has now come.

More Than Allegory can be purchased here:

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Publisher website

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Fasnacht, Carl Jung, the Trickster Archetype and Altered States of Consciousness

Photo by Bernardo Kastrup, hereby released into the public domain.

I have just spent four wonderful days and nights in the Swiss town of Basel (anglicized as 'Basle,' but I prefer to stick to the original, as do the locals), taking part in the traditional Fasnacht festival. For a general impression, have a look at the first video below. You might then ask: What does a carnival have to do with philosophy? Well, actually much more than you'd think!

As many of you know, my philosophical ideas have been largely influenced by the thought of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who developed the theory of the Collective Unconscious and the Archetypes. According to Jung, our thoughts, emotions and behaviors are subliminally influenced—even determined—by shared psychic templates he called Archetypes. There is an Archetype that is particularly repressed and dismissed in contemporary culture: that of the Trickster, an anti-intellect figure, entertaining and mischievous at the same time, who reminds us of our connection to a psychic reality more primordial and fundamental than our linear, logical thinking. As I wrote in my little book Meaning in Absurdity, the absence of the Trickster in contemporary culture is at the root of much of our inability to relate harmoniously to the world and ourselves.

And this is where Fasnacht comes in. The festival brings out some of our deepest, most repressed psychological realities, including the Trickster Archetype. Indeed, the Fasnacht figure of the Waggis is a textbook incarnation of the Trickster. See the video below. As such, the festival is of great psychological and philosophical significance. I've come to Fasnacht this year to experience the expression of these subliminal but powerful psychological realities myself. No festival does it better, perhaps because the Swiss are, for 362 days of the year, the epitome of intellectual order and correctness. Therefore, during the three days of Fasnacht, following a natural compensatory instinct, they let out their repressed Archetypes with a purity and intensity unseen anywhere else. Jung himself has lived and studied in Basel, having experienced Fasnacht firsthand. The festival has more than likely influenced his thinking and inspired his later elaboration of the theory of Archetypes.

More generally speaking, Fasnacht beautifully evokes the mythical world of the obfuscated psyche. The festival starts at 4:00am—the most surreal of hours—when Basel's utility company switches off all the lights in the city. A parade of lanterns, accompanied by the medieval sound of piccolos and almost arrhythmic drums, then starts: the famous Morgestraich. The town immediately gains a mysterious, enchanted, ancient atmosphere. The glow of the lanterns and the uncanny costumes and masks of the musicians reinforce this effect. One feels as though one were back to a primordial time when people passed the dark hours of the night with the telling of stories around the fire, nurturing an introspective relationship with the magical, mythical imagery emerging from the obfuscated psyche. See the video below for an impression.

There is an old documentary that talks extensively about this relationship between Fasnacht, Jungian psychology and the obfuscated psyche:

Perhaps even more significantly, during ‪Fasnacht‬ the people of Basel give a whole new meaning to the words 'chaos' and 'cacophony.' There are perhaps hundreds of bands—such as Cliques and Gugge—and smaller musical groups going around town at the same time, each following their own unplanned, impromptu route, crossing each other, blocking each other, squeezing past each other, jamming, tying and untying traffic knots. Somehow, it all resolves itself spontaneously. Each band plays its own songs. Often they converge at some intersection, side by side, each sticking to its own rhythm with renewed determination. The resulting chaos and cacophony are impossible to describe.

People spend all evening following different bands. If a band passes by playing a song one likes, one follows behind it... until another band comes along that one likes better, so one switches to it instead. So you get myriad processions of bands and people marching behind them, intermingling, morphing and splitting spontaneously, with no central organization whatsoever. All properties of the system are emergent.

The psychological effect of this dynamic is fascinating: the cacophony of sounds, the slightly dissonant music the bands play, the spontaneity of the composition and route of each procession, the complete lack of structure, plus the repetitive physical exercise of marching aimlessly are all ego-dystonic, putting you in a subtle kind of trance. You have to be there to really know what I mean. After about a half hour taking part in this, thoughts subside and a more primordial, spontaneous mode of being kicks in. I doubt the people behind Fasnacht are self-reflectively aware of what they are doing; I think the whole thing is rather instinctive. But they do it wonderfully and effectively nonetheless. And the result is significant both psychologically and philosophically, as those familiar with my work will recognize.

I am grateful to the Waggis, the Gugge, the Cliques and the people of Basel for the truly wonderful time I've had there. The profoundly mythical ethos of the festival has filled me with inspiration for promoting my upcoming book More Than Allegory, in which I elaborate on the truth-value of myths such as the Archetypal templates underlying Fasnacht.

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Predictions that aren't baloney

'Connected to Source,' by Selene's Art.
Copyright by Selene's Art, used with permission.

In Chapter 2 of my book Why Materialism Is Baloney—my best-seller thus far—I elaborate on the notion that the brain is the extrinsic image of a process of localization of universal consciousness. As such, individual people are like whirlpools in a universal stream of transpersonal experiences. If this is the case, one would expect that disruption of the right types of brain activity should induce a de-localization—an expansion—of consciousness. In the book, I substantiate this prediction with a number of studies and known examples of cases in which reductions of brain activity do, indeed, correlate with an expansion or de-localization of experience, which physicalism cannot explain.

There is a tricky balance involved in showing this empirically, in a controlled and statistically significant way: not all brain activity should relate to the mechanism of localization itself; much of it should consist instead of already localized contents of experience. Returning to our analogy, both a large and a small whirlpool can be perfectly localized: one simply has more contents than the other. A de-localized whirlpool is not necessarily a small one, but one losing its coherence and beginning to release some of its contents into the broader stream. Indeed, much of the activity in our brains relates to already localized cognitive and executive functions, such as motor control, language centers and self-reflective cognition. Damaging the associated brain areas or otherwise inhibiting their activity won't necessarily de-localize our awareness, but simply impair motor and cognitive function. Not all reductions of brain activity will open the doors to transcendence; only the right ones.

Therefore, to test the prediction in the book robustly, one has to have a sufficient number of study subjects in which the right types of brain activity have been inhibited—e.g. by prior physical damage to the brain—but without damage to the motor and cognitive functions required to allow the subjects to report their experiences. For instance, it is conceivable that people who suffer widespread brain damage due to accidents may very well have nonlocal, transcendent experiences all the time, but be unable to report any of it because they are in a vegetative state. A very fine balance is thus required; one that may only very seldom occur. Most of the times, chances are that the subject either doesn't have sufficient damage/inhibition in the right brain locations, or has so much other damage that they lose self-reflection, language skills, the ability to speak or move their bodies, etc. In other words, they become unable to report their experiences.

This is why a recently published study is so interesting: 100 subjects were studied; a significant and unprecedented number. Here is how the Daily Mail described the study and its results:

The group looked at more than 100 patients who were veterans of the Vietnam War, and who had undergone a battery of cognitive tests before the war and once they returned. From CT scans showing the extent of damage to certain parts of their brains, the researchers were able to predict how likely they were to have a mystical experience. ... The researchers found that those with damage to the 'God spot' region of the brain, in the frontal and temporal lobes, were more likely to report mystical experiences compared with those without damage to these regions.

And here is the Daily Mail's summary:

[The] study has found that 'dialing down' the brain's inhibition boosts mysticism. ... Damage to the frontal and parietal lobes increased mystical experiences. These regions are linked to inhibitory functions, suppression of which appears to open up a 'door of perception', exposing us to the mystical.

I chose to quote the Daily Mail, instead of the scientific article itself, because it so well captures the essence of the study's conclusion, which directly corroborates what I wrote in the book. There is also a LiveScience article that is worth reading.

It is not every day that one makes a prediction widely in contradiction to prevailing wisdom, and then sees it rather spectacularly confirmed, less than two years later, by a large study. Such short-term vindication is an unexpected bonus, especially because the conclusion of the study is exactly what I had predicted.

Emboldened by this, I will make a new prediction here: further research will pin down more precisely what the specific regions of the brain are that, when damaged or otherwise inhibited, lead to de-localized consciousness and transcendent experiences. I also anticipate that we will eventually invent technology—based, for instance, on transcranial magnetic stimulation—that, by inhibiting those regions, will induce mystical states routinely.

Indeed, in Part 3 of my upcoming book More Than Allegory, I tell a story that describes exactly what this technology may look like, and how it may work... a story that is a mixture of fact and fiction. After all, who knows what kinds of secret technologies aren't already out there? ;-)

Acknowledgment: I am grateful to Ian Wardell for directing me to this study!

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