The world each one of us lives in is the subjective inner world of our own perceptions and other experiences.

a common, learned set of expectations and a homogenization of the imagination. Different individuals eventually begin imagining and projecting very similar scenarios onto the fabric of space-time, for they have learned to have similar expectations about what they should witness. More and more, the emergent realities that actually manifest confirm their now shared expectations. Everybody begins to agree not only about what is going on, but also about what will be going on. Consistency takes over not only across time and space, but now also across individual minds.

ontology; that is, the study of the true nature of being and existence. Indeed, science models the relationships between things, but is surprisingly limited in clarifying their underlying nature.

science is the quintessential third-person investigatory method. The key historical premises of the scientific method are two-fold:

first, one must assume that there is an objective reality “out there” that does not depend on one as observer of it.

Second, one must assume that one’s first-person observations of reality are unreliable and suspicious.

Since we know that all observations are subjective in nature, and that we have no direct access to an objective truth “out there,” a central assumption in science is that objective truth corresponds to the statistical consistency of individual subjective observations.

Largely due to its roots as a reaction to superstition, the scientific method is fundamentally skeptical of one’s own subjective perceptions, placing all ontological value on an assumed objective reality. Yet, the existence of an objective, external reality cannot be proven beyond doubt, for we are all confined to our own individual perceptions and private inner worlds.

Most of these comprehensive theories are no more than stories that fail to take into account one crucial factor: we are creating them. It is the biological creature that makes observations, names what it observes, and creates stories.

through mechanisms yet unknown to science, our minds have direct access to a largely untapped repository of knowledge about reality. Under the right circumstances, we can gain direct awareness of aspects of nature inaccessible through objective means, thereby tapping into knowledge not previously present in the structures of the brain.

two major processes are at work in our brains all the time: one is an excitatory process, responsible for the influx of new ideas; the other is an inhibitory process, called “latent inhibition,” responsible for focusing our attention on the perceptions that are most practical and important to our immediate priorities and survival.

Perhaps our five senses have themselves evolved not to produce information, but as parts of a selection and emphasis mechanism responsible for picking out impressions, anyway available to consciousness, based on a criterion of locality in both space and time that was most relevant to body survival.

If these speculations are correct, then the most direct and efficient way to acquire knowledge about reality is through a partial and temporary disablement of the filtering mechanisms of the brain.

the hypothesis I am postulating here is the following: consciousness is a non-local field phenomenon not caused by, nor reducible to, the brain, but simply associated in some manner with the brain. All understanding and knowledge ever registered by a conscious entity survives ad infinitum in the field of consciousness as permanent experiences, or qualia. Therefore, all universal knowledge is, in principle, accessible by any conscious entity. It is the local attention filters of the nervous system, evolved as a consequence of earlier survival advantages, which prevent us from accessing this universal repository of knowledge. But through perturbations of ordinary brain operation, which partially and temporarily disable or bypass some of these filters, one can gain awareness of it. The

some degree of intentional control over one’s own attention is essential in any thoughtful exploration of nature, objective or subjective.

it is a speculative possibility that tryptamine entheogens, when acting in lieu of serotonin, enable a bypass of certain evolved filtering mechanisms of the brain.

The hypothesis I have set out to verify is whether, through the technologies of awareness expansion, one can access knowledge about reality not previously recorded in, or misleadingly generated by, the brain.

All that is changed is the mental model one uses to perceive reality; that is, one’s worldview.

one of my main objectives is to analytically verify, to my own satisfaction, whether external knowledge can be imprinted onto my physical memory through a mechanism that, through a process of elimination, can be ascertained to bypass all known physical means. No orthodox, reductionist explanation of the transcendent experience could account for such an input of impressions.”

The problem with using language to describe a transcendent experience is that what one experiences may sometimes bear so little resemblance to anything else that precious little semantic anchoring exists. One is then left with precarious and imprecise metaphors to try and capture at least a smidgen of what has been perceived or understood.

Each person interprets and describes the ineffable in his or her own idiosyncratic way, dressing it in the clothes and biases of his or her own worldview.

The experience was not only about me; the experience was me.

As I finally begun to reconstitute my ego and regain some composure, I crash-landed onto the memories of the less desirable elements of my life. Indeed, I learned that, while recovering one’s ego provides welcome relief from the disorientation of the return, along with one’s ego come one’s ghosts. Have you ever had the experience of waking up immediately after a blissful, light, carefree dream, just to remember the bummers of your life? In those initial moments of wakefulness, when your defenses are still down and you have grown accustomed to the lightness of your dream, the bummers of your life jump out at you with a vengeance; until you finally manage to file them back into the mental drawers that keep them in check. The specifics of my experience re-encountering my private bummers are philosophically irrelevant, so I will spare you the details. All that is worth mentioning is that it was hard. Yet, in a way, it was a learning experience too. Through it, I became a lot more aware of the fears, frustrations, and machinations lurking in obfuscated layers of my own mind.

when we imagine things as adults we use a lot of perceptual material accumulated with our physical senses in the course of our lives: sights, sounds, symbols, concepts, events, etc.

Some of the images seemed vaguely to resemble some weird form of visual art, akin to cubism. Whatever it was, it was very peculiar, as if I were tapping into a mind not my own; as if I were witnessing things, events, images, thoughts, and emotions that did not belong to me, or to any normal human being for that matter. It was not scary though:

I was relaxed, open-minded and, frankly, very curious.

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.

This settled the question entirely. 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; this is what nature is; this is what is behind everything. There, in that pattern, in its wondrous shapes and features, in the angles, lengths, proportions, and relationships among its components, and in the way it evolved recursively as if re-birthing itself continuously, was the answer to everything. The pattern was the answer.

I concluded with certainty then that one must be literally insane in order to comprehend this thing. The magnitude of it, its hyper-dimensional character, and its implications, cannot be apprehended unless one completely abandons all pre-existing mental models, semantic frameworks, assumptions, and paradigms of thought one holds. Losing all this mental infrastructure comes very close to the definition of mental pathology. In fact, I understood then why ego dissolution appeared to be a necessary pre-requisite for exposure to that miraculous pattern: the preconceptions, expectations, and closed thought paradigms of the ego would prevent one from even seeing the pattern for what it is, let alone understanding it. The ego would dress it up and squeeze it into lower-dimensional models that would limit the perception of its true nature. Perhaps the mandalas I saw in inner theater were but such lower-dimensional, fragmentary projections or resonances of that miraculous pattern.

the thought occurred to me that consciousness was surely a non-local phenomenon in both time and space. That is, I had the certainty that consciousness was not limited to the here and now of my physical brain but could, under certain circumstances, gain awareness of places and times beyond, whether real or imaginary–the difference between real and imaginary, once again, appearing nonsensical to me.

universal manifold of vibrating subjectivity.

Perhaps all things we see and feel, even we ourselves, are like vibratory ripples in an ocean of a single substance. Perhaps this tone was the natural frequency of vibration–the fundamental note–of this ocean, whose oscillation sustains, through sympathetic resonance, all harmonic notes around it, whatever their octaves. Perhaps this is why I had the subjective impression that all things in the universe were somehow connected. Perhaps all we need to do to heal ourselves, I thought, is to tune in to this fundamental note and simply let it do what it does. A phrase popped in my head, fully formed: “All we need to do to heal ourselves is to bathe in that we are made of.” All we need to do is to stop trying and, instead, allow ourselves to enter into resonance with this fundamental note of existence.

it is tempting to speculate that one’s consciousness inhabits or emanates from one’s inner theater, at the same time giving it its existence. It is also tempting to speculate, on the basis of the subjective data at hand, that the inner theater is not causally dependent on the physical body or brain; that it precedes the body both ontologically and in time, even if it is “merely” a state of mind. Naturally, that would imply that mind is not generated by the brain, but in some other way associated with brain processes while we experience ordinary states of consciousness.

there seems to be at least two distinct forms of identity that consciousness can take on, both of which we recognize as the “I.” The first, and the one usually experienced during ordinary states of consciousness, is the “I” of the ego; the “I” of the cognitive models constructed by the brain. The second is an “I” that seems to be independent of the ego and of life in linear time; a transcendent “I” that seems to exist entirely beyond time, space, and life itself, and whose identity is more profoundly recognized as the true “I” than the relatively provincial and flattened notions of the ego. The implication of this is that a hypothetical, universal field of consciousness must somehow “clot” into multiple, separate “focal points” in a realm of reality beyond that of the physical brain. Each of these focal points must then correspond to a transcendent “I” that is coupled, in awareness, to the electrochemical signals of an individual brain and its ego constructs.

which cannot be reached while one is dressed in the clothes of the ego and carrying the mental baggage we normally associate to sanity

Intellect cannot survive this confrontation for very long.

dreams can perhaps take on increasing levels of properties normally associated with reality–namely, concreteness, endurance, autonomy, etc.; and second, that reality can perhaps take on increasing levels of properties normally associated with dreams–namely, malleability, acquiescence to intent, etc. In other words, the subjective data suggests that dreams and reality may simply be different points on a single, continuous spectrum of the same underlying “stuff;” much like red and blue are simply different points on the electromagnetic spectrum of light.

the mandalas and other geometric forms experienced in inner theater are visual cognitions of raw, elemental thought patterns.

If the inner theater is made of thought, then these geometrically represented, elemental thought patterns are the building blocks underlying its reality.

elemental thought patterns are the building blocks of the compositions of the imagination on the screen of mind.

They are, if you will, akin to the elements in a “periodic table of thought” which, in turn, can be used to compose imagined realities. Once a coherent composition is imagined, the underlying elemental thought patterns disappear. They become as much an abstraction as the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen felt when one runs one’s fingers through water: all that is then left to perception is the freshness, texture, and fluidity of the water, not the abstract idea of microscopic systems of neutrons, protons, and orbiting electrons. Similarly, the geometric forms of the elemental thought patterns seem to disappear from the compositions of the imagination once these compositions are formed.

the incoherent interactions of elemental thought patterns are indeed senseless and silly unless and until organized by purposeful intent into meaningful stories.

the causal agency of the coalescence of elemental thought patterns into coherent images and storylines is intention. The application of intention entails focus. By intending we bring focus, direction, and coherence to a continuous process of creation in the imagination, whose dynamics may persist whether it is coordinated or not. By intending we cause the elemental thought patterns to align, self-organize, and fall into order. By intending we take the steering wheel of their behavior and give it coherent form.

The subjective data also suggests that the elemental thought patterns seen in inner theater are but fractal segments, or resonances, of the underlying Pattern unfolding from the Source. This way, one’s inner theater may be but a local segment of the fractal whole, whereof all segments are, in a way, an image of the whole itself.

It is my strong inclination, on the basis of the subjective data at hand, that indeed knowledge and impressions previously not present in my brain have been accessed through non-ordinary states of consciousness. These images and understandings so far transcend everything entailed by consensus reality that I cannot imagine they were generated by my brain.

Once one has had an experience like that of dreamland, which blurs the boundaries between the properties we normally attribute to reality and those we attribute to dreams, one softens to the possibility that maybe reality is indeed a kind of persisting dream; one simply with a yet higher degree of “inertia” than the stories of dreamland. Instead of being opposites, dreams and reality are perceived to be different points in a continuous spectrum of degrees of externalization and the kind of “inertia” discussed above.

the ineffable feeling one has upon returning from subjective exploration is that consensus reality is by far not the whole story; that we are not ordinarily aware of this fact simply because, while in the trance-like state of ordinary consciousness, we temporarily forget what the real deal is.

In ordinary states of consciousness, all we are aware of is the processing of information–represented by electrochemical signals–taking place in our brains. We have no direct awareness of the external world, but only of the information about it that is captured by our five senses; you can verify the veracity of this statement simply by closing your eyes.

The intuition that nature is constructed according to the symmetries of a pattern is pervasive even in science and has enabled important scientific discoveries. Indeed, as eloquently told by Professor Ian Stewart, the pursuit of modern science has, to a large extent, been the pursuit of abstract, mathematical symmetries.

We seem hardwired to believe that truth is somehow associated with the beauty–that is, the symmetries–of abstract patterns.

the data from subjective exploration also suggests that nature is fractal across its different levels; in other words, that the fundamental patterns of nature repeat themselves at all scales.

what we imagine is but what we can conceive. Our imagination is a reflection of our cognitive models and expectations. So the reality we project onto the fabric of space-time is the reality we are capable of conceiving and expecting.

In chaotic systems, so-called “strange attractors” can condense and amplify small fluctuations in the system’s regular dynamics, allowing irregularities to take hold and grow. 15 We know that our universe is one such a system: in our cosmological past, gravity clumped matter around supposedly random fluctuations at the quantum scale to form the irregularities that ultimately became stars, planets, you, and me. 16 So there are two processes at play here: the first is a process that introduces irregularities in the system; the second is a process capable of amplifying these irregularities. I speculate that, in the hyper-dimensional fabric of space-time that transcends and encompasses our consensus reality, the first process is associated with the fragmentation of conscious intent arising from the clumping up of consciousness in different focal points. Such fragmentation of intentionality breaks, at some level, the coherence of the underlying Pattern. This, in turn, introduces local disturbances that are then amplified, thereby creating the variety of irregular phenomena we perceive in our realm of reality. In the slice of hyper-dimensional space-time corresponding to consensus reality, quantum chance is perhaps a reminiscent echo of these disturbances. And the critical role of quantum chance in our universe has been eloquently highlighted by Seth Lloyd, when he wrote that “chance is a crucial element of the language of nature. Every roll of the quantum dice injects a few more bits of detail into the world. As these details accumulate, they form the seeds for all the variety of the universe. Every tree, branch, leaf, cell, and strand of DNA owes its particular form to some past toss of the quantum dice.” 17

These creative, conscious segments of the whole can now independently project different versions of reality onto a common fabric of space-time–based on their own, separate, local contexts–leading to largely unpredictable, novel, emergent combinations. The relatively disorderly reality we actually experience may emerge out of a complex amalgamation of these different projections. This way, the fragmentation of conscious intent may allow the universe to generate, out of itself, something novel and unknown to itself.

an exfoliation of ideas, not a model of facts.

the next state of each cell depends on the current configuration of states in the cell’s own neighborhood.

It is only the culture-induced stupor we live in that prevents us from raising our gaze and seeing the signs right in front of us.

We seem to have collectively descended into a highly restrictive, cynical, disenchanted frame of mind. We developed the worst and most pernicious of all illusions: the illusion of knowledge. Of all unproductive fantasies, this is the worst in that it makes one believe that one can stop searching and questioning.

a higher level of understanding; a level where paradox, contradiction, and cognitive dissonance are productive steps towards greater insight.

it is, in my view, an observable fact that each of the methods we currently have at our disposal is, in isolation, insufficient to cover all potentially valid avenues of investigation. The dualism I may be implying is thus not one of substance, but one of method.

science starts from the premises that reality is objective and individual observation unreliable. A form of subjective exploration of nature that starts from the opposite premises–that is, that reality is subjective and our own individual observations are all we have–seems to me to be a necessary and complementary ingredient of any thorough and honest investigation of nature.

there is a lot more to reality than we think.