Psychiatrist and author Dr. Iain McGilchrist discusses a post physicalist world and a broader understanding of mind and reality. He explores the limitations of reductionist materialism, the relationship between consciousness and matter, and the complexity of evolution. He also argues against the reductive materialist mindset and explores the relationship between the sacred and scientific reasoning.

Christoph Le Mouel, a PhD holder, delves into the intriguing concept of synchronicity, exploring its connections with physics and psychology. He shares personal anecdotes that illustrate meaningful coincidences in life. The conversation traverses from comic books to quantum mechanics, linking Jung's ideas with concepts like entanglement and the implicate order. They discuss how time, consciousness, and new societal paradigms interrelate, advocating for a fresh scientific approach that appreciates both subjective experiences and objective truths.

Are our scientific assumptions justified? In this episode we’re going to be examining the assumptions of Western Science. All science is based on assumptions. In order to isolate systems in experiments and standardise measurements of the target data, other variables need to be pinned down so scientists can form precise mathematical models, that can then be repeated accurately in the peer review process. Today we’re going to look at these assumptions, and establish if they indeed have become standard, fixed and unquestioned as some critics claim.   One of those critics is Cambridge educated biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who gave a TED talk in 2013 about the assumptions of western science, which was banned by TED’s anonymous board of scientific advisors for not being a ‘fair description of scientific assumptions’. Far from quieting the controversy, the ban caused outcries of censorship, and the ripped video was seen many millions of times on You Tube, probably many times more than had it been left to stand as one scientists opinion. Today I want to examine just how fair his description was.   To help us examine his claims is one of Rupert’s old friends and supporters, a specialist in the history and philosophy of science, an author and the program director of the Scientific and Medical Network, David Lorimer. He is also President of Wrekin Trust and Chief Consultant of Character Education Scotland.  He is also a former President of the Swedenborg Society, and Vice-President of the International Association for Near-Death Studies. Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, most recently ‘The Protein Crunch’ (with Jason Drew) and ‘A New Renaissance’, and out this year his new book ‘a quest for wisdom’. He is the originator of the Inspire-Aspire Values Poster Programmes, which this year involved over 25,000 young people.    What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Compulsory philosophy and death  07:32 Examining Rupert Sheldrake’s 10 claimed assumptions of western science   09:10 The ‘Life and nature are mechanistic’ assumption  19:30 The ‘Matter is unconscious’ assumption  29:40 ‘The laws of nature are constant’ assumption  38:26 The Galileo Commission - get everyone to look though the telescope  43:00 Reality is relational not relative - Apilla Colorado and Leroy Little bear  44:45 The ‘Nature is Purposeless’ assumption - teleology  52:30 ‘Biological heredity is only physical’ and ‘memory is in your Brain’ assumptions  55:00 Morphogenetic fields and memories of previous lives and birthmarks  1:01:45 ‘Your mind is in your head, your consciousness is correlated to your brain activity’ assumption  1:05:30 ‘Psychic phenomena and telepathy are impossible’ assumption  FOR PART 2 TIME CODES AND THE MANY MORE REFERENCES FROM THIS EPISODE PLEASE VISIT: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-13-assumptions-of-science-david-lorimer References: Rupert Sheldrake ‘Science set free’  David Lorimer ‘A Quest for Wisdom’  David Lorimer ‘Thinking Beyond the Brain’  The Galileo Commission - get everyone to look though the telescope  The Scientific and Medical Network 

Can intention, attention or expectation affect random physical events? In this episode we’re going to be exploring the subtleties of an odd phenomenon: the Experimenter Effect, where the expectations of the scientist doing an experiment appear to affect the results measured. This is hugely important for the right practice of science, and for understanding why some experiments that seem watertight methodologically can only be reproduced by scientists who expect the same results and not by sceptics of the hypothesis. Who better to discuss this with than a scientist who ran into this while trying to disprove the the influence of consciousness in a physical system, Professor Garret Moddel; Dr. Moddel is Professor of Electrical and Quantum engineering at Colorado University, specialising in Solar cells, metal-insulator technology and geometric diodes, and optoelectronics among other extraordinary technologies. He also runs a separate psi phenomena lab. He is also one of the former presidents of the groundbreaking research organisation the Society of Scientific Exploration. PART 1 01:04 The Experimenter effect explained 01:06 The difference between the effect in Psychology and in Physics 19:00 RNGs: Helmut Schmitt and atomic decay Random Number Generator experiments 25:00 1000’s of scientists in a data driven, peer reviewed field of science, in underground labs at top universities; totally unacknowledged by the rest of science 27:30 Garrett didn’t believe it till he read the literature 55:55 Standford Research Institute’s 1970’s-1990’s military psychic spy Remote Viewing experiments 01:03:30 Jessica Utts: The statistical analysis of SRI’s remote viewing research PART 2 01:08:00 The Observer Effect: simply observing interacts with quantum systems 01:11:00 Wigner Von Neumann and the ‘collapse of the wave function’ 01:15:00 Our intention does affect random phenomena, incontrovertibly in the literature References: (please note the reported bias towards criticism over support on the wiki entries; the supporters of this science try constantly to re-edit these entries to represent credible support as well as criticism, only for moderators to edit back. Why the need for such disproportional criticism?) Schmidt, Helmut. Paper "Collapse of the state vector and psychokinetic effect." Foundations of Physics 12.6 (1982): 565-581.  The Society for Scientific Exploration Dean Radin at IONS Radin, Dean, et al. paper "Psychophysical interactions with a double-slit interference pattern: Exploratory evidence of a causal influence." Physics Essays 34.1 (2021): 79-88. Robert Jahn, Dean of Engineering at Princeton and founder of PEAR Labs Princeton Robert Jahn, Brenda Dunne paper, ”On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena." Foundations of Physics 16.8 (1986): 721-772. Roger Nelson, Director of PEAR Labs Princeton Bernie Haisch’s and Garret Moddel’s Zero point energy patent Garret Moddel et al, paper on Zero-point research

In episode #11 we explore the way emotions work, and particularly fear - the way it’s triggered, what happens in the brain and how much we are conscious of what’s going on. I think this is really relevant as we appear to be an extremely fearful, defensive and argumentative society in general, and perhaps if we understood what was happening inside us we might be able to limit some of the damage these kind of encounters produce. We also look at the the Limbic System and Triune Brain theories of emotions and the evolution of the brain, and find out why these hugely popular theories in Psychology are no longer really considered true by neuroscientists. Perhaps we can salvage something useful from these theories for psychology, as some really effective therapies have been based on them in the past. So who better to help us clarify all this than emotion and fear specialist, neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. Dr Le Doux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at NYU in New York in the Center for Neural Science, and he directs the Emotional Brain Institute of NYU and the Nathan Kline Institute. He is also a Professor of Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical School. His work is focused on the brain mechanisms of memory and emotion and he is the author of The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, and Anxious and his most recent book that we’ll be talking mostly about today “Deep History of Ourselves and the evolution of consciousness”. He has received loads of awards, including prizes from the Association for Psychological Science, the American Philosophical Society, the IPSEN Foundation and the American Psychological Association. His book Anxious received the 2016 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association. Awesomely, he is also the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band, The Amygdaloids and performs with Colin Dempsey as the acoustic duo So We Are. Jo’s new book “The Deep History of Ourselves: the 4 billion year sorry of how we got conscious brains”  What we discuss in this episode: PART 1 05:16 Jo joined Mike Gazzaniga’s lab in the late 60’s 07:00 The neuroscience of being afraid and under threat 09:00 Left Brain Interpreter: Consciousness is a narration making sense of our behaviour (See Episode #3) 16:45 The Amygdala: Raised heart rate and sweaty palms are not the emotion of fear 33:00 A criticism of Paul MacLean’s Limbic system and Triune Brain theories 40:00 The Amygdala is misunderstood when associated with fear rather than threat stimuli processing 45:45 We should keep mental state terms and behaviour terms separate 47:00 Threat hormones like cortisol can affect rational thinking in the frontal cortex PART 2: 52:00 The conscious experience of anxiety and fear is often where the problem lies, not the physiological mechanisms the medication is treating 59:30 3 types of noetic consciousness: breaking it down to try and learn more 1:14:00 Contrary to darwinism, cognition came before emotions 1:15:30 Reconciling the disconnect between experiences and brain activity 1:24:00 W.H.Auden "The age of anxiety" poem 1:27:00 Focussing on improving how we feel over how we behave References: Leon Festinger’s theory of Cognitive Dissonance  Endel Tulving - 3 types of noetic consciousness Steve Flemming UCL - subjective self awareness in the frontal pole area

'Psychedelics in a changing World: medicalisation, reciprocity and planetary healing' With: Ben Sessa, Gabriel Amezcua, Nick von Christierson, David Luke, Andrea Langlois & Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner. This is a recording of a fascinating panel chaired by Chasing Consciousness in the talks tent of Medicine Festival programmed by Ruby Reed. It included psychologists, psychiatrists, psychedelic entrepreneurs and activists at the top of their field. The panel gave a nuanced and positive overview of the issues associated with the now inevitable medicalisation of these psychedelic compounds. With great sensitivity they approached the very difficult issue of how to honour the roots of this therapy in indigenous shamanism, without reducing it to just money or token indigenous board members. Despite positive predictions for the future it became clear by the end of the talk just how complex the issue of reciprocity is. You can check our interview with Ashleigh Murphy Beiner of the Imperial College team on 'Testing psychedelics for depression' here. And look out for future interviews with panelists Dr. Ben Sessa and David Luke to come soon! 00:00 Introduction to the speakers 02:49 Medicalisation: Just a success story or are there shadows to call out early in the process? 03:10 Ben Sessa: safe, effective medicines as alternatives to long term pharmaceutical 05:00 Getting to the root cause of the problem rather than papering over the symptoms 06:40 'A psychiatric renaissance' 09:20 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: Learning from the shadow to confront worldwide depression 15:40 Designing ethical psychedelic treatment models that match its uniqueness 16:15 David Luke: Biomedical model VS subjective psychological model 18:00 Bio-Psycho-social-spiritual models may not work with medicalisation 21:00 Nick Van Christiersen of Woven Science 22:00 Being inspired by Indigenous models: Diagnosis, preparation, peak experience, integration in community 23:00 Psychedelic treatment is a threat to big pharma 24:00 Andrea Langlois: Keeping the door more widely open than just to medicalisation 25:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Accessibility, decolonisation, inclusion of indigenous people in the medical process 28:00 Andrea Langlois: The indigenous idea of Reciprocity. The ailments of modern society like depression and climate change are a call to come back into a relationship of reciprocity with Gaia 31:00 Risk of hijacking of reciprocity, to green wash profiteering 32:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Giving and getting, participation, engagement, respect not money 36:00 Do you think they really want to be ‘preserved’!? 39:00 Nick Van Christiersen: reparations before reciprocity 42:00 David Luke: Is it our right to give them to have a seat at the table!? 45:00 Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: We have so much to learn and adapt from the indigenous methodology 47:00 The newly founded Association for Psychedelic Therapies 48:00 Ben Sessa: Reciprocity between carer and patient 53:00 Andrea Langlois: Indigenous knowledge should be understood as science and decriminalised 59:00 Ben Sessa: Getting it over the line - decriminalisation 1:01:50 David Luke: Changing our whole world view through psychedelics, to reboot the culture of a species in crisis 1:06:00 Gabriel Amezcua: Psychedelics are confined mostly to privileged white people when they are most needed by vulnerable minorities 1:08:00 De-Regulation of substances, accessibility for poor communities with trauma and PTSD 1:11:00 Andrea Langlois: Earth practice and our own western relationship with plants and the natural world 1:18:00 Closing comments

Can psychedelic therapy help depression? We are now in the middle of the first psychedelic resurgence since the last bout of research in the 60’s and 70’s led by legends of the psychedelic movement like Dr. Stan Grof at Harvard. This resurgence is taking place on two fronts: Firstly, following promising results from Imperial College’s Psidep 1 study into the use of Psilocybin, the active ingredient in Magic Mushrooms, to treat treatment-resistant depression; there has been a host of studies around the world at leading universities like Harvard investigating many other compounds as well as Psilocybin like famous rave drug MDMA and horse tranquilliser Ketamine. This is an odd turn of events for compounds that have been systematically demonised by governments and accused of worsening mental health conditions. Secondly, we are seeing a a massive increase in the participation of Ahyuasca rituals, whose active ingredient is DMT, one of the most hallucinogenic compounds in the world, to the point that it has become a fashion among the funky philosophical Burning Man style community. The world of medicine and personal transformation seem to be converging. But we need a specialist to clarify the details here before we get ahead of ourselves. So who better to help us navigate this new territory than assistant psychologist on Imperial’s most recent psilocybin study, Ashleigh Murphy Beiner. Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner is a Trainee Clinical Psychologist and Mindfulness Practitioner. She is a member of the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London. She is also a scientific researcher and has published research investigating the therapeutic use of ayahuasca. Her research has found changes in mindfulness and cognitive flexibility after ayahuasca use which both play a role in psychological wellbeing. What we discuss: 00:00 Inequality and suffering and how to deal with that experience 05:20 Victor Frankel and thriving from the fundamental quest for human meaning 07:49 Treatment resistant depression, ruminating about the past and social disconnection 14:00 Psychedelics reduce rumination (DMN) and increase plasticity 16:00 Mazatec and North American Indian traditions of healing using hallucinogens 17:30 Plants have their own agency in the indigenous worldview 18:30 Imperial Colleges 2nd Psilocybin Study for depression explained 28:00 The results and how they compared to Psidep1, the first study 31:00 No magic answer to long-term effectiveness challenges against Depression 33:00 ‘Restoring a quality of life’ despite persistent depression symptoms 34:12 Dr. Rosalind Watts’ ACE (Accept, Connect, Embody) Model of treatment and post traumatic growth 36:30 Avoidance to acceptance, and disconnection from others, themselves and the world to connection to those things 39:00 Embody: allowing yourself to feel the pain 43:30 Yohann Hari and the wider systemic issues of inequality leading to depression 45:30 How it feels to publish your first scientific paper 46:00 Ashleigh’s study of Ahyuasca’s effects on cognition 49:00 The commercialisation of Ahyuasca and reciprocity 53:00 Common threads of between Ahyuasca, NDE and psilocybin experiences 56:20 The value of studying altered states of consciousness 1:00:00 Evidence that trauma is stored in the body References: Victor Frankel  Dr. Gabor Mate documentary  Yohann Hari book 'Lost Connections' 

In this episode we want to understand how easy it is to change our beliefs when we receive new information, a process that can be really uncomfortable and lead to great resistance in the psyche. The scientific community, whilst educated to update their world view based on new information and theory, are by no means immune to this resistance; today we’ll find out to what extent it is just a human trait we have to accept. Now that the scientific method has become more water-tight from our biases than ever, and data collection is more sophisticated than ever, the difference between hard data and the opinion we draw from that data should also be more clear. However, the introduction of the internet and the separation of the population by social media algorithms into tribal bubbles of like-minded people, has mixed together data and opinion, confusing the scientific community and the lay population alike.  So understanding the biology of belief, our discomfort and resistance to new information, and how beliefs play a part in our sense of self can really help us stay open to new data and to update our world view to match it with the necessary flexibility demanded by the sheer speed of change of our current era’s technological revolution; in my opinion this awareness offers essential tools for navigating the next few decades. So who better to help us navigate this mine-field of human behaviour than cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Jonas Kaplan. His research focuses on the neural basis of consciousness, self, empathy, social relationships, action perception and creativity. Using a combination of fMRI neuro-imaging and behavioural studies he aims to examine the neural mechanisms that underlie our experience of resonating with other people and being aware of ourselves. He is the assistant Research Professor of Psychology at University of South California’s ‘Brain and Creativity Institut’e and Co-Director of the Dana and David Dornslife Cognitive Neuroimaging centre. Today’s chat will begin discussing his research with Sarah Gimbel and Sam Harris into a possible Backfire Effect when faced with new data. What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Split brains and 2 separate consciousness’ in one head 07:10 The Backfire Effect explained 09:00 Why do we find it so difficult to change our minds about things that we care about? 12:40 Less flexibility to changing mind associated with activated Amygdala and Insular cortices 16:00 Avoidance of situations that will challenge us to change our minds 18:15 The evolutionary intertwining between emotion and cognition 23:30 The difference between Cognitive Dissonance and The Backfire effect 25:30 Reason is coloured by underlying motivation 29:00 Sam Harris and the neural basis of belief 31:45 The algorithmic belief bubbles of a post internet world 37:20 The Default Mode Network’s narrative about self, is less active in meditators 40:00 Utilitarian values VS idealogical/sacred values 45:00 The Left Brain interpreter and making up narratives to keep our world view consistent PART 2 58:00 What is self and is it an illusion? 1:01:30 Demasio’s ‘Core’ and ‘Autobiographical’ self 1:04:00 Mental concepts are useful provisional illusions in some sense 1:08:00 The blur between ‘self’ and ‘other’ 1:11:50 Belonging and social group membership and it’s influence on beliefs 1:21:00 Self is a narrative about ourselves 1:22:00 Exceptional experience revealing the illusion of self and the fear of ego death 1:26:45 The biology of belief: the mind body connection References: The left Brain Interpreter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-brain_interpreter Antonio Demasio ‘Descartes Error’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error Jonas' new podcast

How important is story to to human understanding?   Today we take a step away from science per se, to look at the role of story in the formation of our world views, for generations our only method alongside direct experience of understanding the world, as opposed the more modern method of hard data from scientific research that we tend to examine on Chasing Consciousness. So we’re continuing the all important job of our first series: to establish the limits of what science can know. And today we’re going to start understanding how some of the story like information found in the psyche, and perhaps in the way our lives unfold, can give us clues to the nature of human reality and so support our scientific research in psychology.    So who better to help us navigate this troublesome academic area than award winning social anthropologist Dr Carla Stang! Carla earned her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.  She has held the position of Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and Associate Researcher at the University of Sydney, and was awarded the Frank Bell Memorial Prize for Anthropology from Cambridge. Based on her fieldwork with the Mehinaku, Carla wrote a book called “A Walk to the River in Amazonia” which we’ll be talking about in a bit. She writes for the Dark Mountain collective which advocates ‘uncivilisation’, and has created a mysterious new project ‘Imaginal Futures’. Most recently she co-created the first Masters of Philosophy at Schumacher College, and is currently at work on a new book, an ecological, cross-disciplinary and collaborative project. What we discuss in this episode:  Part 1  00:00 Tarzan of Greystoke 10:00 How much of a problem is our propensity for narrative over fact?  14:00 Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or Monomyth examined 24:00 Critiquing the destructive power and domination of others presented in the mono myth 40:00 The uninitiated: we’re a society of children 49:00 The Heroine’s Journey, Maureen Murdoch and healing the wounded feminine 55:00 Different types of ‘events of consciousness’ and mythos Part 2  1:05:30 The importance of interdisciplinary research to get big picture understanding 1:17:00 What’s quotidian Amazonian life like; ‘A Walk to the River in Amazonia’ Carla’s 2011 book 1:53:00 Imagining the stories of the future we want, we can form the world References:   Carla Stang ‘A Walk to the River in Amazonia’  Imaginal Futures created by Carla Stang,  Rachel Flemming and Emma George   William James quote, ‘Live life to the fullest’    Ben Okri quote ‘We are story beings’  Eugène (Eugeniusz) Minkowski 'Vers une cosmologie. Fragments philosophiques' Joseph Campbell quote ‘follow your bliss’  Sonu Shamdasani Historian and Redbook publisher 'Lament of the Dead' James Hillman Jung scholar and founder of the field of 'Archetypal Psychology' Freddy’s ‘Rites of Passage’ podcast show   Maureen Murdoch 'The Heroines Journey'  Henri Corbin - 'Mundis Imaginalis'  Sean Kane - a place telling a tale through human beings  

How easy is it to change our Habits? Today we have the important job of working out what neuroplasticity is all about. 50 years ago we thought the adult brain remained the same after reaching maturity. Now since the discovery that in fact our neural networks remain ‘plastic’, which means adaptable, a host of research has opened up fuelled by our desire to thrive and improve rather than just survive. Along with that knowledge, as so often with popular science, has come a host of exaggerations and quick fix claims, that prey on the wishful thinker, and today we’re aiming to sort the facts form the fiction and really understand what can change in our neural networks in adulthood and perhaps even offer some tools to facilitate that. Who better to discuss this with than developmental neurobiologist turned freelance science writer Moheb Costandi. He writes stories and articles for various popular publications like New Scientist and the Guardian, is often cited from his Neurophilosophy blog, and is the author of the books Neuroplasticity and 50 Human Brain Ideas You Really Need to Know. Things we discuss in this episode: 00:00 A good psychology teacher 04:30 The controversial history of neuroplasticity 11:46 Longterm potentiation (LTP) 12:41 Stem Cells and the tipping point for neuroplasticity 14:47 What’s the significance of neuro-genesis? 16:00 What actually happens when neurons adapt? 18:00 Electro-chemical neurocommunication at high speed 22:00 Are there neurons all over the body? 23:30 The gut’s enteric nervous system (ENS) 25:00 Calling out spurious false rumours about neuroplasticity 31:40 ‘Awareness of plasticity doesn’t empower us in any way’ 33:00 The wellness, self help and new age industries have manipulated neuroplasticity to exploit the public 37:05 Can we use plasticity to reprogram negative habits? 40:30 The bidirectional link between brain and behaviour. 44:00 The longer we have a particular behaviour the stronger those pathways become 47:00 Stress hormones stimulate plasticity. Negative emotions encode memories more strongly. 50:00 Microglia: the brain’s immune cells 53:00 Plasticity even in white matter tracts of myelin 55.00 Mitigating age-related cognitive decline using plasticity 01:01:00 Learning a musical instrument or new language can help mitigate dementia 1:05:00 Are there any limits to how plastic the mind can be? 1:12:00 Are brain computer-interfaces going to cause a plasticity adaptation in the brain? 1:16:00 Technology could cause a lowering of brain function rather than a bionic super race References: ‘Neuroplasticity’ by Moheb Costandi  ’Neurophilosophy’ Mo’s blog  Charles Darwin - Dissent of Man  Santiago Ramone Cahall and Camill Gogi - Nobel prize  The Raticularists  Paul Bach-y-Rita  Longterm potentiation LTP  Microglia: the brain’s immune cells