The Waking Cosmos Podcast

Patreon ~ https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos Psychologist David Luke is one of the new generation of psychedelics researchers, based at the University of Greenwich in the UK. One of the things that stands out about David is that while he takes a scientific approach to understanding the potential value of psychedelics, he keeps an open mind to what these experiences bring us into contact with, including what they might reveal about the nature of reality itself. One possibility for David is that psychedelic substances such as DMT override the “reducing valve” function of the brain — opening the floodgates between our ordinary sense of self, and a much greater transpersonal reality. In today’s episode of Waking Cosmos (listen below) we talk about David’s ideas and research into these substances, including his controversial experiments exploring whether psychedelics can serve as catalysts for psychic phenomena, like precognition and telepathy. To those unfamiliar with the evidence of such “psi” effects, this might seem bizarre, but as a past president of the Parapsychological Association, David is well versed in the significant body of evidence suggestive that these phenomena are real. I hope you enjoy this episode of Waking Cosmos! If you’d like to support the continued existence of this podcast, please consider visiting my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos David's latest book, DMT Dialogues https://amzn.to/2DgH5uB Breaking Convention Conference https://bit.ly/2GbmZWB

My guest today is David Pearce, a well known philosopher and transhumanist, yet his views about consciousness set him apart from other transhumanists you might be familiar with (listen below). David believes that the nature of consciousness goes much deeper than can be explained through classical physics or from within a materialist paradigm. He suspects that consciousness may reflect an intrinsic feature of reality. Whether or not this is the case, David is confident that the unity of consciousness is facilitated by a quantum unity occurring in the brain. As a result, David is skeptical about the possibility of classical computation-based “mind uploading” or truly conscious artificial intelligences arriving in the foreseeable future. But while our descendents will continue to be biological, they will however be dramatically different to us, not only with their indefinite lifespan, physical fortitude, and resilience to disease, but most significantly, in the structure of their minds. According to David, our great grandchildren will inhabit profoundly blissful mind spaces which exist exclusively “above hedonic zero”. They will have abandoned retributive emotions such as jealousy and anger, and their ordinary conscious states will be comparable to today’s peak experiences. Most significantly for David, our descendants will set their sites on abolishing suffering in all sentient life on this planet, and finally, the entire reachable universe. If you find David’s vision hard to believe, this will be an interesting episode! Next time on Waking Cosmos we’ll compare the mechanistic view of the universe with the emerging organismic paradigm. Please consider supporting Waking Cosmos on Patreon here. https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos David Pearce's website https://www.hedweb.com

"There is a limitless horizon of possible mental experiences, pregnant with unimaginable value and significance." Please consider supporting Waking Cosmos on Patreon~ https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos The nature of consciousness is among the most profound mysteries humans have encountered. And yet, whether we think that consciousness reflects a fundamental feature of reality, or a mere illusion, we do know, at least in our case, that brains are involved. We also know that changes made to our brains correlate with dramatic changes in consciousness. As scientific and technological development continues, we’re likely to gain much greater ability to retune this biological instrument, and potentially gain access to a much broader variety of possible conscious states. Future augmentation of brains could open us to a limitless horizon of mental experiences, pregnant with unimaginable value and significance. When mind itself is stretched across the canvas, what will we want to want? What values will guide such minds? One thinker who is exploring these questions is the philosopher Andrés Gómez Emilsson, who I was honored to interview on the Waking Cosmos podcast. In this conversation we discussed the universal drives of self-creating minds, the elusive nature of consciousness, the recent rise of panpsychist theories, and the power of psychedelics for exploring psychic space. Perhaps the issue that most animates Andrés is the nature of happiness and its relationship to suffering. Do we need the depths of suffering in order to experience the heights of ecstasy? Will it one day be possible to “engineer away” all suffering through technology? And if so, can we really be happy all the time “without going insane?” My conversation with Andres was truly mind-expanding for me, and I hope it will be the first of many. If you value open-minded philosophical conversations like this one, please consider supporting Waking Cosmos on Patreon~ https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos

How do we map the landscape of consciousness? What is the future for mind in the universe? And is consciousness an intrinsic part of reality? Today on Waking Cosmos I'm joined by Mike Johnson from the Qualia Research Institute, where they're working on a theory of consciousness which could have profound implications for society, including the development of what we might call a 21st century mood-ring, through which we begin to telegraph our phenomenology, and explore entirely new landscapes of experience. In the second half we discuss how any sufficiently "crisp" theory of consciousness can be directed to anything, including cosmological phenomena like black holes and even the Big Bang.  I hope you enjoy today's episode as much as I did. If you're enjoying these open-minded conversations about consciousness and reality, and would like to help me turn this into a full time project, please consider supporting Waking Cosmos on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos LINKS~ The Qualia Research Institute website - https://qualiaresearchinstitute.org Mike's blog - https://qualiaresearchinstitute.org/blog Qualia Computing - https://qualiacomputing.com Waking Cosmos Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/wakingcosmos

Are psychic phenomena real? In today's episode of Waking Cosmos, Adrian talks to Garret Moddel, a physicist at the university of Colorado who has carried out extensive scientific experiments exploring ESP, also known as “psi” phenomena. Garret has conducted experiments exploring phenomena ranging from telepathy, to precognition, and mind-matter interaction. He even recounts how he and a number of students used remote viewing to successfully predict the stock market.  In addition to the evidence of psychic abilities, Garret shares his thoughts on the Global Consciousness Project - a global mind-matter experiment believed by some to measure collective shifts in attention in the global human population.  Of particular interest to Garret is the mysterious role of scientists' expectations and beliefs in the outcomes of their experiments. We hope you enjoy today's episode. You can support Waking Cosmos on Patreon here~ https://goo.gl/hguWhM The SSE conference program https://www.scientificexploration.org/2018-conference