Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness (2021) - full transcript

There's a deeper mystery here,

and it's really
the mystery of consciousness.

And it's the mystery of what
we don't understand

about the nature of
this conscious experience

that we're living in.

There's this existential wonder

about what's
really going on here.

What's the meaning of life?

What happens when we die?

Why are we awake?

How is it that we are aware
that we are aware?



We've been asking
for millennia, "What is life?"

Isn't that what we all
want to know?

What is life?

What is consciousness?

We answer one,
we find the other.

Consciousness is the essence
of life, to me.

To think that at one point,

there was this one first cell...

and basically everything that
needed to be known was in there?

Because from there,
everything else just emerged.

How did the one little cell
know how to become this?

You cannot not be in awe of life
in all its forms.

My own personal goal,
before I die, is to understand

how consciousness
fits into the universe,



how is compatible with the
laws of physics and biology

that have been so successful

at describing
everything else around it.

I had this
magic-mushroom experience.

I was sitting here,
just on the beach.

I was listening
to minimalist music.

And the rays of the sun
were reflecting off the water.

And you had these fantastic
hallucinations superimposed.

Everything slowed down

until I thought I arrived
at the center,

at the beating heart
of the universe.

And I finally understood.

I understood how it all works!

But it's ineffable.

Afterwards, you have great
difficulty explaining it.

And so if you apply the cold,
sodden, wet blanket of reason,

you have to sort of
question yourself.

What did you experience,
and what does it reflect?

Does it really reflect
a different experience,

a fundamental, different
aspect of the universe,

or just another intensely
pleasurable experience

produced by my brain?

The magic is that you
experience anything at all.

The magic is that your brain,

which is a piece of physical
furniture like this boat...

That a physical object can feel.

That is the heart
of the mind/body problem.

I'm dedicated to cortex.

That's what I have on my body.

Few scientists have that.

Consciousness is any experience,
any feeling.

It feels like something
to be angry.

It feels like something
to remember something.

It feels like something
to see red.

Common to them all
is subjectivity.

I'm here to direct
this large institute

of 300 people focusing on

trying to understand the cortex,

accelerating neuroscience
by building

these large observatories
to peer at the brain.

- Hi, DiJon. Howdy, howdy.
- Hey, Christof.

- How's it going?
- Very well.

Mouse, human?

This is mouse.

We have this project
at the Allen Institute.

It's a wiring layout
of the brain

that involves taking
a tiny grain of brain matter,

literally one cubic millimeter.

So it's like quinoa,
a grain of quinoa,

one-by-one-by-one millimeter,

cutting it into
30-nanometer-thin slices,

25,000 of them,

at the level of
electromicroscopy

and then using modern
machine-learning techniques

where it can automatically
reconstruct the precise wiring,

because in this piece
of quinoa grain

there are roughly 50,000 cells

and there are
a few kilometers of wiring.

And once I understand
which neuron is wired to which,

I really understand
a whole lot more

about what makes
this matter so special.

So those are all mitochondria?

Yes, it's mitochondria.
This is a...

And that's a micrometer,
or what?

A half a micrometer?

This will be a micrometer
or something like that.

And can you go all the way
to layer one here?

- Yes.
- How does layer one look?

Gosh, it looks beautiful
everywhere!

At this point it is not clear,
whether at this level

you can distinguish whether it's
a human brain or mouse brain.

And the point I always make
is that the basic hardware

of all of us is the same.

Whether we are a mouse or
a dog or a monkey

or a human or a whale,

at this level,
it's all very similar.

The brain
is the most highly organized

and complex piece of matter
in the known universe.

I always say
I get a shiver down my back.

Yeah, because you see just vast
untold complexity

upon complexity upon complexity.

And each brain is unique
and different, right?

And you can go back
to a famous example

when it comes to consciousness
that Leibniz made,

in his mill example
350 years ago,

because he said you can
never find consciousness.

And even if you go into a mill,
as it were...

That was his analogy
at the time...

And you zoom in inside the mill,

you see nothing
but levers moving.

And the same thing here
with respect to consciousness,

you go inside, you say,
"Where is consciousness?

I don't see consciousness."

I see synapses
and I see mechanisms, right?

That was the point of Leibniz.
All I see is mechanisms.

And somehow out of this
emerges consciousness.

What is it about this piece
of goo, of gray goo,

that gives rise
to the feeling of love?

Because if I look at in...

In physics, if I look at
the foundational theories

of physics,
quantum mechanics, relativity,

there's no "love" there.

There is no experience.
There is no pain and pleasure.

If I look at the periodic table
of the elements, again,

there's no
"consciousness" in there.

There's no feelings and love
and hate and dreams and desires.

If I look at the endless
ATGC chatter in my genes,

there isn't anything there.

But here, every day,
I open my eyes in the morning

and I have feelings...
Of love, of pain, of sadness.

And so the big question,

the heart of this ancient
mind/body problem is really,

how do you make...

How do you turn the waters
of the brain

into the wine
of our conscious experience?

Consciousness is,
before everything,

an experience.

I think most neuroscientists
who work on consciousness,

they know very well...

You could
track to the last neuron

of the hundred billion neurons,

made a complete map
of everything that takes place

when you see red
or feel anger or love.

Fine.

But unless you know
what experience is

by the first person,

it tells you nothing about what
it is to be and to experience.

Nothing.
Zero.

Sometimes people ask me,
"You were a scientist."

I did a PhD in cell genetics.

"Why suddenly
you left all that?"...

Seems supposedly
a promising career.

I don't know, might have been
a complete flop, but anyway,

was going okay
until I finished my PhD...

To become a Buddhist
practitioner first,

and then when I was 30
I became a monk, yes.

Well, first of all, I didn't
slam the door on science.

I didn't left science
because, for me,

science is the rigorous
pursuit of knowledge.

I was trying to know more
about the mind

and what it is to achieve inner
freedom from mental poisons.

Different science.

After so many years,
I'm certainly not enlightened,

but I have a real clear picture
of how the mind works.

So I just changed
the field of application.

We speak of a horizon
that cannot be reached.

It is the idea of studying
consciousness from the outside.

Now, from the inside,
there's no such problem.

Because we are not trying to
step out of consciousness,

you go so deep
within consciousness

that actually you can experience

pure consciousness...
The bare faculty to know.

There is something
at the depth of consciousness

that is pure awareness.

You can't get deeper than that.

Meditation aims at getting
an aspect of the mind

that is perfectly lucid,
perfectly clear,

where there's no gap
between perception and reality,

where you see phenomena as
appearing yet empty of reality,

as impermanent,
as interdependent.

Where you see beneath
the movement of thought

is pure self-illuminating,
nondual awareness

so that you require
the maximum clarity,

limpidity of the mind,

like a blue,
perfectly immaculate sky.

It's getting to the very core

of the basic nature
of consciousness.

The key difference
between the Western way

of looking at consciousness
and the Buddhist way,

is that they have primarily
focused on the inside view.

We, by in large in the West,

since particularly Galileo,
scientific revolution,

we said, "Let's remove
subjective from the world."

That was the step of Galileo.

And that gives rise to science,
because let's just focus

on the objective things
we can all agree on.

I now realize as a mature man
much better

why I first became interested

as a scientist
to study consciousness.

And ultimately I think
my reason was to rebel against

this feeling
of cosmic indifference.

I felt that consciousness

ultimately could not
be explained by science.

I have two conflicting impulses,

"Zwei Seelen, ach,
leben in meiner Brust."

Right?
Very much so.

So, on the one hand,
I was very much a scientist.

I love science.

I love looking
and finding confirmation

of order
in the natural universe.

That's why I'm a scientist,
ultimately,

because I do believe
that by rational process

we can understand what
this universe is made out of

and what we are we made out of
and why we are here?

On the other hand, I grew up
as a devout believer

and I wanted to reconcile...

Those are obviously
conflicting things

and I wanted to reconcile them.

So, on the one hand, I thought,
well, consciousness...

You know, science is going to

not be able to explain that,
finally,

and then finally
I have a justification

for why I believe in a soul.

But then as I did it
more and more

and thought about it more
and more, I said,

no, this is...
I don't need a soul.

I don't need the
classical sort of,

you know, traditional
and religious Cartesian soul.

I think you can explain
the strange aspect

of consciousness,
you know, the subjectivity,

using physical, natural laws.

You have to extend what we know
about the universe a little bit,

but you can
explain consciousness

without removing this wonderful
aspect of consciousness,

that it is a feeling.

It cannot just be reduced
to my neurons in my brain.

There are many...
Possibly infinite... ways,

of approaching consciousness,

just like in the story
with the blind men

and the elephant, where everyone
had a different perspective

of what this elephant might be.

We have learned
over the last few decades,

that under the ground,
a forest like this,

these trees will be connected
and will be talking right now.

Probably whispering about
what I'm talking about.

The field of bioacoustics
is just at its infancy,

and we still know very little.

But we know that trees
and plants

are not only able to detect
sounds from their environment

but would also produce
their own sounds.

The incredible amount of data
that is emerging

in the field of plant behavior
and communication

is obviously pointing
at more uncomfortable questions

of whether plants
are actually sentient,

intelligent, conscious?

To be sentient means that
you are perceiving, sensing,

responding subjectively.

And that is the key word.

We have plenty of data to show
that plants perceive,

sense, respond.

So they definitely do that.

And the real question
that I often ask myself is like,

can you do this in any other way
that is not subjective?

Because to do it nonsubjectively

means that you're
doing it "objectively,"

which really means
that you're an object

but objects don't feel,
don't perceive, don't respond.

The new lab that
I'm setting up here

at the University of Sydney,
it's called the B.I. Lab,

and it stands
for "biological intelligence."

And really,
it is my little smirk

to the A.I. people,
so, "artificial intelligence."

We are kind of comfortable
in considering technology

as becoming intelligent
and even conscious...

We talk about robots
as if they are alive,

and yet we are not prepared
to talk about plants

as if they are alive.

It's definitely not
considering the question

of intelligence or consciousness
for these others

worthy of discussion.

My pea is out!

Ohh, I can see the root.

Excellent.

The plant is directing the root
into the channel here,

which is exactly the one
that is taking it to the water.

So the previous experiment

with the peas looking for
water using sound

was quite straightforward.

The pea was growing
inside a maze,

which was the shape
of a letter "Y" upside down.

And when I just placed
real water

at one end of the maze,

the pea grew its root
straight to it,

which is not surprising

because they use
the humidity grading

to detect the source of water.

Now, I then did what we do
with animal studies

and designed
a playback experiment.

So, I actually recorded
the sound of water in the pipe

and I played it back
by attaching a little speaker,

a vibration speaker, and an iPod

which would play back
the sound of water.

And what I found is that
the peas would also be able

to find the source of "water"
through the sound

even when water
really is nowhere to be found.

Yeah.

- That's touch.
- Okay.

So, we're going to
set up the EPG,

which is the equivalent
of the EEG, for the little pea.

Oh, yeah.
There it is.

What are you doing?

I'm not touching it.
That's amazing.

Yeah.

I was a few centimeters away.

So it's seeing you.

Again.

So one other experiment I did

is testing Pavlovian
learning in plants,

specifically, peas.

And it's following
pretty much the same

testing protocol
that we use in animals,

and specifically the Pavlovian
protocol with the dog.

So in the case of Pavlov,
he used a bell

which was always preceding
the arrival of dinner.

And in response to that,
the dog would salivate

because it's very excited
about the arrival of dinner.

By repeating this long enough,
or times enough,

the bell on its own,

even when there is no
dinner coming,

will make the dog salivate.

Now, plants don't salivate
and I didn't use a bell.

But instead of a bell,
I used a little fan.

And instead of dinner...

I used light.

Now, this is actually blue light

because the peas
really like that.

And what they do, a blue light,
they grow towards it.

So they bend.

If you repeat this
enough times...

In this case for three days...

You will find that
the fan alone,

without the light even arriving,

will make the pea bend
in the right direction.

The fan didn't mean anything,

but the plant somehow
has learned the association

between these two.

And just like the dog,

the pea is passing the test
with flying colors.

My first experiment was received
with great resistance

because it was really the first
one to show that, yeah,

plants can learn

and they can tick
all the same boxes

that we would expect
from an animal.

A lot of the comments
that I received

were never about the data,
which is, you know,

that's the foundation
of science.

Nobody ever actually said to me,
"You did this experiment wrong.

The data are no good."

It was always about,
"This cannot be."

That is, the concept,
even the idea

that a plant could learn,
it was almost disturbing.

So, what is it about brain
and neurons that is so special

that without them
you can be conscious?

What brain and neurons
are really doing

is passing through signals
of an electrical nature.

Well, plants are really good
at electrical signaling.

So does that mean the plants
are more conscious?

I think that they have
more genes that are coding

for that kind of exchange
of information internally.

So does it mean that they are
even better than we are

at this consciousness business?

They're doing all of the things
that we think you can only do

if you do have a brain and
neurons, but they're doing them.

Modern science seems to be

coming around in a circle.

The voices of plants
that the shamans

have listened to for millennia,

we can record them now
in a lab with a laser.

A lot of my research
has been inspired

by knowledge that was shared
by Indigenous people with me.

And it was directly opened up by
the experience with the plants.

Often it comes through dreams.

And in a traditional indigenous
knowledge perspective,

this is nothing unusual.

A lot of shamans

get their information
through the dream world.

But for a scientist to get
the information

from the dream world
looks weird.

It requires an opening
up to a space

where intuition lives.

When we launched our
first psilocybin study,

no such study
had been done for decades.

Psilocybin is
the active principle

in the so-called magic mushroom.

And it is a classic psychedelic
or a hallucinogen drug

used for thousands of years
by Indigenous cultures

for religious or divinatory
or healing purposes.

These drugs provide
a very unique window

into the nature
of consciousness.

The lights are super bright.

I'm seeing kind of like
a metronome keeping time,

keeping track.

And as that metronome
swings up and down,

I'm bouncing backwards
into time.

There's a woman, a native woman,

that I know I've encountered.

She has long dark hair.

And I can see her face,

and to me it looks
very familiar.

She knows me, and I know her.

I feel very peaceful
and not scared,

like I'm being connected to
like a collective knowledge base

and that I'm learning
about myself

and about what is.

These experiences
looked like experiences

that have been reported
over the ages by mystics

and religious figures.

There's a sense of unity
of all people and things,

the sense that everything
is interconnected.

And that's accompanied by
a sense of deep reverence

for that experience.

Some people describe it
as homecoming...

There's something that they knew
to be true all along,

and it's a remembering.

And that's one of the powerful
pieces of the truth value

of this experience,

when we say it's more "real"
and more "true"

than everyday
waking consciousness.

You ready for a few ratings?

Yes.

Zero, not at all.

Ten being the strongest
imaginable.

Distance from normal reality.

Six.

Pure being and pure awareness.

Five.

Fusion of your personal self
into a larger whole?

Four.

Everything okay?
Warm enough?

- Yeah, I'm warm enough.
- Okay.

You're doing beautifully,
Justine.

- See you in a little bit.
- Yep.

Okay.

- She's doing great.
- Great.

Yeah, I mean, look at...

Pure being and pure awareness...
Five.

Fusion of your personal self
into a larger whole... four.

Sense of reverence
or sacredness... five.

Eight for timelessness.

So, yeah, so we may have some

touch of a mystical
experience here.

We brought people back

a month later
or two months later

and interviewed them.

We have anywhere from

70% to 80% of people
saying that this is

in the top five most meaningful
experiences of their life.

With respect
to spiritual significance,

in our first study,
we had 30% of people

saying it was the single most

spiritually
significant experiences

of their entire life.

And when you'd ask,
"Well, what does that mean?

You know, you're saying
this is in the top five.

What does that really
mean to you?"

people would kind of
look off and say,

"You know,
when my first child was born,

that changed my entire life.

You know, my life
would never be the same.

And my father
recently passed away,

and that's hugely moving."

They'd say, "You know,
it's kind of like that."

And so that's the metric
that they're using,

these huge experiences
that everyone has,

but this is occurring
in a single six-hour session

in a session room
at Johns Hopkins.

I have worked at Johns Hopkins
for over 40 years.

I work long hours.

And I work more than
five days a week.

And I can't say I've had
one of the most, you know,

top-five experiences
in my life there at Hopkins.

In one of
my most meaningful sessions

that I had in the study,

I felt the energy of people
that have been close to me

that have passed away

in a way that
is maybe hard to describe

but it was very convincing to me

that it was these
certain people.

So that's one way that
it really strengthened my belief

in the afterlife,
whatever that means.

Whether that means

that your energy
cannot be ever destroyed.

And that's a part of that
connective thread

that is binding
all of us in the world,

all people and things.

I felt as though the experience

was preparing me for things

that I know will happen
in my life, that will be tough.

I'm being pushed on a gurney
down a hallway.

What I can see is ceiling tiles

going by very, very quickly,
and industrial lights,

and I know
that I'm in a hospital.

And something is not right.

I can smell
the anesthetic hospital smell,

and things are
very chaotic around me.

Just commotion, concern.

But all I can feel is safety

and a loving feeling

that's cradling me
in that moment.

And I know I'm learning now

for an experience in the future

and that I'm being
prepared that,

when that happens,
when that moment happens,

I'll remember this,
remember that I'm safe,

and it will be okay.

Since we began this work,

we have conducted research
in over 600 psilocybin sessions.

Just recently,
our group at Johns Hopkins

and a group
at New York University

copublished studies
in which we administered

a moderately high dose
of psilocybin

to cancer patients
who met clinical criteria

for very significant
anxiety or depression.

And most importantly,

the measures of depression
go markedly down.

And for the most part,

people felt
much more comfortable

with the prospect
of facing death.

And these effects
appear to endure.

People do not come out
of that experience saying,

"Oh, now I believe in heaven,"
you know,

"Now I believe in life
after death."

But it's not uncommon
for people to come out

entertaining, in a way
that they perhaps

didn't previously,
that there's...

There could possibly
be continuity of something.

Sometimes when Western
visitors come here,

they expect that
all our young monks

in the school would meditate.

But, basically, meditation

is not considered something
for beginners.

You don't go to
a mindfulness course here.

"Meditation" means
"cultivating" in Sanskrit...

Cultivating altruistic love,
loving kindness, compassion.

So it's not just sitting there
and looking in the sky

and emptying your mind.

Meditation actually comes
pretty late

because it's dealing with
the basic nature of your mind.

And if you're not prepared,
what are you going to do?

When you see the sacred dance,

the rituals are not
just magic rituals.

They are actually
guided meditation.

First, there is a dance
to purify the ground

from all graspings
and mental clinging.

When you see a dancer with
a sword that cuts an effigy,

it's just cutting
the clinging to ego.

Grasping to the self could be
a source of hatred,

obsessive craving,
arrogance, jealousy,

distortion of reality.

What would be
the result of that?

Suffering.

So unless you deconstruct
the notion of ego,

those things
will continue to appear.

Meditation is
the tried-and-true course

for understanding
the nature of mind,

and psilocybin
is the crash course.

We often speak in terms of
"ego" and "self"

being dissolved acutely
by psilocybin

and some of these
meditation practices.

That's actually the objective
of most Buddhist practices,

to recognize that
you are not the self

and that so often
in our cultures

that we've come
to identify ourself

with that voice in our head
that says, "I'm going to get up.

I see the morning."

As one meditates more deeply,
it becomes very apparent

that that sense of self
can drop away.

And that experience alone
can be totally transformative.

So we'll have this top
over your head.

It's like an antenna.

Okay.

Hey, Jane... Roland.

Just wanted to know
how you're doing in there.

I'm doing great, thanks.
It's actually pretty comfy.

Okay.
That's what we want to hear.

It's like a spa.

One perspective on
what happens with psychedelics,

from a neuroscience
point of view,

is the influence of psychedelics

on something called
the default mode network,

a function of brain
that underlies ego

or sense of self.

People with clinical depression
have increased sense of ego,

and one of the things
that psychedelics do...

Psilocybin and LSD...

Is to decrease function
in the default mode network,

in other words,
decrease egoic function.

There can be a sense
of the melting away

of a sense of self
or personality, if you will,

and a merging with
something greater than that.

So, acutely you'll get decreases
in the sense of self,

but concurrently a much greater
interconnectivity in the brain,

and the opportunity for rewiring
and new connections forming

is really quite substantial.

One of the common
features of this

decreased sense of self

is just a greater openness
and a greater freedom of choice.

And so that emerges
from psychedelics.

It emerges in meditation because
one of the characteristics

is an open-mindedness

and a freedom
from habitual response.

And it looks very much
like patterns that we see

in childhood before
those narratives get locked in,

and that sense of self
gets locked in.

So this openness has
huge implications for healing.

I wouldn't hesitate
a second to say

that the Hopkins experiment

was a completely
life-changing experience.

Why would something
synthesized by mushrooms

do something so dramatic
to the human brain?

And, in fact, "What does it do?"
was the question, in part.

I participated about
10 years ago in a study

which gave a small number
of subjects like me

various concentrations
of psilocybin

in a very controlled environment
in which we were coached

to be open to whatever
happened in our brain.

Ten years later,
I still regard it as...

In fact, even more so regard it

as the most significant
experience I've ever had.

At the time I did this,

I was in the more or less
immediate aftermath

of a really tragic death.

My son died by suicide.

He went through different
forms of drugs,

from alcohol to Ecstasy to LSD
to cocaine to heroin.

And one night I just got a call

that he had
shot himself to death.

My son's death
had left me so raw

and so in need of working
through certain things.

So I regarded the whole
psilocybin experiment

as at least potentially a way

to come to some further
terms with that.

I went into it with a good
deal of skepticism.

I wasn't in any...

Certainly not in any
institutional way religious,

nor really a believer
in much of any sense.

As a philosopher,
as a professor of philosophy,

I knew a lot about the
history of theology

but didn't feel a great deal
of personal participation in.

So I went into the whole
thing quite prepared

for a big zero
on the spiritual side.

Okay. So...

All right.
Get a sheet.

Roland and Mary
coached me a lot,

regarding the whole experience

as a kind of space traveler,
a kind of astronaut,

where you're going
to get blasted out

into some possibly scary
place by yourself.

Okay, so, Rick, just begin by
taking a couple deep breaths.

And out.

And in and out.

It really felt like a journey

through some kind of
cosmic roller coaster.

A deep-sea diver descending
into the ocean depths.

I even had the illusion
of pressure and darkness.

And I was so gratified to feel
the touch of Mary's hand,

although it felt as though
she's in some little boat

hundreds of feet,
if not miles, above me.

But even that didn't suffice
to orient me.

I seriously wondered,
"Am I alive or am I dead?"

I couldn't make out.

And at one point I thought,
"Oh, my God,

I have become
a heroin addict myself.

In some kind of mania
of sympathy and grief

for Oliver's death,
I have experimented with drugs

and here I am
in some kind of overdose."

But I maintained a weird clarity
of mind at the same time,

as though I was able to observe

from some position
that was undisturbed

while the rest of
my entire reality fell apart.

I felt at times as though

I was hearing music
for the first time.

It felt like the heartbeat
of reality itself.

And it became clear
that something like that

is the very essence of life...

That is to say,

life is about
trying to open oneself

in a kind of loving acceptance
and an engagement

or pure openness to experience.

That's the point.

Rather than fear and defense.

What remains if ego
or self dissolves completely?

What remains is this sense
of awareness,

this sense of witness,
the sense of awakenedness.

And so ego
can dissolve entirely,

sense of self
can dissolve entirely,

and yet you can be fully aware
that you're aware.

And there's something
sacred about that.

Some people might
describe it as a void.

Some people might describe it
as a white light.

But there's this state
of pure awareness...

and we're leaning deeply...
As deeply as we can...

Into this existential mystery

of what it is
that we're doing here.

I changed my research
direction and my career, really,

because of something
that happened in the field

with my fish.

I was trained as
a marine scientist,

and I did most of my early
research with coral reef fishes.

And then one day,
as part of my experiment,

I was in the water,
and after spending months

with these
particular individuals,

which I knew personally,
I would say,

as one-on-one relationship
built over time,

that day, fish that just
until the day before

would come inside my hands

and I could close my hands
around them, and they were like,

"We know.
This is just Monica.

She comes every day,
and it's all good."

That day nobody came out.

And the only thing that
was different that day

was that I went in the water

with the thought
of finishing my experiments

and collecting them all,
which, obviously,

it wasn't a good
ending for them.

In that moment when nobody
came out to greet me,

as they did for days and days,
for months,

I just realized that these
fish knew about me

much more than I knew about me.

They showed me
what it really means

to have empathic relationships.

In that moment, I realized
that there are no boundaries,

that we think we have our
private lives inside our minds,

but in reality
we are immersed in this ocean

where all boundaries
are quite fictitious.

That experience for me
changed my entire career

because I realized
that there was no questions

that I could ask
that would be important enough

or special enough to justify me
taking someone else's life.

That's when the plants came
and rescued the scientist in me.

We see the world
as separate from us,

and we see things, not beings.

And so the moment we appreciate
what consciousness really is,

this one big ocean
that expresses itself

through different forms
and shapes,

then, as the plants
have taught me many times,

what you see is just you.

You wouldn't hurt yourself.
You wouldn't kill yourself.

You wouldn't destroy anything.

You wouldn't behave as we do
in our environment

because that is you too.

I'm now a "panpsychist."

So, panpsychist comes from the
word "pan"... "everywhere"...

And "psyche"... "soul."

And it's an ancient faith.

So, many philosophers in the
Western tradition have had it,

including Plato and Spinoza
and Schopenhauer.

But, of course,
it's very prevalent

if you look, for example,
in Buddhist faith,

that many more creatures
may be en-souled than we think.

Most people are willing to say,
"Okay. A monkey is conscious,"

and maybe a cat and a dog.

But it peters out very
quickly after that.

Bird?
Mnh-mnh.

A squid?
Probably not.

Bees? Heaven's sake.
They're just bugs, right?

But we really don't know.

A bee has a brain that's roughly
a million neurons.

Far smaller than us.

However its complexity,
it's much denser...

10 times denser than the neurons
in the human brain.

Many biologists, particularly
who think about consciousness,

believe it's
an "emergent" property.

The classical one
is wetness of water.

I can take a liquid like water,
and it's wet.

I can pour it over my clothes,
and I know what "wet" is.

Now, if I ask, is one
molecule of H2O...

It isn't wet. It doesn't have
those properties.

Or two molecules of H2O.

But at some point, if you put
enough molecules together,

they have this property,
"wetness."

They cling to surfaces and
they have tension, et cetera.

So people think, "Well,
you have one or two neurons,

you don't get consciousness,
42, you don't.

But if you have a billion,
you get some.

And if you if you have
two billion, you get more."

So it is just
an emergent property.

I used to think that.

But then consciousness
is just too radically different

from anything else I know.

Conscious experience,
subjectivity,

feelings are
too radically different

from anything else
in the universe

for me to accept
that it just emerges.

Max Planck, the father
of quantum physics,

said in the late '20s,

"I regard consciousness
as fundamental."

I concur.

It's not something
first you have physics,

and then if you have
enough physics,

then somehow you get
consciousness.

Consciousness is a fundamental
feature of the universe.

Does the fish know
that they're in water?

Do we really recognize
that we're swimming

in this sea of consciousness
all the time?

In our culture,
often that's not the case.

We're so caught up
in achievement

and our own stories

and acquisition of material
objects that define us

that we lose track of the fact

that we're afloat
in this sea of consciousness.

Psilocybin is one very powerful
doorway into that recognition.

Some people are already awake
to the vastness and the wonder.

But other people,
it's their first awakening

to a different way

of experiencing
and being in the world.

It's not the drug.

The drug helps you
to open the door.

But the drug isn't
what's outside the door.

The question is how much
of reality you can take.

Ordinarily, the function
of our mental apparatus

is to close down the opening,

like closing down the
aperture of a camera

to the tightest,
most restrictive aperture,

so that you're not flooded,
so you're not overwhelmed.

And psilocybin is
an aperture opener.

It massively exposes.

I felt like I was being...

miraculously exposed
to my own life.

I had enormously powerful
experiences visually

of what seemed to be
an immensity of space.

Then the experience
would reopen,

as if you're already
at the infinite.

And suddenly
that would open again

to an infinite
beyond the infinite.

And that was the moment

when the astronaut
metaphor came back.

And I thought, "Yeah."

Something like exploration,

something like
the pure adventure

of going out
with as open eyes as possible,

to drink in what is new
and strange.

That's the whole purpose
and aim of our existence.

Consciousness is nothing
but this openness.

Traditionally, we think of God
as the end point of the journey.

God is the destination.

And it suddenly
rolls over me again...

No, God is not the destination.

God is the journey.

It's the openness itself
that is divine.

Which then led me
to this massive realization

that God is seeing
through our eyes,

that God's on the adventure,

that God, in a certain sense, is
the ultimate astronaut Himself,

that without us seeing
these strange visions,

He doesn't get to see anything.

And without us feeling things,
He doesn't feel anything.

Without us going through
the experiences of life,

He doesn't go through life.

In other words, that we are
the proxies for God's own life.

And this was, to me, so new...

a perspective that I was
kind of shocked by it.

And I realized if God
truly grants freedom...

He doesn't know the outcome
of those free acts.

He is on the adventure
more than anyone.

The gift of freedom necessitates

that God is truly open
to whatever's gonna come out.

And it also made me realize,
of course,

this is the only possible
meaning of love.

Love is such an
adventure of freedom

where you take the risk
of openness to the other,

including the possibility
of being disappointed,

of being wounded.

In another rushing over me
of a revelation,

I thought of my son.

He came to me.

And not just his presence,

but a kind of electric, vivid,
intense presence.

I could not but imagine it alive

and imagine it
as his core being.

In his absence, in this ultimate
absence, I found him again.

It came to me to realize

that maybe in this sense,
nothing ever dies.

His... essence,

his kind of distilled essence,
could survive death...

At least in my heart.

That triggered another whole
wave where I thought to myself,

"Maybe this is why this life
is so filled with failures

and tragedies and losses,"

that love requires
these failures,

its own failures,
its own losses.

Love perhaps,
in this very mysterious way,

requires death in order to...

sort of purify itself,

which, you know,
in any other time,

I would have regarded
as a completely crazy thought.

Or I would have regarded it
in another time and place as...

a kind of not just silly
religious thought,

but maybe almost
a despicable thought.

A making light
of what is terrible and tragic,

a sugarcoating it

and making appear acceptable
what isn't acceptable.

For me,
the work with psychedelic plants

is a moment of communion
with the infinite,

just the same as maybe

the poets would have written
about it forever.

Anybody who has had
those experiences

knows exactly what they are.

And they touch our soul
so deeply

that the mind has no chance
to try to explain.

The heart is listening.

And the heart already knows.

When we're having
these mystical experiences,

whether it's, like,
through meditation

or psychoactive plants or yoga,

the place that we are touching
is always the same,

because there is
only one place here.

That's what I would call
consciousness.

It's not a thing.

It's a space.

And that's where we go
when we allow it.

I think this ability
to directly connect

with this universal...
consciousness,

whatever we want to call it...
God...

it's actually
not a special thing,

but it's our heritage.

It's not something that only
some people can achieve.

It's our heritage
as human beings.

And it is, again,
just a matter of choices.

But we are all the same.

We are made of the same.

We come from the same.
We are the same.

And so we all have
exactly the same opportunity

for the same choices
if we want them to.

Which, of course,

compared to what
a religious system would offer,

it would be
exactly the opposite.

Someone has the control of your
experience of yourself as God.

I had dreams in my home
in Australia

pointing to specific
places and people.

Then I went and looked for them.

And that's how I ended up
working with an elder

who taught me a lot
about the plants that he uses

to heal his people.

I traveled to this
very remote area of Mexico

to learn from the Huicholes,

because they are
such an ancient culture

and their entire culture
is founded and closely related

to one psychedelic plant...
The peyote.

The relationship with this plant
seems fundamental

for them to survive
in these remote regions,

not just physically
but also spiritually,

and find the direct connection
to their divine essence.

And now I have to
deal with my conflict.

I see a stressed animal

that knows exactly
what is going to happen.

And...

And I actually really hope
he is going to fight.

And it's actually interesting,

because,
just like in our society,

I don't feel I have a choice

that I can stand just on my
own and stop this.

It's going to happen regardless.

And I have to let it happen,

and this is where
my conflict is.

Under all of these layers,
I'm actually wearing a T-shirt

that says, "Tread lightly,
eat kindly."

It's like it's...

This is seriously
a really funny joke from life.

There's a Buddhist saying,

which I think physicists
will agree,

that a million calls
cannot bring to existence

something that does not exist
in any way out of nothing.

There's always a transformation.

So, according to a Buddhist way
of seeing things,

the stream,
the continuum of consciousness,

can only be beginningless
and endless.

Now, what will happen
when we die?

The atoms of my body
will disintegrate,

but they are not
going to disappear.

Similarly,
the stream of consciousness,

made of moment of consciousness,
being a continuum,

unbroken continuum,
but without entity traveling.

Me, I'm traveling there,

the young Matthieu
now becoming the old Matthieu.

I'm going to die,

maybe reincarnate
in a little cow.

But something is still Matthieu
in that cow and all that.

Okay.
Buddhism doesn't accept that.

There's no "self,"
autonomous and permanent

that travels along
the consciousness.

There is just the successions
of moments

that is never interrupted.

It's like a stream.

The Mississippi River,
the Rhine River...

There's not something at core

that is really the essence
of the Rhine River.

It's just the endless succession

of flow of the river
that you call Rhine.

And rightly so, because it's not
the same as the Ganges.

If we see consciousness

just as this ocean,

then my essence as me right now

is just part of that ocean.

And in that sense,
I will continue.

I don't die because I'm already
everything as it is,

concentrated into
this little drop.

If I do see myself as separate
from the ocean, then I will die.

This question
about the nature of awareness,

the nature of this sense
of the interconnectedness

and the sacredness of that...

This is not going to be answered
in my lifetime,

and it's not going to
be answered

in my grandchild's lifetime.

This is a much deeper question.

It may never be answerable.

But, boy, do I love
contemplating that,

do I love studying that.

And I think that
deeper understanding of that

has very profound implications

for how we're going to end up
treating one another

and how we're going to
survive as a species.

This mechanistic view is dying,

and we really need to move into
a more unifying view.

And inevitably, I think
the message is always the same.

It's like, just remember
that you are part of this.

And your delusion
that you are separate from this,

it's just that... an illusion.

And actually, I think what is
really beautiful about it

is that longing,

that feeling of aloneness
that most of us carry

in those moments,
just really disappears,

because you are not alone.

You never were,
and you cannot be alone.