# Psychedelic Experience  ## Metadata - Author: [[Aidan Lyon;]] - Full Title: Psychedelic Experience - Category: #books - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Document Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] [[psychedelics paper]] - Summary: The content discusses the concept of psychedelic experience and its connection to meditation and psychedelics. It explores the idea that psychedelic experiences reveal hidden aspects of the mind and can vary in degree. The content also discusses the role of attention in psychedelic experiences and how meditation and psychedelics can induce mind-revealing experiences. It further explores the effects of psychedelics and meditation on attention and creativity. The content concludes by discussing the relationship between psychedelic experience and mindfulness. - Source File: Psychedelic Experience - Revealing the Mind by Aidan Lyon (2024).pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > This book is about the philosophy of a special kind of experience known as *psychedelic experience*. The term ‘psychedelic’ derives from the ancient Greek words *psychē* (mind/soul) and *dēlos* (revealed/manifest) and means *mind-revealing*.[1](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn#oso-9780198843757-chapter-1-note-1) Accordingly, a psychedelic experience is a *mind-revealing experience*. It is an experience in which hidden parts or aspects of your mind are revealed and become manifest in your consciousness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wafamq8btth9gq63zc7ry)) > it. A view that is more reasonable, and which appears to be somewhat popular, is that there are, in fact, parts of our minds that exist outside of our awareness, but they are nonetheless accessible and can be made conscious at will. For example, right now you may not be consciously experiencing your love for chocolate, or your anxiety about finances, or your memory of eating breakfast today, but you can bring any of these into your awareness. From the perspective of this view, parts of the mind like these exist outside of awareness, but they are not *hidden* from awareness. And so the idea of a mind-revealing experience can still seem nonsensical: there is nothing inside our minds that is genuinely hidden. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wepqz7y1n4k9gj0ew543w)) > One doesn’t need cognitive science, though, to know that parts of our minds can be hidden from awareness. Anyone who has struggled on an exam is familiar with the fact that it can be frustratingly difficult to call up knowledge—that we *know* we have—into awareness. Similarly, anyone who has had a tip-of-the-tongue experience—where you can’t remember a particular word, but you can *feel* that it’s there, just beyond the reach of your awareness—is also familiar with this fact. And psychotherapists around the world witness this phenomenon on a daily basis: we are remarkably oblivious to the emotions, beliefs, desires, and mental habits that drive so much of our behaviour and decision-making. It can take a lot of work—sometimes years of therapy—to uncover those things. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wfzg7tjfeqhtn4179z6jv)) > According to this kind of view, there are chunks of our minds that we are forever locked out from accessing directly—much like how we are locked out from directly accessing *each other’s* minds. So, the only way to come to know these aspects of ourselves is to do what we do when we try to understand someone else’s mind: we have to observe our own behaviour, listen to what we tend to say, learn facts about human psychology, collect witness testimonies, and then draw *inferences* as to what is most likely going on in our hidden minds—as if we are strangers to ourselves. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1whwr8wrsset3fezctt9dg)) > A core thesis of this book is that in addition to these inferences, we can come to know our hidden minds through psychedelic experiences ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wj6am09905m46jafep7vq)) > To put the point more vividly: I’ll argue that we can have a kind of *x-ray vision* into our hidden minds, so that when one is having that x-ray vision, one is having a psychedelic experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wkcj4hbs529qta40gw0yn)) > A third way of having a psychedelic experience that I haven’t yet mentioned is to do nothing. That is, you can have a psychedelic experience during your normal, everyday life (at the office, say), without doing anything unusual like meditating or consuming strange substances. I call such experiences *spontaneous* psychedelic experiences. We are all familiar with them, even though we may not be familiar with them as such. For example, take a typical case of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. An interesting feature of such cases is that the desired word often comes to you after you have stopped reaching for it. That’s a spontaneous psychedelic experience: the word was hidden, and then it is suddenly revealed to you—without you doing anything weird. There are many other kinds of spontaneous psychedelic experiences, including epiphanies, creative insights, overcoming writer’s block, when we laugh at some jokes, when we first have the insight of our own mortality—and when we become aware of it again in later years. There are many more examples. What they all have in common is that a previously hidden part or aspect of the mind suddenly appears in one’s conscious experience. > The idea that we can have spontaneous psychedelic experiences will be counterintuitive to some readers. You could even frame this reaction in terms of an objection: if it is correct that we can have spontaneous psychedelic experiences, then why are psychedelic drugs such a big deal? Why do people report having such profound and life-changing experiences from them? My reply is that psychedelic drugs are a big deal because they tend to induce experiences that are *extremely* psychedelic and *far more* psychedelic than our spontaneous psychedelic experiences tend to be. In other words, the difference is a difference in *degree*, not a difference in *kind*. To be sure, the difference in degree is substantial—like the wealth difference between billionaires and regular people—but it is still just a difference in degree. > This reply requires a conceptualization of psychedelic experience that allows for experiences to vary in the *degree* to which they are psychedelic. It may be tempting to understand this idea in terms of experiences varying in how weird or mind-bending they are, but if we stick to our understanding of ‘psychedelic’ in terms of mind-revelation, then it must mean that experiences can vary in how mind-revealing they are. But what does *that* mean? What makes one experience more revealing of the mind than another? One of the objectives of this book is to answer this question and to unpack the idea of psychedelic experiences coming in degrees. > When we dig into that idea, it becomes clear that experiences can be more or less psychedelic in *different* ways. In other words, we’ll see that psychedelic experiences are multidimensional with respect to how they may reveal the mind. There are different dimensions along which psychedelic experiences can vary, and the position of a psychedelic experience with respect to these dimensions determines the overall character and strength of the experience. I call the space entailed by these dimensions *psychedelic space*. As we will see, the conceptual framework of psychedelic space is extremely helpful for thinking clearly about the concept of psychedelic experience. For instance, it will help us analyse the similarities and differences that exist between the psychedelic experiences induced by psychedelics and those that are induced by meditation. And it will help us understand the phenomenon of psychedelic experience in general, no matter how it is brought about. > So far, we have been focusing on the ways one can have a psychedelic experience. However, we should also consider if, and how, one can have the *opposite* kind of experience. Such an experience would be one in which the mind is *concealed* rather than revealed. I will call such experiences *psychecryptic experiences*—derived from *psychē* (mind/soul) and *kryptos* (concealed/hidden). As in the case of psychedelic experiences, we regularly have psychecryptic experiences but often don’t recognize them as such. A common example of such an experience is getting angry, which explains why one should avoid making decisions in such a state: you have temporarily lost access to the better parts of yourself. Another example is when a clever salesperson lures you into buying something you don’t want: they know how to manipulate you so that you become disconnected from the parts of your mind that would prevent you from making the unwanted purchase. Various dissociative states—such as amnesia, fugues, derealization, and depersonalization—are also often psychecryptic in nature. Certain substances, such as alcohol and sedatives, may also have a tendency to cause psychecryptic experiences. Although we never use the terms ‘psychecryptic’ or ‘mind-concealing’ to describe these sorts of mental states, it’s clear that we can recognize them as such. In some cases, we even label them in a way that reflects this idea. Take, for example, the experience of *brain fog*, which we all endure from time to time. We use the term ‘fog’ to indicate that we can’t think clearly and that it’s more difficult to see and move around in our minds the way we normally do—for example, by recalling memories in sufficient detail. Such an experience is clearly psychecryptic, and there are many more examples of psychecryptic experiences that we could find. Once you see a few of them, you start to see them everywhere—just like psychedelic experiences. > Although they are opposites, it is possible to have psychedelic and psychecryptic experiences at the same time. The metaphor of using a flashlight to find something in a dark and cluttered closet can help illustrate this idea. Turning on the flashlight is a psychedelic experience, making it brighter makes the experience more psychedelic, turning it off is psychecryptic, and moving it around is simultaneously psychedelic and psychecryptic: as you clamber through the closet, some parts of it are revealed and other parts are concealed (falling back into the darkness). In other words, in some of our experiences, some parts of the mind can be revealed while other parts are simultaneously concealed. Such experiences are both psychedelic and psychecryptic. Again, we’re also familiar with these experiences, but we just may not be familiar with them as such. For example, part of the reason we tend to be bad at multitasking is because most tasks usually induce experiences that are both psychedelic and psychecryptic. As you pay attention to one thing, and thus bring it into awareness and hold it there, it becomes more difficult to pay attention to other things, and they consequently tend to fade from awareness and become hidden from it.[4](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn#oso-9780198843757-chapter-1-note-4) > This connection with attention is of fundamental importance in understanding how psychedelics and meditation can induce psychedelic experiences. The attentional system involves the allocation of attentional resources so as to bring things in and out of our awareness. There are two important facts to know about this resource: (i) it is limited, and (ii) we often don’t use it as efficiently as we could. These two facts roughly correspond to the two ways that psychedelics and meditation can change our awareness, so that our experience becomes more psychedelic: psychedelics temporarily increase the amount of resource that can be allocated throughout the mind, and meditation increases our ability to use it more efficiently.[5](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn#oso-9780198843757-chapter-1-note-5) Although the primary effect on attention is different, the outcome can be the same: both psychedelics and meditation create an attentional surplus. This surplus of attentional resource can then be allocated to things in the mind that don’t normally receive enough attention to appear in awareness. > The flashlight analogy is again useful here. The light of the flashlight is your attention, and what you can see is your awareness.[6](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wrhgygp6ys85fkh0m2g1z)) > A third way of having a psychedelic experience that I haven’t yet mentioned is to do nothing. That is, you can have a psychedelic experience during your normal, everyday life (at the office, say), without doing anything unusual like meditating or consuming strange substances. I call such experiences *spontaneous* psychedelic experiences. We are all familiar with them, even though we may not be familiar with them as such. For example, take a typical case of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. An interesting feature of such cases is that the desired word often comes to you after you have stopped reaching for it. That’s a spontaneous psychedelic experience: the word was hidden, and then it is suddenly revealed to you—without you doing anything weird. There are many other kinds of spontaneous psychedelic experiences, including epiphanies, creative insights, overcoming writer’s block, when we laugh at some jokes, when we first have the insight of our own mortality—and when we become aware of it again in later years. There are many more examples. What they all have in common is that a previously hidden part or aspect of the mind suddenly appears in one’s conscious experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1wve4h0x7yebdz09g5p33x)) > This reply requires a conceptualization of psychedelic experience that allows for experiences to vary in the *degree* to which they are psychedelic. It may be tempting to understand this idea in terms of experiences varying in how weird or mind-bending they are, but if we stick to our understanding of ‘psychedelic’ in terms of mind-revelation, then it must mean that experiences can vary in how mind-revealing they are. But what does *that* mean? What makes one experience more revealing of the mind than another? One of the objectives of this book is to answer this question and to unpack the idea of psychedelic experiences coming in degrees ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1x04m3pnemdf9qd1fmdt61)) > So far, we have been focusing on the ways one can have a psychedelic experience. However, we should also consider if, and how, one can have the *opposite* kind of experience. Such an experience would be one in which the mind is *concealed* rather than revealed. I will call such experiences *psychecryptic experiences*—derived from *psychē* (mind/soul) and *kryptos* (concealed/hidden). As in the case of psychedelic experiences, we regularly have psychecryptic experiences but often don’t recognize them as such. A common example of such an experience is getting angry, which explains why one should avoid making decisions in such a state: you have temporarily lost access to the better parts of yourself ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1x2k3zakm52w2f639nhj7e)) > Although we never use the terms ‘psychecryptic’ or ‘mind-concealing’ to describe these sorts of mental states, it’s clear that we can recognize them as such. In some cases, we even label them in a way that reflects this idea. Take, for example, the experience of *brain fog*, which we all endure from time to time. We use the term ‘fog’ to indicate that we can’t think clearly and that it’s more difficult to see and move around in our minds the way we normally do—for example, by recalling memories in sufficient detail. Such an experience is clearly psychecryptic, and there are many more examples of psychecryptic experiences that we could find. Once you see a few of them, you start to see them everywhere—just like psychedelic experiences. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1x3w0jwcedxxa4c3g0q352)) > part of the reason we tend to be bad at multitasking is because most tasks usually induce experiences that are both psychedelic and psychecryptic. As you pay attention to one thing, and thus bring it into awareness and hold it there, it becomes more difficult to pay attention to other things, and they consequently tend to fade from awareness and become hidden from it ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1x6nnanyb7ypfsyw8jddjk)) > This connection with attention is of fundamental importance in understanding how psychedelics and meditation can induce psychedelic experiences. The attentional system involves the allocation of attentional resources so as to bring things in and out of our awareness. There are two important facts to know about this resource: (i) it is limited, and (ii) we often don’t use it as efficiently as we could. These two facts roughly correspond to the two ways that psychedelics and meditation can change our awareness, so that our experience becomes more psychedelic: psychedelics temporarily increase the amount of resource that can be allocated throughout the mind, and meditation increases our ability to use it more efficiently.[5](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn#oso-9780198843757-chapter-1-note-5) Although the primary effect on attention is different, the outcome can be the same: both psychedelics and meditation create an attentional surplus. This surplus of attentional resource can then be allocated to things in the mind that don’t normally receive enough attention to appear in awareness ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1x7r4rfatn22nq1sdxfzhh)) > glance, engaging with psychedelic experience might seem like the sort of thing that is antithetical to good decision-making. However, this impression is mostly because of the unfortunate connection between the concept of psychedelic experience and the world’s turbulent history with psychedelic drugs. One way to begin to see through that cloud of confusion is to notice that we all recognize that the *opposite* is true: we know that *psychecryptic* experiences tend to be *bad* for decision-making. Recall: you don’t want to make decisions when angry or drunk or when struggling with brain fog. So, if concealing the mind tends to be bad for decision-making, wouldn’t it follow that revealing the mind tends to be good for it? I’ll argue that the answer is yes, provided that we make some qualifications. Roughly speaking, my argument will be that appropriately engaging with psychedelic experiences can help us become more aware of the undue influences on our deci ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hp1xhz9g7t8ph8pyzf9ddgwd)) > there are four main ways an experience can be more revealing of the mind: (i) *scope*: it can uncover larger parts of the mind; (ii) *clarity*: it can uncover parts of the mind more clearly; (iii) *novelty*: it can uncover more novel (or more deeply hidden) parts of the mind; and (iv) *duration*: it can uncover parts of the mind for longer periods of time. These four ways of being more mind-revealing constitute the four dimensions of what I call *psychedelic space*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpe7hwcbzaq7107zs1gm9765)) > a broadly Carnapian view of explication ([Carnap 1951](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-106)). According to this view, an explication is successful to the extent that it is: (i) *simple*, (ii) *precise*, (iii) *faithful* to the original concept, and (iv) theoretically *fruitful*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpe8pk7bzj5hx7rhqgwgra3s)) > James’ metaphor of the filmiest of screens evokes the idea of something being hidden and which could be revealed—in this case, by nitrous oxide, but also potentially by some other stimulus. Note that the implication is not that nitrous oxide *creates* the alternative forms of consciousness, nor that it *transforms* the normal form into a new one. Rather, the nitrous oxide *reveals* what was always there.[2](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-2) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpeacd0n3pkyrhhcgvyt0ghm)) > So if there is going to be apprehension of things present in this way, then that which is to apprehend must revert inward, and focus its attention there. Just as if someone were waiting to hear a voice that he wanted to hear, and, distancing himself from other voices, were to prick up his ears to hear the best of sounds, waiting for the time when it will come—so, too, in this case one must let go of sensible sounds, except insofar as they are necessary, and guard the soul’s pure power of apprehension and be ready to listen to the sounds from above. > Plotinus, *Ennead V*, 1.2.15[4](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-4) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpeaq60q7zxfvpjyhx2kdx69)) > The thinker is the mind and the thought-of is the environment. Therein are mountains, rivers [ … ] and so forth; reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind—are there so many things there? You people should all turn back your light and reflect; do not memorize my words. Since beginning-less eons you have turned your backs on the light and plunged into darkness; the roots of your false conceptions are deep. > Yangshan Huiji 807–83[17](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-17) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpebvr4kvzn5gxvr7tkj5ttq)) > The most important thing is for people of great faculties and sharp wisdom to turn the light of mind around and shine back and clearly awaken to this mind before a single thought is born [ … ]. > Yuanwu Keqin 1063–1135[19](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-19) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpebx43hgp3n9nmvfpbntxm3)) > That’s a brief (and incomplete) summary of the history of the concept of psychedelic experience.[26](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-26) It is important to remember that it has *not* been a brief history of psychedelic *drugs*, nor has it been the etymological history of the *term* ‘psychedelic’. It’s the history of an *idea*: the idea that there are parts or aspects of the mind that are normally hidden from us and which can be unveiled through an experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpec4a0bv1xf9t0k5gv0r88n)) > Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God—a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part of it be which it does not contain? Is it outside and not in itself? How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htyg9yba8g74z437v0rzkh44)) > We now have a clearer idea of the concept of psychedelic experience: an experience is psychedelic if it is an experience of a hidden part or aspect of the unconscious mind being revealed to the conscious mind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpecj19t828jzxnw0byqcf80)) > **Tip-of-the-tongue experiences:** This kind of example also involves memory, but of a different kind: semantic rather than episodic. Pretty much everyone has had a tip-of-the-tongue experience: it happens when you are unable to recall a familiar word. Indeed, it isn’t just that you are unable to recall the word. You also feel that you are *almost* able to recall it. Hence the name for these experiences: it can feel like the word is right on the tip of your tongue. These experiences themselves are not psychedelic, but they are followed by a psychedelic experience—when you finally recall the word. That moment in which the word pops into your awareness is a mind-revealing experience: for a while, the word was hidden from you, despite your best efforts to recall it, and then it is suddenly revealed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpecnx5wqq00vktbpwhvah8v)) > A completely different class of examples involves our visual system. The popular view of vision is that it starts by light reflecting off objects and hitting our eyes, which then convert that light into a neural signal, which then is processed by the brain, resulting in the visual experience of the objects before us. However, cognitive science paints a rather different picture: roughly speaking, the mind proactively creates visual scenes it thinks are likely to be real (or useful) and then checks to see if this matches the incoming signals from the eyes.[31](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-31) We typically don’t notice this process because the visual system works smoothly and does an adequate job of showing the world in front of us. However, we can get glimpses of the process by putting it in unusual situations that evolution didn’t optimize for—such as closing one’s eyes in a pitch-black room for an extended period of time. For many people, intricate geometric patterns of colour eventually emerge from the initially dark visual scene. In [Chapter 7](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-7), I’ll argue that these patterns are the result of the visual system actively trying to find low-level visual features, such as edges, colours, contours, motion, and so on. In such cases, we get a glimpse of the processes that create our everyday visual scenes. These glimpses are psychedelic experiences. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htygc52epn0k4ypt88kwqwag)) > Note that the distinction between inference and experience in this context is not entirely clear-cut, and some philosophers consider experiences to be simply fast, unconscious inferences—or the outputs thereof. For example, [Carruthers 2011](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-110) adopts such a view and argues that much of the mind can only be known via inference. On the face of it, this would rule out the possibility of psychedelic experience: we would only have inferences about the mind. However, from the perspective of this kind of view, the relevant distinction for our purposes would be the one between fast, unconscious inferences (corresponding to what we normally call ‘experiences’) and slower, conscious inferences. To detect that the mind is behaving strangely with the Müller-Lyer illusion, you need to conduct a slow, conscious inference (for instance, checking the lengths of the lines). In contrast, in the case of illusory motion, a fast, unconscious inference (which you have no control over) causes you to become aware of a novel aspect of the mind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpedweg463hgd30cywb8qjfk)) > Another class of non-psychedelic experiences are those experiences that are *psychecryptic*. In [Chapter 1](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-1), I introduced the term ‘psychecryptic’ as deriving from the ancient Greek words *psychē* (mind/soul) and *kruptos* (to conceal/hide). Psychecryptic experiences are, thus, mind-*concealing* experiences. Alongside the notion of a psychecryptic *experience*, it is also helpful for us to have the concept of a psychecryptic *state*. In a psychecryptic state, some parts or aspects of the mind are hidden from awareness. The difference between these concepts is analogous to that of a ship sailing into the fog and a ship already being in the fog. In other words, a psychecryptic experience is the process of something becoming concealed, and a psychecryptic state is a state in which something is already concealed. The more your mind is hidden from your awareness, the more psychecryptic your mental state is. It follows that if you can have a psychedelic experience, then your mental state is, by default, psychecryptic to some degree. Below are some examples of psychecryptic experiences and states. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpee1hwnbhwpb63pbwzx834f)) > There is another way in which the revelation of the painting may come in degrees. Suppose that the painting is fully uncovered but the room is filled with smoke. Although the critics will be able to see the painting in full, they won’t be able to see it *clearly*. Similarly, suppose that the painting was not completely dry when it was covered, and so when the cloth is removed, some of the paint becomes smeared. Or, as another example, suppose that brightly coloured lights are shone on the painting, altering its apparent colours. In all of these cases, the critics can see the full scope of the painting, but they do not see the painting as it is—in its true, original state. In all these cases, the *clarity* of the revelation is imperfect. All else being equal, increasing the clarity of a revelatory experience makes it more revelatory. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpeerakn415ny6w3zxhwg7ra)) > Now consider a third experience, which is exactly like the second one, except that it is vague or fuzzy (the recollection, not the memory itself): you can remember the entire house but not at the same level of detail. This third experience has the same scope as the second, but it has less *clarity* to it, and so it is less psychedelic. In other words, it is less revealing of your memory. How does it compare to the first experience? On the one hand, the third experience has a greater scope. On the other hand, it has less clarity. We may not be in a position to tell which experience is more psychedelic, but there may still be a fact of the matter. For example, if we could measure the overall *informational content* of the experiences, then perhaps we could say that the more psychedelic experience is the one that contains more information.[43](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-3-note-43) This thought fits rather well with recent research that suggests that psychedelic drugs increase the “richness of conscious content” ([Carhart-Harris and Friston 2019](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-101)), so it has some plausibility to it. Nonetheless, even if there isn’t a fact of the matter, we can still compare the third experience with the second and the second with the first. Such a partial ordering will be sufficient for our present purpose. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpef2td71cayqrghj1fqqynj)) > There is one final question we should consider before moving on: is psychedelic space unbounded or bounded? If it is unbounded, then there would be no limit to how psychedelic one’s experiences may be. If it is bounded, then there is some upper limit. This issue depends, in part, on the nature of the mind. If the mind is finite, like a painting, then an experience can only be so revealing of it—that is, there is only so much of the mind that can be revealed. Alternatively, if the mind is infinite in some way, perhaps like a fractal, then there may be no limit to mind-revelation. This matters because, for example, mystical experiences induced by psychedelics are often considered to be peak, or maximally psychedelic, states. So we will need to consider how mystical experiences relate to psychedelic space. Perhaps, for example, a mystical experience is a psychedelic experience that is maximal in scope, clarity, novelty, and duration. To answer this question, we need to develop a better understanding of mystical experiences, which will be a central task of [Chapter 10](private://read/01hp1rre3jrv1qz5qymfpyndmn/#oso-9780198843757-chapter-10). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpefpjxyxgpgv88cw5kg34c6)) > We have now seen the kinds of hypotheses that we can articulate using the conceptual framework of psychedelic space, with its component dimensions of scope, clarity, novelty, and duration. We have also seen how we need to be mindful of a range of complicating factors as we consider the empirical evidence for these hypotheses. In this chapter, we will look at the empirical evidence concerning the effects of psychedelics and meditation on attention. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jjw4965f9sntcvd472d0vam5)) > 5.1 Introduction ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jjpnraw8ry0mgyyqg66vwkwq)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: this chapter should be read properly > The second (and final) argument concerns how psychedelics disrupt the complex phenomenological structure of attention. In particular, psychedelics appear to regularly disrupt the phenomenal *transparency* and *opacity* of one’s experience ([Lyon and Farennikova 2022](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-426)). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs42shmft3et4wwv8ftk64qy)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] > ([Vervaeke and Ferraro 2016](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-708)). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs42w6gxxerjkykj08tg60t6)) - Tags: [[toread]] > [Letheby 2021](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-399) has argued that the primary mechanism by which psychedelics have their therapeutic effects is that they cause increases in phenomenal opacity. For example, someone who is stuck in depressive rumination can be jolted out of the stream of such thoughts and experience them as *mere* thoughts. This person then has the mental space to examine those thoughts and change them, potentially leading to an improvement in their well-being. However, while psychedelics do cause such increases in opacity, it is clear that they *also* cause substantial—and often radical—increases in transparency. This can be seen in the qualitative descriptions of psychedelic sessions. For example, people often report feeling more connected and more “at one” with all sorts of things, including one’s self, one’s body, other people, music, nature, the universe, and God—or getting lost in visual hallucinations, sounds and music, physical sensations, and so on. To quote a few examples from the qualitative descriptions recorded in the literature: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jjpnp4k1ya22wj35aez1jb2p)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] > At any rate, the important point for our present argument is that psychedelics appear to cause *both* effects, and this amounts to another way in which psychedelics disrupt our usual patterns of attentional resource allocation—either by increasing transparency and/or increasing opacity. Psychedelics appear to allow attentional resources to flow more freely “back” and “forward” through the mind’s hierarchies of representations and associations. This point also lines up neatly with the observation that the practices of mindfulness-oriented traditions involve learning how to make *both* kinds of shift, and even simultaneously ([Vervaeke and Ferraro 2016](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-708)). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs430gwd4dpjhtt98sc20v7n)) > However, it is also not clear whether this definition counts the geometric patterns as hallucinations. This is because the patterns may not appear as ‘sensory perceptions’, and they may also not have ‘a compelling sense of reality’ to them. Whether they do would seem to depend on the details of the experience—and, in particular, on its *phenomenal transparency/opacity* ([Chapter 5](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-5)). For example, a person may become so immersed in the geometric patterns that they take on a reality of their own. In that case, the experience would be high in phenomenal transparency, and so perhaps the patterns should count as hallucinations. However, another person may have a completely different kind of experience, one that is low in phenomenal transparency: the colourful patterns may be experienced from a detached perspective and have no sense of reality to them—that is, the person easily recognizes the patterns as just a form of mental imagery. For this reason, [Metzinger 2003](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-456) calls these cases of phenomenally opaque images *pseudohallucinations* (p. 186) to signify the fact that they are not quite hallucinations—at least, according to a definition of hallucination that requires a commitment to the reality of the apparent perceptions. [Shanon 2002](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-620) also makes a similar point about many of the visual effects of ayahuasca, and the distinction is made earlier in a conceptual analysis of hallucinatory experience by [Horowitz 1975](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-297). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01htygdyewnxw3w2cqn86j26dg)) - Note: Opaque geometric hallucinations ## New highlights added February 12, 2025 at 11:05 AM > [ …S]imple formed hallucinations arise from an instability of the resting state leading to concomitant spatial patterns of activity in the cortex. This instability arises from a combination of enhanced excitatory modulation and decreased inhibition (disinhibition). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkwmyyrzr6pkyx39rd049gyd)) > And we also find a similar interpretation of the more complex models that have since been developed. For example: > [T]he model is sensitive to the symmetries in the interaction patterns between neurons: the mathematics shows that it is these symmetries that drive the formation of periodic patterns of neural activity. […] in other words [it is] the mechanisms that enable us to detect edges, contours, surfaces and textures in the visual world, that generate the hallucinations. […] It is when these mechanisms become unstable, for example due to the influence of a drug, that patterns of neural activity arise, which in turn translate to the visual hallucinations. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkwngs8h790ehkqea98rnhq4)) > However, this simple argument is based on a mistake. The mistake is a conflation between the *creation* of the patterns and their *appearance in awareness*. These two things can come apart. It is true that, according to the models, the psychedelic-induced instability in the resting state allows the patterns of neural activity to grow in strength until the geometric hallucinations appear in awareness. However, this doesn’t mean that the instability *creates* the patterns. In fact, we can see this by numerically simulating the models. For example, [Figure 7.10](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-7-figureGroup-10) shows the output of a numerical simulation of a one-dimensional version of the Ermentrout-Cowan model (which I’ve adapted from the one-dimensional model presented in [Murray 2003](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-476), pp. 614–22). The first graph shows what happens when the initial sensory input is random noise and the bifurcation parameter is *above* the critical value: the dynamics of the model smooth out the noise while also amplifying its accidental trends, turning them into structured oscillating patterns of neural activity. The second graph shows what happens when the bifurcation parameter is *below* the critical value: the initial noise is smoothed and dampened back to the uniform resting state. In this second graph, it looks like the pattern is not there. However, the third graph shows a zoomed-in version of the second graph: when we zoom in, we see that the pattern *is there*—it’s just really small. So the difference between the first two graphs is not the *existence* of the pattern per se, but rather its *size*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkwn0m7d2xa58c6srk9v4n2r)) > The idea, then, is that the brain is actively engaged in the creation of the experienced visual scene by making educated guesses as to the location and form of any existing edges and by automatically amplifying any signal that indicates the existence of an edge. In other words, the subliminal hallucinations are actively interacting with our sensory input to help us better see the edges of objects.[19](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-7-note-19) Normally, we don’t notice this because the brain is doing a good job of finding the world’s edges for us.[20](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-7-note-20) It is only in unusual visual circumstances, such as that of the Hermann grid illusion, or when we’re under the influence of psychedelics, that we begin to see how the brain is actively constructing our visual experience in this way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkwn3bxhkgd1t7k9t1t2naa1)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: lyon saying that perceptual processes are revealed. > Nevertheless, it is useful to think about the basic idea using different terminology: roughly speaking, the experiences of geometric patterns *seem* hallucinatory, but they are actually the revelation of the visual system’s building blocks—or raw ingredients—that it uses to construct our visual experience of the world. We are not aware of them under normal circumstances, as that would interfere with their purpose, but, under the right conditions, and especially with the help of psychedelics, they can be revealed to us in experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkwnhsxne72wnptqxvy0qvsc)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: EXCELLENT QUOTE ## New highlights added February 13, 2025 at 8:53 AM > The basic assumption in the model is that the effect of drugs, or any of the other causes of hallucinations, is to cause instabilities in the neural activity in the visual cortex and these instabilities result in the visual patterns experienced by the subject. [ … ] In the case of drug-induced hallucinations *p* [the bifurcation parameter] could be associated with drug dosage. [ … ] The mechanism for spatial pattern creation is then very like that with the other pattern formation mechanisms we have so far discussed. That is, the pattern is generated when a parameter passes through a bifurcation value, *p**c* [ … ]. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkz4e142jae5pqsvksek52v7)) ## New highlights added February 18, 2025 at 11:17 AM > To take another example: when you learn how to ride a bike, you begin interacting with the bike in a predominantly opaque mode: you are thinking about the pedals, the handle bars, the seat, the breaks, etc. At some point, when you become familiar with these parts of the bike, they “disappear” and you enter a kind of *union* with the bike. Around this time, you start to ride the bike with ease, and you begin to be aware of other features of the world *through* the bike—for example, bumps in the road, or the traction of the surface. These notions of phenomenal transparency and opacity can apply to almost any part or aspect of the mind. In general, increases in opacity can be characterized as a kind of “stepping back” from experience and taking on a more analytical or “distant observer” relation to it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc44vp2qqa0kqqryf7j5bb1)) > In contrast, increases in transparency involve a “plunging” into experience, taking on a more involved, engaged relation to it. Increases in transparency tend to involve increases in meaningfulness and connection, and a kind of union with the objects of experience—the sort of unity with experience that arises in flow states. In extreme cases, this culminates in a mystical experience (see [Chapters 9](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-9) and [10](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-10)) whereby one is no longer in a relational stance with respect to anything and is instead simply *being*—in a state of knowing-by-identity (Forman 1999). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc47xaamwjjzwep92v0w3zp)) - Note: connects psychedelic transparency to meaningfulness, flow, connection > Let’s now take stock. In general, it is difficult to make specific predictions about the effects of freeing up attentional resources: the observed effects will depend on how attention ends up being allocated, and this will depend on the individual and their context. However, roughly speaking, we should expect more things to appear in awareness and also for things to appear in awareness more vividly: emotions will be intensified, sounds will be more distinctive, smells will be stronger, memory recollections will be more frequent and immersive ([Chapter 6](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-6)), creative and psychological insights will be more frequent and novel (Chapters 8 and 9), and so on. There are also likely to be general phenomenological changes in the structure of experience, such as the slowing down of the perception of time and increases in the opacity and transparency of mental representations. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc543fmzbma34h3nqyxnxkt)) - Note: attentional resources being redeployed. > To many readers, the fact that psychedelics cause hallucinations suggests that psychedelics do something other than reveal the mind. One reason for this stems from the fact that the onset of hallucinations can be a sign of an underlying health problem. This can drive the intuition that psychedelic-induced hallucinations are the result of some *deleterious* effect on mind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc0c8sbsck8z366y124pgs7)) > Hallucinations don’t appear to be like memories in this regard—they don’t seem like the sort of things that are *already* in the mind. Instead, it seems they are *added* to the mind in some way. How those additions are understood will depend on one’s general attitude towards psychedelics. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc0d53pqq3jvz1ma9tdya1d)) > an experience can be more or less psychedelic by varying in terms of its scope, clarity, novelty, and duration ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc0e9e80frzxceyjtx7twtm)) - Note: Q: remind me what these four variables are please A: The four variables that determine the psychedelic experience, as outlined by Aidan Lyon, are: (i) scope, which refers to uncovering larger parts of the mind; (ii) clarity, which pertains to revealing parts of the mind more clearly; (iii) novelty, which involves uncovering more novel or deeply hidden aspects of the mind; and (iv) duration, which relates to how long parts of the mind are revealed. > Although it is helpful to use maximal uncertainty as a model for mystical experience in this way, we need to recognize that in doing so, we run afoul of ineffability. That is, we’re bound to say something about mystical experiences that is highly misleading. For this reason, it is essential to note that mystical experiences are often characterized as involving a high degree of *certainty*. For instance, they are often said to seem “realer than real” and involve some form of profound insight into the ultimate nature of self and reality. That hardly sounds like a state of maximal uncertainty. And so, although the model can help us develop an appreciation for ineffability, we should be aware that holding on to it is just as mistaken as holding on to a particular theory or description of mystical experience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmc15q1mt9cbvcgdfj8gmwrk)) ## New highlights added February 19, 2025 at 10:06 AM > There is some evidence that psychedelics have these effects on visual experience. From early on, researchers studying the effects of psychedelics noted the drugs’ effects on vision. Although the hallucinations caused by psychedelics often received the most discussion, these researchers were careful to comment on other types of visual effects. For example, [Knauer and Maloney 1913](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-357) reported that visual sensibility was substantially increased by mescaline, that visual acuity was incontrovertibly enhanced by the drug, and that visual hyperesthesia was objectively demonstrated for colour. They also reported that subjective sharpness of object contours—that is, contrast—was enhanced, but they could not demonstrate this objectively (they didn’t explain why). After describing how mescaline made his visual perceptions more vivid and caused a tremendous increase in the clarity of his kinaesthetic sensations, Samuel Fernberger accounted for these changes in terms of attention and the revelation of normally unnoticed stimuli: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmemv5bhf77a91bj6k2anbc7)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: things seeming hyper real ## New highlights added February 19, 2025 at 4:18 PM > One salient possibility is that psychedelics cause temporary increases in the attentional resources that are available for allocation. This idea would fit well with the intuition behind the Osmond-Grof hypothesis, since more available attentional resources would mean that more representations and processes in the mind can be amplified. It also fits well with the thought that psychedelics expand consciousness, given the close connection between attention and awareness. Having more available attentional resources would mean that more unconscious representations and processes can be brought into awareness. Moreover, for those representations and processes that are already conscious, an increase in available attentional resources would allow them to appear in an enhanced way to us—more vividly, intensely, etc. In short, this idea that psychedelics somehow increase one’s available attentional resources seems to fit well with the common phenomenological descriptions that people give of their psychedelic trips. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmf4xrn31aapdese4h4ffnvk)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: Attention and different processing ## New highlights added February 20, 2025 at 9:38 AM > I have argued that this hypothesis can be understood in terms of psychedelics releasing attentional resources, which then flow somewhat freely (i.e. nonspecifically) throughout the mind (unless they are directed otherwise). Thus, we can understand psychedelics as being mental amplifiers, since allocating more attentional resources to a mental representation increases the probability that it will appear in awareness or, if it is already in awareness, that it will feature in awareness more vividly. This, in turn, explains the common report that psychedelics “expand consciousness” and supports the hypothesis that they reveal the mind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmh636rrv15kccnjw06zktpa)) ## New highlights added February 20, 2025 at 11:59 AM > we could think about making sense of these terms within computational or predictive processing frameworks. Or we could try to reduce them to something observable at the neural level. These are reasonable strategies that we could pursue—and they are already being pursued in the scientific literature. However, I think a more natural starting point, given our purposes, is to understand the hypothesis using concepts that are abstract enough to cut across most models and frameworks while at the same time precise enough so that we can begin evaluating the hypothesis with respect to the evidence we already have. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmhfm4473nxqsvap0zxb2xgy)) > The hypothesis, then, is that psychedelics create a surplus of attentional resources that tend to flow somewhat freely and unpredictably onto various mental representations and processes. By having this effect on attentional resources, psychedelics amplify parts of the mind into awareness that would otherwise remain hidden in the unconscious. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jmhfcq5900sb6czaa384evfb)) ## New highlights added March 16, 2025 at 4:32 PM > To further complicate matters, there are visual effects that are not caused by psychedelics that are difficult to classify as hallucinations or illusions. To take an example that will be relevant later on, consider the Hermann grid illusion, depicted in [Figure 7.1](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-7-figureGroup-1). The grey blobs you see at the intersections of horizontal and vertical white lines are not real. Seen as objects, they are hallucinatory. Seen as properties projected into the white lines, they are illusory. This kind of example shows that we should be wary of expecting too much from our definitions of these concepts ([Macpherson 2013](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-433), pp. 7–8). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jpfnpd9bn76wmj1cxn35y2nw)) > There are two salient possibilities for how hallucinations may be psychedelic. The first is that the hallucinations may function as *vehicles* for content that is being revealed—similar to how psychoanalysts understand dreams as being revelatory of the inner mind. The second way is that the hallucinations may *themselves* be hidden elements of the mind that are being revealed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jpfnvhq450vrdh9frymg54gb)) > The fact that DeepDream produces images that are so similar to hallucinations produced by psychedelics gives us some clues as to the neurocognitive processes by which they do so: it would seem that psychedelics are causing a strengthening of the top-down visual processes, relative to the bottom-up processes, that normally help us see the world.[8](#oso-9780198843757-chapter-7-note-8) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jpfny5z10na294h01ksmdwnn)) > [3](#r_oso-9780198843757-chapter-7-note-3) For example, we can find this sort of view expressed in [Huxley 1954](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-302). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jpfgkz1swtysb1m47q44f3pn)) ## New highlights added May 5, 2025 at 4:55 PM > This sense in which hallucinations may be mind-revealing (i.e. as vehicles for content) is very similar to how the images produced by Google’s *DeepDream* can be revealing of the hidden content of its “artificial mind”. The DeepDream program ([Mordvintsev et al. 2015](#oso-9780198843757-bibliography-1-bibItem-469)) was developed in response to a problem that image classification engineers at Google were struggling with. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtgccvtzztzv4xw6hsn8mf8n))