From: jimruttshow8596
This article is based on a conversation with John Vervaeke, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto, from part three of his four-part series on “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” [00:00:32], [00:00:40]. This discussion follows previous topics on theories of consciousness [00:01:07].
Higher States of Consciousness and the Nature of Reality
A central idea of the “actual revolution” that influenced major world religions like Buddhism and Taoism is that higher states of consciousness (HSCs) are perceived as more real than everyday reality, leading to profound individual transformation [00:02:21], [00:02:35], [00:03:02].
This contrasts with dreams, which, despite their strangeness, are generally not considered more real because their content cannot be coherently integrated into our everyday worldview [00:03:17], [00:03:32]. The intriguing aspect of HSCs is that while they are unique and ineffable, individuals often judge them as representing a deeper reality, prompting questions about the justification of these judgments [00:03:55].
The focus regarding mystical experiences and rationality and HSCs should be on their underlying functionality, such as an increased capacity for insight, rather than solely on their altered phenomenology (the subjective experience) [00:05:22], [00:05:52]. The phenomenology can offer scientific clues to the machinery of insight, but it is not the primary focus [00:06:38]. The goal is not merely altered states of consciousness, but altered traits of character, aligning with a principle articulated by Deichmann [00:07:01], [00:07:05]. Over-focusing on phenomenology can lead to “spiritual narcissism” or “spiritual bypassing,” escaping reality into the experience itself [00:07:11], [00:07:19]. The Buddha warned against attachment to such states, just as he warned against anger and greed [00:07:24].
Fluency and the Continuity Hypothesis
Fluency, in psychology, refers to the ease with which information is processed, which the brain uses to make judgments about the information’s content [00:07:48], [00:08:08]. For example, text with better contrast is judged as more true or trustworthy [00:08:21]. This is a good heuristic because fluency can indicate an “optimal grip” on a situation [00:09:14].
Vervaeke’s Continuity Hypothesis proposes a progression from fluency to insight, to flow states, to mystical experiences, and ultimately to transformative experiences, all utilizing the same underlying cognitive machinery [00:10:04], [00:10:13]. Andrew Newberg has made a similar proposal [00:10:29].
A mystical experience can be understood as a flow state where the capacity being exercised is an “optimal grip” on the world itself, rather than a specific object or situation [00:10:41], [00:10:51]. This idea of optimal grip comes from the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, and it provides a functional understanding of these experiences [00:11:00], [00:11:09], [00:11:15]. Just as one balances different perspectives to gain an optimal visual grip (e.g., zooming in vs. zooming out), in a mystical experience, one achieves an optimal grip on “realness” or “reality” [00:11:21], [00:12:58]. This “meta-stance” toward the world is highly valuable because it indicates the possibility of a better fit between the individual (agent) and the world (arena) in a comprehensive manner [00:13:13], [00:13:21].
De-centering and the Solomon Effect
De-centering, a concept from McNamara, describes the process of moving beyond egocentrism to a more world-centric perspective [00:15:29], [00:16:09]. Children are more egocentric than adults, and the analogy suggests that adults are egocentric compared to a “sage” [00:15:35], [00:16:02]. Egocentrism underlies many cognitive biases like confirmation bias and “my side” bias [00:16:09].
Mystical experiences and even flow states weaken egocentrism, making “realness” or the world more salient than the ego [00:16:51], [00:17:02]. This process of de-centering can lead to insights that are otherwise inaccessible [00:15:11].
The Solomon Effect, demonstrated by Igor Grossman, shows that simply re-describing a personal problem from a third-person perspective (as if a friend were discussing it) can lead to significant insights [00:17:15], [00:17:28], [00:17:35]. This practice, similar to what happens in mystical experiences, weakens the “blinding glare of the ego” [00:17:43]. Psychedelics, especially strong doses, can also induce “ego death,” demonstrating that agency can exist without the ego, albeit in a peculiar way [00:17:58], [00:18:07]. The flow state, too, shows that agency is enhanced even when the “nattering nanny manager ego” is lost, revealing a long-standing existential lesson about the nature of agency [00:18:24].
The Role of Tradition and Community
It is argued that mystical experiences and altered states of consciousness should be engaged within a tradition or an ecology of practices embedded in a community [00:19:00], [00:20:12]. Evidence suggests that collective cognition is generally superior to individual cognition, as seen in scientific practice where mutual correction overcomes individual biases [00:20:20], [00:20:30], [00:20:47].
The danger of self-guided exploration, particularly with psychedelics, is the risk of “autodidactism” when messing with one’s salience landscape [00:21:03], [00:21:38], [00:21:45]. A perennial corrective is to regularly and reliably subject personal revelations to the witnessing and critique of others [00:21:53]. This “inter-subjective collective verification of the inter-objective” is how science and face-to-face communities function [00:22:09], [00:22:18]. While not requiring adherence to existing traditions, the emphasis is on establishing new communities that create their own traditions and engage in collective intelligence [00:21:24], [00:21:30].
Reading historical philosophical influences and philosophical works (like those of Socrates) is valuable not just for their propositions, but for developing intellectual skills—like going to a “dojo” or “gymnasium” for the mind [00:23:32], [00:23:40].
Complexification and Wisdom
Complexification is defined as a system simultaneously differentiating and integrating, leading to emergence [00:26:14], [00:26:16], [00:26:18]. This allows a system to perform many more actions in a coordinated manner, giving rise to emergent functions [00:26:20], [00:26:29]. The brain is seen as a complex system at multiple levels, continuously integrating and differentiating [00:26:38].
Complexification can be coupled to the complexity of the world, allowing for a better fit by appropriately complexifying [00:27:27], [00:27:36]. This concept updates Plato’s notion of anagoge (ascent to higher knowledge) [00:27:40]. Many contemporary problems arise from attempting to address complex phenomena with merely complicated solutions, rather than recognizing their emergent nature [00:27:50].
Parasitic Processing and the Buddhist Eightfold Path
Parasitic processing refers to maladaptive self-organizing processes that feed on adaptive machinery but take on a life of their own, leading to self-destructive behaviors [00:28:31], [00:29:52], [00:31:00]. Examples include anxiety and depression spirals [00:28:49], [00:31:38]. These processes adapt to attempts to intervene, making them self-preserving [00:32:15].
The genius of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was in making explicit the idea of creating counteractive dynamical systems of practices [00:32:38]. These systems intervene at multiple points and levels in a parallel fashion, effectively dismantling maladaptive dynamical systems [00:32:49]. The Eightfold Path is designed to achieve this [00:33:00]. This approach defines foolishness as being caught in such systems and wisdom as cultivating ecologies of practices to deal with them [00:34:02], [00:34:11].
Reinterpreting Dukkha
The traditional understanding of dukkha in Buddhism as “suffering” is challenged [00:34:48], [00:35:06]. Instead, based on the Buddha’s parables and etymology, dukkha primarily emphasizes a loss of agency [00:35:25], [00:35:41]. For example, the parable of the monkey stuck in pitch illustrates self-entrapment and loss of freedom, not just pain [00:35:50]. The Buddha emphasized freedom, an agency-related concept, rather than mere relief from pain [00:36:24], [00:36:44].
Historically, “suffering” meant undergoing something that overwhelms agency (e.g., “he suffered great joy”) [00:37:04], [00:37:08]. The modern reduction of suffering to pain is akin to how “mad” came to mean angry instead of insane [00:37:18]. While pain can cause a loss of agency, so can overwhelming pleasure, which is also a point in Buddhist thought [00:37:41], [00:37:45]. Reinterpreting dukkha as “loss of agency” helps explain why ignorance is a primary mark of dukkha, as ignorance profoundly reduces agency [00:38:26]. The etymology of dukkha (something off-center, out of joint, like a wheel destroying itself on its axle) aligns with the concept of parasitic processing [00:38:35].
Historical Turns in Western Philosophy and Religion
Alexander the Great and Domicide
Alexander the Great’s conquests profoundly impacted the spread and preservation of Greek historical philosophical influences, including the works of Plato and Aristotle [00:39:13], [00:40:08]. His empire led to a new phenomenon for the West: large, centralized empires where the capital was far away, displacing people and weakening local community bonds [00:43:03], [00:45:55].
This led to domicide, a term meaning the loss of home [00:43:41], [00:43:51]. Beyond losing housing, it refers to losing the sense of being at home, even with shelter [00:44:00], [00:44:05]. In the Greek polis (city-state), people felt deeply at home through shared religion, language, and ancestral ties [00:44:33], [00:45:23]. Ostracism, a punishment worse than death, was a form of domicide [00:45:38]. Alexander’s empire, and its subsequent breakup into warring states, created an “age of anxiety” due to widespread displacement and lack of local connection to governance [00:46:10], [00:46:36], [00:46:42].
This domicide is comparable to the contemporary “age of anxiety” brought on by globalization and, more profoundly, the replacement of extended family and face-to-face community with impersonal governmental and market structures [00:46:56], [00:47:13], [00:47:31]. This loss of recursive layering contributes to egocentrism and isolation [00:48:07]. The shift from the church as a “homing function” to the non-family of the state and market further drives this sense of homelessness [00:48:38], [00:48:58]. This longing for extended intimacy is seen in the rise of new communities like the Game B movement [00:49:11].
Stoicism: A Response to Domicide
In response to the domicide of the Hellenistic age, philosophy shifted from pursuing wisdom to countering foolishness, focusing on relieving existential suffering [00:49:25], [00:49:31], [00:49:39]. Stoicism, in particular, offered a therapeutic approach with direct links to modern cognitive therapies (e.g., CBT) [00:49:51], [00:50:05], [00:50:18].
Stoicism emphasized internalizing Socratic dialogue to replace rumination and parasitic processing [00:50:50], [00:51:00]. The Stoics introduced the term “cosmopolitan” – finding the cosmos as one’s polis or home [00:51:22]. Following the Cynics, who argued against finding home in contingent things like wealth or fame, the Stoics sought a home not dependent on external circumstances [00:51:35], [00:52:14].
Their solution was to reconfigure how one homes oneself, recognizing that home is about the meaning one makes of any place [00:52:29], [00:52:34]. The Stoic practice of prosoche (paying careful attention) focused on consciously intervening in one’s moment-to-moment thought and perception to make the homing process as wise and resilient as possible against contingencies [00:52:47], [00:53:10]. This aligns with the idea that “the mind is its own place and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven” [00:53:40].
Christianity and the Two Worlds Model
The rise of Christianity, particularly through Jesus’s emphasis on agape and Paul’s cosmological vision, represented a new philosophical and spiritual step [00:55:09], [00:55:16]. Agape is a creative love, distinct from eros (consummation) or philia (reciprocity), exemplified by a parent’s love for a child, aiming to foster independence and personhood [00:56:40], [00:57:33], [00:58:31].
Jesus revealed God’s creativity as agape, making humans more God-like through compassion [00:59:28]. The Gospel of John integrates this agape with the Greek philosophical concept of logos (reason, order, intelligibility) [01:00:10], [01:00:26]. Logos means to gather things so they belong together, creating order [01:00:38]. Agape is also a creative act of bringing people together (“where two or three are gathered in my name”) [01:00:46]. Thus, logos and agape are seen as interpenetrating aspects [01:00:55]. Humans are dependent on and vehicles for expressing, sharing, and creating more logos and agape [01:01:03]. This insight, that all are equal children of God, was fundamental to the positive developments in the West [01:01:54].
Christianity expanded on the Stoic idea of cosmopolitanism, creating a new way of “homing” oneself in the world through ecclesia (the gathering, churches originally in homes), offering belonging to many in the Roman Empire who felt disconnected [01:02:08], [01:02:26].
Augustine’s Synthesis and Aquinas’s Division
Augustine, considered the last great philosopher of antiquity, created a titanic synthesis that would shape Western civilization for over 1500 years [01:03:28], [01:06:01]. He integrated the grand unified field theory of Neoplatonism (which itself integrated Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics) with Christian agape and the idea of moral history from ancient Israel [01:03:33], [01:04:06].
Augustine personalized this synthesis, turning the kairos (opportune time for decision/action) of Jesus into a template for individual transformation through his Confessions [01:04:22], [01:04:47]. This synthesis provided massive coherence (from logos), purpose (from moral history), and significance/connection to reality (from agape) [01:05:03], [01:05:06], [01:05:08]. Augustine effectively unified rationality, meaning, and a sense of belonging in a comprehensive worldview [01:05:22], [01:05:32].
However, cracks began to form in this architecture, partly due to the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works, which were less compatible with Platonism’s influence on Christianity [01:06:44], [01:06:50], [01:06:57]. Thomas Aquinas, another brilliant thinker, responded to this challenge by making a division [01:07:27], [01:07:31], [01:10:30].
In the Middle Ages, an extreme Platonism became prevalent, reifying an “other world” as real, beautiful, and glorious, contrasting with the harshness of earthly life [01:09:12], [01:09:37]. Aristotle’s return, via flourishing Islamic civilizations, challenged this “two-worlds mythology” by emphasizing the fundamental reality of this world, accessible through senses and reason [01:09:50], [01:10:04], [01:10:08].
Aquinas’s solution was to solidify the two worlds: a lower, natural world knowable by reason and observation, and an upper, supernatural world knowable only by faith, given by God’s grace [01:10:33], [01:10:46]. This bifurcated reality led to the modern understanding of “supernatural” as a separate, often magical world, discontinuous with the natural and inaccessible to reason [01:11:29]. While this preserved the roles of both church and nascent science, it destroyed the Platonic idea of anagoge (ascent from lower to higher reality) and made the natural world self-sufficient [01:12:30], [01:12:44]. Eventually, the supernatural became less plausible and even absurd [01:13:03].
Galileo and the Death of the Universe
Galileo’s work, building on the rise of nominalism (the idea that patterns are in the mind, not the world) and the revival of Platonism’s emphasis on mathematics, profoundly reshaped our understanding of the universe [01:15:00], [01:15:21]. Galileo asserted that mathematics is the language of the universe, and our everyday experience is often illusory [01:15:41], [01:16:07]. This was a radical break from Aristotle’s metaphysics, which was based on the structure of human language and experience [01:17:08].
By trusting mathematics and experiments over sensory experience, Galileo discovered inertial motion [01:17:33], [01:17:49]. This meant that things were not happening “on purpose,” nor did they have an “inner life” or “drive,” as in Aristotle’s teleological universe [01:17:50]. This insight effectively “killed the universe” by removing its inherent purpose, meaning, and coherence, leaving behind “a bunch of stuff slamming into each other” [01:18:17], [01:18:36], [01:18:39], [01:18:41].
With Galileo and the rise of scientific measurement, a loss occurred in our “perspectival” and “participatory knowing” [01:20:40], [01:20:42]. While we still possess skills and procedural knowledge, the concept of “knowing” (scientia) was reduced to propositional knowledge—justified true beliefs [01:21:17], [01:22:04], [01:22:32]. This “propositional tyranny” means that other normative ways of judging reality (e.g., skills being powerful or weak, perspectives offering presence or connection, identities affording belonging) were devalued [01:22:44], [01:23:18], [01:23:51]. Recovering these lost senses of knowing and agency is crucial for cultural “therapy” [01:23:20], [01:23:45].
Luther, Descartes, and the Enlightenment
Martin Luther and René Descartes, though from different domains, are seen as embodying similar shifts [01:24:15]. Neither truly emphasizes personal transformation (in the Platonic sense) in their philosophies [01:24:32]. Luther’s transformation is entirely heteronomous, driven by God, eliminating human participation in the process [01:24:40], [01:24:50]. Descartes, conversely, believed no transformation was needed; only a scientific, mathematical method was required for certainty and to alleviate the meaning crisis [01:25:19], [01:26:49].
Both, unintentionally, made God profoundly irrelevant [01:27:34]. Luther’s metaphysics, where God acts arbitrarily (reified by Calvin), made God absurd and irrelevant to human life [01:26:09]. Descartes, while still a Catholic, relegated God to merely guaranteeing the scientific method [01:27:15]. This contributed to the fragmentation of the Protestant church, lacking a unifying vision [01:27:46].
The Enlightenment, influenced by these precursors, fundamentally shaped the modern world [01:28:09], [01:28:16]. The clockwork universe of Newton and deism (God as a detached clockmaker) became central [01:29:21], [01:30:38]. The core premise of the Enlightenment was that reason (understood as logical-mathematical manipulation of propositions) plus evidence would provide all the tools needed to alleviate human suffering [01:31:57]. This led to the belief that science, democracy, and markets—all seen as self-correcting processes driven by reason and evidence—are sufficient to run the world and address its problems [01:32:21], [01:32:46], [01:33:51].
Secularism, in this context, is the idea of a natural world running independently from a supernatural one, with political and economic spheres operating separately from religion, which became irrelevant to the natural world’s functioning [01:32:32], [01:32:43]. This contributed to the “death of God” not as a violent rejection, but as a gradual irrelevance [01:30:58], [01:31:12].
Criticisms of the Enlightenment include its truncated view of reason (propositional tyranny), its “naive Newtonianism” (lack of complexity science or systems thinking), and its implicit assumption that adults possess all necessary tools to navigate the world without further growth or transformation [01:34:01], [01:35:00], [01:35:12], [01:35:50]. The reliance on “self-organizing processes” within a clockwork universe framework was a core mistake, leading to systems that lack the dynamics needed for cultivating wisdom or addressing parasitic processing [01:37:27], [01:37:37].
Romanticism and Its Decadence
Romanticism emerged as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s austere, propositional worldview and the perceived entrapment of the mind within itself (culminating in Kant’s philosophy, where even mathematics doesn’t describe reality but merely how our mind shapes experience) [01:38:47], [01:39:10], [01:40:06]. Romantics sought to reconnect with the world by exploring the “irrational” or less processed aspects of the mind, believing this would lead to rediscovering their “true self” and meaning [01:41:46], [01:42:06], [01:42:25]. This idea is rooted in Rousseau’s concept of an unspoiled true self [01:42:06].
A major flaw in romanticism is the notion of a pre-existing “true self” that is merely expressed onto the world [01:43:13]. This rejects the idea of the self as an inherently developmental, aspirational, and complex dynamical system, as found in Socratic models [01:43:46], [01:44:03]. Romanticism reverses Locke’s empiricism, viewing the world as a blank canvas upon which the individual expresses their authenticity through acts of will and imposition [01:44:40], [01:45:12]. This “stupid idea” of the world as devoid of inherent properties and structures is the culmination of nominalism [01:45:21], [01:45:33].
Romanticism also often rejects Aristotle’s virtue ethics and the cultivation of character, preferring a “joie de vivre” of letting the true self out [01:45:57], [01:46:04], [01:46:30], [01:46:57].
Decadent Romanticism has had dire consequences, leading to the underlying philosophical basis for totalitarian ideologies like fascism and Marxism [01:47:44], [01:48:00]. The idea of the world as a blank canvas for human will and meaning-making is a core claim of ideology [01:48:15], [01:48:22]. The romantic glorification of an “inborn true self” and its willful expression can be seen to lead to notions like the “will to power” and, disturbingly, aligns closely with racist ideologies [01:48:53], [01:49:03], [01:49:10]. The 20th century, through genocidal levels of violence, has worked out the tragic implications of these ideas [01:49:34].