The curious person’s guide to all things mind!
Have you ever wondered how it is that your thoughts and feelings relate to the grey matter in your head? How space and time came to be out of nothing? How what life means to us influences our day-to-day struggles with mental health?
In conversation with experts in physics, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, Chasing Consciousness will take you to the very fringes of reality and share with you the groundbreaking discoveries that are dramatically changing the way we relate to the world, the future, and our own minds.
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OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES: THE ANTHROPOLOGY - Samantha Lee Treasure #75
lundi 30 juin 2025 • Durée 01:29:18
What are the contents of Out of Body Experiences? How closely do they map the actual physical world? Is it possible to induce them purposefully? How do modern practices compare to indigenous shamanic ones?
In this Episode we look at the scientific, religious, cultural and historical contexts of Out of Body Experiences, also known as astral projection - so the experience in which an individual appears to leave their body and be able to travel around the world and into other dimensions, often meeting other worldly entities, similarly to DMT psychedelic experiences, (see Episode #73, “DMT Entity Experiences”). So, we get into the phenomenology- the various things people experience; potential neurobiological explanations; and the possibility of inducing the experiences on purpose and of exploring alternate realities; we get into indigenous traditions of ‘Shamanic flight’ and which people might be predisposed to these alternate states of consciousness; and we end up talking about a potential connection between OBE, sleep paralysis and ludic dreaming.
To discuss this slippery topic, we have a researcher who is also a lifelong experiencer, who has devoted her career to trying to understand these phenomena, the medical anthropologist and author Samantha Lee Treasure; she has an MA in Medical Anthropology from SOAS university in London, has been a brain science research assistant at the University of Liege, and has just released her first book on the topic, “Out of Body experiences”, the release of which this episode is timed to coincide with.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro.
11:30 What is medical anthropology?
16:00 OBE entity research.
22:15 Samantha’s New Book - getting beyond preconceptions.
25:50 OBE vs Astral projection - bypassing the taboo.
30:00 Common reported OBE experiences.
33:00 Mental body schemas and projected models of the world.
37:00 Do OBE’s map the real world accurately?
45:00 Olaf Blanke - the Temporoparietal junction discovery.
48:45 No sense of smell during OBE nor processed by the TPJ.
49:40 Techniques to induce OBE’s intentionally.
53:45 Bob Monroe’s perspective switching technique.
55:30 Shamanic flight practices in Tuva, Siberia.
59:35 The sonezen - the perceiving mind self.
01:01:00 This is not for everyone, it can be scary.
01:05:00 The predisposition for some to have these experiences.
01:10:45 Crossovers between NHI Contact and OBE entity experiences.
01:14:20 Genealogical predispositions.
01:18:25 “Reality Shifting” and the role of intention in OBE.
INTELLIGENT LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? - Adam Frank PhD #74
Saison 5 · Épisode 72
samedi 14 juin 2025 • Durée 01:17:26
How do astronomers detect the conditions for life and techno-signatures on exoplanets many lightyears away? What conditions on earth give us clues to how life might have formed elsewhere? How do intelligent civilisations evolve to technomaturity before they destroy themselves?
So in this episode we have the mysterious arising of life and eventually intelligent life on our planet to try and explain, to then apply that to our search for other intelligent life in the cosmos. So to explain that we’re going to be getting into the co-evolution of the geosphere and the biosphere on earth and their corresponding feedback loops; the possibility of planetary level intelligence; the difficulty of laying a technosphere on top of the geo and biosphere, and the risk of civilisations wiping themselves out before learning how to harmonise the technosphere with the biosphere; We’ll be looking at the changes in the field of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Terrestrial Intelligence), since we can now identify potentially life sustaining exo-planets in nearer parts of the galaxy; we’re going to get into the newly funded search for techno signatures from advanced civilisations, and potential space junk from the many civilisations that presumably didn’t make it; lastly we’re going to discuss recent claims of ancient and alleged present visitations to earth by extra terrestrial intelligence.
Fortunately to face these tough and complex issues, our guest is a world specialist in astrobiology, with a talent for making these topics fun and imaginative, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, Professor Adam Frank. He’s the author of over 200 scientific papers and 6 books for the general public including, “The Blind Spot: why science cannot ignore human experience” and “The Little book of Aliens”which we’ll be focussing on today. He’s also an award winning science communicator, on a mission to raise public awareness about existential risk and science in general.
What we discussed:
00:00 Intro.
05:20 The importance of experience.
DMT ENTITY ENCOUNTERS, A QUANTITATIVE STUDY - Dr David W Lawrence #73
Saison 5 · Épisode 73
samedi 31 mai 2025 • Durée 01:19:07
What’s the architecture of a DMT experience, who are the entities that regularly interact and what’s their message? How can DMT therapy facilitate positive mental health outcomes?
In this episode we’re going to learn about the bizarre types of experience that users of DMT have; DMT being the most powerful hallucinogenic molecule on the planet. So we’ll be getting into the background of psychedelics for mental health; and the particularities of DMT, the active ingredient in Ahyuasca and the psychedelic that most often presents entities that interact meaningfully with the experiencer; we’re going to discuss the different types of entities: from mythological creatures, to Gods and Demons, to machine elves and aliens, and the significance of these same characters appearing significantly often without an obvious primer; we’ll also discuss the importance of mystical experience and teacher /guide experiences to positive mental health outcomes.
Fortunately our guest was the head researcher on a 2022 paper that looked at exactly this topic, the medical doctor and sports scientist professor at the University of Toronto, Dr. David Wyndham Lawrence. He’s published over 35 scientific papers across sports science and psychedelics for medical use.
What we discussed:
00:00 Intro
05:20 Concussion, sports mental health & psychedelic therapy.
08:10 Bringing in Robin Carhartt-Harris on the gaps in sports mental health treatment.
12:06 Why psychedelics for those already in psychological difficulty?
THE SLEEP DEPRIVATION EPIDEMIC & SOLUTIONS - Roxanne Prichard PhD
Saison 5 · Épisode 72
mercredi 14 mai 2025 • Durée 01:13:31
What are we sleeping less and less? What are the benefits of getting a good nights sleep and the risks if we consistently don’t? How is sleep linked to memory, cognitive performance, blood sugar regulation & stress hormones? How is young people’s development affected by sleep?
In this episode we have the surprising data on the science of sleep to get up to date on; so, why there’s a sleep deprivation epidemic; how sleep works and what it’s required for; dreams; and importance of sleep for learning and for immunity. We’re also going to discuss the wide range of serious health issues that arise with even a small sleep deficit, and the vast benefits of getting sleep right; and the lifestyle tips we need to consistently get the sleep we need. And of course, sleep and mental health, and the importance of sleep for development in young people.
Gratefully our guest today is a psychologist and neuroscientist that specialises in sleep, mental health and dream research, particularly in young people. She’s the Scientific Director of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, Roxanne Prichard! She’s the author of over 40 highly citied scientific papers, and her TEDx talk “Addressing our Childrens Sleep Debt” was featured in the lecture series: Transforming Education. She’s quoted regularly in the press, inlcuding the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, and USA Today.
What we discussed:
00:00 Intro.
05:00 The Sleep deprivation epidemic.
07:15 Shaking off prejudice about resting being laziness.
08:31 Glymphatic system for toxin removal.
10:00 Synaptic plasticity: Learning & unlearning.
11:10 Learning & memory require sleep.
14:00 The hippocampus processes memory during sleep.
15:00 Late night cramming for exams blocks learning.
15:50 Lack of sleep appears to the body as a threat out in the world.
17:40 Blood sugar regulation is affected by sleep.
GLOBAL FIELD CONSCIOUSNESS THEORY - Roger Nelson PhD #71
Saison 5 · Épisode 71
mercredi 30 avril 2025 • Durée 01:38:03
Can intention alone cause changes in physical systems? Can the collective attention of a large group of people to an event cause changes in the coherence changes in physical systems, despite that lack of intention to do so?
In today’s episode we’re going to be exploring a field consciousness hypothesis: so a variation on the idea that consciousness may extend beyond the body and interact casually with physical systems and the consciousness of other beings, in some kind of resonant field phenomena. We’re going to be learning about the experiments with random number generators used to test this hypothesis; how human intention and attention has been proved to be able to affect these random outputs in a vast backlog of positive results and meta analyses; We're going to hear about how these experiments have been taken global, looking at collective effects on RNGs of particularly important world events that many people are attending to; we’re going to be looking at criticisms of the statistical analysis and a potential experimenter effect; and we’re going to be talking about the contrast between some seemingly non-local effects with other localised effects; and as always we’re going to be getting into the implications, in this case of whether the ‘field consciousness’ effect the data seems to point to, is more likely to be a unified field of consciousness, so in some sense a single mind, or simply the aggregated sum of all individual consciousnesses.
Now fortunately to guide us as we carefully test the thickness of the ice on this genuinely alternative world view of consciousness, we have the cognitive psychologist that has pioneered these field consciousness experiments since he founded the Global Consciousness Project at the Princeton University PEAR labs, Roger Nelson. Roger worked at Princeton’s PEAR labs in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, initially under Bob Jahn, for over twenty years until his retirement in 2002. He is also the author of the book “Connected: The emergence of global consciousness”.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro.
07:30 Random Number generator ‘mind-matter interaction’ experiments at Princeton PEAR labs.
21:10 Bob Jahn - Dean of Engineering at Princeton.
MOOD FOOD: TREATING MENTAL HEALTH WITH DIET - Felice Jacka PhD #70
Saison 5 · Épisode 70
lundi 14 avril 2025 • Durée 01:44:59
How much can a change in diet influence symptoms of mental health disorders? Why are a diversity of plants and whole foods so important to include, and ultra processed foods so important to remove? Why are inflammation and microbe diversity in the gut so key to this question? What does this research mean for the life-style medicine movement and to world food policy?
In this episode we have the exploding new field of nutritional psychiatry to get to grips with, that is the way our diet can influence and even treat mental health conditions. We’re going to be discussing the historical separation of mind and body by science, which has led to scepticism that diet could influence mental health outcomes; the new understanding of the importance of diversity in our microbiome and inflammation to our mood and mental state; our main topic which is going to be the radical results of recent trials showing large changes in cognitive and mental health outcomes when diet is altered; we’ll get into the foods that can bring about that change and why they work; and we’re going to be getting into the reasons for the broken industrialised food environment that has contributed to the current mental health epidemic in the west.
Fortunately, to understand this complex new field, our guest today is the very scientist that risked her reputation to conduct the first trials, facing considerable pushback, only to shift the consensus remarkably quickly with some top science, Felice Jacka. She is the Deakin University Distinguished Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry in Melbourne, the founder and director of the Food & Mood Centre, and of the International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry; She has been cited in over 100 institutional directives for food policy including the World Health Organization and UNICEF; and she is also the author of two books on this for the general public, the children’s book “There’s a Zoo in my Poo” and for adults “Brain Changer: How diet can save your mental health” which we’ll be covering today. Her impact has been so high on public health that in 2021 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to nutritional psychiatry.
What is the relationship between our cognition and our bodies in the natural environment? How do we reconcile the presence of mind in life without splitting them into a dualism? What are the similarities between cognitive science and the buddhist view of the mind? How can we resist the bifurcation of nature into subjective and objective?
In this episode we have the important topic of embodied cognition to raise our awareness about, that is the importance of our biologically lived experience to our perspective of world. So we get into the biologist and neuroscientist Francisco Varela’s concept of Autopoiesis, literally ‘self creation’ from the Greek, which describes the extraordinary tenacity of self-organising living systems to create and sustain themselves; we discuss the meeting point of buddhism, meditation, asian philosophy and modern cognitive science which may have become overstated in recent decades; and we get into the deep continuity between body and mind, and the importance of the artificial separation of the objective and subjective in the history of science, that has led us to the dominant position of reductionist materialism.
To face these diverse topics, we have as our guest the hugely influential philosopher, cognitive scientist and Asian philosophy scholar Evan Thompson. Evan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies and the Department of Psychology (Cognitive Science Group). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of many books, collected works, and papers, including “The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience”,“Mind in Life”, “Why I’m not a buddhist” and “The Blind Spot, why science cannot ignore human experience”.
MEMORY - A NEW PERSPECTIVE - Charan Ranganath PhD #68
Saison 5 · Épisode 68
vendredi 14 mars 2025 • Durée 01:22:41
Why and how do we store certain memories and not others? What lifestyle elements influence memory for better or worse? Can traumatic memories be reframed and lead to reduction in symptoms?
In this episode we get into the most recent research into memory. So, how we store memory; the different types; the way we actively construct it rather than simply receiving it; it’s importance to our sense of self and framing of the world; to our attention and motivation; to our openness and updating our beliefs; and to Deja Vu. We talk about the influence of screen time and multi-tasking on memory; some unexpected life style factors that influence the quality of memory function and how they can feed into memory disorders; and we discuss traumatic memories and how we can reframe them, and the psychedelic research on that too.
Fortunately, our guest is one of the world’s most fun and knowledgeable authorities on memory, psychologist, neuroscientist, and head of the dynamic memory lab at The University of California Davis, Dr. Charan Ranganath. He’s the author of over 120 scientific papers on memory and has recently released a fascinating book for the general public on all this, “Why We Remember”. Charan is also a rock guitarist with several bands so a man of many talents.
What we discuss:
00:00 intro.
07:20 The remembering self vs experiencing self.
09:30 We forget a lot, we’re supposed to.
11:00 Autobiographic memory.
13:30 Episodic memory.
14:20 Emotional intensity brings attention, which is linked to motivation.
18:20 Association, cue and prompts, and the hippocampus.
20:30 Memory athletes and training memory.
21:51 Storifcation, mental schemas and ‘scaffolding’ new memories with old blueprints.
PLANT INTELLIGENCE, MEMORY & COMMUNICATION - Monica Gagliano PHD #67
Saison 2 · Épisode 67
dimanche 1 décembre 2024 • Durée 01:20:39
How do plants communicate using sound? How do they remember previous stimuli that have proven not to be threat, when at first they seemed like one? Where is the memory encoded considering they have no brain? What are the implications for biology of plant memory?
In this episode we cover the ground breaking topics in plant cognition studies of: plant intelligence, behaviour, memory and communication. The type of experiments presented here have never really been done before, because there has always been an assumption in plant science that the cellular cognition that all living cells have, relies solely on light, touch or chemical interactions; so it doesn’t really permit for plant behaviour, memory and consciousness. So with my guest today, the first scientist to bypass the assumptions and try these tests, we’re going to discuss her experiments with plants; that clearly show not only basic memory and the corresponding updated behaviour based on that memory, but even pavlovian memory, i.e. associative memory that requires arbitrary stimuli to take on meaning to the plant. Obviously all of this has massive implications for distributed memory and memory beyond brains. We’re also going to get into plant medicine and other indigenous approaches to connecting with plant consciousness; and what plant communication and biophilia in general might do for our relationship to the natural world as we face imminent biosphere collapse.
My guest is of course, the research associate professor of Evolutionary Ecology at several universities in Australia, Monica Gagliano. She’s published over 60 scientific papers, across the fields of Ecology, Plant Cognition, Plant Communications and Marine Ecology.
Where is nature’s memory of its evolution encoded? Is there evidence for extended mind occurring beyond individual brains? How possible is it that the sun is conscious?
In this episode we’re going to get up to date on Rupert Sheldrake’s extraordinary theory of Morphic resonance: so Morphic fields, the unfolding of nature’s ‘habits’ and the ‘memory of nature’. We’ll examine the possibility of levels of consciousness larger than our own brains - scaling up in a hierarchy from cellular consciousness right up to planetary and perhaps even stellar consciousness! We’re also going to get into examples of consciousness beyond the brain like ‘the sensation of being stared at’ (clearly a useful skill to evolve) and other phenomena Rupert has reported in his experiments.
Rupert Sheldrake is a Cambridge PHD developmental Biologist whose published over
100 papers on topics as wide as Cellular Biology, telepathy, Pets who know when their owners are coming home, and after-death communications. He is also the author of many books like “A new science of life”,“Science set free”, and “Ways of going Beyond”, among many others.
What were discuss:
00:00 Intro.
06:10 Morphic resonance explained.
08:15 Polar Auxin - death in the midst of life.
09:15 Genes make proteins, morphogenetic fields determine form.
11:30 Nature’s “memory” spread across time.
13:25 Something that has happened before is more likely to happen again.
14:15 Collective memory, like Jung’s collective unconscious.
07:00 The limits between the expressible and the inexpressible.
09:10 Semantic Information: life as self organising, autonomous agents.
15:00 There’s stuff you can’t talk about - there’s only the silence
16:20 The Basian probability of other life in the universe.
20:00 The ingredients for life on this earth.
22:30 The codependence between Geo and Biosphere.
22:60 Gaian feedback loops.
27:00 The earth is not conscious but it is an agent.
29:45 Mind is a process, it’s not just in the head.
33:25 The fluidity of individuality.
34:30 Distributed Cognition - bacteria, fungal networks etc.
38:30 A fundamental reimagining of what we mean by ‘Nature’.
39:30 There is no disembodied perspective.
41:00 Geosphere to Biosphere to technosphere maturity.
47:30 The biosphere offers a model for what planetary intelligence looks like.
48:00 The history of search for extra terrestrial Intelligence, SETI
49:00 The Drake equation - 7 requirements for intelligence life.
53:45 We’ve never looked - a tiny amount of the sky has been studied.
54:00 Exoplanets: searching for biosgnatures and techno signatures.
56:00 Technospheres: Kardeshev scale and Dyson Spheres.
59:00 Techno junk from dead civilisations.
01:02:30 UFO’s need more data to be taken seriously.
01:08:20 UFO’s could be surveilling their spy tech.
01:10:00 Pros and Cons of solar system settlement.
23:45 Sleep delay of morning stress hormones in teens.
26:15 Light Vs Deep ‘Slow Wave’ Vs REM sleep.
30:00 REM Sleep explained.
33:00 Dreams: The top theories.
36:30 The electrical nature of sleep & brain waves.
40:00 Alpha Waves and biofeedback for insomnia.
42:00 Insomnia & the health risks of sleep deprivation.
46:00 Sleep is within our control.
47:15 The inflammation link with sleep.
49:30 The mental health risks of sleep deprivation.
50:00 Catastrophising and attention deficit.
50:45 College students mental health & sleep as a crucial marker.
57:30 Persausive technology, screens & sleep.
01:02:30 How much sleep do we need?
01:04:25 Avoid external stimulants & go to low light.
01:06:00 Avoid internal stimulants like caffeine and alcohol. 01:07:40 Sleep and wake at regular times every day.
01:08:40 Core temperature dropping signals sleep.
01:10:00 Roxanne’s campaign points.
01:12:00 The shame around rest.
References:
Ya Chai at al, ‘Two nights of recovery sleep restores hippocampal connectivity but not episodic memory after total sleep deprivation’ paper.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65086-xN.I.H. article, 'Sleep on it - How snoozing strengthens memories' (40% drop in learning after sleep deprivation)https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/04/sleep-itU. Chicago Medicine article, 'New study helps explain the link between sleep loss and diabetes'.
Trisha Hershey, ‘the Nap’ Bishop. - “Rest is Resistance” book.
28:45 Emotional and passionate group events saw coherence in the RNG experiments.
33:00 Contrast between apparent local and non-local effects.
37:55 David Bohm’s Implicate / Explicate order concept.
38:55 “Pilot wave” and “active information” link between the implicite and the explicate.
43:55 Statistical results generation and analysis of significance.
49:05 The sceptics criticisms.
51:45 The Global Consciousness Project methodology.
53:05 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s mind sphere, called ‘Noosphere’.
57:45 Measuring the group coherence of Princess Diana’s funeral.
01:00:25 The 9/11 Results.
01:05:55 The emotional component in coherence.
01:18:40 The quantity of people and strength of the emotion, whether positive or negative, raises the effect size.
01:11:10 A single collective consciousness VS an aggregate of all individual consciousnesses.
01:14:50 Different levels of collective consciousness above individual bodies.
01:16:55 The analogy of individuals being like neurones in a cosmic brain.
01:20:55 The Experimenter effect criticism.
01:26:10 The Helmut Schmidt “Unobserved tape” experiment.
01:29.10 The indeterminate state before observer ‘collapses of the wave function’ analogy to explain results.
17:15 His scientific education engrained materialism and atheism in him..
18:15 Asian philosophy, psychedelics, Neo-platonism and Christianity.
20:30 Questioning of scientific dogma came before his faith.
22:00 Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm change, an analogy for him breaking with science.
23:50 Rupert’s work denounced as ‘Heresy’ by the editor of Nature in 1981.
26:30 Measuring Morphic fields in experiments.
28:30 IQ tests have got easier for people over time, The Flynn Effect
30:00 Video games have to make new versions harder each time.
32:10 Is subtle energy field research beyond science?
37:00 Bioelectric morphogenetic fields & Michael Levin.
41:20 Bioelectric fields are the interface not the explanation.
42:30 Where are morphic fields recorded in nature?
44:50 Platonism doesn’t explain evolution and change over time.
47:00 Different levels of collective consciousness, up to planetary, stellar and even cosmic consciousness.
56:40 The feeling of being stared at: examples of extended mind.
01:02:55 Mystical experience - being part of a greater consciousness.
01:09:40 Are spiritual & scientific insight compatible?
References:
Rupert Sheldrake, “A New Science of life”.
Michael Levin - Bio-electric morphogenetic fields CC interview
The Sheldrake.org Staring App.
Polar Auxin
QUOTE:
“Morphic resonance leaps across time and space,
It’s not stored anywhere it’s a direct connection with the past.”
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