It took me a couple of journeys to adjust the Recipe and my own mental attitude to a point where the dialogue between ego and Other would routinely emerge. But once that was achieved, I had the ride of my life. What follows is an account of what I learned from these dialogues.
Notice that, although the reports below are necessarily restricted to words, the dialogues themselves weren’t. The Other communicated in the form of images and the direct transmission of ineffable insights just as often as words. My attempt below has been to translate these other forms of communication into words as well as I could, though much has unavoidably been lost in translation.
Who the heck are you?
10, 9, 8, 7 … I could feel the knot of my ordinary mental associations becoming untangled, different threads of thought and emotion being teased apart and allowed to starve in isolation. I didn’t resist it, merely witnessing as huge mental spaces opened up in my mind. How incredibly spacious it was. Mundane questions, worries and concerns were gone. 6, 5… My awareness of my own body dissipated quickly, leading to mild anxiety. The body became distant, remote, even abstract. 4, 3, 2… It is impossible to describe one’s state of consciousness at this stage. One drifts within an ocean of previously obfuscated mental contents, unspeakably huge vistas—comprised of images, affections and insights—opening up at each twist and turn. This unfathomable ocean felt as autonomous and tangible as the ordinary world, if not more.
1…
‘This feels so concretely and palpably real!’ I mentally remarked to myself.
‘But it is concretely and palpably real,’ a voice responded, seemingly out of the blue.
‘What the heck?’ I asked rather startled.
It is difficult to say whether the answer I then received was my own conclusion or something communicated by the voice:
‘I am this “Other” you’ve been trying to find.’
A mental reality
I paused to gather my ‘thoughts,’ or whatever type of mental activity one manifests in that state of consciousness. I was surprised and excited, only reassured by the fact that I sensed great patience and serenity on the part of the Other. My struggle was in deciding which line of inquiry to pursue next. Part of me wanted confirmation of whether the Other was an aspect of myself or a separate, autonomous entity of some sort. Yet, I also felt irresistibly puzzled by his very first words: ‘it is concretely and palpably real,’ he’d said, referring to the unfathomable mental space where I now was. How could it be? I knew I was undergoing a glorified psychedelic trip enhanced by E.M. fields. I was lying in a scientific laboratory, monitored closely by over a half-dozen people. My eyes were shut and my ears plugged. Clearly, my experience was mental and, as such, not ‘concretely and palpably real.’
‘But isn’t your ordinary waking reality ultimately also a mental experience?’ the Other asked, in seeming awareness of what I was thinking. ‘All you can know about it is experiential. Whatever else reality may be, apart from your experience of it, is just an abstraction of your intellect, forever beyond your life.’
This was disarmingly logical. Yet, habits of thought, when reinforced over a lifetime, are hard to break. So I insisted:
‘Yes… But there is a clear difference between the world of my mind, inside my head, and the real world outside my head. For one, I need to have my eyes open to see the real world, while this experience right now, including you, can only be within my head. After all, my real eyes are closed right now.’
‘Your confusion arises from a fundamental inversion: it is your head that is in your mind, not your mind in your head. This realm is indeed entirely within your mind. But so is your ordinary waking reality, your body included. Both realms are mental worlds unfolding within consciousness at all times. The act of focusing your attention on one particular realm obfuscates the others. That’s why you cannot feel your body right now: your body is a mental content that belongs to another, now-obfuscated realm of mentation; another dream of mind, so to speak.’
I had never thought of things this way and the idea was strangely seductive. But if the Other was correct, the implications would be nearly unimaginable. The idea that the mind is inside the body—as opposed to the other way around—is behind everything we consider true about the world and ourselves. Not only are psychiatry, psychology and our understanding of death directly rooted in it, our economical, political, social, educational, scientific, philosophical and even religious systems are also indirectly based on it. We couldn’t possibly have gotten it all so wrong for so long. We would have noticed problems and contradictions earlier. Yet, the edifice of our culture has survived for centuries standing on this very foundation. Picking up on my thoughts again, the Other continued:
‘Nobody knows how the matter of the brain could possibly produce the qualities of experience. The edifice you speak of has only stood for so long because you’ve conveniently quarantined the most difficult and fundamental questions.’
I knew this was at least partly correct. The issue he was referring to is now known as ‘the hard problem of consciousness.’ We cannot even conceive coherently of a process by which arrangements of matter could produce subjective experience, let alone explain experience. It’s a baffling mystery in neuroscience and philosophy of mind. But I wasn’t ready to admit defeat:
‘Perhaps, but neither can we ignore all the evidence for a world outside mind. For instance, if I close my eyes, I stop seeing because photons from a world outside my mind can no longer stimulate my brain via my retina. Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence that the brain has a lot to do with the mind. My very presence here is proof of it: right now, I am experiencing you because drugs are being pumped into my brain and electromagnetic fields are being beamed into my head.’
‘The brain and the mind are surely not separate from each other. In saying that the brain is in the mind, I am saying precisely that they aren’t separate. But that doesn’t imply that there is anything outside mind. You’re merely assuming that a world outside mind is the only possible explanation for sense perceptions, like your ability to see.’
‘What other explanation can there possibly be?’ I asked.
‘Before we explore this question, remember how this conversation started: you experience this realm to be as real, as palpable, as concrete as your ordinary waking world. At the very least, this proves that mind is capable of producing fully convincing realities without the aid of anything external to it, correct?’
‘Yes… Unless this realm actually isn’t mental but material…’ I retorted rather hesitantly. I knew I was directly contradicting my earlier stance, but I felt I needed to explore all alternatives. ‘Perhaps this realm, too, is outside mind,’ I continued, ‘just like my ordinary waking reality. Perhaps the Recipe has just brought me to a parallel universe of some kind.’
‘Oh, I see… And how would that work?’ asked the Other with a slight undertone of mockery.
‘I don’t know. Maybe mind can tune into different material universes.’
‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘mind would have to be fundamentally independent of your brain, not generated by it. Isn’t that right?’
‘True,’ I admitted. ‘This would indeed imply some form of dualism.’
‘So how would you then explain the ordinary correlations between brain states and mental states?’
‘It would still be conceivable that, after my mind chose to tune into my ordinary waking world, my experiences could be modulated—as opposed to generated—by my material brain in that world, just as empirically observed…’ I was reaching and I knew it.
‘Yes. However,’ rebutted the Other, ‘in that case the Recipe couldn’t have caused your mind to tune into another realm, and then keep you here, simply by manipulating your brain from within your ordinary waking reality, could it?’
‘Indeed not,’ I conceded. ‘My brain exists in the ordinary realm, so it couldn’t have any influence on what happens here. Yet, I am here presumably thanks to the on-go
ing interference of the Recipe with my material brain…’
‘Precisely. So your hypothesis cannot be true.’
‘OK. But then again,’ I insisted, ‘if the brain is in mind, how come the Recipe works? How come drugs and electromagnetic interference in my brain change my mental states?’
‘Why wouldn’t they? You are implicitly thinking in dualistic terms: you assume that your subjective experiences are one type of “stuff” while physical processes, like drug intake and exposure to electromagnetic fields, are another. But what I am suggesting is precisely that both are mental and, therefore, can affect each other just like your thoughts can affect your emotions. I am saying that everything is mental, including the drugs and electromagnetic fields, not only your brain.’
‘And how does this answer my question?’ I was genuinely confused.
‘When you dream at night, the objects you see in your dreams do not correspond to a world outside your mind, do they? Yet, they can influence your subjective state within the dream: dreamed-up water can get you wet and make you experience cold within the dream; a dreamed-up lover can make you feel arousal within the dream; even dreamed-up drugs can make you trip within a dream. Moreover, you always have a dreamed-up avatar, whether implicit or explicit, since you always experience the dream from a localized, moving view-point within it.’
‘I think I already see where you are going with this…’
‘Your ordinary life is like a dream,’ he continued anyway. ‘Your physical body is inside your dreaming mind just like your avatar is inside your nightly dreams. The Recipe can change your state of consciousness for exactly the same reason that a dreamed-up lover can make you feel arousal, or that dreamed-up water can make you feel cold. The same goes for your earlier point about closing your eyes: if you close your avatar’s eyes in a dream, you might also stop seeing within the dream. Whether this is the case or not depends merely on the particular rules of cognitive association that govern the dream by tying its unfolding experiences together. These rules are a kind of belief system in mind, encoding what mind instinctively believes must be the consequences of any given event or action. What then transpires in the dream is precisely what mind implicitly—in deep, highly obfuscated layers of cognition—believes must transpire. You stop seeing when you close your eyes in a dream if your dreaming mind expects that shutting your eyes should prevent you from seeing. In ordinary waking reality, you call the applicable rules of cognitive association the “laws of cause and effect” or “the laws of classical physics” or, even more deeply ingrained in your belief system, the “laws of classical logic.” The only peculiar thing about the rules of cognitive association in ordinary waking reality is that they are rather stable and consistent, unlike those usually governing a nightly dream. Yet, this very stability and consistency are part of the belief system applicable to ordinary waking life. You implicitly, instinctively believe—and therefore expect—that nature must be rather stable and consistent.’
I don’t know why but this resonated strongly with me. I intuitively knew that there was truth in this, even though I was extremely uncomfortable with the way it contradicted my worldview. In this state of cognitive dissonance, I offered:
‘What you are saying is that this realm feels so real to me not because it is material, but because the ordinary waking world I consider real is, just like this realm, mental…’
‘Precisely! Both realms are mental, this being the reason why you experience them in the same way. Reality is a feeling. Concreteness and palpability are qualities of experience, not of the abstraction you call the “material world.” This realm is real not despite being in mind, but because it is in mind.’
I understood him perfectly, but the point raised many questions. If all reality was in my mind, did it mean that I was the only conscious being in the universe? Did it mean that all reality was my personal dream, other people being simply projections of my dreaming mind? And what about the Other? Was he, too, just a projection of myself? Now that I had finally interacted with him, he felt so autonomous and external to me that I began to question my original assumptions. I wanted to confront him with these questions but I felt exhausted. I needed time to process and integrate this experience and all the insights I’d had. The Other recognized this. Reassured, I then proceeded to mentally chant the mantra that would trigger the A.I. to stop the trip and bring me back. In the minutes during which my “re-entry” unfolded, I could sense the presence of the Other slowly fade away… I knew I’d miss him, but I also knew I’d be back soon.
The nature of self and others
Some of the drugs used in the Juice Mix caused the body to develop temporary resistance: if you used them again shortly after the previous trip, their effect would be markedly diminished. So I had to wait a full week before I could journey again, and even that amount of time was considered short by the attendant nurse. Luckily, she was sympathetic when I said I couldn’t wait.
Indeed, there was more than just capricious eagerness behind my haste. I had to go back home to my day job in a little over a week, and I still hoped to squeeze in another journey during that time. Since my previous trip, I had tried to integrate and consolidate the insights I’d had. However, many more questions and doubts had arisen in my mind. I felt I needed to address them all before I could go back home in relative peace of mind.
It was a sunny Thursday afternoon when I returned to the lab for the next journey. I had already fine-tuned the Recipe based on the Telemetry recordings of my last trip and felt ready to encounter the Other once again. Sophie was there to see me off, as word of my earlier success had gotten around. There was general curiosity about what I’d bring back this time. The air was electrified with the reticent anticipation that Trilobite might—just might—have finally delivered.
The transcendent ‘space’ where the dialogues with the Other unfolded had the general feeling of being underground, like a cave or a subterranean installation. Many Explorers would describe it as a domed chamber, so we colloquially referred to it as ‘the Dome.’ Once in the Dome, in the presence of the Other, I wasted no time and went straight to the point:
‘I am confused. You say that reality is the imagination of my mind, there being no external world. So does it mean that I am the only living being in the universe, everybody else being projections of my mind? Does it mean that you are just a projected aspect of myself? Neither possibility seems reasonable or plausible to me.’
I could sense the Other think something like ‘OK, this will be delicate…’ But he didn’t quite ‘say’ it, whatever it means to ‘say’ something in that space. Instead, he offered this:
‘The confusion rests in what you mean by the words “my” and “I.” It’s true that all reality is in your mind, but the “your” here does not refer to you as an individual person; instead, it refers to your true nature as impersonal mind. Your sense of personhood is an amalgamation of a particular experiential perspective—that is, a specific point of view within the dream—a particular set of memories and a particular model of self-identity. In other words, your personhood consists of images and thoughts. But images and thoughts are ephemeral, ever-changing. They come and go. As the constant witness of these changing images and thoughts, you can’t be them, can you? Only your innermost subjectivity—the instinctive “I” feeling that precedes and couches all images and thoughts—is your true mind, wherein all realities unfold.’
Somehow this wasn’t really satisfying to me.
‘So reality doesn’t really unfold in my mind, but in some kind of impersonal mind-at-large, a la Aldous Huxley…’
‘This is where words become very delicate.’ The Other seemed to be trying to be particularly precise at this point. ‘I could answer “yes” to your question, but that would be misleading. It would lead you to think of mind-at-large as some kind of abstract entity that isn’t really you. Yet, the instinctive and concrete sense of “I” that you feel right now, which precedes and couches all your percept
ions, thoughts, emotions and memories, is mind-at-large. This way, mind-at-large really is the felt you; it just isn’t your concept of you. If you stopped thinking and forgot everything you know, you would still have this same instinctive “I” feeling.’
‘This is too subtle. I am not sure I really grasp this…’ I protested.
‘Then try the thought experiment I just hinted at: pretend right now that you forgot everything you know. Pretend that all your memories, theories, opinions, beliefs, everything, dissolved into oblivion without your losing consciousness. What’s left?’
The mere invitation to try it instantly triggered the thought experiment in my mind. For what felt like several seconds, everything I knew about self and world vanished.
‘Pure being,’ I replied. ‘I felt only a sense of pure being…’
‘That’s it! Pure being, unpopulated by thoughts, concepts, memories, etc. Every living creature feels this sense of pure being in exactly the same way. All organisms have the same instinctive “I” feeling that is mind-at-large.’
‘But this is just a feeling, not an entity,’ I pointed out. ‘What does it mean to say that mind-at-large is a mere feeling? It would make more sense to me if you said that mind-at-large has the feeling you are talking about…’
‘Stop looking for an object,’ he rebuked me. ‘Mind-at-large is the subject. All objects exist in mind-at-large as experiences, so mind-at-large itself can’t be an object, can it? You must turn inward, to the innermost sense of pure being you’ve just felt. Only by being itself can mind-at-large know itself. Because it is all there is, including time and space, it cannot stand outside itself to observe itself as object.’
‘This turns things inside out, but I am beginning to see what you mean,’ I acknowledged. ‘Mind-at-large is pure subjectivity. It can only pinpoint itself through its own most primordial inner sense of being…’
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