Psychedelics can produce life-changing experiences – but what if they’re fake? What if that sense of oneness with the cosmos and with yourself is just a potent delusion?
If you could plug yourself into a Matrix designed to gratify your every dream, would you do it? Or would the knowledge that it’s all ultimately a fabrication hold you back?
Dr Chris Letheby has been asking big philosophical questions about psychedelic experiences for some time, and we managed to score this exclusive, fascinating interview with him at Breaking Convention 2017.
We talk about humans’ quest for certainty and how far that serves or hinders us; what ‘consciousness’ really means; how classical, modern, and Buddhist philosophies tie into psychedelic experiences; and we try, through it all, to get things just a little bit less wrong.
There’s serious moral questions at play here: If we give people facing death a psychedelic experience to ease their anxiety, are we just foisting comforting delusions on the sick and dying?
Chris thinks it does matter whether psychedelic experiences are ‘real’ or not – but how can we ever grapple with what that means?
Are we all living in a delusion – and if so, what sort of delusion? And is it one we share with other people?
This is one of the most mind-opening episodes we’ve done – it’s 100% not to be missed.
Find Out More:
- Find Chris on Twitter, and on his academic homepage
- Chris’s paper at Breaking Convention
- Learn more about Dre’s unusual, autistic brain in this special episode
Be Silly. Be Kind. Be Weird.
