The dramatic shifts in perception during psychedelic trips are often called hallucinations. But what if everyday perception is also a kind of hallucination? Even your sense of Self?
Neuroscientist Anil Seth proposes that “your brain hallucinates your conscious reality” in one of TED talks most popular events, viewed by over 11 million people.
His insights chime with mystical traditions that say the normal perception of reality and “self” is a kind of illusion. People who claim to perceive this on an ongoing basis say this can create a sense of liberation, freedom or unity with all existence. In other words, enlightenment.
“..its the kind of understanding that makes us feel continuous with nature rather than separate from it." - Anil Seth
The notion of "no-self" can be bewildering, and this talk may change the way you understand yourself, perception and reality. But it can also help understand ego dissolution/death experiences common during psychedelics, near-death experiences and mediation in a way that is easier to conceptualise and integrate.
This event was recorded in April 2021 in collaboration with the Psychedelic Society London. Join future events at: http://www.adventuresinawareness.com
Get Anil Seth's book 'Being You: A New Science of Consciousness' here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-You-New-Science-Consciousness/dp/1524742872
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0:00 Introduction
1:09 Talk outline and interests
2:22 The hard (and easy) problems of consciousness
4:18 The 'Real' problem of conciousness
5:41 The End of Vitalism (2.0)
7:25 The three dimensions of consciousness
8:01 1: The Coniscous level
11:46 Signal Diversity
13:26 EEG data findings
16:30 Psychedelic data findings
19:30 Upon publishing findings
20:34 Neural information flow in the psychedelic state
21:51 Granger causality
26:38 2: What you are conscious of
28:01 Your brain is a prediction machine
30:33 Predictive processing
34:04 Computational phenomology
37:31 Mapping the diversity of Visual Hallucinations
42:08 strobe induced hallucinations
46:43 3: The Conscious Self
47:58 Different experiences of the self
48:47 Bodily experience of self & further studies
53:18 Out of body experiences & interoception
59:52 Q&A: The concious self in mystic traditions
1:07:47 Q&A: The conscious self - liberation or madness?
1:12:46 Q&A: Psychedelic, medatitive & sleep experiences
1:18:25 Q&A: Research on the experience of reality
1:25:43 Q&A: Personal experiences and influences
1:31:14 Q&A: Split brain studies and the conscious experience
1:40:33 Q&A: Consciousness as a field and other metaphysical views
1:43:10 Q&A: Psychedelic treatments for psychatric disorders
1:49:48 Q&A: Other research on stimulatives
1:51:43 Q&A: DPDR and the conscious experience
1:55:00 Q&A: Signal diversity and the entropic brain hypothesis
1:56:55 Q&A: Book & film recommendations
Anil Seth discusses how his research on perception may relate to various meditative, mystical and psychedelic experiences that induce ego-dissolution.
- Could there be psychological and neuroscientific justification for claims to such enlightenment?
- Is perceiving “No-Self” closer to a scientific understanding of reality?
- In what ways might such perception be related to disorders such as depersonalisation or dissociation?
- What correlates are there between the ego dissolution of meditators, psychonauts on those suffering from mental illness?
Anil Seth's groundbreaking research seeks to understand consciousness in health and in disease. As Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and founding co-director of the University of Sussex’s Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, his research bridges neuroscience, mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychology, philosophy and psychiatry. He has also worked extensively with playwrights, dancers and other artists to shape a truly humanistic view of consciousness and self.
Seth is the editor and co-author of the best-selling 30-Second Brain, a collection of brief and engaging neuroscience vignettes. His forthcoming book The Presence Chamber develops his unique theories of conscious selfhood within the rich historical context of the mind and brain sciences.
His TED talk is one of the most popular ever, at over 11 million views, and his interview on the Waking Up podcast is considered by Sam Harris as one the most important conversations he has recorded.
"The idea of where we exist, how we develop that sense of self and how it can be explained in terms of the activity of brain cells, all of that is still largely the domain of philosophers rather than scientists. Anil Seth (...) wants to turn that around.” — Guardian, May 9, 2010