Does 20th Century Science Fit 21st Century Consciousness?
A Psychedelic Springboard into a Mystical Mystery
Amidst the sturm und drang of the liminal time we’re experiencing, a mind-manifesting conversation percolates under the chaotic surface that challenges our epistemological and ontological foundations of reality. As the old world dies, and we await a new world to be born, psychedelics help lead truth-seekers to eternity’s most profound question- What is consciousness? As more people search for the answer to mankind’s greatest mystery, it begs a question. Does 20th century science fits 21st century consciousness?
Consciousness Creep
Long ago, we planted the seeds of the strange times blossoming now. I first became aware of consciousness creep in the mid 2010s thanks to 2 events. Imperial College of London released some of the first news about psychedelic-assisted therapy about a decade ago. Around the same time, I witnessed American hospice care employ acupuncture and reiki for the terminally ill. How could the Western medical establishment embrace such “quackery”?
I got over those malformed thoughts when a cancer patient, with zero spirituality, told me how much they benefited from reiki. Acupuncture is one thing, as the Chinese have practiced it for thousands of years. But energy healing? C’mon. Yet I was forced to believe. Believe, as in extraterrestrial life like Fox Mulder from The X-Files? Yes and no.
Little green men scampering around on spindly legs with oversized heads may never be proven. However, The X-Files acted like a media virus. The show used the candy-coated shell of alien lore to inject a more provocative idea. Mulder and Scully were mystic and empiricist, yin and yang. Chris Carter, the show’s creator, saw the future decades ago. We’re living in Mulder and Scully’s world now, as mysticism and empiricism collide, entangle and merge.
Consciousness, from Taboo to Du Jour
Going back 30 years or more, the subject of consciousness was taboo. Discussions about the nature of consciousness were limited to chin-stroking café philosophers and stoned college kids in their dorms gazing at M.C. Escher posters. Now, neuroscientists, biologists, philosophers, physicists, psychonauts and truth-seekers are entertaining the conundrum of consciousness, as if it’s the topic du jour. Consciousness is crashing science’s party and challenging us to suspend belief.
A quick survey of the zeitgeist reveals fascinating questions being raised.
The Food and Drug Administration’s rejection of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, included various criticisms. One critique focused on the “inner healing intelligence,” a fundamental concept of Grofian, transpersonal psychology.
DMTx, or extended state DMT experiences, are being studied at Imperial College London.
One of the world’s leading DMT experts, Dr. Andrew Gallimore, discusses how DMT defies reality and isn’t shy discussing DMT entities.
These are just some examples from the psychedelic field. Beyond psychedelics, the fissure between empiricism and mysticism narrows, and appears to be leaning in for a risqué kiss.
In 2022, three men were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science."
Neuroscientist Anil Seth, popular on the psychedelic event circuit, thinks “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality.”
Psychotherapist Robert Falconer discusses the “foreign entities within our minds.”
Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, uses the scientific method to try and prove the veracity of psi phenomenon, like telepathy for example. If you don’t know Dean’s famous synchronicity story, you’re missing out.
Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance combines science and spirituality.
After disappearing 3 decades ago, Mexican neurophysiologist and psychologist Jacobo Grinberg’s work is resurfacing. His multidisciplinary approach combining Mexican shamanism, astrology, telepathy, Eastern disciplines, and more, led to his groundbreaking Syntergic Theory to mind the gap between neuroscience, metaphysics and spiritual experiences.
Michael Pravica, Ph.D., a professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a supporter of hyperdimensionality and believes that, “human consciousness comes from a higher dimension.”
Combat war veteran Hakim Isler is now organizing the 2025 Psi Games. Held in August, 2025 in Virginia, the event is billed as “A Global Arena For Psychic Abilities,” where people can compete using psi abilities, backed by “a supportive community dedicated to consciousness exploration.”
The Gateway Process at the Monroe Institute provides numinous experiences based on sound, frequency and vibration, which helped birth binaural beats.
The Telepathy Tapes have exploded in popularity.
Critical voices have sounded the skeptical alarm over The Telepathy Tapes, and for good reason. However, when I learned that Rupert Sheldrake was involved, of course the skeptics were upset. Rupert is a walking controversy, and he’s an exemplar of our collective moment that pits empiricism against mysticism, joins empiricism and mysticism, or both.
Empiricism and Mysticism- The Scientific Enigma
The overlap between empiricism and mysticism creates an inherent epistemological enigma. How do we prove something is “real” if we can’t see, touch, hear, smell or taste it? The scientific method, for now, can’t prove or disprove what may lie beyond the bookends of consciousness. This creates a conundrum and the ouroboros.
However, what if our brain doesn’t generate consciousness? Rather, what if the brain channels consciousness? Does consciousness function like our vision? The naked eye sees a sliver of the entire electromagnetic spectrum; about 1% or less.
We’re arriving at a revelatory point in science and epistemology. Can something intangible and subjective be proven “true” using the very method intended to disprove it?
For the skeptics who cry “woo woo,” don’t ignore the biggest, metaphysical skeleton in the closet of science. How do you wrestle with the placebo effect? The placebo effect still poses one of science’s most complex conundrums.
Perhaps the mind, vis-à-vis consciousness, creates a lot more of our reality than we realize. Scientific orthodoxy may still reject mysticism, thanks to cognitive biases like the Semmelweis Reflex, for example. But there’s an emerging paradigm shift that may disrupt the scientific status quo forever.
Monistic Idealism
According to the Google AI overview, monistic idealism is:
is a philosophical view that posits a single, ultimate reality, which is primarily or entirely mental or spiritual. It differs from other forms of idealism by emphasizing the unity of existence, suggesting that all things can be reduced to a single, underlying substance that is not physical. This substance is often described as mind, spirit, or consciousness.
Monistic idealism represents an ontological shift, which could render our epistemological foundation obsolete. Two monistic idealism proponents are Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup.
Donald Hoffman is a cognitive psychologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Hoffman believes that we are one consciousness. Hoffman refers to his reality theory as “conscious realism.” He asserts the primacy of consciousness, out of which all matter is created.
Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch philosopher and computer scientist, most well-known for his work in the field of consciousness studies. Kastrup is also the executive director of Essentia Foundation. Kastrup supports analytic idealism, also known as monistic idealism.
Kastrup believes:
that phenomenal consciousness is the fundamental reality and individual minds are dissociations of a monist universal mind. This aligns with the general definition of monistic idealism, which states that everything ultimately derives from a single, mental substance.
Mankind hasn’t seen an ontological paradigm shift since rational materialism took hold in the 16th and 17th centuries. After four or five centuries are we due for a change? Are we witnessing the downfall of rational materialism? If so, are we discovering the limitations of scientific materialism and entering a novel era of reality?
Stubbing Your Toe On the Way Out of Plato’s Cave
Another intriguing figure, considered to be a monistic idealist is Thomas Campbell. Tom Campbell is a former NASA physicist, consciousness explorer and author of the My Big TOE trilogy. He’s well known for his book, My Big T.O.E., or My Big Theory of Everything.
The Google AI overview says Campbell:
proposes a model of reality where consciousness is fundamental and evolves to create both the objective and subjective worlds. This view aligns with monistic idealism, which posits that reality is ultimately a single, unified substance, and that consciousness is central to understanding that substance.
Campbell’s My Big T.O.E. proposes that we’re living in a simulation. The simulation is akin to Plato’s Cave and/or The Matrix. To be certain, a lot of ambiguous overlap exists between monistic idealism, simulation theory, hyperdimensionality and more. This conversation starts getting above my pay grade. However, here’s a basic summary of Campbell’s cosmology.
Campbell believes in the primacy of consciousness, thus we are all chips off of the old block. For consciousness to continue growing and expanding, the system must avoid entropy. Entropy is the death knell of consciousness. Thus, in order to provide more chances and more opportunities for evolution, consciousness creates human beings. Each of us, every single one of us, is a drop of consciousness.
This echoes the ancient wisdom of the Sufi mystic Rumi when he said, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
Campbell takes the entropy discussion even further. If consciousness seeks to reduce entropy, then mankind’s mission by proxy is to also reduce entropy. What is entropy? Entropy is the quantification of disorder and randomness in a system. What are examples of disorder and randomness?
Uncertainty, imbalanced resource sharing, distrust, disconnection, chaos, fear, to name but a few. Starting to sound like our current moment? So how does consciousness and mankind solve for entropy?
Campbell has a one word answer- LOVE.
Sit with that for a moment. Inhale and exhale 3 times, be present, and ruminate on that. The possible directions this conversation can take from here are profound.
Is Western Science Just Now Learning What Mystical Traditions Knew All Along?
If you’ve worked with DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, or ayahuasca, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced a psychedelic experience known as “unitive consciousness.” This is the phenomenon that makes you feel at one with the universe and all that resides within. This is esoteric knowledge of the oldest order- “As above, so below.”
For millennia, various mystical traditions have supported the cosmology of unitive consciousness and monistic idealism. Traditions like Buddhism, Taoism and Sufism all revered a common, sacred idea. The idea of a single reality manifesting in infinite forms.
Even the Maya cosmology echoes monistic idealism and unitive consciousness. The Mayan greeting, “In Lak'ech,” translates to “I am another yourself” and “is a statement of unity and oneness.”
Keep in mind the Maya were robust aficionados of psilocybin mushrooms and meditation. Mayan psychedelic traditions often overshadow their prodigious meditation practices. Many meditation chambers are found in Maya pyramids and ruins. If a civilization practices psychedelic rites and meditation for 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 years uninterrupted, the civilization is bound to have a revelatory breakthrough.
We seem to be just catching up at this point. Or are we waking up?
“Waking Up From the Dream of Life”
This is an idea that Donald Hoffman plays with, and it always reminds me of the 2001, Richard Linklater movie Waking Life. The movie follows the life of a man, while he is lucid dreaming, and moves from dream to dream, trying to answer life’s most perplexing questions and mysteries.
One of my favorite scenes is the boat car.
“The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. Saves on introductions and goodbyes.”
The boat man’s words are a lesson in non-duality, a key aspect of unitive consciousness. In the West, we have our own unique ways to wrestle with consciousness. Sometimes all it takes is a young man on acid.
Bill Hicks, Mystic, Sage, Fool, Comedian and Trickster
Bill Hicks was legendary. He had a unique ability to distill complex topics and ideas through the filter of comedy. Hicks confronted the complicated mysteries of consciousness and the follies of the human condition with laughter and comedy.
In fact, Bill Hicks loved psilocybin mushrooms and he knew quite a lot about unitive consciousness, oneness, and Love. Bill wanted one thing- a positive drug story. His bit is more relevant today than ever, and his wish may have been a prophecy.
“All matter is energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves.”
Bill was a genius, and perhaps a mystic too, thanks to his keen understanding of metaphysics. We haven’t even discussed quantum theory, “spooky action at a distance,” the observer effect, or non-locality. These are all scientific proofs that we’ve failed to integrate into our ontology and epistemology.
It’s Darkest Just Before the Dawn
Let’s face it, we’re experiencing a collective, dark night of the soul. Even if you don’t think so, or are aware of it, you must have a gut feeling, an intuition, a sense that something is off. Is the darkness of empiricism and rational materialism yielding to the light of monistic idealism?
I’ve already heard a couple of people say this online in the last month. They’ve both said something akin to, “Rational materialism is dead, the mainstream just doesn’t know it yet.”
So in these unpredictable, unknown and scary times, take heed in the possibility that you are not a human being having a spiritual experience. Rather, you are a spiritual being having a human experience. Consciousness can’t taste a juicy, fresh mango, or enjoy the mystical scent of copal wafting in the air. If you bought the ticket for the psychedelic renaissance, you’re now taking the ride on the revival of consciousness.
Adam Miezio
An experienced psychedelic writer and copywriter, psychedelic content marketer, and have 10+ years of experience in SEO content writing, content creation, content strategy and analytics.
