The map is not the territory. The modelled brain is not consciousness. ‘This’ – the ineffable quality of subjective experience – is consciousness. No scientific description can ever reach it. The psychedelic experience allows us to get behind our models, and provides us with a special, unitary knowledge of consciousness; shedding new light on the infamous hard problem, writes Jussi Jylkkä.

This, my experience right now, is what it feels like to be alive. But this cannot be inferred from science alone. David Chalmers calls this the “hard problem” of consciousness. Psychedelic experience can shed light on the problem, as it demonstrates how I know my consciousness in a non-conceptual and non-reflective way through being it. I call such knowledge “unitary”, as it is not about anything. It is simply the brute happening of a process: this. In contrast to unitary knowledge, scientific models and observations only give relational knowledge that is about something distinct. Thus, psychedelic experience shows that consciousness is part of the concrete reality that science merely models. This is what science models as “physical”.

Consciousness is this, matter is that something

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of why it is that any physical processes feel like anything ‘from the inside’. A closely related problem is the epistemic gap, or why it is impossible to infer from science what experiences feel like, or that subjective consciousness exists at all. Psychedelics can shed light on these problems through demonstrating a categorical difference between how I know my own consciousness, and what type of knowledge science gives.

Psychedelic experience shows that consciousness is part of the concrete reality that science merely models.

To understand the relationship between consciousness and matter, we must understand what consciousness is, and what matter is. To begin with the latter, matter (or the physical; I take these to be synonymous) is whatever it is that physics models. As Galen Strawson puts it, “matter” is the ultimate natural kind term: it refers to that something, whatever it is, that produces observations of atoms and molecules, and that modern physics models as, say, interaction between quarks. [1] However, “interaction between quarks” is merely a theoretical model in our minds, which refers to that something that matter truly is. Observations of atoms and molecules are merely sensations in our minds. The word “matter” does not refer to these sensations, but instead to what produces them. Beyond our observations and theories, matter is a mystery.

What is consciousness? For me it is this, sitting in front of my computer, thinking about philosophy at 9am on a Saturday morning during my summer vacation. Consciousness is this thinking process now, the ache in my back, the sound of the refrigerator, the sight of trees trembling in late summer breeze. The slight fear of deadline. Consciousness has been characterized in countless ways throughout history, as “qualitative”, “non-spatial”, “soul”, “Brahman”, etc., but all these are merely words, and the word is not the object. Beyond words, consciousness is simply this, what is immediately present every moment. This is consciousness when it is not called “consciousness”, this is the flow of experience when it is not called “the flow of experience”. It is this when it is not called “this”.

Beyond words, consciousness is simply this, what is immediately present every moment..

How do we know matter and mind? Matter is known through observations and theories. I call such knowledge relational, because it is distinct from what it is about: the atomic model is about that something that we call “atom”; our observations of quantum interference are produced by that something that we model as “quarks”. As to what matter is outside my consciousness, I cannot know, since knowing is in consciousness. My own consciousness, in turn, I know simply through being it, through being this. I call such knowledge unitary. It is not “about” anything, nor is it “possessed” by anyone—it is simply the process that happens here and now. This is demonstrated by unitary experiences that can be produced by meditation, or more easily, through psychedelics.

Psychedelic consciousness

Psychedelic substances such as psilocybin, LSD, or cannabis can occasion mystical experiences, whose central feature is unity. In the right set and setting, psychedelics can catalyse the dissolution of the experience of a “subject” that is distinct from the “objects” of its knowing. For example, the journalist Michael Pollan describes his experience of listening to Bach’s sonatas under the influence of psilocybin as follows:

[I] lost whatever ability […] to distinguish subject from object, tell apart what remained of me and what was Bach’s music […] I became a transparent ear, indistinguishable from the stream of sound that flooded my consciousness until there was nothing else in it.[2]

In this experience, there is no longer “I” or “subject” who knows or undergoes their experience, there is just the experience itself, the brute flow of consciousness. There is no subject who undergoes or knows experiences, there is merely the experience itself, the brute happening of a process. The psychedelic experiencer knows their experience in a unitary way through being it. Such “knowing” is not conceptual; it is non-reflective and non-intellectual. It is unitary: the experiencer knows their consciousness through being it, and then there is no longer an “experiencer” or “subject” distinct from their consciousness. There is merely the happening of a process, and its happening constitutes its knowing.