Through a Glass Darkly

The other day there was a report in the newspaper about what was described as some "psychedelic research" that had been carried out at Imperial College London. The article explained that, in the course of this work, Imperial College's researchers had discovered that people who took a substance called DMT reported the same sensations as people who had returned from near death experiences. The leader of the research team, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, was then quoted on the conclusions he drew from this finding:

"These findings", he said, "are important as they remind us that near-death experiences occur because of significant changes in the way the brain is working, not because of something beyond the brain."

Had Dr Carhart-Harris stopped before the phrase "not because of something beyond the brain", I could have agreed with him. However, it seems obtuse to draw the conclusion he does in the last part of his statement. In near death experiences and when taking DMT indisputably something changes in the brain - but surely what changes is the nature of individual perception, in which case what is revealed by the researchers' studies is that human beings, when they are in the standard, everyday state of consciousness, do not see the entirety of all that exists.

If that is the case, then it may well be that when something changes in the brain - when, to use Aldous Huxley's phrase, (via William Blake), the doors of perception are opened, (or at least nudged slightly ajar) - we observe things in a different way or from a different perspective, but that is not to say that that perspective is less rather than more revealing of reality than our default state. Perhaps the changes in our brain are just a case of lights being turned on so that things we aren't normally aware of are able to emerge from the gloom and be recognised.

Rather than proving that what people see under the influence of DMT or during a near death experience is imaginary, the experiments of Dr Carhart-Harris and his team may well demonstrate that beyond the brain in its normal state are many things of which we are entirely unaware.