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Prof. Moreira argues that reason cannot generate intrinsic value; it merely operates on existing human needs and emotional commitments. While reason can expose contradictions, refine desires, and structure society, it cannot logically compel anyone to care about existence, honesty, or reciprocity. True human value begins with felt needs—most fundamentally, the recognition of the “Other” and their inner life. Ultimately, reason and need must work together to build a pluralistic society where individuals can coexist without needing universal agreement on what makes life meaningful.
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Dr. Goodwin argues that, under Idealism, all illnesses, not only mental health conditions, are a result of abnormal dynamics in the medium of mind. This includes infections, cancers, and even broken bones. The implications, he argues, open up new horizons for the expansion of effective treatment strategies, provided that we find ways to keep the nonsense—such as considering all illnesses merely psychosomatic—away.
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Naina Eira Gupta is a philosopher, Buddhist practitioner and PhD researcher at the University of Exeter, working at the intersections of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience with a focus on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics and meditation. Her current research examines altered states of consciousness—specifically, the phenomena of unitive experiences and ego dissolution. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Gupta shares how a psychedelic experience in her youth set her on a lifelong personal and academic journey into the nature of self and reality, and how she found in the Nālandā tradition and Nāgārjuna’s fourfold logic, precisely because of its paradoxical nature, a philosophical framework for making sense of non-dual experiences.
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Peter Jones argues that, despite the historical inability of Western metaphysics—especially when compared to science—to eliminate hypotheses and arrive at consensus views, the metaphysical method does enable us to drive to conclusions. He elaborates on this view and identifies the key criteria that allow us to discard untenable metaphysical theories. What is left is nondual idealism, he argues.
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We never encounter nature outside consciousness, observes Dr. van Droffelaar. Nature, as lived and known, is always already in it. It is in this sense that wilderness experiences—the felt presence of nature in its most primordial form—can sustainably transform human consciousness, bringing idealism to life in the core of our being; not as a conceptual abstraction, but as an embodied philosophy.
Do we really live in a fundamentally physical universe? Are we essentially material beings? Essentia Foundation is a new force in the cultural dialogue about the nature of reality. Find out more about us.
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Peter Jones argues that, despite the historical inability of Western metaphysics—especially when compared to science—to eliminate hypotheses and arrive at consensus views, the metaphysical method does enable us to drive to conclusions. He elaborates on this view and identifies the key criteria that allow us to discard untenable metaphysical theories. What is left is nondual idealism, he argues.
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Today we are releasing something that has been cooking in the background for a while: our AI-powered Essentia App!
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A clinical neuropsychologist tells us how her own ego-dissolution experience led her to a new perspective on science, the ‘soul,’ and life itself. Psychology and spirituality are not opposing paths, she realized, but complementary languages describing the same reality: consciousness.
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River Kanies argues that the paradoxical nature of psychological archetypes isn’t contingent, but reflect the very structure of experience: one where irresolvable tension is the impetus to action and the substance of meaning. The belief that an archetypal paradox can be resolved—that the tension between order and chaos, control and freedom, self and other can be finally settled in favor of one pole—is a failure to understand the nature of consciousness, he argues. It mistakes a structural feature for a solvable problem.
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Renowned physicist and nanoscientist Anirban Bandyopadhyay presents a radically different picture of the human brain: not as a computer processing bits, but as a nested architecture of clocks, resonances and shifting geometric patterns. At Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Bandyopadhyay and his team developed the dodecanogram, or DDG: a high-frequency brain-measurement technique designed to detect electrical and electromagnetic activity far beyond the reach of conventional EEG. Their findings include megahertz signals associated with microtubules, structures inside neurons that may host quantum effects. This research leads Bandyopadhyay to view consciousness quite literally as a universal symphony making music that is both everywhere and nowhere. Yet, while unequivocal in rejecting the computational view of consciousness, he remains cautious about the implications of his own findings: “The time has not yet come for a true theory of consciousness.”
Seeing
Videos
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In this conversation, neuroscientist Dr. Christof Koch, philosopher Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, and Hans Busstra explore what it means to take mystical experience seriously without abandoning scientific rigor. Both Koch and Kastrup emphasize that some psychedelic experiences exhibit a striking degree of specificity and convergence across individuals, pointing toward possible archetypal universals. While this raises clear ontological questions—suggesting that the contents of mystical experience may, in some sense, be real—the deeper lesson may be epistemic: alongside knowledge gained through scientific experimentation, there may also exist a form of direct acquaintance with truth; a ‘hyper-real’ mode of knowing that can leave the experiencer puzzled for years, or even a lifetime, and can inspire groundbreaking new science.
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Professor of physics Ivette Fuentes is doing groundbreaking work at the interface of quantum mechanics and gravity. At the heart of Fuentes’ work are Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs)—ultra-cold states of matter in which millions of atoms behave as a single quantum system. These systems are exquisitely sensitive to gravitational effects, making them ideal candidates for probing whether gravity plays an active role in quantum collapse, as Roger Penrose has long suggested. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Fuentes reflects on her original, cross-disciplinary approach to physics by drawing on her background as a dancer: first, one must fully master the classical forms—the established fields of physics—but true novelty only emerges when one dares to break the rules.
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In this conversation with Natalia Vorontsova, Francis Lucille explains that Advaita Vedanta is grounded in a single axiom: there is only one reality, which he equates with consciousness. The apparent multiplicity of selves, worlds, bodies, and minds is an appearance arising within this one consciousness. An important value of Advaita Vedanta, in the myriad of idealist spiritual traditions, is that it focuses not so much on achieving altered states of consciousness, but rather offers a method to recognize that consciousness is the single, universal reality.
From the archives
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David Lloyd returns with another captivating analysis of the isomorphisms—the correspondences of form—between the patterns and regularities of inner experience and those of the physical world. His writing is informed by both deep introspection and hardcore physical science. In this essay, he discusses isomorphisms that allow teleology—a certain sense of purpose and direction—to exist in nature in a spontaneous, science-treatable manner, without need for deliberation from an anthropomorphic divinity.
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Brian Stafford, MD, is a psychiatrist, board member and training director at the Animas Valley Institute, the organization founded by depth psychologist Bill Plotkin PhD and known for its work on nature-based human development. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Stafford reflects on his remarkable transition from a successful academic career in psychiatry to guiding wilderness-based practices aimed at what he calls an “eco-awakening”: a shift from an ego-centric to an eco-centric mode of consciousness.
Drawing on the work of Plotkin, Carl Jung, and his own clinical and personal experience as a wilderness guide, Stafford argues that many forms of psychological suffering are rooted in a deeper ecological disconnection. Rather than viewing the psyche primarily through the lens of pathology and symptom reduction, he proposes that psychiatry should recover a richer understanding of the psyche as a living reality embedded within both nature and the symbolic life of dreams, imagination, and meaning.
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Through a simple, direct, and very effective thought experiment, Nilsson helps us develop a very concrete and explicit understanding of where events take place: the realm of mind. He further demonstrates the fundamental independence between this realm and spatial location.
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