The metaphysics of the psychedelic experience: Anil Seth, Christof Koch, and Bernardo Kastrup debate
Seeing | Neuroscience | 2026-07-10
Prof. Anil Seth, PhD
Christof Koch, PhD
Bernardo Kastrup, PhD, PhD
Hans Busstra, MA
The OPEN Foundation and the Essentia Foundation together hosted a panel debate on metaphysics at the latest Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR26), Europe’s leading scientific conference dedicated to psychedelic science, therapy, ethics, and policy. During this discussion, Anil Seth, Bernardo Kastrup and Christof Koch discuss the latest insights from psychedelic research, as well as their different viewpoints on the epistemic value of psychedelic experiences and what metaphysics these experiences point to.
All our podcasts and essays without ads and powered by AI search: check out our new app! https://essentiafoundation.app/
0:00 Introduction
2:04 Anil Seth on How Psychedelics Changed His Views on Consciousness
6:27 Bernardo Kastrup on the Renaissance of Psychedelic Research
9:23 Anil Seth and Bernardo Kastrup on Death
11:55 Christof Koch on What Neuroscience Reveals About Psychedelics
17:56 Christof Koch on the Metaphysics of Psychedelic Experiences
18:18 Join the Essentia Foundation Membership
20:14 What Is the Epistemic Status of Psychedelic Experiences?
23:20 Christof Koch Asks Anil Seth About an Experience of Oneness
26:07 How Can We Distinguish Signal from Noise in Psychedelic Experiences?
30:15 Audience Poll: Idealism vs. Materialism
32:22 Bernardo Kastrup: “We’re Always on Drugs”
34:12 Is The Dress a Test of Idealism vs. Materialism?
35:18 What Kind of Materialism Does Anil Seth Defend?
37:48 Christof Koch on the Failure of Materialism
40:00 “Metaphysics Is a Luxury Few People Can Afford”
41:37 Where Bernardo Kastrup Agrees—and Disagrees—with Anil Seth
44:29 Anil Seth Explains His Position in Kantian Terms
46:52 How Metaphysics Shapes the Questions We Ask
52:33 Can We Escape the Kantian Trap?
55:38 Audience Q&A
Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.
Recently published
|
Steven Wolfram claims that the “ruliad,” the space of all possible computational states in nature, is reality—a structure so complete it contains every possible way of processing information. Our universe emerges from how observers with particular computational bounds sample this infinite structure. In this profound essay, Proulx argues that the ruliad is best understood under an idealist framework wherein each observer’s perspective isn’t merely a partial representation of underlying states, but a rendering of reality itself; just as a frame in a computer game is a rendering generated on-the-fly, not a partial representation of underlying states.
|
In this conversation, cognitive scientist John Vervaeke joins Hans Busstra to examine the historical roots of the modern meaning crisis through the lens of psychotechnologies: culturally developed mental tools and practices that transform how human beings think, perceive and make sense of reality. Vervaeke describes how psychotechnologies such as shamanism, Socratic dialogue and the Christian notion of agape profoundly shaped Western thought.
From the archives
|
Swami Sarvapriyananda is one of the world’s leading teachers of Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual philosophical tradition rooted in Hinduism, which places rational inquiry and self-investigation at its core. As head of the Vedanta Society of New York, he is renowned for his clear and rigorous presentations of Advaita Vedanta, and for showing how its insights resonate with modern developments in analytic philosophy, neuroscience, and physics. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Swami Sarvapriyananda explores the metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta, the meaning of the great saying “That Thou Art” (Tat Tvam Asi), how Advaita differs from other schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, and why it offers a unique perspective on the problem of suffering.
|
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.
|
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.
Reading
Essays
|
The question of reality has proceeded uninterrupted with a search “out there,” outside ourselves, but must progress to a search inward towards awareness, argues Adedire. All honest and rigorous inquiries into the nature of reality will ultimately come to the realization that fundamental Nature is conjoined with the phenomenon of consciousness, he concludes in this short and powerful essay. Yet, here, at the inflection point of a new age of contemplation, we find ourselves burdened by the walking-dead ontology of physicalism.
|
Today we are releasing something that has been cooking in the background for a while: our AI-powered Essentia App!
|
Swami Sarvapriyananda is one of the world’s leading teachers of Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual philosophical tradition rooted in Hinduism, which places rational inquiry and self-investigation at its core. As head of the Vedanta Society of New York, he is renowned for his clear and rigorous presentations of Advaita Vedanta, and for showing how its insights resonate with modern developments in analytic philosophy, neuroscience, and physics. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Swami Sarvapriyananda explores the metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta, the meaning of the great saying “That Thou Art” (Tat Tvam Asi), how Advaita differs from other schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, and why it offers a unique perspective on the problem of suffering.
|
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.
|
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.
Seeing
Videos
|
David Glowacki is a cross-disciplinary researcher and artist who founded the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’ (IRL) in Spain. A 2020 study showed that the Virtual Reality (VR) phenomenology Glowacki constructed induced peak mystical-type experiences similar to near-death and psychedelic experiences. In this conversation, Glowacki explains how his VR work led him to develop fascinating new visual metaphors for non-duality.
|
This essay proposes association as a fundamental principle uniting physics, biology, and mind. Rather than treating causation as either upward (from parts to wholes) or downward (from wholes to parts), Jarosek suggests that coherence emerges through the relational act of association itself. From Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics, where particles acquire properties only in interaction, to Michael Levin’s discoveries of cellular intelligence, to Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics, evidence converges on association as irreducible. It can be seen as the connective tissue of reality: the principle by which potential becomes form, and form becomes meaning.
|
David Lloyd discusses the intriguing correspondences and isomorphisms between physical laws—such as electromagnetism and gravity—and the phenomenal flow of mentation. He sees in them more than mere poetic analogy, but a hint pointing to the mental nature and structure of reality.
Let us build the future of our culture together
Essentia Foundation is a registered non-profit committed to making its content as accessible as possible. Therefore, we depend on non-financial contributions from people like you to continue to do our work.
