You wake up with certainty but that certainty is built, moment by moment, inside your brain. In this episode, I explore how your brain creates reality, how the sense of self is a delicate illusion, and what happens when it cracks: out-of-body experiences, near-death visions, and encounters with impossible beings.
In this episode, you’ll explore how Michael Persinger’s God Helmet experiment revealed that magnetic fields could generate sensations of an invisible presence, and how doctors later triggered out-of-body experiences on command through targeted brain stimulation. You’ll learn what split-brain patients have shown us about divided consciousness, and why DMT and psychedelics, as studied by Rick Strassman, can dissolve the stable sense of self. The episode also examines near-death experiences that include veridical perceptions (accurate details observed while clinically dead) and ends with a provocative idea: that consciousness might be something the brain channels, not merely creates.
Chapters:
What is consciousness?
How does the brain create reality?
What is the God Helmet experiment and what did it reveal about the brain?
How can brain stimulation trigger out-of-body experiences?
What are split-brain experiments and what do they show about the mind?
How does DMT affect consciousness and the sense of self?
What do near-death experiences tell us about life after death?
Does consciousness exist outside the brain?
What is the illusion of self in neuroscience and psychology?
Produced by Oscar Emerson
The Opening is also available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@theopeningproject/