u/rp_tiago

hey folks

as we know almost every big trip report includes some version of the same claim: the ego disappears, ordinary filters drop away, and reality is seen more clearly than usual.

on psychedelics, ordinary things can seem unusually vivid and meaningful. a plant, a wall, or your own hand can feel more present than it normally does. but i am not sure that means we are seeing things “raw” or without interpretation.

i just recorded a podcast episode with Danny Forde, a philosopher who wrote a book on the phenomenology of psychedelic experience. he defends this view carefully. his term is “ego free seeing.” the basic idea is that, in ordinary perception, the ego filters experience through personal concerns, memories, plans, and practical uses. on a high enough dose, that filter quiets down. what remains, he argues, is not simply hallucination or projection, but a more direct encounter with the thing itself.

it is an attractive idea, and i partly see the appeal. but this is where i disagree.

i do not think there is such a thing as raw perception, even during a psychedelic experience. perception is already interpretive. meaning is not something added after the fact. it is part of how anything appears to us in the first place.

i think this is undeniable from what we learn from cogsci. attention is not a camera. the brain does not take in the whole scene neutrally and then add meaning later. it is already selecting, filtering, and organising what matters based on expectation, memory, mood, task, and context. always. i dont doubt the extra layer of meaning is reduced, but i'm not sure if we have good enough reason to claim this (somehow?) entire disappears.

this is why people can miss the gorilla in the famous attention experiment. not because the gorilla is invisible, but because their perception is organised around counting passes. what shows up as obvious depends on the question guiding the looking. so psychedelics may not remove interpretation. they may change the question, loosen ordinary practical concerns, and make different features of the world stand out. that can feel like seeing reality directly, but it is still a structured way of seeing.

so when a flower seems intensely real (eg huxley), I am not convinced that the ego has stepped aside and revealed reality as it is. I think something else may be happening. the person may first enter a state of awe, openness, or receptivity, and that state changes how the flower appears.

in other words, the experience may not begin with clearer perception. it may begin with a changed orientation.

if that is right, psychedelics may not show us the world more accurately. they may change our relationship to what we perceive. to me, that is the more interesting question.

so i am curious how this lands for people who have had this kind of experience. when you felt that you were “finally seeing reality,” did it feel like the world became clearer, or like something in you had changed?

Hey everyone.

A while back I posted here on reddit a criticism on Bryan Johnson, which got a little popular. There was also a longer version on Substack, which then was spreading around as well. In both, I had a very common criticism from some people: that I shouldn't be judging Bryan, and that psychedelics can be used in whatever way people want. So this is my reply for anyone that is interested in this rather important conversation, which in my useless opinion, is one of the core cultural features of the psychedelic community and movement.

Several people thought I was being too harsh and too certain that I had understood the proper meaning of psychedelics while Johnson had failed to do so. Others framed the issue more gently, suggesting that he should simply be allowed to have his own journey, especially if he is still early in it. I understand why that response is attractive. There is a real ugliness in the internet’s instinct to turn every public figure into an object of moral autopsy, and I do not want to contribute to that more than necessary.

Still, a public critique of a public worldview is not the same thing as a condemnation of a person. Bryan Johnson is not merely undergoing private spiritual experiments. He is livestreaming high-dose psychedelic sessions to huge audiences, branding them, placing them inside a longevity project, and interpreting them through a technological vision. At that point, the relevant question is no longer only whether these experiences are good for him as an individual. The question becomes what kind of anthropology, what kind of image of the human being, is being normalized through this project.

That can be criticized. It can also be defended, of course. One can argue that Johnson is helping normalize psychedelics, or that his technical language is simply his native symbolic vocabulary. One can argue that I have overread him, that I am projecting, or that my critique betrays its own form of spiritual pride. These are fair objections. What I reject is the stronger claim that such a critique should not be made at all, as if the only spiritually acceptable posture were a vague and frictionless acceptance of whatever anyone happens to do.

That posture seems to me to express one of the central diseases of the modern world. We no longer know how to negotiate borders. We are often trapped between order that hardens into domination and openness that dissolves into meaninglessness. On one side, there is the fantasy that every problem can be solved through control and measurement. On the other side, there is the equally false fantasy that every boundary is oppressive and every form a prison from which the self must be liberated.

Psychedelic culture is especially vulnerable to the second error. Psychedelics are extraordinarily good at loosening rigid structures of perception and identity. They can reveal the contingency of social roles and the constructed nature of ordinary selfhood, exposing the fragile stories through which we organize reality. For people trapped inside dead forms, this can be life-saving. But the fact that some structures need to be broken does not mean that structure itself is the enemy. Once a person has seen through one false form, it becomes tempting to treat all form as false.

This is where the rhetoric of acceptance becomes confused. Acceptance is not a neutral principle floating above all visions of the good. We value acceptance because we already believe something about love, humility, and the dignity of persons. But if acceptance is rooted in a sense of the good, then it cannot coherently refuse to name what undermines that good. A parent who accepts everything a child does is not thereby more loving. A teacher who refuses to correct a student is not thereby more respectful. A culture that cannot name pathology does not become compassionate. It becomes unable to protect the conditions under which compassion itself can survive.

The Christian tradition has always understood this tension. In the icon of Christ Pantocrator, Christ is often depicted holding a book in one hand while the other hand is raised in blessing. The book is commonly interpreted as the Gospel book, but it’s also connected to the Book of Life and, especially when closed or placed in an eschatological context, the Book of Judgment, the measure by which all things are revealed for what they truly are. The blessing signifies mercy, forgiveness, and the healing of the sinner. The image does not resolve the tension by abolishing one side. It presents the ideal as the union of both, not mercy without truth and not truth without mercy, but the perfect reconciliation of judgment and love.

That symbolism matters because the human problem it expresses is not abstract. Every parent, teacher, leader, and friend has to face it. How does one love without becoming permissive, or judge without becoming cruel? How does one uphold a standard without turning into the standard, or correct another person while remembering one’s own need for correction?

The Christian warnings against judgment are severe, and they should remain severe. St. Maximus the Confessor writes:

>“He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins.”

And Seraphim Rose says:

>“Don’t criticize or judge other people... justify their mistakes and weaknesses, and condemn only yourself as the worst sinner...”

Judging others is how the ego escapes judging itself.

Yet the same tradition gives us Christ saying…

>“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.”

The same Christ drives the money changers from the temple. The same tradition that tells us to condemn only ourselves also gives us saints, prophets, martyrs, and teachers who speak against falsehood, corruption, hypocrisy, and spiritual danger.

The line between these two postures is difficult to draw. That difficulty is not an argument against drawing it. It is the reason wisdom is necessary. Modern people often want fixed rules that save them from the nuance wisdom requires. Slogans like ‘never judge,’ ‘always call out,’ ‘accept all paths,’ and ‘refuse harmful narratives’ each carry some truth, and each becomes foolish when absolutized. The real task requires discernment, which means attending to person, context, and consequence.

That is also why I do not think it is hypocritical to write differently about a public phenomenon than I would speak to a person in private. If I met Bryan Johnson face to face, I would not frame the matter in the same way. I would try to be careful and curious, partly out of respect for him and partly because direct personal encounter has a different purpose. But an essay about a public ideology is not the same thing as a private conversation. A philosopher can write a severe critique of another philosopher’s work and still have dinner with him afterwards. A scientist can dismantle a paper without hating the person who wrote it. The harshness belongs to the argument, not necessarily to the personal relation.

My original essay was not written primarily for Bryan Johnson. I doubt he is especially troubled by it. It was written for a broader culture forming around psychedelics, optimization, longevity, technology, and transcendence. My concern is that experiences which seem to point toward surrender, humility, reverence, and the preciousness of existence are being absorbed into a system of control, metrics, branding, and indefinite self-extension. I may be wrong about that. Perhaps Johnson is integrating these experiences in a deeper way than can be seen from the outside, or his language will change over time, or the tension I identified is only a temporary stage in a longer transformation. But none of these possibilities means the question should not be asked.

A similar issue came up during my philosophy of psychedelics talk earlier this year. Someone in the audience pushed back with the familiar claim that religion is just another box, while psychedelics are meant to free us from boxes. I understand the appeal of that framing, especially for those who have encountered religion only as inherited guilt, institutional control, or dead dogma. But the conclusion does not follow. Some boxes are prisons. Others are rightful forms of human experience that help you navigate the world. To reject every form because some forms are dead or pathological is not liberation but a deep inability to inhabit anything at all.

This is the paradox that psychedelic culture often fails to think through. Dissolution is not transformation, and a mystical experience is not a life. Drug-induced ego death is certainly not sanctification, and openness alone is not wisdom. The religious traditions understood this, which is why mystical experiences were always part of the tradition, yet also not necessarily encouraged for their own sake, and rarely left to interpret themselves. They were held inside ritual, communal practice, and moral formation. These forms did not exist because tradition hated freedom. They existed because freedom by itself doesn’t go very far. Without such forms, mystical experiences can become another form of consumption.

A related criticism has also been made against my broader writing and work, especially my tendency to treat psychedelics as sacred. Some people regard this as elitist, or as an attempt to impose a religious frame onto substances that can be used in many different ways. They point out, correctly, that not every culture has treated psychedelics the same way, and that even the word “sacred” brings with it associations that many people are trying to escape entirely. I understand the objection, and it is worth making. But I still reject it. My view is that psychedelics should be treated as sacred because, at their deepest, they disclose the sacred, and they disclose it more fully when approached with reverence, preparation, humility, and form. To “liberate” them from sacredness so they can be used merely for entertainment, productivity, novelty, or self-expression does not strike me as liberation at all. It looks more like another stage in the modern extinction of the sacred, where freedom increasingly means the right to consume without obligation and to experience without any change.

This is why the backlash to critique matters. The issue is not whether everyone agrees with me about Bryan Johnson. The issue is whether we are still capable of saying that some interpretations are wiser than others, that some uses of psychedelics are more adequate than others, and that some public visions of the human being deserve resistance. A culture that cannot make such distinctions will not become loving. It will become vague. It will confuse the avoidance of conflict with compassion, and it will allow anything to pass under the protection of “everyone has their own path.”

To add some variety to the Christian frame, there is a Tibetan Buddhist practice that also fits well here. In some monastic contexts, monks engage in intense ritualized debate, complete with loud claps and sharp logical challenges meant to expose contradiction. To an outsider it can look aggressive, and in a limited sense it is. But the aggression is disciplined by the aim of awakening. The point is not humiliation. The point is liberation from confusion. One goes hard at ignorance because ignorance is not harmless.

That is closer to the spirit in which I want to understand critique. I do not always achieve it. My own ego is surely involved, and part of what bothers me in Johnson is that I recognize something of my own former self in him, only magnified by wealth, audience, and technological ambition. I know what it is like to treat data as sacred, to believe that what cannot be measured is somehow less real, and to imagine that life can be redeemed through optimization.

The question is not whether one must be morally purified before speaking. If that were the standard, there would be nothing but silence. The question is whether the critique serves truth. That is the line I am trying to walk. I do not want a culture of permanent denunciation, but neither do I want a culture where every dangerous confusion is protected by the language of acceptance. I do not want totalitarian order, but I also do not want psychedelic formlessness. The better task is to seek the Ultimate Good and allow that Good to determine where structure is needed, where mercy is needed, and where a line must finally be drawn.

If we are serious about love, we have to be serious about truth. If we are serious about acceptance, we have to ask what acceptance is ordered toward. And if we are serious about psychedelics, we have to take integration, discernment, and form as seriously as we take dissolution. Otherwise, the experience will open everything and transform nothing.