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Tuning the Brain Radio



From Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head, page 36:

I now think of the brain (as distinct from the mind) as a kind of radio. With “normative” levels of serotonin, the brain is tuned to the “consensual reality” - something like the local pop or talk radio station. By substituting psilocybin, ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine, or some other psychedelic compound for serotonin and other neurotransmitters, you change the station and suddenly you begin to pick up the sensorial equivalent of avant-garde jazz, Tibetan chants, or another channel resonating with new and astonishing information. Yet your mind, the perceiving core of the self, remains more or less unaffected. In that sense, psychedelics, unlike alcohol or heroin, are not even intoxicating.

I think that’s a really interesting distinction to make…







8 Reader Responses

  1. Fell Says:
    August 25th, 2005 at 12:05 pm

    It’s essentially a statement on where the brainwaves are entrained therein, to what EEG.

  2. prunesquallori Says:
    August 25th, 2005 at 12:09 pm

    What he describes sounds like the separation of the observing consciousness from the everyday consciousness. The everyday consciousness can be disrupted or retuned or something but the observing consciousness is still and imperturbable.

  3. Nathan Says:
    August 25th, 2005 at 12:42 pm

    Or, maybe brain is like a magnet, pulling consciousness in and binding it tightly, so tightly that mundane consensual reality is (mostly) all that can get through the various filters. Maybe the psychedelics act like de-magnitizers, loosening or severing the connections so the conscious field can range more widely, opening up possibilities for perception in the imaginal vistas that are normally inaccessible when we are too tightly wrapped in the desperate, clinging embrace of brain.

  4. Rob Says:
    August 25th, 2005 at 1:07 pm

    I think Huxley wrote similar ideas… the brain as receiver or filter of consciousness as opposed to being the generator of consciousness… I think he used the analogy of a radio receiver and that through psychomemetic drugs you could change the station.

    It’s also similar to an article I read about the Dalai Llama and neurology… He was being shown brain activity and having it explained to him how specific biological activity generated certain thoughts, emotions, etc. He asked, basically, how do you know it’s the biological activity generating the emotion, and not the emotion [something/somewhere else/outside] causing the biological activity… There was no real answer, as that’s basically the result of a presupposition that everything originates in the brain, as opposed to the idea of the brain as a filter or receiver.

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 25th, 2005 at 1:10 pm

    Yeah, Huxley got it from C.D. Broad - I have the quotes here.

    I guess the thing that I found fascinating about this quote was not so much the idea of the radio. But this idea that one part of your brain goes batty, while the other part stays untouched, and is still fully operational. That to me is really interesting.

  6. alistair Says:
    August 25th, 2005 at 1:20 pm

    the emotion causes the biology. i thought that would be obvious to any critical observer.(unless you are scientist, of course.) the question then becomes what drives the emotions? the answer to that is conditioning. we become adept at reacting to images, sensations and sounds in specific ways then having emotional responses. there are those who are shut down sufficiently enough that they only recognise the emotions and believe they are the point of conscious origin in thier mind. my personal belief is that the victorian culture had a lot to do with a repressive view of reality, out of which came modern science, medicine, physics, religion, etc. i see it as the role of the modern mystic, shaman or spiritual philoshopher to point out to people what goes on in thier reality before the emotional trigger point. pushing back conscious awareness further gives people spiritual mastery.

  7. Rob Says:
    August 26th, 2005 at 1:12 am

    But this idea that one part of your brain goes batty, while the other part stays untouched, and is still fully operational. That to me is really interesting.

    Yet your mind, the perceiving core of the self, remains more or less unaffected

    I don’t know… I mean, it does sound interesting, but how does one even make that determination? I mean he’s hypothesizing ‘mind’ as something different than his other perceptual impressions, and and seemingly above them as well. I mean, if the world is warping around you, what is this ‘perceiving core of self’? Is it nothing more than your rational mind trying to assert it remains in control?

    It could be looked at from the perspective of the bicameral mind/corpus callosum issues though…

    But it engenders the question, is the ‘perceiving core of self’ actually that which is changing frequencies or the part that remains the same? However you answer would seem to be just an expression of your presupposition.

  8. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 26th, 2005 at 1:24 am

    I mean he’s hypothesizing ‘mind’ as something different than his other perceptual impressions,

    I don’t think he’s hypothesizing so much as he is describing his experience.

    However you answer would seem to be just an expression of your presupposition.

    That’s the case with all communication. But it doesn’t mean we should stop trying to communicate.



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