Ayahuasca as Science: Death by Astonishment. Navigating Strange Experiences through an app.

Our normal mind gives us only a tiny fraction of the experiences we could have. In fact, there are probably countless other worlds outside of the "consensus reality".

• Curious about exploring? Browse down to application.

The title "Antipodes of the Mind" is a book by the cognitive scientist Benny Shanon about Ayahuasca. It refers to Aldous Huxley's concept of the "world of Visionary Experience" that exists at the opposite pole from everyday consciousness. Shanon argues that it must be included in any comprehensive theory of cognition.

His rigorous classificatory approach is different from the countless "I attended a ceremony and puked" or "I was ONE" accounts (of which I have also published one, years ago...) He goes about it with the instruments of a cognitive scientist, informed by his scientific tools AND hundreds of experiences, made by others and by himself. So, he has the outside and the inside view which makes this book quite appealing to me.

Meditation and psychedelics as sources of expanded states of consciousness

Spiritual people may have meditative experiences of "bliss, clarity and non-conceptual awareness" (as they are called in the classical texts), or even very psychedelic-like visual phenomena. In this context, the strict old meditation teachers in Tibet (like Wangchuk Dorje) would warn to not get lost in such experiences, as nice as they might be. But - so far at least - only psychedelics open up a vast additional realm of otherworldly mental and sensory experiences and visions. Andrew Gallimore calls them "Reality Switch Technologies" . He compares them to switches giving access to other reality channels, like turning an old radio knob to tune in to different audio worlds.

The DMT in Ayahuasca opens up one of these worlds, over the 6-8 hours of a ceremony - and yes it may be "death by astonishment" - a new book title by Gallimore. Not a physical death. But - if like me one had never experienced it - the death of the belief that things are as they seem to be.

Thanks to Claude 4, here is a high level interactive overview of the book.

This mini app is based on Benny Shanon´s "The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience". I went through a large number of his collection of experiences, over 4 years.

The app