Integrated Wisdom

Beyond The Veil Special Series: Ep 2- "The Brain as a Filter—Or a Gateway?"

• Tatiana Da Silva • Episode 63

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In this fascinating second instalment of our "Beyond the Veil" series, we explore the revolutionary idea that your brain might not be creating consciousness but rather filtering it. Discover how the "Reducing Valve Hypothesis" proposed by William James and Aldous Huxley is finding support in modern neuroscience, especially through research using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) that shows inhibiting certain brain regions may enhance psychic abilities.


Key Topics

  • The origins of the "Reducing Valve Hypothesis" in psychology and philosophy
  • How neuroplasticity and altered states challenge traditional brain models
  • Groundbreaking rTMS research showing enhanced psi abilities when inhibiting specific brain regions
  • The science behind why meditation, flow states, and hypnosis may access expanded consciousness


Notable Mentions

  • William James' pioneering theories on consciousness filtration
  • Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" and consciousness theories
  • 2024 Cortex study using rTMS to enhance psi phenomena
  • Connections to "The Telepathy Tapes" podcast findings on nonverbal autistics
  • Hypnosis research demonstrating suggestion's effect on sensory perception


Coming Next

Join us next time as we explore how epigenetics and environmental influences shape our ability to access spiritual states. Is consciousness inherited or cultivated?

Series Context

This episode builds on our previous discussion exploring genetic links to mediumistic abilities. We recommend listening to Episode 1 in the series- 'Is Spiritual Perception in our DNA?' first for full context.

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Intro and Outro music: Inspiring Morning by Playsound


Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Tatiana:

Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share something special with you. If you've been listening to our conversations about integrating screw trial into therapy, you might be wondering where to start with your own clients. To help you with that, I've created a free guide called 20 Client Conversation Starters, X Exploring Spirituality Ethically. Now, these aren't just any random questions. They're carefully crafted prompts designed to open up meaningful dialogue while respecting ethical boundaries and diverse beliefs. With each question, you will be given a context for when and how to raise it with a client to provide you with that extra guidance. You can download this guide right now by heading to the link in the show notes. Let me know how you go with using this conversation. Starters, I'd love to hear from you. Now, today's episode. Welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. I'm your host, Tatiana DaSilva. Join me as we discuss what it means to live an integrated life and explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater meaning, peace and connection by integrating the wisdom of spirituality, psychology. Neuroscience, epigenetics and energy psychology. I hope to empower you to create deeper and more loving connections with yourself and others, whilst also paving the way for humanity at large to be reimagined and inspired to become the very best version of it. Hello and welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. Today we're going to have episode two of our special series, Beyond the Veil: the Science or Spiritual Perception. I'm so excited that you'll be joining me again today, and if you joined us last time, you know that we explored the idea that spiritual perception might be in our DNA. With some groundbreaking research that's come out of Brazil suggesting genetic links to mediumistic abilities. But if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend going back and, listening through that first to give a context to today's discussion. But today we're going a little bit deeper. What if your brain isn't creating consciousness but rather filtering it? Now this idea that the brain might be more of a reducing valve than a generator has actually been proposed by some of the most brilliant minds in psychology and philosophy, including psychologist William James and philosopher Aldous Huxley, and now modern neuroscience is beginning to catch up and give some credence to some of these thoughts that started originating back in the 1800's. So in this episode, we're going to explore the origins of the Reducing Valve Hypothesis, how neuroplasticity and altered states of consciousness challenge our traditional models of the brain. And finally, how recent research is using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation or RTMS. It has been showing that inhibiting certain brain regions may actually enhance psychic or PSI abilities. So let's take a step through that veil again and look at the brain, not just as a machine, but as a possible gateway to expanded consciousness, starting with reduced valve hypothesis. So back in the late 1800's, American psychologist William James, who is widely considered the father of modern American psychology, proposed that the brain may restrict the full range of consciousness acting kind of like a filter. And then later in 1954, writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley took this idea even further in his book, the Doors of Perception, he suggested that the brain functions. Much like a reducing valve, narrowing the vast potential of consciousness to what's needed for survival on a daily basis. In fact, Huxley wrote to make biological survival possible, the mind at large or higher consciousness has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. In other words, our everyday perception might represent only a sliver of what reality actually is. And when we think about the fact that there are human beings out there having these PSI experiences or spiritual experiences that. Most of us don't, don't have, it starts to raise those question marks, doesn't it? Like, why is it that some people can, can sense spirit or hear, um, these sorts of experiences or, you know, view things that are happening kilometers, hundreds of kilometers away, through remote viewing abilities. It suggests that there is so much more to consciousness than what we know. Hypnosis research has also been speaking about this, you know, the way that through suggestion, our mind can guide our body to respond in ways that contradict what we know about the way the brain controls our body in the signals that it receives from our body. So it's exciting to see that there's this idea that starts to. Provide some kind of explanation for why that is so, in other words, there the reality is very vast, very complex, but it's all kind of funneled through our brain so that we only ever access a fraction of what's actually really out there And advances in neuroscience and particularly the discovery of neuroplasticity that brains' remarkable ability to rewire itself in response to experience have been showing this to be the case as well. Practices like meditation, psychedelic journeys and even some intense emotional, spiritual experiences have been shown to literally change how the brain operates. And as I said, with hypnosis research, and this has been fascinating. When I was, when I was trained as a clinical hypnotherapist, I was blown away by some of the studies that had been conducted that showed the way that hypnotic suggestion interfered with the brain's ability to receive or rather interpret signals that were coming in through the senses. One study that that really stood out to me. And blew my mind was a study that was done out in Scandinavia. I can't remember if it was Finland or Sweden. Um, but I remember that the study looked at the, it had participants going into a functional MRI and they mapped out where in the brain. lit up to, in response to images that were coming in from a, a colored photo compared to a black and white photo. And when they then put the participants under hypnosis and gave them the, the suggestion that they were going to be shown a black and white photo, even though they were actually shown of colored photo, their brain responded as though it was seeing a. Black and white photo. So in other words, the signals that were coming in through the optic nerves, through the visual, um, cortex were being confounded by the suggestion. Um, that contradicted what was actually being fed into the brain. And so, you know, these, these sorts of studies or experiences kind of show us that there is something else going on, right? Like that. It's not as simple as our senses and our brain and the material experience we have in this world, that there are other forces at play here that interact and influence what we perceive and experience at any given moment. So, for example, with advanced meditators, they show altered activities in brain regions that are linked to self-awareness, time perception, and even sensory integration. Some psychedelic studies using functional MRI machines have found that under substances like psilocybin or DMT, for example, the brain connectivity actually increases, which suggests a loosening of this filter and a temporary expansion of that valve. You know? But we don't have to take substances to have experiences like this or even be avid meditators whenever we. Engage and become immersed in activities that we really, really love. Whether it's reading, whether it's dancing, listening to music, painting, you know, whatever it is that allows you to become completely absorbed. We can lose sense of time, can't we? Like all of these structures that give order to our life can kind of melt away and blend into each other. So these are the sorts of experiences that we're talking about here. But perhaps what's most in intriguing is a new line of research involving a technique called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation or RTMS. In a 2024 study that was published in Cortex, researchers used RTMS to inhibit activity in a part of the brain called the left media middle front. Got Gyrus. It's a mouthful. A region that's associated with executive functioning and cognitive control, and the results were astounding. What participants showed was a significant increase in performance on tasks that were designed to measure PSI phenomena. So in other words, non-ordinary information perceptions. And Yes, you heard that right? Inhibiting parts of the frontal lobe seems to enhance people's ability to access information that shouldn't have been available through normal means. And again, the implications here are very intriguing, right? Because I know from experience that maybe you've experienced this yourself, that when I'm really worried or when I'm trying to problem solve something, I'm really fixated on, you know, things that are, are going on in my life or. Things that I'm trying to juggle. So a lot of that frontal. Lobe activation, right? Or when we're trying to plan and organize and problem solve, it can be so much harder for me to connect with myself with, connect with my guides, and so you can see how that interference, right? Like whenever we, we actually have a really. Active frontal lobe, it diminishes our ability to connect with these extra sensory perceptions. And the opposite is true. So when we, when that part is inhibited, when we're relaxed, when we're kind of like just going with the flow and surrendering a little bit more, right? Relinquishing control of things a little bit more, these experiences or that information is so much more accessible to us. And now we're starting to see science demonstrate that in more tangible ways and demonstrating what's actually going on in the brain that explains these experiences. And I guess this adds further weight, right to the idea that our brain might be actually limiting rather than enabling our full conscious potential. Imagine what we would be able to perceive and experience if that wasn't happening. In some cases it might be too much, but we can talk about that in a different, in a different episode. So what does this all mean for how we understand human consciousness? Now, if that brain is really a filter, then altered states spiritual practices and even certain neurological conditions might help us tune into aspects of reality that are always there just outside our normal bandwidth. And some of you may have come across this incredible podcast that's really, um, it's kind of everywhere at the moment, the telepathy tapes and a lot of the things that they're talking about there in terms of telepathic abilities of nonverbal autistics, and even now. There the study to expand their discussion, to include individuals that are experiencing dementia or Alzheimer's and that are also demonstrating these, these telepathic abilities and different ways where their consciousness is operating. It's, it's all kind of pointing to the same thing, right? That there is something else going on outside our normal conscious awareness and so many answers can be found. Outside, you know what, what we're normally experiencing, right? This is what that podcast has had many of us asking ourselves, and these studies are starting to get us to ask ourselves, you know, what are we actually missing? What else are we missing? What else is out there? You know, all of these studies are just scratching the surface still. There's so much more for us to uncover and to understand. We still don't have the full picture. You know what might actually lie beyond this veil of awareness on a day-to-day basis, I. I would love to hear your thoughts on what I've been talking about in today's episode, or even in episode one. I would love to hear maybe some of your own experiences, that may be intriguing or, a little bit out of the norm. You know, have you experienced moments of sudden clarity or deep intuition, or a knowing that's. Seems to come from beyond your rational mind. Do you meditate or engage in any practices that might help you tap into different levels of consciousness? Have you had some of these experiences that we're talking about? Like, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a dm, send me a message or an email. Let me know and if you're open to it, I'd love to feature some of your experiences in our future Q and A episode, send me some questions as well. You can DM me, you can email me at hello@integratedwisdom.com au. That's hello@integratedwisdom.com au. Or you can also find me on Instagram and send me a DM there. My handle is at Integrated underscore Wisdom, If today's discussion or these topics are starting to spark some curiosity in you, please subscribe. Share it with a friend that you think will be interested in these discussions as well, and please leave a review. The more interaction we get with this podcast, the more the algorithm knows to push it out there and show it to other people who might benefit from these discussions. I'll be so grateful if we can expand this, knowledge, and start transforming people's understanding of what it means to be human. In our next episode, we're going to explore how epigenetics and environmental influences might shape our ability to access spiritual states. And the question we're going to try to answer is consciousness something that we inherit or it's something that we cultivate? So I hope you'll join me then. Until then, stay curious, stay open, and we'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Integrated Wisdom. It's my sincere wish that today's episode may have intrigued and inspired you to reclaim your power and step into becoming more fully integrated spiritual beings. New episodes are published every second Wednesday, and I hope you'll continue to join us as we dive deeper into what it means to live an integrated life. So if it feels aligned to you, I invite you to hit subscribe. Share it with others who you feel may benefit too. Meals will find me on Instagram at integrated underscore wisdom. Remember, each moment is an opportunity to embrace your divine potential and create a world that is more frequently inspired. So for now, stay connected, stay inspired, and keep shining your light into the world.