ideasthesia

Sign in Subscribe

Ryan Collison

I write about cool science and share it here.

Meditating figure showing anatomical systems as contemplative technology

Embodied Religious Cognition: Why Bodies Matter for Mystical States

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 9 of 10 When you think of mystical experience, you probably think of consciousness. Maybe the brain. Definitely something happening in the mind. The body is just the container—the meat suit that sits while the real action unfolds in awareness. Every contemplative tradition disagrees with

Pharmacological dissolution of Default Mode Network into expanded consciousness configuration

Psychedelics and the Pharmacological Shortcut

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 8 of 10 In 2006, a 36-year-old cancer patient received psilocybin in a carefully controlled study at Johns Hopkins. She’d been given months to live. She was terrified—not of death itself, but of the process, the meaninglessness, the isolation. Six hours after

Recognition of atman-brahman identity with multiple yoga paths converging

The Hindu-Yogic Path: Integration and Recognition

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 7 of 10 Tat tvam asi. You are That. Three words from the Chandogya Upanishad that contain the entire geometric truth of non-dual realization. Not “you will become That if you practice hard enough.” Not “you should strive to be like That.” You are That—

Ecstatic dissolution through longing and divine love

The Sufi Path: Annihilation in the Beloved

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 6 of 10 “I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I. We are two spirits dwelling in one body. If you see me, you see Him; if you see Him, you see us both.” This is Al-Hallaj, the 10th-century

Relational dissolution through love showing surrender and union with divine

The Christian Path: Surrender and Union Through Love

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 5 of 10 “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” When Paul wrote this in Galatians, he was describing a mystical state that every contemplative Christian tradition has recognized: the dissolution of the separate self-will into union with the divine. Not metaphor.

Analytical deconstruction of self-structure through focused attention revealing empty luminous space

The Buddhist Path: Deconstruction of Self Through Analysis and Attention

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 4 of 10 Buddhism doesn’t ask you to believe there’s no self. It asks you to look and see if you can find one. This is the distinctive feature of the Buddhist approach to ego dissolution: it’s analytical. Where Christian mysticism dissolves the

The dissolving self expanding into boundless awareness

Ego Dissolution: The Central Phenomenon Across Traditions

Series: Comparative Mysticism | Part: 3 of 10 Something happens in the depth of mystical experience that mystics struggle to put into words. Not because they’re being deliberately obscure—because language itself is structured around a subject-verb-object grammar that the experience violates. “I disappeared.” But who’s reporting