It’s almost at the point of self-parody at this point when we see someone in the middle of a trip who believes the trees are talking to him/her. It’s the number one image that pops in people’s heads when they think of a mindtrip. Someone out of their mind, seeing souls where there aren’t any.
But is there something to it?
This study, unfortunately, is not a dive into the authenticity of consciousness in inanimate objects. However, it does find just how common this phenomenon really is.
An online survey conducted from 1,606 participants was used to find out how often people attributed consciousness to the world around them. The study was focused mainly on these beliefs lasting after the psychedelic trip, whether it be from psilocybin, LSD, or ayahuasca.
Unsurprisingly, the study found that belief in consciousness outside of humans skyrocketed after a psychedelic trip.
Here are some of the data points:
- Consciousness in Inanimate Natural Objects: From 8% to 26%
- Consciousness in Inanimate Human-made Objects: From 3% to 15%
- Consciousness in Plants: From 26% to 61%
- Consciousness in Fungi: From 21% to 56%
- Consciousness in Insects: From 33% to 57%
On average, the participants had their psychedelic experience 8 years before the study was conducted, which shows just how long-lasting some of the effects can be.
Consciousness is an area that we as humans have very little grasp of, partly due to our inherent bias in seeing it from one point of view: our own.
“It’s not clear why, whether that might be an innate drug effect, cultural factors or whether psychedelics might somehow expose innate cognitive biases that attribute features of the mind to the world,” says psychiatrist Sandeep Nayak.
Read the original article at Science Alert.
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