Jon Brooks speaks with psychologist Steve Taylor about consciousness, spiritual experience and the limits of explanation. Taylor presents his view that consciousness is fundamental, while Jon asks what that would mean and how it could be investigated. The interview also covers meditation, contact with nature and reports of change after emotional turmoil.
Archive note: the feed dates this episode to 29 February 2024, but the conversation introduces Spiritual Science as a new book. The book appeared in 2018; the original recording date is unconfirmed. Taylor's affiliation is Leeds Beckett University, not the University of Leeds named in the current show notes.
Start with what the experience was
Steve leads a short exercise in noticing thoughts, the act of observing them and awareness of the room. I had meditated before, but approaching the exercise as an investigation of consciousness gave me a different question to sit with.
What did I notice, and what am I adding to explain it?
That distinction matters throughout the conversation. A feeling of connection can be powerful. Describing it carefully is one job. Deciding what it proves about the universe is another. The experience alone does not settle that second question.
An explanation still needs evidence
Taylor calls his position panspiritism. He proposes that consciousness is fundamental and that the brain receives or channels it. He extends this account to empathy and telepathy. Those are his arguments, recorded here so they can be examined. This page does not present telepathy or the brain-as-receiver model as established findings.
An unanswered question about consciousness is not, on its own, evidence for a particular alternative. Taylor's account needs to be judged by the evidence for it, including what would distinguish it from competing explanations. His university profile confirms his work and publications; it is not independent proof of the claims.
The Stoic connection is the discipline of examining an impression before accepting it as true. You can remain interested in what someone describes while withholding agreement with their explanation. This interview is a discussion of Taylor's modern ideas, not an account of ancient Stoic physics.
Turmoil is not an instruction
We also discuss Taylor's reports of changes in perspective after bereavement, illness and other distress. He distinguishes temporary experiences from what he describes as lasting changes. These are retrospective reports. They do not show that suffering reliably improves people, or that deliberately seeking distress would help.
Nothing in the conversation is a reason to manufacture trauma, stop treatment or use psychedelics. The historical transcript contains stronger claims about awakening and psychological change than this companion endorses. Those claims need to remain distinguishable from advice to the reader.
For a related discussion of perspective, see Trust the Cosmic Perspective. For the practical limits of directing your own response, read the dichotomy of control.
Sources: Steve Taylor, Spiritual Science and The Leap, discussed in the interview. His Leeds Beckett University profile documents his academic affiliation and work; the university's 2018 book announcement records the book's publication period and his claims. The separate Stoic point about examining impressions is grounded in Epictetus's Discourses. The opening endorsement is from Tolle's foreword to The Leap. Taylor and Krisztina Egeto-Szabo's study of awakening experiences documents reported experiences; it does not test telepathy or establish his model of consciousness.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for readability.
Editorial note: this is an archived interview. Taylor's claims about telepathy, a universal consciousness and the brain as a receiver are his theoretical position, not established findings presented by this page. Accounts of awakening after distress are retrospective reports, not a reason to seek trauma or replace treatment. Historical plant-medicine references are retained as spoken discussion, not recommendations. A brief interjection with uncertain attribution is labelled “Speaker”.
Jon: Eckhart Tolle described Taylor's book, The Leap, as containing, quote, a great deal of precious wisdom expressed in the straightforward, clear, and down-to-earth language that Steve Taylor is so good at. Taylor's primary interest is in the field of transpersonal psychology, where he explores the science of higher states of consciousness, wakefulness, and the claims many of us are familiar with in popular spirituality. In my talk with Steve, we discussed topics such as the materialistic worldview, its limitations, the best way to think about enlightenment, how we can define consciousness, the three ways we can achieve awakening experiences, the unlikely yet powerful benefits of extreme emotional turmoil, the uses and dangers of psychedelics, telepathy, and tons more.
Jon: I really loved my conversation with Steve. He is a very calm, grounded presence, but is also able to clearly put forth very important, profound ideas on how we can live a more enriched, meaningful, significant, awake existence. Enjoy. So you've just released the book Spiritual Science, Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World. So I'd like to just start there and just ask you what was the motivation behind writing this book?
Steve: Well, I've always had a kind of a strong spiritual side to my nature. And I've read a lot of books about spirituality, and I've always experienced what you could call spiritual states of being. But at the same time, you know, I've always had a keen interest in science, particularly physics and biology. I've always had a sense of the sort of the miraculousness of the world and how science can kind of uncover that and you know try to harness the sort of wonders of creation. And what but at the same time I was always very suspicious of the attempts that many scientists make to be dismissive towards psychic phenomena, towards spiritual experiences.
Steve: I've always I was always very suspicious of the idea that consciousness is just produced by the brain. I always felt that a lot of scientists are trying to reduce the world to a very simplistic materialistic form. And I always felt that somehow some scientists almost subscribe to a belief system. You know, in in some respects, they're not so different to religious people. They seem to have a s a set of assumptions and tenets which they subscribe to, and that forms a certain picture of the world. And I always felt that they're very, you know, that they try to kind of sweep away any evidence which contradicts that view of the world.
Steve: So I guess that's what I was trying to do in my book, is trying to sort of expose the belief system of traditional science and also sort of bring a spiritual element to science, which I think can actually help to explain a lot of strange phenomena which traditional science finds it difficult to ex difficult to explain.
Jon: So you said you had a like a spiritual element to your nature. like where did that come from? Is that just, would you say, just who you are, or was there some incident that triggered that?
Steve: No, there was no incident that triggered it. It seemed to be something which was inside me. it was something that I became aware of as a teenager. maybe it was there as a child, but I don't remember. You know, I just remember as a child just feeling kind of exuberant and happy all the time. And just feeling you know, a sense of a kind of childlike, well, obviously a childlike sense of wonder about the world. But when I was a teenager, I started to have spiritual experiences, although I didn't call them that at the time, I didn't understand them at the time.
Steve: But I started to experience moments of euphoria and connection and harmony, a feeling, a feeling that the world was sort of the world around me would suddenly become much more real. And there would be a sense of meaning, a sense of harmony in the world around me. I'm talking about sort of natural surroundings, like trees and fields and the sky. Everything would seem alive, and there was a sense of meaning somehow, which is very difficult to explain. And I'd feel very uplifted, and but at the time I didn't understand the experiences, which caused some problems because I felt that you know maybe there was something wrong with me because nobody else I knew seemed to talk about these experiences.
Steve: And so it took me maybe five or six years to make sense of the experiences, and then you know, that sense of confusion began to alleviate.
Jon: What does spirituality mean to you? What's how would you define it?
Steve: That's a tricky one, but you know, spirituality is one of those words, a bit like consciousness, you know, it kind of means something different to different people. A lot of religious people think they have a kind of a monopoly on the word spirituality, and they talk about spirituality and religion as if there's the same thing. But I would say that spirituality relates to inner transformation, it relates to an impulse to transcend your normal state of being, to move towards a more expansive awareness of reality and a sense of connection, whether that's a sense of connection to nature, to other human beings, or to the world in general.
Steve: But spirituality is definitely about inner transformation, and I guess one of the main features of it is a transcendence of separation and a transcendence of discord. So there's a movement towards connection and unity and a movement towards harmony and meaning. Right.
Jon: so in your book, you address some of the kind of problems with materialism. could you just give us a bit of an outline on what those main problems are, some of the issues with materialism, and what kind of what we can what spirituality can show us like in a different what other perspectives spirituality can inform us about?
Steve: One of the one of the biggest problems of materialism is the view of reality that it presents, and you know, the view of reality which it assumes is the truth about the world. And that view of reality is fundamentally nihilistic and meaningless. It assumes that living beings, including human beings, are basically biological machines. It assumes that consciousness is produced by the brain, so that when the brain ceases to function, you know, our our consciousness will also cease to function. And so obviously there is no life, no form of life after death. And it assumes that life is fundamentally purposeless.
Steve: You know, the only real purpose in life is to survive and reproduce our genes, to replicate our genes. So I think that has created a kind of climate of meaninglessness, a climate of nihilism. A lot of people are not consciously aware of it, but it's kind of like the background in which we live our lives. It's kind of in the atmosphere around us, this sense of meaninglessness. And that sense of meaninglessness has led to the consumerism, you know, the mad consumption of material goods. So you could say, in a sense, that philosophical materialism has led to you know, materialism as a as a behaviour.
Steve: And it's led to, you know, a frenzied desire to gain as much success and power as possible, and also a desire for distraction as well, you know, because obviously if life is meaningless, we want to be distracted from it. So you know, I think a lot of people just further lives with distractions, so endless hours of watching the TV and surfing the internet and so on. So that's one of the bad effects of materialism, but also you know, our attitude, our attitude to nature. materialism promotes a kind of a mechanistic view of the natural world, and it promotes the idea that natural resources or natural things are really just a supply of resources and they're for us to use and abuse and exploit as as we desire.
Steve: So obviously, I think you know that's one of the root causes of our environmental problems and the degradation of the environment. But I think you know it's going on moving on from those two problems. Maybe the biggest or the most obvious problem with materialism is that it doesn't actually explain the world very well. That's the main sort of the main theme of my book, Spiritual Science, is that there are there are many riddles and puzzles about the world and about human behaviour and human experience, which materialism just can't explain. consciousness is one example, the influence of the mind over the body is another example, altruism, and you know, there are many, many more examples.
Steve: Then you move on to anomalous experiences like near-death experiences and science phenomena. All of these things just don't make sense or can't be explained in terms of materialism. So, what materialists do generally is they explain away these phenomena. They, you know, they just say they're the result of fraud or they can be explained in terms of you know aberrational brain activity. But what I think spiritual science can do is it can actually explain a lot of these phenomena. If you establish spirit or a fundamental consciousness as the kind of founding or the essential reality of the universe, then a lot of these phenomena become explainable.
Jon: So how can they become more explainable? Like what's the process? So if they're like if they're difficult to explain through materialistic, more materialist measurements, are you suggesting then like a phenomenological view of these phenomena would be the way to explain them?
Steve: Partly, but I'm also suggesting that you know, if you take the view that the essential reality of the universe is a fundamental consciousness, or a spirit, you could say. And this fundamental consciousness it pervades everything around us, it pervades every living being and every natural object, it pervades the smallest particles of matter. And actually, the material universe emerges from this fundamental consciousness, maybe even pre-exists the universe. Then, for example, consciousness. So consciousness is almost impossible to explain in, well, it is impossible to explain in materialist to materialistic terms. And you know, for three decades now at least, scientists and philosophers have been trying to investigate the association between the brain and consciousness, often under the assumption that the brain produces consciousness.
Steve: But they, you know, they've made almost no progress, and there's many sort of varied and conflicting theories about what parts of the brain or what aspects of neurological functioning could produce or be associated with consciousness, but it doesn't really work, partly because of the you know, the idea of the hard problem, the idea that there is such a gulf between the matter of the brain and the richness of conscious experience. it's impossible to reduce the richness of a conscious experience to brain functioning. But if you take the view that there is a fundamental consciousness or spirit which gives rise to the universe and which is you know all-pervading, then the brain doesn't have to produce consciousness.
Steve: The brain, all the brain has to do is act as a receiver or a transmitter of consciousness. Because consciousness is everywhere around us, it's it fills the space around us. And the function of the brain, I think, is to pick up this all-pervading consciousness so that it becomes canalised into our individual being, and so that we become individually conscious.
Jon: In your book, you say that you teach 18-year-olds about consciousness, and you have to do this, you have to define what consciousness is. is that correct? And how would how do you define it?
Steve: that's correct, yeah. I do teach a module on consciousness studies at my university to university's 18-year-olds. And I take them through a little exercise just to illustrate what consciousness is. I ask them to close our eyes. And we could do this now if you like, you know, it takes a couple of minutes.
Jon: Yeah, I'd love to do that.
Steve: Okay, so let's just close our eyes for a moment. And just relax for a few moments.
Steve: Just be aware of your breathing for a moment. Just feel the air brushing your nose as you breathe in and out. And bring your attention into your mental space and just be aware of any thoughts that rise up or that flow into your mind and just let them arise whatever their content is Let them take form and allow them to pass away Whether it's thoughts about the future or about the past or random associations about people or fragments of conversation Just allow them to arise and just observe them Think of think of yourself as sitting on a river bank watching the river flow by So the river is like your thoughts the stream of associations flowing through your mind But you're sitting on the riverbank detached from your thoughts, just allowing them to flow by and watching them So just turn your attention away from your thoughts now and be aware of that place inside you from which you're observing your thoughts You could call it the witness or the observer the point inside you where you observe your thoughts just root your identity in that place for a few moments And now just bring your attention outside your mind and outside your body Just to any sounds that you can hear inside this room Also any smells that you can pick up around you And also a sense of feeling and touch be aware of the clothes against your body the chair you're sitting on again be aware that there's a place inside you from which with which you are aware of these feelings and smells and sounds So there's really three aspects of consciousness which we're observing here or experiencing probably probably a better way to put it to put it.
Steve: First of all, there's the stream of sensations and associations in our minds, our thoughts. You could call that our subjective experience. There's also an observing self where our sense of identity is rooted and from which we are aware of our subjective experience. So that's the second aspect. And the third aspect is simply our awareness of our surroundings that we which comes through our senses. So awareness works through our senses, and that is obviously an aspect of consciousness too. So oh yeah, so remember to open your eyes if you haven't already, because the exercise is now over.
Steve: But yeah, so the consciousness, I think, to in a very broad definition, it includes those three aspects: the inner subjective experience, which is usually thoughts and associations, then there's a the sense of a witnessing self and observing self, which you could say is self-consciousness, and then there's just awareness which works through our senses. So I think those are the main aspects of consciousness.
Jon: That exercise of sort of exploring one's own consciousness. I've never actually, even though I'm a meditator, I've never really sort of meditated from with that intention, just to purely see what my consciousness is, to experience just my consciousness. Like I've I have kind of done it, but not in the way that you just led me through that. So that was really quite insightful, actually. And it's a really good way to kind of like define consciousness by having someone experience it firsthand as opposed to just like hear some ideas about it.
Steve: Yeah, because you can't really treat consciousness as a thing, you know, because you are consciousness. you can't really get outside it and treat it as a an object because you're well, you're always in it. So the best way to understand it is to you know immerse yourself in it and experience it.
Jon: One of the so one of the like I think in your book you present a series of puzzles, like some of, as you say, like the materialist view has some gaps, some unexplained things. with sort of typical religion, it seems to be that the more that we learn about science, the less prevalent religion is getting. Do you think that the same will happen with spirituality? So the like in like 50 years, 100 years, spirituality will decline, or do you see it increasing?
Steve: I see it increasing. I think it has been increasing over the past 20 or 30 years. you know, as traditional religion has been declining. I think you know, the group of the demographic of demographic of spiritual but not religious is one of the you know the fastest growing demographics in society. And I mean I do think there is a cultural and even even an evolutionary shift underway. That's one of the you know the main themes of my books that I suggest there's evidence that we're undergoing the human race as a whole is undergoing a shift in consciousness, a shift in its state of being.
Steve: So I think that one of the signs of that shift is that there is a growing awareness of spirituality. more and more people are exploring spiritual practices and paths, but even to the extent that I think that people are having spiritual experiences more frequently. You know, there's actually evidence for this from surveys in the US that show that over the last 40 years, more and more people are reporting mystical or spiritual experiences of oneness and wonder. and it one of the things I've done in my research. I've spent a lot of time investigating cases of spiritual transformation which occur in the midst of extreme psychological turmoil.
Steve: So that's people who are diagnosed with cancer, people who have a bereavement, or who recover from addiction and maybe severe depression or stress. So I found that it's not uncommon for people in those circumstances to undergo a shift into a radically different state of being. Even to the extent where they feel that they're not the same person, they are a different person living inside the same body. And, you know, the more, the more I look into this phenomenon, the more cases I find. I think it's more common than most people realise. And a lot of the people who undergo this shift, they don't know anything about spirituality.
Steve: They come from completely secular backgrounds. So they don't understand what's happened to them. It can be quite confusing sometimes. And or they don't talk about it because they, you know, they think that other people won't understand them. So I think those experiences are becoming more common. So I mean, to me, it's almost as if there is a latent higher self or a kind of a different state of being, a higher state of being, which is kind of latent in the human race as a whole, and it's slowly emerging. You know, it's like just peaking above the water. and I think you know, the growing frequency of spiritual experiences and the ease with which with which people can shift into a higher state of being in the midst of psychological turmoil, I think these are signs of this shift.
Jon: The idea that you mention awakening experiences stemming from emotional turmoil, I've read a few of your articles on this. I think this idea is very interesting. You also say in your book that you've collected accounts of people who've had awakening experiences, and I think you say around a quarter of these people had a lot of turmoil, which led to their awakening experience. What do you think the sort of psychological mechanism is there for people to experience trauma or turmoil than to kind of have an awakening experience? What is going on there?
Steve: Well, yeah, you're right. There's a distinction between awakening experiences, which are temporary spiritual experiences, you could call them. And there is also permanent awakening where people shift permanently into a new state of being. But in both those cases, psychologist psychological turmoil seems to be the you know the main trigger of both types of experiences. And in awakening experiences, which are temporary, I think what's happening when they are caused by psychological turmoil, what's happening is that the normal self or the normal structures of consciousness seem to be being dislodged. I think when people are in extreme stress or extreme turmoil, they sometimes undergo a kind of collapse of the normal self-system or the normal structures of consciousness.
Steve: It's a bit like a building that collapses in an earthquake. You know, that the pressure is so great that the whole structure just gives way. And that can often happen in intense stress or intense psychological turmoil. And often that equates to a breakdown, to a form of psychosis. But in some people, it and the breakdown of the normal selves gives them a glimpse of something transcendent. It's almost as if in some way the structures of the normal self hide reality from us, or they reduce our awareness of reality and they create a sense of separation.
Steve: But when those structures fade away, suddenly we're in this heightened reality. it's a bit like just to continue with the building metaphor and earthquake, it's a bit like you're stuck inside a building looking through the windows, and the windows are kind of you know, they're kind of a bit dirty and maybe shaded. So what you see of reality through those windows is a kind of degraded, reduced picture of the world. So when the building collapses and you're actually out in the space looking at the whole landscape, and reality is heightened, and suddenly the world looks much more real and beautiful.
Steve: And you no longer have a sense of separation. If you're stuck inside the building, you have a sense of separation, but the sense of separation fades away, and suddenly you're part of the landscape, part of your surroundings. So I think you know that's what happens in temporary experiences. And I think something similar happens in permanent awakening too, when that's caused by psychological turmoil. I think normally what happens is that when somebody has a temporary awakening experience, the normal structures of consciousness they reform themselves. and so after a while the person feels that they're back to the same reality, the same old reality, back to being the same old person.
Steve: And there can sometimes be a sense of frustration and loss because of that, because you're kind of shut as shut up inside the building again. But when it happens permanently, what happened what seems to happen is that the old structures of consciousness just don't reform. The power the kind of the shift is so powerful that the structures just dissolve away completely. And so a person never returns to their old state of being or to the old to their old vision of the world.
Jon: So I think if one is going through s some turmoil and they hear that, I think that it would give them some hope possibly because if you're pra practising spirituality and you're going through a tough time, I think one of the things spirituality has helped me with personally is that I tend to see like some of life's the curveball life throws me as as kind of spiritual tests or challenges that I can use to grow from. but what other forms of awakening experiences can people get if they obviously are not going through emotional turmoil? Are there any things people can do to increase the likelihood of having these kinds of breakthroughs?
Steve: Yeah. In my research, I found that there are three major triggers of awakening experiences, temporary experiences. So besides psychological turmoil, which is a major, most major trigger, the most frequent trigger, the two other triggers are contact with nature and spiritual practice, which is usually meditation or perhaps prayer, or it could be also reading spiritual literature or listening to spiritual videos. So yeah, it's obviously not advisor advisable to create psychological turmoil in your life. I wouldn't recommend that. I mean, it happens anyway, it's gonna everyone's gonna experience psychological turmoil from at some point or other in their lives.
Steve: But you can obviously have contact with nature, you can obviously practice meditation. So if you want to increase the likelihood of awakening an awakening experience, on a psychological level, it's about quieting the mind, reducing your exposure to external stimuli. So it means sort of having quietness around you, being inactive. And also cultivating a quiet mind too. They experiences in nature, or it can be also creativity or playing music, or even listening to music, or listening to or watching an arts performance or a dance performance. They can also, these situations can also give rise to awakening experiences.
Steve: So I think the key there is just to cultivating a quiet mind. Any situation where our thoughts slow down, our minds become quiet, we become still inside, and there's a kind of an intensification of our inner energy. That's the basic condition which gives rise to awakening experiences. So, yeah, you can easily create those conditions. You can easily cultivate quietness inside you and stillness. but on a permanent basis, you know, if you want to cultivate a permanent ongoing state of wakefulness, which is possible, and every spiritual tradition, you know, recommends guidelines for this. All spiritual traditions have their set of principles and guidelines which will lead people to a permanent higher state of consciousness.
Steve: And you know, it usually always involves meditation. That's kind of like the prerequisite for cultivating a permanent spiritual state. Because meditation, one of the things it does is to cultivate a permanent state of inner quietness, or at least a permanent state of decentring or being disidentified with your thoughts. It cultivates space inside you and a deeper awareness of the expanses of your of your own being. And besides that, service as well, you know, all spiritual traditions recommend service and altruism as a way of cultivating a permanently spiritual state. so yeah, it's important to make sure that service is a big part of your life.
Steve: And I would also recommend you know, cultivating quietness, living a simple, quiet life with, you know, without too many material possessions, and quietness and simplicity have a naturally spiritual effect too. So yeah, things things like that really.
Jon: That's really great. That's really useful. W when you talk about this permanent awakened state, are you referring to enlightenment there? just like because we get asked a lot on the website, like what is enlightenment? And we've found that there seems to be many different versions of that word, many different like you can have for example, like you could say some people could argue that Socrates or like a top Western philosopher has their own kind of enlightenment, or like the Stoics had their own kind of enlightenment, and then there's the Buddha where he had the perfected mind, and then obviously people like Eckhart Tolle, who are present to the moment, on this sort of permanent level.
Jon: So, what is what is enlightenment to you?
Steve: Well, I think that you know, there in different spiritual traditions there is always some concept of an awakened state, you know, a state of expanded awareness where in which one overcomes illusions and attains a more true picture of reality. And I think, you know, in every tradition there are slightly different conceptions of this state, but I think essentially they're referring to you know the same underlying principle, the same underlying state. They're just like people who are you know viewing a landscape in slightly different ways. So I you know sometimes I don't really like the word enlightenment because it suggests something final, it suggests like an end point.
Steve: I don't think there is an endpoint. I think there is you could think in terms of a landscape of expansive experience and which different traditions or different individuals view in different ways. You know, they're maybe just sitting or standing on different parts of the landscape, so they obviously interpret it in slightly different ways. But I think of a, you know, if you want to speak in terms of enlightenment, I prefer the term wakefulness actually, because it suggests something less final. And in any case, the term enlightenment is a mistranslation of the term which is used in Buddhism, which is bodhi, and is the meaning is actually closer to wakefulness.
Steve: But if I want to, if you if you know, in terms of a short definition, definition, I would say that wakefulness is an expansion and an intensification of awareness and it awareness I think in terms of four different types of awareness so there is perceptual awareness, so that so that in wakefulness the individual's perception becomes more intense, the world becomes more real and more beautiful, as if filters have fallen away. And there is also subjective awareness. So that means that the individual's awareness of their own being becomes more intense and more expansive, they become aware of depths of consciousness inside them, and they become aware that the essence of their being, there is a kind of pure consciousness which is the essence of all things, so they experience a basic oneness, essential oneness.
Steve: But there's also intersubjective awareness, which means that there is a more intense awareness of the being of other human beings and other living beings and of the whole universe. There's a sense in which we connect to other people's beings more intensely, we feel the identity and the experience of other beings more intensely, which is why every spiritual tradition talks about increased compassion and altruism, because that naturally arises as we become more spiritually developed. And finally, there is a what you could call conceptual awareness. And so in wakefulness, people become more intensely conceptually aware, they have a wider frame of reference, a wider sense of perspective, and they're not so self-centred. they have a very sort of a global universal morality, and they don't have a sense of group identity, so they transcend any sense of national identity, ethnic identity, religious, political identity, and so on. they have a very all-embracing, all-encompassing sense of identity with the whole human race or with the whole universe.
Steve: So yeah, so essentially I think enlightenment or wakefulness is an expansion and an intensification of awareness in in different directions. And that means also that there's no final point. You know, obviously there are different gradations of that, different degrees. People can be slightly awake, they have a slightly more intense and more expansive awareness, or they can be very intensely awake where their awareness is much more expansive and much more intense.
Jon: So I absolutely love that definition, like using wakefulness instead of enlightenment and seeing it as a sort of a landscape and a gradation of a gradation of how wakeful you are. and I think intuitively I've always kind of agreed with what you say about the problem of seeing enlightenment as this final state. because it's like the I think one of the beauties of the spiritual path is this the there's no there's no end to it. It's like it's a it's you meditation is your life's work, or the spiritual path is your life's work, it's not just something that you've just like achieved.
Jon: I've finished it now, I can relax, I've t attained my wakefulness. It's something that's needs to be practised. have you personally had experiences of intense wakefulness?
Steve: Yeah, yeah. I think of I wrote about this in my book, The Leap, my previous book, The Leap, which was a study of spiritual awakening from a psychological point of view. And I say in that book that I think you know there are different degrees of wakefulness, and I wouldn't say that my normal state is an intense wakefulness. I think I have a certain degree of wakefulness which is kind of natural to me. but there was there are there have been certain points or certain experiences where my wakefulness has become more intense, you know, when I've had intenser awakening experiences.
Steve: Definitely.
Jon: Do you have you looked at all into the role of psychedelics on wakefulness? Because that's one of the things we sometimes write about. Like there are things like ayahuasca and psilocybin that are being used now to help people achieve mystical experiences and overcome death anxiety and addictions, etc.
Steve: Yeah, yeah. No, I've you know, when I was younger, I'd had a few experiments myself with magic mushrooms and LSD. yeah, so I've looked into it. And but funny enough, in my in my research into awakening experiences, psychedelics didn't come up as a major trigger. I think, you know, there were where awakening experiences are much more common in other situations. But I think they I think psychedelics can be useful in providing people a glimpse. You know, we were thinking in terms before of this metaphor of the building, you know, which collapses in intense psychological turmoil.
Steve: So I think in in psychedelics, they can just give you a glimpse of a wider reality outside that building, and they can dissolve away your sense of separateness and give you a glimpse of this much more intense reality. Because they can have the effect of dissolving away the normal structures of consciousness, just like that building collapsing again. so they can be useful that in that sense, but I think the problem can be that well, I think it's two issues really. Psychedelics can be extremely powerful, and if a person doesn't have a stable sense of self, if they have kind of underlying trauma which hasn't been resolved and so forth, they can be quite dangerous, they can cause psychological problems, you know, they can especially if they're taken frequently and regularly.
Steve: Because obviously we need to function in the world, we need a stable sense of self, we need certain psychological structures in order to function in the world, in order to concentrate and organise our lives and so forth, to distinguish reality from our own thoughts and associations. So I think well, you know, if a person takes psych psychedelics very regularly, the normal structures of consciousness can dissolve away, creating psychosis sometimes. So I think you know, you know, psychedelics can be really useful in a way, providing a glimpse of a wider reality. But I don't think we can rely on them as a kind of a spiritual path or a spiritual practice.
Steve: I think we have to, you know, look to more organic organic forms of spiritual practice like meditation and yoga.
Jon: I think that yeah, I that resonates with me because I did psilocybin once properly in a in a structured responsible way with with sitters and I found that the I experienced you know the typical like visual distortions, but the thing that really hit home for me was when the psilocybin was wearing off, I had this wakefulness, this in increased awareness, just looking at the ceiling, I felt very, very present. And then that inspired me to stay motivated on my daily meditation practice after the experience. So it just gave me a little glimpse, it but it didn't, you know, permanently increase my wakefulness, but it definitely inspired me to continue with other forms of spiritual practices.
Steve: Yeah, I think that's a really useful way. that's yeah, a you a really useful effect of psychedelics. And I've met quite a few people who have taken ayahuasca just once or twice, and it's just been enough to make them aware that they don't know everything and the world is more complex than they understood, and that there is there are wider realities out there. And yeah, I think the problem with psychedelics is it shows us that the there are wider realities out there, that it is possible to experience a much more intense, expansive form of consciousness.
Steve: But they don't actually give us the way to reach that place permanently. And if you try to reach that place permanently through taking regular psychedelics, you're more likely to cause yourself permanent psychological damage. You can't actually get there permanently through psychedelics. but you can get there in other ways, you know, through meditation or through living a life of quietness and service and contact with nature and so forth.
Jon: Do you like obviously you're a lecturer and you're an author? Do you find time also to Practice spiritual practices. like how do you incorporate what you write about into your own life? I'm just curious.
Steve: Yeah, well, I meditate, not every day, but you know, maybe three or four times a week I meditate. I like to practice yoga asanas sometimes, tai chi. But one of the things I really like to do is to have contact with nature. So I love to go running on the local fields or on the park. And for me, that's a kind of spiritual experience just to go running and just to feel that I'm part of my surroundings and to just watch the trees and the sky and the clouds as I'm as I'm running. I also love swimming in the sea.
Steve: That's also a kind of spiritual experience for me. I always feel a sense of a sense of oneness when I'm in the sea. Suddenly you become part of this body of water which fills over two-thirds of the surface of this planet. And I don't know, there's something so sort of primeval about water, it's like being in water, it just feels so natural and so right. It feels like coming back home again in some way.
Jon: One of the things I've gotten from talking to you today is that I definitely want to start spending more time in nature. because I had this conception that in order for me to increase my wakefulness, I had to be more strict with myself and meditate more, you know, like one hour is not enough, gotta meditate more, gotta be more strict, gotta read more Buddhist books. But right, like I kind of see the trap of that, but I just sort of had that feeling that I needed to do that. But spending more time in nature, looking at mountains, according to your research, can create awakening experiences. so yeah, I'm really excited to do that.
Steve: Yeah, in my last study, it was about of 91 awakening experiences, and around a quarter of them were seemingly generated by contact with nature. You know, they occurred in natural surroundings and they were associated with the beauty and stillness of nature. So, yeah, I think it is it is really important to spend time in nature. I think there's a tendency in some spiritual traditions, in also in some forms of Buddhism, to denigrate the natural, the natural world and the material world. Almost as if we're trying to transcend it. And in a similar way, some spiritual traditions tend to denigrate the body as well.
Editor's note: the published study analysed 90 reports, rather than the 91 recalled here. Its table records 23 nature-related reports. This was a self-selected sample of experiences, not an estimate of how often the general population awakens.
Steve: Almost as if the spirit is trying to transcend the body, and the spirit and the body are two different things. So, yeah, it's important not to fall into that kind of dualistic attitude, I think. You've got to see the natural world as as a spiritual, you know, it's full of spirit, it's sacred, and it's alive, and it's you know, it's a manifestation of spirit. And the same about the body, too. The body is a manifestation of spirit, it's not the opposite of spirit, it's just a different manifestation of spirit.
Jon: One of the things, just to go back to your book, since we're talking about the spirit, is you talk about in spiritual science this notion of spirit force. I love this idea. Could you explain to our listeners what that is?
Steve: It's the idea that the fundamental reality of the universe is an all-pervading spirit force which fills the air around us, the space in which we live. And it pervades every single object as well, you know, every chair, every table, everything, every tree, every cloud. It's all pervaded with spirit. And our own being is pervaded with this spirit force too. It's the essence of our being. And this idea is really the oldest idea in the history of the human race because when I was when I was researching the fall, which you mentioned earlier, I did a kind of wide-ranging survey of indigenous cultures throughout the world, both the indigenous cultures which are still intact and ones which were, you know, existed in the 19th and 18th centuries or earlier.
Steve: And I found that every indigenous culture had a concept of spirit force, just in the way I've described it. They had a concept to describe an all-pervading spiritual force which was in the air around them, which was in all natural things, and which was in their own being, and which was also seen as the source of the world. It was kind of the essential source from which the world had arisen. And you know, the most famous examples are the Native Americans who use terms like the great mystery or the great spirit. Other cultures use terms like universal soul or soul force and so on.
Steve: And in spirit in our sort of spiritual traditions, in Taoism, we have the concept of the Tao, in Hinduism, we have the concept of Brahman. In Jewish Kabbalah, there is the concept of Ein Sof. And these concepts also refer to an all-pervading spiritual force, which is the source of things and which and which is also manifest inside human beings. So this is this is really the foundation of you know my view of the world, and I mean what I argue in spiritual science is that if you make this the foundation of science, if you accept that this spiritual force is there, is real, then a lot of things begin to make much more sense, such as consciousness or altruism and telepathy and other phenomena.
Jon: W when you say the word telepathy, do you like do you mean like actual mind reading based on like subtle intuitions that we pick up on other people? Or do you think that it might be possible that we can actually transfer thoughts like in some other plane of consciousness?
Steve: I think I think we can pick up on other people's thoughts and respond to them without being consciously aware of them. I think we can pick up on other people's intentions and respond to them. and I don't think it's just intuition. I think you know it is actually possible for us to enter each other's mental space and to be aware of each other's feelings and thoughts. I think this happens in empathy. You know, empathy is a very important aspect of human behaviour and human experience because it suggests that well, I mean some people some people would say that empathy is just kind of a kind of mind reading or taking the perspective, putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
Steve: But I think it's much more than that. I think there is a kind of deep empathy, which is when we sense other people's feelings, we experience what other people are actually experiencing, and that becomes the basis of altruism. The basis of true altruism is empathy. You know, we pick up on other people's feelings, and if they are feeling pain or if they are suffering in some way, then we respond to that. We feel an impulse to respond to that and try to alleviate their suffering. That's the basis of altruism, and that's possible because we share the same consciousness.
Steve: You know, consciousness is not separate. We share, we partake in the same shared consciousness. So even though we seem to be separate beings and physically we appear to be separate, we can actually enter each other's mind space because fundamentally consciousness is shared and it's kind of it transcends space and transcends time. So I think telepathy can sometimes work in that way too. And but I mean, but it's important to be aware that there's a lot of convincing empirical evidence for telepathy too. You know, experiments on telepathy have been carried out for decades now and with very rigorous controls.
Steve: And so if you look at the evidence, and if you also take a kind of a pan-spiritist view, as I call it, which suggests that consciousness is all pervading and is shared, then I don't see any reason why we shouldn't believe in the reality of telepathy.
Jon: You mentioned that empathy is you can have a deep state of empathy. There seems to be, I've noticed, a sort of a battle with certain books, like there's a book called Against Empathy, suggesting that compassion is different from empathy, and that we should strive to be more compassionate and not be so empathic because if we feel the suffering of other people too strongly, we can be pulled down into their sort of psychological turmoil. how do you see that distinction?
Steve: Yeah, that is a it is a possibility, you know. if you are very empathic, and that really means that you have kind of quite soft boundaries, your ego has quite soft boundaries, quite labile, and therefore you're open to things which normal other people may be protected from. so if you have a very kind of labile ego and you can sense other people's suffering very easily, then it can be disorientating. It can be overwhelming, you know, because obviously there is a lot of pain and suffering in the world. so there's no doubt about that, there is there is a kind of slight danger of that.
Steve: But I think you could compare it to psychedelics in a way. You know, psychedelics can be dangerous because they open you up massively to overwhelming, potentially overwhelming material. You know, they open you up so fully and so widely widely that there is this danger of being overwhelmed by this mass, by being bombarded with perceptions and phenomena and stimuli. So I think it's important to have a stable sense of self, to have strong structures of consciousness. And if you have that, if you have a kind of a stable, oriented and strong sense of self, then you're less likely to be overwhelmed.
Steve: I think without that, then there is a danger of being overwhelmed, just like there is in psychedelics.
Jon: Right. Would you say that compassion though is different from empathy, and that compassion or striving to be more compassionate is sort of the solution to the problem if you do have soft boundaries?
Steve: Well, I think empathy you could think of empathy as a kind of a kind of bridge that flows between people. a bridge that connects people. and you know, compassion is what flows through the channel, if you like. so empathy is the channel itself, and compassion flows through the channel, and altruism can arise from compassion. so I think there is a distinction between empathy and compassion. And I guess the danger is when the channel is open, the danger is that so much kind of tumultuous, powerful experience can flow through that you know it doesn't actually manifest itself in altruistic behaviour, it just makes you feel kind of depressed and overwhelmed.
Steve: And therefore, yeah, what is the point of that? You just make yourself suffering, you're just suffering in the way that other people are suffering, and there's no positive outcome of that. So I think you know, you can you could say that compassion is not that kind of tumultuous, overwhelming flow of suffering that you can pick up, it's a more kind of measured and contained flow that does result in altruism. So I think that's true in the sense that you know there's really no point to empathy unless it results in altruism. And I guess compassion does result in altruism.
Speaker: Right.
Jon: You said when we first started talking that you read a lot of books on spirituality. what are your favourite books on spirituality and who are your favourite authors and influences that have sort of shaped your view on spirituality?
Steve: Well, my kind of original favourite book, the book a book that was really important for me that I read when I was about 20 years old, and it allowed me to make sense of my own experiences, it was a book called Mysticism by F. C. Happold. And it was subtitled A Study and an Anthology. So largely it was just a collection of mystical experiences, some of them from spiritual texts like the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita. And it was also, there were also some selections from what you could call secular mystics like Walt Whitman or Richard Jefferies, people who were not affiliated with any spiritual tradition but were still having mystical experiences.
Steve: So I really resonated with those people because I wasn't from any spiritual tradition, but I was having similar experiences. So that book was really important to me because it allowed me to make sense of my experiences. And it led me to the Upanishads, which is my favourite spiritual text. There's a selection of Upanishads in Penguin, translated by Juan Mascaró. And it just had such a powerful effect on me when I was in my early 20s because I was just overwhelmed by this spiritual vision of the universe, everything being infused with spirits and the universe being illuminated with harmony and meaning.
Steve: And also from the fact that the human soul was united with spirit as well. Our Atman was one, is one with Brahman. So I found I found those books really powerful. But more recently, I like Eckhart Tolle. I like his books, The Power of Now and Stillness Speaks. And I like them because they're you know they're free of concepts, they're free of any belief system, they're detached from any particular spiritual tradition. In a way, they're very secular and quite kind of psychological. So I find their kind of simplicity and their freedom from concepts very powerful.
Jon: I saw in your list of books that you've have you helped compile some spiritual teachings from from someone?
Steve: Oh, that's true, yeah. that started in about 20 years ago. I started to visit a spiritual teacher based here in Manchester, where I live in England, a guy called Russel Williams. And at that time he was already in his mid-70s, and he'd been teaching for 30, 40 years by that time. But on a very I wouldn't say secretive, but on a very kind of anonymous level. You know, the meetings weren't, you know, they were only attended by a small handful of people, and he wasn't well known at all. He didn't promote himself or or write anything.
Steve: So I can't I've I continued going to the meetings until Russell died. He died in April this year at the age of 96. And he had a really remarkable life. In a way, he was a good example of a spiritual awakening that occurs following intense psychological turmoil because he was he was an orphan from the age of 11. He started work at the age of 11 and had no education after that. but most importantly, he was caught up in the Second World War. He was at Dunkirk and in the Blitz. he was in London during the Blitz.
Steve: So at the end of the war, he was completely broken down and completely traumatised and you know, just sort of kind of emotional and psychological wreck. And that led to a spiritual awakening a few years later. But anyway, about five years ago, I said to Russell, you know, have you ever thought about writing a book? And he said, No, no, I'm not really a writer, and I don't think the my meetings or my teachings can really be captured in words because they're based on a kind of feeling, they're based on experience. And I said, Okay, then if you ever think about writing, if you ever want to write a book, I'll help you do it.
Steve: So just a year or two later, he said that he was happy to start writing a book to put together a book. So I helped him write his book. We recorded his life story, we recorded a lot of the meetings, and I edited them into a book, which is called Not I, Not Other Than I. The Life and Teachings of Russel Williams. It came out in 2016, I think.
Jon: I had that yeah, that book's on my list because the reviews for that book are really, really good. And I just I've never heard of him before, but I want to read it even more now.
Steve: Yeah, yeah, he was great. He was such an amazing guy, such an incredible example of an enlightened man, you know, very extremely humble, very, very pure teachings, and had such an amazingly powerful presence.
Jon: So you obviously then you've actually been in his company. Was there could you kind of sense his wakefulness just from being around him?
Steve: Definitely, yeah. I mean, a lot of people used to go to the meetings not really to listen to him, but just to be in his presence, because it was such a powerful experience to be in his presence. and I found it myself, you know, I'd go to the meetings, and after about 10 minutes of sort of settling down, I'd begin to experience powerful, unusual states of consciousness, and the whole room would just become illuminated, and I'd feel as though the duality between inside and outside faded away. I was no longer a person inside my own mental space. so he had quite a remarkable presence, which was I think everybody felt it who used to go to his meetings.
Jon: Wow, that's pretty inspiring. That sounds great. where can so where can people find out more about you? like read your articles and get your books and any other sort of places people can learn more about you?
Steve: The best place is my website, which is stevenmtaylor.com, Steven with a V, stevenmtaylor.com. I'm also on Facebook as Steve Taylor author on on Twitter as well. And I do talks, I go to London quite frequently for talks and different parts of the UK. I also obviously teach at my university, which is Leeds Beckett University, and I have kind of ongoing research projects into spiritual awakening. And I've just completed a research project on bereavement and how bereavement can give rise to spiritual transformation. And I'm gonna I'm just in the process of starting another, which is based on spiritual experiences that occur in a in a military context, like soldiers who experience high states of consciousness on the battlefield, or soldiers who eventually you know experience a kind of shift due to all the trauma they've been through.
Steve: So that sounds that's gonna be interesting.
Jon: I haven't encountered anyone like you. I think there's like I'm really glad that you're doing the work that you're doing, like bringing more sort of combining the world of spirituality and psychology in a way that's it seems like it's really good on both ends. Like you are a scientist and you take the psychology very seriously and you do research, but you're also very open to the sort of spiritual ways, and you don't you seem like all inclusive and Jordan Peterson has kind of come onto the scene recently. He's sort of doing something similar, but with religion, like the combining the Bible with sort of psychological, profound insights. so yeah, I'm really glad that you're doing the work you're doing, and I think that there's a people can get a lot of value from it.
Jon: So thank you.
Steve: Oh, thanks. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's never I know I've always thought that you can't really understand psychology without bringing spirituality into it. You can't really understand human beings without, you know, investigating spiritual experiences because they're so natural. They're such a you know a normal aspect of being human. So I guess you know, a lot of normal psychologists do subscribe to the kind of materialistic view that we were talking about earlier, and they would see sometimes people say to me, you know, these experiences you're writing about, they're really just the result of aberrational brain activity.
Steve: You know, why are you wasting your time talking about them? They're just the result of high levels of dopamine and so on, and or endorphins and whatever. But yeah, I've obviously never subscribed to that view.
Jon: so yeah, I just want to say thank you for talking to us. I would love to talk to you again at some point in the future. Great, yeah.
Steve: Thank you. Thanks, Jon.
Jon: I'm gonna make sure to list all of the links that you referenced in the episode for the podcast as well. So people will be able to find you. Okay, great. Thanks, thanks, Jon.
Go deeper
If you want structured practice, the 7-Day Stoic Challenge is free. Nine audio lessons and a 42-page workbook.