by : Admin 30 July 2025
Can the unconscious be studied scientifically? Yes, within limits. Below the surface of the human mind lies an uncharted and largely unexplored realm that has yet to be fully understood by empirical frameworks. While the tools of modern neuroscience and psychology continue to evolve, much of the unconscious remains just beyond our reach. For those drawn to this mystery, the next great frontier is not outer space, but inner space.
I know we’re venturing into unconventional territory here, but in the spirit of Jeffrey Mishlove, this is “New Thinking Allowed,” and that’s exactly the point. When it comes to studying the unconscious scientifically, this is no easy task, but several key figures and models stand out. Each offering a unique lens into the hidden depths beneath ordinary awareness, including:
Freud who introduced a model of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious processes rooted in conflict and repression. Additionally, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Otto Rank, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, Lacan, and others made significant contributions to the development of depth psychology.
C.G. Jung expanded Freud’s model by introducing concepts such as the persona, shadow, anima/animus, the personal and collective unconscious, archetypes, and the undifferentiated, psychoid layer of consciousness. Closely tied to synchronicity, where symbol formation begins and the boundaries between body and mind, psyche and matter blur, the psychoid represents a threshold of meaningful connection between inner and outer reality. Jung also viewed the personality as both an evolutionary and socio-historical phenomenon, highlighting how deep symbolic patterns of the psyche emerge out of the cosmic flux and humanity’s biological past is continually shaped by socio-cultural and historical forces.
Stan Grof radically broadened the map of the psyche through psychedelic therapy. His research uncovered sensory-aesthetic, biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal layers of the unconscious, rich with myth, birth trauma, and non-ordinary states. These dimensions challenge the reductionist worldview and suggest consciousness extends beyond the ego and brain.
Neuroscientific models offer insight into altered states, including hypnosis, trance, meditation, dreaming, hypnogogia, fasting, holotropic breathwork, sensory deprivation, psychedelics, and dissociative research, which can reveal neuro-biological correlates in the brain of unconscious processes. Studies highlight down regulation of the brain’s default mode network, a mechanism often linked to ego dissolution and expanded awareness.
Charles Tart’s work on state-specific sciences further explores how altered states enable de-automatization of automatic perceptual filters and cognitive structures of selective attention, and open access to otherwise inaccessible layers of consciousness.
Mapping the DMT hyperspace has involved documenting subjective experiences to identify common patterns in environments, entities, themes, and emotional responses. While this perceived hyperspace is often thought to be a result of complex brain activity and subjective interpretation, researchers are exploring methods to distinguish between purely internal experiences and potentially transpersonal phenomena.
Terence McKenna proposed connections between psychedelics, DNA, quantum microtubules, and the structure of mind and time. The “invisible landscape” portrays his vision of consciousness as embedded in time and novelty with holographic and fractal models of the psyche. Memory may be structured holographically, with each part containing information about the whole.
Trance states have been explored, especially by shamans, in relation to the mind-genetic connection, hinting at the possibility that consciousness may have epi-genetic influences and impact biological systems. Quantum activity within neuronal microtubules could also influence the expression of genetic information and potentially shape cognitive processes and decision-making over time.
Quantum-consciousness theories (e.g., Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s Orch OR model) suggest that microtubules within neurons may support quantum processes and computation, making space for unconscious, non-linear, and even retrocausal influences. In this framework, not only does the past shape the present, but the future may also reach backward to cause the past. Central to this idea is the quantum wave-function and its collapse, a mysterious threshold where potential becomes reality.
The I Ching, an ancient mathematical oracle, offers a symbolic system that reflects archetypal patterns of time and change. Often considered a cosmological compass and psychological map of humanity, it reflects unconscious rhythms and has even inspired modern concepts such as binary code. Terence McKenna described links between the I Ching, the structure of DNA, quantum microtubules, and patterns of information embedded in time revealing a hidden architecture of reality.
Other Oracular Systems, such as astrology, tarot, and runes likewise hint at a symbolic matrix underlying conscious experience. Richard Tarnas and Stan Grof have explored the connection between astrology and perinatal experiences, showing how archetypal patterns may be reflected in both birth trauma and cosmic cycles.
Parapsychological research encompassing psi phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, and remote viewing, have been carried out by figures like J.B. Rhine, the CIA’s Stargate Project, the Monroe Institute, the Psychical Research Society in the U.K., and the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, and the work of Edgar Cayce, adds another layer to the conversation. These investigations, alongside studies of near-death experiences (NDEs), out-of-body experiences (OBEs), and the growing interest in unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), continue to push the boundaries of what consciousness may be capable of.
In the end, exploring the unconscious calls for both rigor and reverence. Science gives us tools to observe, but without wonder, it falls flat. Likewise, spirituality without inquiry risks superstition and losing touch with reality. As Einstein suggested, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” To truly understand the depths of the mind, we need both ways of knowing—working together, not apart.
References:
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Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
Freud, S.(1965). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (J. Strachey, Ed. & Trans.). Hogarth Press. (Original works published 1895–1939)
Gallimore, A. (2023, June 5). Evidence That DMT Opens the Brain to Other Dimensions [Video]. In Danny Jones Clips. YouTube.
Grof, S.(1988). The adventure of self-discovery: Dimensions of consciousness and new perspectives in psychotherapy and inner exploration. State University of New York Press.
Hameroff, S., & Penrose, R. (2014). Consciousness in the universe: A review of the 'Orch OR' theory. Physics of Life Reviews, 11(1), 39–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002
Jung, C. G.(1961). The basic writings of C. G. Jung (V. de Laszlo, Ed.). Modern Library.
McKenna, T., & McKenna, D.(1993). The invisible landscape: Mind, hallucinogens, and the I Ching. HarperOne.
Mishlove, J. (Host). (n.d.). New Thinking Allowed.
Oxford Psychedelic Society. (2023, February 13). Mapping Out the DMT hyperspace.
Rank, O.(1936). The Trauma of Birth. New York: International Universities Press.
Rhine, J. B. (1934). Extrasensory perception. Boston Society for Psychic Research.
Tarnas, R., & Grof, S. (2010). Archetypal astrology and the changing worldview. Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology, 2, 5–22. https://www.archai.org/journal/
Tart, C. T. (Ed.). (1969). Altered states of consciousness: A book of readings. John Wiley & Sons.