Is Reality Mental?
Bernardo Kastrup and the Future of Consciousness
As part of my ongoing inquiry into the invisible architecture of mind, matter, myth, and meaning, I’m excited to share the first episode from last year’s video course, The Future of Consciousness, now available to watch for free on YouTube. Also, for Memorial Day, we are offering a 30% off sale on seminars and products at Liminal News, including The Future of Consciousness seminar and the upcoming Breaking the AI Barrier course (July). The sale runs until Tuesday.
This opening lecture features philosopher and former CERN scientist Bernardo Kastrup, a central figure in the modern revival of metaphysical idealism—the idea that consciousness is the ground of being, not an emergent property of brains or machines.
Watch the full lecture & dialogue here:
In this session, Kastrup lays out the case for analytic idealism, drawing from neuroscience, quantum physics, and a deep philosophical tradition. He introduces a new way to see the world—not as a universe of dead matter governed by randomness, but as a meaningful expression of mind.
In our extended dialogue after the lecture, we explore the implications of this worldview for death, healing, reincarnation, telepathy, synchronicity, and the symbolic nature of reality itself.
Why It Matters
The mechanistic materialist worldview has lost its imaginative and explanatory power. It cannot account for subjective experience, and it offers little in the way of meaning, purpose, or coherence. Its cultural expression—technocracy, surveillance, ecological devastation—has begun to collapse, taking the liberal / secular establishment down with it. We need to graduate from the “myth of materialism” to a new understanding of reality that foregrounds our subjective experience and meshes with the new discoveries of quantum physics, such as the revelation that the universe is “not locally real.”
Kastrup offers a different starting point: Consciousness is not produced by the brain, but filtered through it. The “physical world” is a kind of symbolic dashboard we perceive from within a vast, mysterious field of awareness.
This view is not wishful thinking. It’s philosophically rigorous and increasingly supported by fields as diverse as quantum mechanics, psychedelics, near-death research, and parapsychology.
The Future of Consciousness seminar is part of an ongoing attempt to reframe our metaphysics in a time of civilizational unraveling—and to invite others into the same inquiry.
Why YouTube?
In the months ahead, I’ll continue releasing full-length lectures, dialogues, and curated clips from my courses and podcast. If you find value in this material, please subscribe to the channel.
Subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@MrDanielPinchbeck
It’s a small gesture that helps this work reach new people—and helps us shift the cultural conversation about consciousness, spirit, and the future.
If you get a chance to watch the Kastrup lecture, let me know what you think. What resonates for you? Also, what would you love to learn more about, in the newsletter and in future seminars. I still hope you will join us for Breaking the AI Barrier, if you haven’t yet. I think it is one of the most important topics of this time: We all need to prepare ourselves and understand the level of transformation coming at us in the next few years. The seminar will help us accomplish that.
With gratitude,
Daniel
Well I have to say that this is quite a synchronicity such that I’m compelled to post it here, now mostly as a footnote to preceding comments. I've been reading one of Barbara Hand Clow's books tying together quantum physics and ancient sacred science. Fascinating. In any event, in the context of this discussion about Kastrup I came across this statement: “Modern science is making us sick by often using only a portion of its own data. We can see that sacred geometry, the substratum of all things in nature, ought to be taken more seriously than successful experiments in particle accelerators.” (As a quick reminder, Kastrup worked at CERN. Enough said.)
I’m sorry to be once again contrarian to your thought processes Daniel, but I want to address two statements right out of the gate: “He introduces a new way to see the world.” And then: “ Kastrup offers a different starting point: Consciousness is not produced by the brain, but filtered through it.”
This is not groundbreaking stuff at all. This is the fundamental awareness of millions of spiritual practitioners who are involved in the awakening process. It’s not even the elephant in the room. It is the room. And it’s also the core insight of many ancient and contemporary spiritual traditions too numerous to name.
That said, I acknowledge that it’s possible that this intellectualization of widely accepted spiritual realities might become a useful thought experiment for certain groups such as the scientific community involved in neuroscientific research. It might serve as a way to chip away at the foundations of Western materialism for various communities of interest. But such an intellectualization also has the potential to add another layer of remoteness to actually experiencing these deep spiritual realities. The mind interposes and becomes an obstacle to growth.
Most importantly, I’m reacting this way because your statement seem to to diminish the important hard-won, and incredible work of so many contemporary spiritual teachers who are fostering the need for awakening at this most crucial time in human spiritual evolution as we all navigate through the existential intensity of world polycrisis.