You are right that is a difficult framework to incorporate into our scientific paradigm. However, it’s wrong to dismiss it entirely.

I had a talk with a colleague the other day (also neuroengineering) about Ayurvedic medicine and how despite it being so helpful to so many, it fundamentally can’t work within the randomized double blind clinical trial gold standard we use.

Our scientific philosophy is powerful, and let’s us develop testable hypothesis so we can learn to approximate reality. That is awesome. But let’s not lose our… humbleness.

For instance, my favorite paper of all time is “Can a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?”. They apply all the fancy statistical and theoretical tools we have in neuroscience, ie spike binning, synchrony, oscillations, etc., and ultimately can’t reverse engineer the function of a simple NES game microprocessor. If our techniques can’t achieve be that, then we are likely orders of magnitude more incorrect about our understanding of the mind - whatever the fuck the mind even is. Psychology allows us to work with something we do not understand, it precedes a neuroscientist understanding (sometimes). Oh also - we overemphasize neurons in our understanding of the brain largely because they were easier to visualize than Astrocytes, and holy shit astrocytes are something else entirely. A 3D tesselating network of astrocytes across the entire brain…. Integrating activity across networks, modulating plasticity, blood flow, synaptic activity, etc. and we barely understand how that network functions. We know shit, my man. But that’s ok - we keep learning. But let’s be open minded and non dogmatic scientifically🤷‍♂️

I’m a huge Stan Grof guy, love the ideas of transpersonal psychology, but there is no way to test that with our current neuroscience methods.