My Journey — Soulphilosophy
Me, summer 2025.
About Integrating Different Types of Knowledge and Uniting Theory with Practice
Hello there beautiful Soul!
I wanted to offer you a little impression of myself, the person behind these articles.
(This article is from beginning of 2025. My other articles are here (Medium) and here (Website).)
I’m a philosophy student just about to finish his Master’s in Berlin, Germany.
Over the last five years, since I was about halfway done with my Bachelor, I got sucked more and more into many fascinating topics that did not fit into the usual curriculum.
For some time, I had an insatiable hunger for knowledge and insight from all domains. I kept researching, reading, and writing on different topics, spanning from Jungian Analytical Psychology to Transpersonal Psychology, from Cognitive Science to Spirituality, from Mysticism to Psychedelic Therapy, and from Mythology to Metaphysics.
I loved the works of Joseph Campbell, C.G. Jung, Stan Grof, Erich Fromm, and Ken Wilber among many others, and enjoyed the writings of the great wisdom traditions of East and West.
What I was doing felt so intimately connected to what I considered to be the essence of philosophy and at the same time, yet it seemed entirely separate from the philosophy I was studying.
Effectively none of it (except for cognitive science and metaphysics which are well-established fields) played any role in the academic world, neither in philosophy, cognitive science, or psychology, where I also visited courses.
In my (personal and scholarly) opinion these topics are more closely related to the mystery of life and existence and inevitable in understanding the human experience, the mind and consciousness, as well as our place in the cosmos, than anything else.
So, I noticed that there are many things that you simply can’t discuss in the academic context. It’s not forbidden at all, people just won’t take you seriously, or they will avoid the discussion since they themselves are not versed in these topics. It doesn’t matter how well-researched, empirically sound, or relevant it may be, some things are just off the table.
After all, everyone is too scared of losing the respect of their peers for engaging in anything too much “out there”. But in that way, we are also avoiding some of the most meaningful and relevant conversations.
Let’s go on an adventure! Photo by the author.
About the Mystery of Life and Finding Answers
Today, there seems to be a rise in curiosity, a search for meaning, purpose, and the infinite mystery life truly is.
I would argue there was no better time to be alive to find answers and inspiration to any question one might have…
Today we have access to almost all knowledge ever made available to humankind, the wisdom and techniques of all spiritual traditions, the findings of modern science and psychology, the writings of countless philosophers, and the insights of poets and writers through the ages.
And most of it can be accessed for free on the internet, or at mostly reasonable rates through books and courses.
So, there really is no excuse for ignorance. But our time and energy are limited and the sheer amount of possible topics, traditions, and theories may be overwhelming.
This is why I want to offer you the gems, the most interesting theories, the key insights, and ideas I have come up with or encountered on my journey. I want to present you with the best books, podcasts, and papers, tell you about the most fascinating theories and phenomena, and introduce you to the most interesting researchers and projects out there.
This is why I’m here, to share inspiration, insight, and knowledge with the hope of finding resonance and community.
A topic that currently deeply fascinates me, are altered states and related practices in antiquity, for example, incubation or the many mystery religions of antiquity like Eleusis, or the rites of Isis and Osiris. I’m also writing my thesis in a similar domain exploring how the theme of self-transformation in his middle dialogues connects Plato to the Mysteries.
Another longstanding and somehow related interest of mine has been consciousness research and psychedelic therapy. Recently, I also found myself returning to Joseph Campbell and Jung at the moment to better understand the role of story and myth in our modern society.
A woodcut I received as a present.
More Than Theory
After having had my experiences with breathwork, psychedelics, and meditation, while exploring spiritual traditions and psychological writings, I had to admit that in many domains theory without practice isn’t worth much.
Philosophy is not about a way of life or wisdom anymore, neither is it engaged in the mystery of existence, hence it has greatly lost importance.
While in antiquity the greatest and smartest people (take the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Plato, or Aristotle, who trained Alexander the Great) were engaged in philosophy, today the first question to the student of philosophy often is, what jobs you may be able to find when you finish.
For the ancients, philosophy was a way of life. Philosophy was about wisdom and wisdom meant self-knowledge, knowledge about who we really are in the scheme of the greater cosmos. Dialog was not a means of simply learning, but of getting closer to the truth and transforming the individual in the process.
Rational argument was a means to end, instead of being the end in itself and Plato for example does not get tired of repeating this again and again in his dialogues.
Along the way, I began my spiritual practice implementing Yoga, Meditation, Plant Medicine, and eventually Breathwork. By now, Breathwork has probably become the most potent ingredient in the mix and to share this gift I’m facilitating workshops myself.
Adding to the theory part, I want to share about my own experiences, trying to integrate current peer-reviewed science and the spiritual and experiential dimension of the human experience with my story and the lessons learned.
This is why, Yoga, breathwork, plant medicine/ psychedelics, and meditation which I found deeply meaningful and transformative and which had a great influence on me, will be featured here as well.
The logo I created for my Breathwork courses.
Science, Matter, and the Mind
I feel more and more people are not satisfied with the physicalist-materialist framework that is often painted of how the world, how nature and how the human psyche function.
The current paradigm is:
Only matter matters. What you can’t measure, ain’t real.
This worldview is inherently insufficient to explain or even deal with certain phenomena like the arts, creativity, emotions, the psychedelic experience, mystical states, phenomenal experience (qualia), or the infinite complexity and wonder of the world.
None of these can be reduced to a physical substrate without losing what they actually are, therefore any reductive explanation will inevitably miss the point.
We see complementary forces arising in depth and transpersonal psychology, in the psychedelic renaissance, with a new wave of spirituality, with a new interest in shamanic practices, plant medicine, and somatic therapy and with an increasing number of people practicing meditation, or simply rediscovering their own authentic expression through art or movement.
But our current modern and Western meaning matrix is not ready to accommodate some of these spiritual and transpersonal experiences, or their theoretical implications yet. But science is slowly opening up to understanding more about experiences as well as why they are so potent and beneficial for many.
At the same time, (natural) science also has its limitations as it is inherently limited to observing the outside world. It functions through empirical experiment and measurement which work great when studying the objective. Yet, only through observing the subjective, our internal world, our psyche, and its workings, we can come to fully understand reality and the human condition.
(Have a read why we desperately need the Humanities too!)
Where Are We Heading?
Don’t get me wrong, I think science is truly AMAZING and the rational mind can understand a LOT, but they both have their limitations and these have to be taken seriously instead of being ignored.
Reality is not something out there, it is being created in every instant, by every one of us.
Kant already stated at the end of the 18th century that space and time, space and causality are necessary conditions of our human sense-perception. They are not “objects” themselves, they are the container through which all objects appear in our minds. And quantum-physics has verified that the material world we perceive is not the world as “it is”. It does not exist “just like that” independently of any observer, it exists as pure potentially and instantiates only in the moment of observation.
More and more people are recognizing that we are collectively playing the game of life in a 3D world, and that there are other dimensions beyond the material plane and the interface of everyday consciousness.
We are deeply connected to Life, Nature, society, and the cosmos because we can’t be separated from it, we only exist as ecological, embodied, enacted, and deeply social beings. Harming another is like harming yourself, destroying nature means destroying our own source of life.
Instead of constantly fighting each other and playing a finite game, a zero-sum game based on fear and the rules implemented through the conditioning of society, culture, and our parents we may start playing an infinite game, where we co-create the rules collectively and consciously.
We desperately need to let go of our current system running on trauma, fear, and self-serving short-term benefits. We have collectively lived far too long abiding by the strategy of “divide and conquer” imposed by the powers that be.
Cosmic connectedness combined with collective effort or natural disaster combined with self-centered ignorance seem to be the only options.
It may sound extreme, but these are our times. Make it or break it.
Let’s move away then from the edge of annihilation through egotistic economics, self-serving politics, ignorance, disinformation, and false separation, shall we?
Sitting on the Edge. Photo by the author. Lake Wanaka, NZ.
Here’s a link to an overview of my published articles so far.
Some Upcoming topics (already more than 60% finished):
The Truth of Paradox and the Paradox of Truth
What Can We Learn From the Psychology of the Flow-State
How Can We Minimize Friction in Everyday Life
What Is Embodied Spirituality?
What are our modern myths and what do they reveal about our psyche?
What Is the Philosophia Perennis, the Tradition of the “Eternal Philosophy”?
Romanticism and How It Centered Around Nature Mysticism
C.G. Jung as a Philosopher
Predictive Processing: Cognitive Science and How our Mind Predict RealityYour Brain on Meditation — What Current Cognitive Science Reveals About the Effects of Meditation
Attention and Intention: The Key to Understanding Conscious Action
The Limitations of the Rational Mind
How Weird Were Pythagoras and the Presocratics Really?
Integrating Science and the Humanities
Philosophy and Mysticism
All Religion Starts in Mysticism and Ends in Politics
Understanding Polarity: How Our Time Is Defined by Separation
The Meaning Crisis and Its Antidotes
Socrates As a Spiritual Teacher
What is Transpersonal Psychology?
If you’re interested in any particular topic, feel free to comment or write me a message, so I know a little better what to turn to next.
Otherwise, if you want to join, I’m more than happy to go with you on this journey and explore the infinite mystery of life in its different facets.
If this resonates and you’d like to connect feel free to write me a message or leave a comment!