Speaker 1: Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom
Speaker 1: of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and the
Speaker 1: gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of
Speaker 1: nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Speaker 1: Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
Speaker 1: The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and
Speaker 1: the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like
Speaker 1: autumn leaves as age comes on. One source of enjoyment
Speaker 1: after another is closed, like nature's sources never fail. I
Speaker 1: know that our bodies were made to thrive only in
Speaker 1: pure air and the scenes in which pure air is found.
Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to blow your mind a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How stuff works. Hey, Welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And those quotes we just read were, of
Speaker 1: course from the Great John. You're one of the great
Speaker 1: priests of the religion of the Mountains. Absolutely a true
Speaker 1: American hero. I say that without a shred of irony.
Speaker 1: Uh an important individual in the natural preservation efforts of
Speaker 1: the United States. And I like these two quotes because
Speaker 1: he's he's getting into the power and the awe of
Speaker 1: the mountains, and that first quote, and in that second
Speaker 1: he's talking about the air of the wilderness. And we're
Speaker 1: going to be discussing the air of the wilderness in
Speaker 1: this our second episode on Sacred Mountains. But I suppose
Speaker 1: we should we should, of course, refer you back to
Speaker 1: the first episode. If you didn't listen to the first
Speaker 1: episode on Sacred Mountains, go back. That is the uh
Speaker 1: important first installment. But let's catch everybody up to speed
Speaker 1: on what we chatted about last time. Sure, well, last
Speaker 1: time we talked about holy mountains from religious and cultural
Speaker 1: beliefs around the world, and common types of beliefs about
Speaker 1: holy mountains. We talked about the idea of mountains as
Speaker 1: the homes of the gods, or as the bodies of
Speaker 1: gods themselves, as uh like entrances to other worlds, as
Speaker 1: pillars that hold up the heavens, as places of pilgrimage,
Speaker 1: as places where the gods once were or still dwell
Speaker 1: or sleep. There's almost an infinite array of ways in
Speaker 1: which mountains have been religiously significant, and so we talked
Speaker 1: about some reasons that might be of course, there are
Speaker 1: things having to do with perspective. When one climbs a
Speaker 1: mountain and looks down at the earth. Uh, there are there.
Speaker 1: There's just the sheer fact of its size, I mean,
Speaker 1: in a pretty basic sense, and just how important natural
Speaker 1: forms are and are the shaping of our cosmologies in
Speaker 1: our sense of self. Uh. We discussed like the main
Speaker 1: points along these lines in the last episode. We also, though,
Speaker 1: talked about stories expressed by many mountain climbers, so certainly
Speaker 1: not only by mountain climbers, of hallucinations during the journey
Speaker 1: of climbing a mountain, including the very common third man syndrome. Uh.
Speaker 1: The experience of sensing another person making a journey with you,
Speaker 1: who in fact is not there right, And it's very
Speaker 1: often um, I would say a neutral apparition. Uh, we're helpful,
Speaker 1: not a beneficial one. So it's not like, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: there's a monster beside me. It's more like, oh, well
Speaker 1: there's Uh. I thought I was up here alone climbing
Speaker 1: this mountain, but there's this this other fella, and that's
Speaker 1: comforting to know that it's not just me. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: read a section from an account by the mountaineer Frank Smythe,
Speaker 1: who wrote of his experiences attempting and failing to summit
Speaker 1: Mount Everest alone in nineteen thirty three, and he wrote
Speaker 1: in one section of his account, quote, all the time
Speaker 1: that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling
Speaker 1: that I was accompanied by a second person. And then
Speaker 1: later I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder. And once,
Speaker 1: when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try
Speaker 1: and eat some mint cake. I carefully divided it and
Speaker 1: turned around with one half in my hand. It was
Speaker 1: almost a shock to find no one to whom to
Speaker 1: give it. And of course there are also plenty of
Speaker 1: much more recent reports of the same thing, people having
Speaker 1: strange experiences, delusions, hallucinations, or at least apparently to you know,
Speaker 1: modern skeptical thinkers, hallucinations. It's very possible if people had
Speaker 1: these experiences in the ancient world, or if they're just
Speaker 1: less skeptically minded, they might think, you know, this was
Speaker 1: a real presence with me on the mountain. There was
Speaker 1: something supernatural happening up there, right. There was something revolting
Speaker 1: about my mint cake that drove the spirit away. Now
Speaker 1: it's clear that very high altitudes can have a number
Speaker 1: of health effects that could have neurological and psychological implications.
Speaker 1: These are generally thought to be caused by the lower
Speaker 1: air pressure at higher altitudes. This is understood to be
Speaker 1: the major cause, though I think it's worth emphasized that
Speaker 1: there are things that are still not fully understood about
Speaker 1: altitude sickness. Absolutely, and you know, there's a whole They
Speaker 1: have been numerous studies over the years about individuals who
Speaker 1: are climatized to a high altitude environments. Uh, that's something
Speaker 1: we could potentially come back and do an entire episode on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think one of the interesting things about altitude
Speaker 1: sickness that we still don't fully understand is why it
Speaker 1: affects different people so differently, Like you can't always predict
Speaker 1: whether a person will experience altitude sickness at a certain altitude.
Speaker 1: And so the generally understood major cause of altitude sickness
Speaker 1: seems to be the lower air pressure means less oxygen
Speaker 1: is compressed in the atmosphere because you're up higher, so
Speaker 1: there's less atmosphere sitting on the air you're breathing, right,
Speaker 1: And that this was an idea that we initially explored
Speaker 1: in the under Pressure episode. Yes, and so this means
Speaker 1: you literally get less oxygen with each breath, and of
Speaker 1: course you need oxygen to survive. If you're getting less
Speaker 1: of it with each breath you take, you can begin
Speaker 1: to suffer negative sequences in the body and the brain.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you are perhaps climbing a mountain. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're exerting yourself anyway, but it can happen even without exertion.
Speaker 1: That that's important to note. And exactly what altitude it
Speaker 1: sets in varies a good bit from person to person,
Speaker 1: Like we were just talking about, a reasonable figure at
Speaker 1: which a significant percent of people will display symptoms is
Speaker 1: sometimes cited to be eight thousand feet or but for
Speaker 1: each individual person, it's a toss up. You individually might
Speaker 1: be affected at a lower altitude or a higher altitude.
Speaker 1: It it's hard to know for sure if you haven't
Speaker 1: been there before. Um it's usually said to be worse
Speaker 1: if you ascend quickly and don't give your body time
Speaker 1: to adapt to lower air pressure at higher altitude. So
Speaker 1: that is one thing if you're expecting to be like
Speaker 1: hiking at a high altitude, it's good to give yourself
Speaker 1: time to hang out at high altitude without exerting yourself first,
Speaker 1: Always be wary if you're aboard the starship Enterprise and
Speaker 1: you teleport down to a mountain top, teleport to the
Speaker 1: lower mountain area first. Yeah, base camps are still important, guys.
Speaker 1: But some common symptoms of like mild to moderate altitude
Speaker 1: sickness would be the kinds of things you would first
Speaker 1: of all, the kinds of things you would expect with
Speaker 1: less access to oxygen. So maybe shortness of breath, breathing
Speaker 1: harder with less physical exertion, uh, faster heart rate. You
Speaker 1: know your heart's beating hard, it's trying to oxygenate your tissues.
Speaker 1: You're just not getting enough oxygen in each breath, and
Speaker 1: so you know you'd expect those kind of things. But
Speaker 1: also you can experience nausea, dizziness, or lightheadedness, and it
Speaker 1: can mess with your natural drives such as for sleep
Speaker 1: and for food. So you can have loss of appetite, headache,
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. In much more severe cases
Speaker 1: of altitude sickness, you can have changes in the color
Speaker 1: of the skin, you can have tightness in the chest.
Speaker 1: You can have mental effects like you know, loss of
Speaker 1: loss of awareness, loss of coherence, or confusion, there can
Speaker 1: even be offing up of blood or loss of consciousness.
Speaker 1: And there there are subsequent life threatening conditions that can
Speaker 1: come out of altitude sickness. One is known as high
Speaker 1: altitude pulmonary a DEMO or hape HPE, where altitude sickness
Speaker 1: leads to a build up of fluid in the lungs. This,
Speaker 1: if you experience it is life threatening and you should
Speaker 1: act on this immediately. Another is high altitude cerebral adema
Speaker 1: or HACE, when altitude sickness leads to swelling of the brain,
Speaker 1: which is very dangerous and of course can cause all
Speaker 1: kinds of mental disturbances. And so obviously one question we
Speaker 1: might have is if people often report seeing things that
Speaker 1: aren't there in the mountains, to what extent can these
Speaker 1: be traced to known psychological or not psychological, known physiological
Speaker 1: conditions like cerebral dima hece absolutely and and as we
Speaker 1: mentioned in the last episode, you know we're not looking
Speaker 1: at this is like this the soul uh cause or
Speaker 1: the soul re in that one has mountain myths, but
Speaker 1: it could certainly potential uh thing that augments them or
Speaker 1: feeds them in some cases. No, as we mentioned previously
Speaker 1: in the other episodes. There's no way that say, psychological
Speaker 1: disturbances as a result of you know, less oxygen reaching
Speaker 1: the brain or something like that could explain all the myths.
Speaker 1: So one reason for that is that many holy mountains
Speaker 1: aren't high enough to cause any altitude related symptoms. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are holy mountains that are just a few hundred
Speaker 1: meters high. So it's obvious that you know, these are
Speaker 1: these are geographical landmarks and they serve, you know, they
Speaker 1: represent things to people. It doesn't have to be that
Speaker 1: somebody went up on there and had a hallucination that
Speaker 1: caused them to found a religion or a myth around
Speaker 1: the mountain. Though. We do want to point out that
Speaker 1: it's possible that in higher mountains, people going up into
Speaker 1: these altitudes could have contributed to beliefs, you know, strange
Speaker 1: supernatural beliefs about some mountains, right, and or the idea
Speaker 1: that in general, mountains provide some sort of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: loosening of the veil between this world and the next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great way to put it. So I want
Speaker 1: to call attention to one recent paper, in particular in
Speaker 1: the journal Psychological Medicine that deals with these phenomena of
Speaker 1: people high up in the mountains having strange and anomalous experiences.
Speaker 1: This was by Katerina Hoofner at All called isolated psychosis
Speaker 1: during exposure to very high and extreme altitude characterization of
Speaker 1: a new medical entity, and this was published in So
Speaker 1: the authors here have examined about eighty three documented cases
Speaker 1: among reports from alpine expeditions, and they believe they've identified
Speaker 1: a new independent condition that's separate from altitude sickness and
Speaker 1: separate from any existing mental disorder. It's called isolated high
Speaker 1: altitude psychosis. Now, of course, psychosis is a set of symptoms,
Speaker 1: and that would be I have, right, wait, what we
Speaker 1: can call it? I have, I have, I have. Oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about an acronym I have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I have the International House of Psychosis. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Psychosis is a set of symptoms including quote, hallucinations, delusions,
Speaker 1: disorganized speech, abnormal psychomotor behavior, and negative symptoms, and additionally
Speaker 1: impaired cognition, depression, and mania. So it's characteristic of of
Speaker 1: underlying conditions like schizophrenia, but can also occur in isolation
Speaker 1: due to a number of inciting stressors. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things is people often think that hallucinations can
Speaker 1: only occur if somebody has an underlying mental illness, But
Speaker 1: people who don't have an underlying mental illness sometimes experienced
Speaker 1: hallucinations just depending on like fleeting, stresses and things that
Speaker 1: are affecting them. Oh yeah, absolutely um. Oliver Sachs's book
Speaker 1: Hallucinations is always a fabulous source on all of this
Speaker 1: because he you know, he discusses hallucinogens a little bit
Speaker 1: in there, but but for the most part, it's it's
Speaker 1: all these various other causes that are in play. Right,
Speaker 1: So the author's exam and a list of documented cases
Speaker 1: of mountaineering, and they looked for signs of high altitude psychosis,
Speaker 1: and then they cross reference this to see whether there
Speaker 1: were always concurrent symptoms of physiological distress from high altitudes,
Speaker 1: such as high altitude cerebral a DEMO or HACE. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you can see why if the brain is swelling with fluid,
Speaker 1: that might cause things like hallucinations and mental disturbances. So
Speaker 1: from previous studies, we know that how often psychosis occurs
Speaker 1: at high altitude seems to vary a lot, depending on
Speaker 1: who's doing the counting and what criteria they use. So
Speaker 1: this is unfortunately a case where the numbers are not
Speaker 1: very solid. They seem to be all over the place,
Speaker 1: like Woo at All in two thousand six found that
Speaker 1: there were hallucinations in three percent of cases with Hace.
Speaker 1: Wilson at All in two thousand nine reported hallucinations in
Speaker 1: thirty two percent of climbers above seven thousand fives, which
Speaker 1: is a totally different criterion than the last thing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: so we're not going apples to apples here, we're just
Speaker 1: seeing what there is to see about hallucinations at altitude.
Speaker 1: Bruger at All in quote found hallucinatory experiences in seven
Speaker 1: of eight, or eighty eight percent of world class climbers
Speaker 1: who reached altitudes above eight thousand five hunds without supplementary oxygen. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty wild fluctuation, And I don't know
Speaker 1: for sure, but I guess the discrepancy here has to
Speaker 1: do with the methods they're using to select cases in
Speaker 1: these different studies. Right, you'd probably get very different numbers
Speaker 1: if you just check to see if climbers self reports
Speaker 1: psychosis versus say, proactively asking them if they've had psychosis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of those spreads of numbers that you know,
Speaker 1: it brings to mind the whole like you know, it
Speaker 1: just depends on how you torture the numbers, what kind
Speaker 1: of story you're going to get out of them exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the problems here is
Speaker 1: that we don't have anything consistent to work with going
Speaker 1: into the study. So so they had to try to
Speaker 1: come up with with the method of their own, and
Speaker 1: they know it's not perfect, but it's just to sort
Speaker 1: of get a rough idea of where to start looking
Speaker 1: at this problem. So in the present study, the authors
Speaker 1: found first of all, that psychosis of some kind often
Speaker 1: happens when you're at high altitude. Their sample, which they
Speaker 1: did from consulting existing literature, yielded a result that found quote,
Speaker 1: hallucinations occurred in forty two percent or thirty five out
Speaker 1: of eighty three of the episodes that they surveyed at
Speaker 1: a mean altitude of seven thousand, two hundred and eighty meters,
Speaker 1: and of these episodes, thirty four percent or twelve out
Speaker 1: of thirty five uh The hallucinations occurred at the same
Speaker 1: time that there are signs that the person had a
Speaker 1: cerebral demo or hace they determined that high altitude psychosis
Speaker 1: can happen together with HACE or with other physiological effects,
Speaker 1: or without them. Therefore, they concluded that isolated high altitude
Speaker 1: psychosis or eyeap your coining should be considered an independent
Speaker 1: psychological condition related to high altitude and not us as
Speaker 1: a possible symptom of altitude sickness. And finally, they concluded
Speaker 1: that high altitude psychosis is associated with an increased risk
Speaker 1: of accidents or near accidents. That's kind of not surprising. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now they propose some hypothetical causes for these non hece
Speaker 1: cases of high altitude psychosis. One would be like social
Speaker 1: and sensory deprivation in conjunction with psychological stress. Stress is
Speaker 1: often a common inciting factor for people who don't otherwise
Speaker 1: have him into illness to have hallucinations, right, And then
Speaker 1: of course it's so varied depending on how much stress
Speaker 1: an individual is going to have in a given circumstance,
Speaker 1: and then how that stress is affecting their performance and
Speaker 1: their mental capacity. Yeah, and then you add social and
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation to that. They don't have anybody else there
Speaker 1: to talk to if their climbing alone, or or they
Speaker 1: have limited numbers of people there with them. Uh, the
Speaker 1: their view of the world. You know, there might be
Speaker 1: a lot less like color and stuff than they'd normally
Speaker 1: be seen. Another potential, uh cause they side is quote
Speaker 1: dysfunction of the temporal parietal junction and angular gyros due
Speaker 1: to hypoxia, hypoglycemia and cold. And then finally they say, well,
Speaker 1: another possibility is just that HASE is going on in
Speaker 1: these cases and somehow it's being under diagnosed in the field.
Speaker 1: Maybe a lot of these people experiencing psychosis do have
Speaker 1: HASTE and just for some reason, the normal symptoms are
Speaker 1: not showing up and being recorded. This is I mean
Speaker 1: especially true if you're going it alone, right or or
Speaker 1: even if you you have a climbing partner like you
Speaker 1: you may not I guess be having um, just a
Speaker 1: regular check in about your your your your feelings of
Speaker 1: physical and mental health. Yeah. And of course cerebral adema
Speaker 1: is like that. That's really dangerous. You know, like if
Speaker 1: if you have this, you should be getting treated for it.
Speaker 1: That's not like a time to say Okay, I'll just
Speaker 1: power through and trying to go on up to the summit. Now,
Speaker 1: this is interesting going back to what Frank Smythe and
Speaker 1: the others have talked about with with their experience of
Speaker 1: what's known as third man sent drome. The authors here
Speaker 1: found that when climbers reported perceptual disturbances of various kinds,
Speaker 1: the majority, though not all of them, but the majority
Speaker 1: of them were either neutral or even helpful and comforting.
Speaker 1: For example, a hallucinated climbing companion who protects and guides them,
Speaker 1: or a voice encouraging them or warning them of danger. Now,
Speaker 1: just because the majority of these perceptual disturbances and hallucinations
Speaker 1: are positive in nature or at least neutral, doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we shouldn't worry about them. Since hallucinations high altitude seemed
Speaker 1: correlated with a risk of accidents, it's not hard to
Speaker 1: see why that would be. Uh, Climbers high altitude should
Speaker 1: be aware that psychosis is very possible and should develop
Speaker 1: defensive strategies for what happens if it sets in if
Speaker 1: you think you see somebody that you don't remember being there.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you should have like procedures in place for that,
Speaker 1: like reality testing. Now, on the other hand, about the study, obviously,
Speaker 1: there appears to be some weakness in the selection criteria
Speaker 1: for cases. But I guess in this kind of study
Speaker 1: you're limited by the fact that you can't just stick people,
Speaker 1: you know, random test subjects at the top of a
Speaker 1: mountain and see if they undergo psychosis. Uh, they're they're
Speaker 1: Also the authors point out, there is survivor bias at play, right,
Speaker 1: We're hearing the stories of people who were able to
Speaker 1: report their stories, some people who did not succumb on
Speaker 1: the mountain or experience some sort of a fatal accident,
Speaker 1: or didn't have somebody with them who got to report
Speaker 1: what happened. Yeah, they say, for future studies, you you
Speaker 1: could perhaps simulate some conditions like this in chambers that
Speaker 1: simulate altitude with low oxygen or low atmospheric pressure. Also,
Speaker 1: you don't need to have a huge or hugely random
Speaker 1: number of cases if you just want to establish that
Speaker 1: sometimes people report psychosis at high altitudes with no record
Speaker 1: of altitude sickness or cute sickness like hace. Now we
Speaker 1: mentioned already that that one of the other factors here
Speaker 1: is that not all sacred mountains are enormous skyscraping um,
Speaker 1: you know, monuments to the sky God. Right, not all
Speaker 1: most sacred mountains are probably not even tall enough for
Speaker 1: people to be reaching the same kinds of altitudes that
Speaker 1: are in this study, though some are. The authors here
Speaker 1: point out that most of these reports of symptoms reminiscent
Speaker 1: of psychosis among mountain climbers come from very high and
Speaker 1: extreme altitudes, so like thirty five to fifty ms or
Speaker 1: even above. So there're gonna be tons of holy mountains
Speaker 1: around the world that that do not even reach these altitudes.
Speaker 1: Nobody could could climb high enough to be at the
Speaker 1: altitudes like the ones being studied in this in this research,
Speaker 1: so I'd say whether the physiological or psychological effects of
Speaker 1: altitude contribute to these types of religious beliefs in some cases,
Speaker 1: especially at higher peaks, It's hard to know for sure,
Speaker 1: but absolutely it seems possible and even attempting origin story
Speaker 1: for some holy mountains and sacred peaks around the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one thing, and I may come back to this, the
Speaker 1: whole idea that most of these reported cases of another
Speaker 1: of this uh you know, this third man or what
Speaker 1: have you, is going to be neutral or beneficial. And indeed,
Speaker 1: when we look at all these different myths about holy mountains, um,
Speaker 1: so many of them are about like the gods living there.
Speaker 1: Um like I wanted to find more mountain monsters. I
Speaker 1: truly did. I'm always looking for the monsters. And not
Speaker 1: to say there are not mountain monsters, certainly there Um,
Speaker 1: there are traditions of things coming down from the mountains, crampits, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But it kind of seems like they're they're weighted in
Speaker 1: favor of at least the neutral deities, neutral spirits and
Speaker 1: what have you, uh and and even beneficial beings as
Speaker 1: opposed to the monsters of say, uh Mount doom Um
Speaker 1: or the lonely mountain and token. Well, maybe we can
Speaker 1: We will explore mountain monsters a little bit today, but
Speaker 1: maybe we can explore it more in the future. I'm
Speaker 1: just I didn't think about this when we were preparing,
Speaker 1: but I just now remembered the mountain trolls of Iceland.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll look at another study and
Speaker 1: we'll move on to a particular mountain creature that, yes,
Speaker 1: you might qualify, you might describe as a monster. Thank
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. All right, we're back, all right,
Speaker 1: What have we got next to? Robert? All right, So
Speaker 1: I was looking at a study. This is one that
Speaker 1: you found and then I ended up diving into it.
Speaker 1: This was yeah, yeah, yeah, I was interested. I didn't
Speaker 1: know about this one because it seemed like some of them. Well,
Speaker 1: well you describe it and then we can discuss. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This one was titled why Revelations have Occurred on Mountains
Speaker 1: Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience. This was published in
Speaker 1: Medical Hypotheses from Autoto back It, Old Land, SIB and
Speaker 1: blank ep quote. Here's a quote from the piece. Quote.
Speaker 1: Prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially in social deprivation, may
Speaker 1: also lead to refrontal lobe dysfunctions such as low resistance
Speaker 1: to stress and loss of inhibition. Based on these phenomenological, functional,
Speaker 1: and neural findings, we suggest that exposure to altitudes might
Speaker 1: contribute to the induction of revelation experiences and might further
Speaker 1: our understanding of the mountain metaphor and religion. So they're
Speaker 1: really going for it on this one, and they point
Speaker 1: to the major revelations in the three major monotheistic religions.
Speaker 1: UH in Judaism, the burning bush uh. This is where
Speaker 1: God speaks through the burning bush. This is from Exodus, Christianity,
Speaker 1: there's the Transfiguration from the Book of Matthew. This is
Speaker 1: a in which Jesus's divine nature is revealed to onlookers.
Speaker 1: And then in Islam there's also the point where Allah
Speaker 1: speaks to the prophet Muhammad, and that is also like
Speaker 1: a mountain revelation. Now, one of the problems here is
Speaker 1: getting into the idea of insufficient altitudes, right yeah. So
Speaker 1: I'd seen the study brought up on a science blog somewhere,
Speaker 1: and I thought, um, it was interesting because it's touching
Speaker 1: on this question we're asking. But I saw it in
Speaker 1: the context of it being ridiculed because the main mountains
Speaker 1: that it's talking about aren't really that hot, you know,
Speaker 1: so they're not like super high mountains that would be
Speaker 1: likely to cause altitude sickness, right right, Yeah, They're not
Speaker 1: dealing with Himalayan peaks here, right. Um. This is what
Speaker 1: the paper says though, about the idea of moderate altitudes.
Speaker 1: They said, although the revelations discussed here had occurred in
Speaker 1: moderate altitudes, it may be assumed that in subjects who
Speaker 1: are prone to mystical experiences, already moderate altitudes are sufficient
Speaker 1: to trigger revelation. Like experiences and revelations So the argument here, then,
Speaker 1: I guess is is, first of all, you know, not
Speaker 1: not everyone's going to have the same reaction to high
Speaker 1: altitude like we've discussed, and that even moderate high altitude
Speaker 1: they're arguing, could be sufficient. Potentially, this is one of
Speaker 1: those more research needed areas, but it could be enough
Speaker 1: to push people's minds toward mystical experiences, especially if those
Speaker 1: minds are already uh susceptible to say, hallucination to voices
Speaker 1: or to the experience of the supernatural. And then the
Speaker 1: the the remembrance of supernatural experience. You know, it's funny
Speaker 1: that they focus on like the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity,
Speaker 1: and Islam, because in the last episode, you remember, we
Speaker 1: had a discussion about how it seems to me that
Speaker 1: um that actually sacred geography plays less of a role
Speaker 1: in the Abrahamic religions than it does in many other
Speaker 1: religions around the world, Whereas in in the Abrahamic religions,
Speaker 1: it seems that when a place is wholly it's usually
Speaker 1: because the idea something important happened there, whereas in many
Speaker 1: other religions around the world, the place itself has some
Speaker 1: religious significance the the land itself, the mountain is the
Speaker 1: home of the gods, or is the body of a god,
Speaker 1: or is sacred in its own right, and not just
Speaker 1: because of something that happened there, right, you know, I
Speaker 1: imagine there could be this is room for a lot
Speaker 1: of theological discussion, uh, you know, in each of these
Speaker 1: three religions. But but yeah, but all three of these
Speaker 1: even as we as we were mentioning them, uh, we
Speaker 1: were mentioning the event they were mentioning in the paper,
Speaker 1: the event that took place, the meeting of of an
Speaker 1: individual in the divine, for instance, in the case of
Speaker 1: the the uh the Jewish and Islamic examples. So at
Speaker 1: this point I want to turn to um a particular
Speaker 1: mountain entity because I think it lines up with some
Speaker 1: of what uh we were just discussing here. And that's
Speaker 1: that entity is the YETI everybody's favorite cooler. No, not
Speaker 1: the cooler, I mean, unless the cooler has an actual
Speaker 1: YETI in it. That'd be a good trick discovered one
Speaker 1: what was it the when there's somebody in Georgia who
Speaker 1: claimed they had a big foot and like a beer
Speaker 1: cooler and it was like a freezer. Right. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a whole the whole thing about ten or eleven
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah. I remember it well because for one
Speaker 1: fleeting second it made me wonder, are we about to
Speaker 1: know that there is a sasquatch? And of course that
Speaker 1: turned out to not be the case. It was like
Speaker 1: a costume or something. Right now, the Eddie in modern
Speaker 1: Western culture, it has become just kind of a Himalayan
Speaker 1: variant of the sasquatch. You know, if I say yettie,
Speaker 1: you may just picture a big foot or skunk ape,
Speaker 1: whatever the regional variation of this creature is. And I
Speaker 1: do think that is important as we're moving forward to
Speaker 1: to think about the fact that there are variations of
Speaker 1: the wild man uh being in various cultures. Basically like
Speaker 1: a bipedal creature covered in hair that is seen all
Speaker 1: around the world but has distinct origins in each case,
Speaker 1: right right, yes, uh, But I was looking at I
Speaker 1: wanted to get a little like a beetter snapshot the
Speaker 1: this ape like beast um as far as like Himalayan
Speaker 1: traditions go. So I ran across a very very insightful
Speaker 1: piece titled Butanese Tales of the Yetti by Kunzang Codin.
Speaker 1: Tales of the creature exist through the Himalayan region and Uh.
Speaker 1: The author points to the different names that are given
Speaker 1: to this entity. So into Tibet there's gangs Me or
Speaker 1: glacier man. There's me Champo or strong man, and me
Speaker 1: chin Po or great man. Um. The Sherpas Uh call
Speaker 1: it Yetti, the lep Shaws call it chew moon or
Speaker 1: snow goblin I like that one, or hell moon or
Speaker 1: mountain goblin. And Nepal there's Nilemu or banmanche. He didn't
Speaker 1: provide a translation translation for those, but I'm assuming some
Speaker 1: treatment on these various ideas, you know. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the Mutanese Uh say me Goy or strong man or
Speaker 1: also gred Po. So you know, we this idea of
Speaker 1: some like figure of of savage cold strength with possible
Speaker 1: um you know, god goblin qualities as well. So Childen
Speaker 1: writes that the megoy idea here, it dates back to
Speaker 1: the pre Buddhist Bond writings. The uh is the pre
Speaker 1: Buddhist animist religion. I believe we mentioned this briefly in
Speaker 1: the last episode. Yeah, the indigenous religion of Tibet. It
Speaker 1: came up because Mount Kailash or Mount Kailassa in uh
Speaker 1: in the Himalayas is a peak that is holy, not
Speaker 1: just two Hindus who believe uh, some of whom believe
Speaker 1: that the Lord Shiva and Parvati dwell on top of
Speaker 1: Mount Kailash, but it's also holy to some Buddhists, chains
Speaker 1: and members of the Bond religion, the Tibetan indigenous religion
Speaker 1: and uh and apparently some Bond rituals call for the
Speaker 1: blood of a Megoy slain with a sharp weapon. Wha, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so this is a pre existing idea. But
Speaker 1: then you get some Westerners involved, right, and then you
Speaker 1: get this idea boarded and uh and and reignited in
Speaker 1: the Western mind. Uh So. British traveler William Hugh, Knight
Speaker 1: of the Royals the Royal Society's Club, recorded a Yeti
Speaker 1: siding in nineteen o three on his way back to
Speaker 1: India from Tibet. And then there was another siding in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty five by a Westerner by a Greek zoologist
Speaker 1: in a Tombazi who described it like this. Unquestionably, the
Speaker 1: figure in outline was exactly like a human being walking
Speaker 1: upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some
Speaker 1: dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow,
Speaker 1: and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes.
Speaker 1: And then later you had print sightings and uh and
Speaker 1: so forth in the nineteen fifties that helped popularize the
Speaker 1: idea of the Yetti in the West. UM. Various films
Speaker 1: UH certainly television series like In Search of helped to
Speaker 1: contribute to this idea, and today the interest interest in
Speaker 1: the Yettie continues, but there remains no proof that the
Speaker 1: creature exists. In fact, examination of preserved evidence of Yetti's
Speaker 1: tends to lean toward the intentional or accidental misinterpretation of
Speaker 1: of another animal or its handiwork. So DNA work from
Speaker 1: the past few years, for instance, points uh you know,
Speaker 1: directly to at Asian bears as the source of the samples.
Speaker 1: So in all of this and any anytime we're talking
Speaker 1: about a YETI sighting, even in like the Himalayan region,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't discount hoaxes and various other reasons,
Speaker 1: but we when we consider the potential effects of hypoxia
Speaker 1: and uh uh and and these other like high altitude
Speaker 1: situations which all I think in some degree or related
Speaker 1: to hypoxia. You know, we we might be talking more
Speaker 1: of a full blown hallucination, and then it lower altitudes,
Speaker 1: the effect could just be enough to make the individual,
Speaker 1: you know, see what they want to see when they
Speaker 1: glimpse a normal animal or another human being. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I found this idea of first of all, there is
Speaker 1: I did see this idea echoed in um Searching for
Speaker 1: the Yetty Mysterious Monsters two thousand fourteen, book by General
Speaker 1: for rifkn. Now, this is a kid's book. I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about this, so you normally we don't
Speaker 1: cite a lot of of of of kids book, but
Speaker 1: this one was. Actually I was reading through it. It's
Speaker 1: pretty good. Uh. It seems to to to balance the
Speaker 1: sort of mystical what if with a lot of of
Speaker 1: legitimate skepticism. And then also I did see this idea
Speaker 1: also echoed in a couple of journals and books such
Speaker 1: as High Altitude Medical Science by Udah Kushma and Vocal
Speaker 1: And I think there is a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of similarities between for instance, that
Speaker 1: that yetty account that I read earlier and accounts of
Speaker 1: a third man right like here, there was some other
Speaker 1: creature there and uh, you know it wasn't human, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was hanging out, it was there. I
Speaker 1: glimpsed it. And then once you have this and and
Speaker 1: this is of course on top top of a pre
Speaker 1: existing idea of there being some sort of a yetty
Speaker 1: creature in the mountains. Uh. And then once this idea
Speaker 1: gets becomes a part of of Western culture as well,
Speaker 1: then there's more room to misinterpret the the evidence or
Speaker 1: even uh, your senses. Now, I wonder if the if
Speaker 1: like a psychological thing kind of like the the climbing companion,
Speaker 1: the third man syndrome is going on here, what do
Speaker 1: you think it might be that would cause people to
Speaker 1: see a bipedal human like creature covered in hair as
Speaker 1: opposed to seeing you know, another just another human dress
Speaker 1: like them, or too seeing like a dead relative or something,
Speaker 1: you know, one of these common hallucinations of comforting figures. Well,
Speaker 1: on the hair thing, I think certainly of one glimpsed
Speaker 1: a bear that could throw you off. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a bear in the in the flesh,
Speaker 1: you know it can be this weird, surreal and frightening experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully a little frightening, because as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, if you encounter a bear and you don't
Speaker 1: have like a certain amount of fear, you're doing it wrong. Oh.
Speaker 1: I think there are good reasons why we see bears
Speaker 1: as objects of prehistoric religions. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: quite clear that that bear worship in various forms goes
Speaker 1: back a long way. That's one of those where it's
Speaker 1: kind of obvious why that would happen, you know, is
Speaker 1: this kind of like too many people? The bear would
Speaker 1: clearly seem to be like the king of nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this beast that can also rise up on two legs
Speaker 1: and stand like us, that is seemingly slow and lethargic,
Speaker 1: but then full of energy and ferocity. That also we
Speaker 1: got into this in our Winter People episode a couple
Speaker 1: of years back. A creature then in some cases, uh
Speaker 1: digs its own grave and seems to die and then
Speaker 1: re emerge with life in the spring. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: does seem quite mystical. You can totally see why a
Speaker 1: bear would be a thing that you would be, you know,
Speaker 1: afraid to speak its name. Speak it's it's dangerous holy name,
Speaker 1: and uh and why if you saw one out in
Speaker 1: the wild. Yeah, you you might think you'd had some
Speaker 1: kind of other worldly encounter. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's leave the jetty and take one more break and
Speaker 1: we come back. We'll continue to discuss the topic. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. All right, we're back. Now. We've been discussing
Speaker 1: our records of delusions, hallucinations, and other just various strange
Speaker 1: sightings and encounters that seem to occur often at high altitude.
Speaker 1: Some possible explanations for what might be going on physiologically, neurologically, psychologically. There,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna continue with this now. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: really a couple of other just examples of not mountain climbers,
Speaker 1: but individuals encountering some sort of phantom stranger. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a case of uh, Sir Ernest Shackleton um he
Speaker 1: uh uh, he encountered such an apparition. Also, Antarctic explore
Speaker 1: Peter Hillary Um actually encountered a presence that manifested as
Speaker 1: the double of his dead there. Oh yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: ancestors appearing. Yeah, which which is important to to think
Speaker 1: to think of when when we're thinking about the mountains
Speaker 1: as a potential uh, you know, place where one can
Speaker 1: encounter the spirits of the departed. Um. So, as I
Speaker 1: was reading around about about this, I ran across a
Speaker 1: Scientific American article from on the since presence effect. And
Speaker 1: this was from Michael Schermer. Always a great source to
Speaker 1: turn to. Four discussions of paranormal experiences because he is
Speaker 1: an individual who has has had paranormal experience. I didn't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, if I am remembering correctly, it was like
Speaker 1: a like a cycling marathon he was on. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like a strenuous exercise and then
Speaker 1: he ended up like seeing an alien, but it was
Speaker 1: because of like something he'd been watching previously. He's written
Speaker 1: about it, um quite a bit. But you know, applying
Speaker 1: the skeptical mindset and then understanding how hallucinations occur. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, how we think about hallucinations after they occur
Speaker 1: takes all this into account. So um, he he touched
Speaker 1: on all of this, and he pointed to four or
Speaker 1: so scientific explanations. Uh that that that he says, really
Speaker 1: really get to the heart of what's going on when
Speaker 1: when people like this encounter um uh, some sort of
Speaker 1: spectral apparition or a third man etcetera. First of all,
Speaker 1: isolation triggers the mind to hallucinate the normal feeling we
Speaker 1: get when we're working or traveling among other people, which
Speaker 1: seems to be a standard here. Uh. Then the rational
Speaker 1: cortical control over emotions shuts down due to oxygen deprivation,
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation, or exhaustion, and this opens the door for
Speaker 1: inner voices and imaginary companions. Next, he says, are temporal
Speaker 1: low body scheme. Now, this is the brain's image of
Speaker 1: our body, and what it's doing is tricked into thinking
Speaker 1: you have a double um and ever up for a
Speaker 1: game of rationalization and story making. The brain that constructs
Speaker 1: a plausible explanation for this double's presence, Like there's another person. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's another human being that's covered in furs. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they're next to me. Oh, well, I guess that is
Speaker 1: another mountain climber. Likewise, though, I could see where this
Speaker 1: would be exactly the kind of thing that could be
Speaker 1: misinterpreted as a yetti, right, because if you're climbing a
Speaker 1: mountain in the Himalayas, you're probably bundled up head to toe.
Speaker 1: You probably don't look like a low altitude human anymore. Then,
Speaker 1: there's the mind schema. This is our psychological sense of self,
Speaker 1: and it's simply coordinating independent neural networks to solve the
Speaker 1: problem with survival and extreme situations. And the hallucination comes
Speaker 1: out of its function of making this feel like we're
Speaker 1: a single mind. Yeah. But then oh, on the on
Speaker 1: the sleep deprivation, uh situation. He uh. He points to
Speaker 1: Charles A. Lindbergh's Transatlantic flight UM and Shermer quotes his writings, quote,
Speaker 1: the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences, vaguely
Speaker 1: outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding waitless with me in this plane,
Speaker 1: conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation,
Speaker 1: reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.
Speaker 1: UM Shermer also shared that his own brother in law,
Speaker 1: man by the name of Fred zeal Or Zile, experienced
Speaker 1: a sense presence on both of his everest climbs. The
Speaker 1: first case involved frost bite and the lack of oxygen,
Speaker 1: and the second entailed his collapse from dehydration and hypoxia.
Speaker 1: Quote telling Lee, when I asked his opinion as a
Speaker 1: medical doctor, impossible hemispheric differences to account for such phenomena.
Speaker 1: Fred noted both times the sense was on my right side,
Speaker 1: perhaps related to my being left handed. The sense presence
Speaker 1: maybe the left hemisphere interpreter's explanation for right hemisphere anomalies. Oh,
Speaker 1: this takes us back to our split brain episodes, exactly
Speaker 1: the idea of the the interpreter. Now, normally this would
Speaker 1: be the left hemisphere interpreter. This Michael Gazaniga's idea of
Speaker 1: the interpreter being this function in the brain that sort
Speaker 1: of ties together disparate neural phenomena into one experience that
Speaker 1: that we sense as a single, unified whole and sort
Speaker 1: of tells a story that makes it all part of
Speaker 1: the same game. Where in fact, you know, the hemispheres,
Speaker 1: as was shown in the Spilip brain experiments, can behave
Speaker 1: quite independently of one another. Yeah, but but we've got
Speaker 1: this thing that Gazaniga calls the interpreter, that says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's all you. It's just you. So two things come
Speaker 1: to mind and discussing all of this. First of all,
Speaker 1: is i'm alway, I'm anytime we discuss altitudes and pressure,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the fact that human beings are not
Speaker 1: a creature that evolved to thrive on the earth. They're
Speaker 1: they're a creature that that evolved to thrive in a
Speaker 1: very thin atmospheric layer on the Earth, and and then
Speaker 1: only within certain ranges. And when we get out of
Speaker 1: those ranges, when we get out of there are our
Speaker 1: layer that we we thrive in, we can run into problems.
Speaker 1: The other thing I'm reminded of is, Joe, have you
Speaker 1: ever been to a like a children's musical performance, preferably
Speaker 1: a band or an orchestra. I've been in that performance,
Speaker 1: been to one too. So you know how ideally if
Speaker 1: everybody's doing doing their job and the you know, the
Speaker 1: conductors pulling it all together, Uh, there's a unity. You know,
Speaker 1: they're performing this this piece sometimes, but in other cases,
Speaker 1: things kind of drift and fall apart. And I feel
Speaker 1: like like that's kind of what's what's being described here. Uh,
Speaker 1: at at high altitude, like the the the orchestral performance
Speaker 1: that is our mind state is is drifting a little bit.
Speaker 1: It is like it is. It's it's not so much,
Speaker 1: you know, a professional level of performance anymore. It is
Speaker 1: a middle school band performance. And things are getting out
Speaker 1: of sync, things are getting out of whack, and then
Speaker 1: what does that mean when we are the performance. That's
Speaker 1: a really good analogy because in that case, I mean
Speaker 1: when you've got Even if Gazaniga's interpreter theory is not
Speaker 1: exactly right there, there clearly is a way in which
Speaker 1: the mind, that the human brain, is performing itself for
Speaker 1: an audience of itself, like you in a way are
Speaker 1: the audience of what your brain is doing. And so
Speaker 1: you're there watching how the show is going and if
Speaker 1: the show is not going right, you you are sensing
Speaker 1: it even though you are also the thing that's messing up.
Speaker 1: All right, So I'm not a mountain climber. I am
Speaker 1: not a mountaineer. I've visited mountains. I've had I think
Speaker 1: I discussed like maybe a very limited reaction to an
Speaker 1: increase in altitude that was slightly noteworthy. But I know
Speaker 1: we have to have some mountaineers out there who are
Speaker 1: listening to the to these episodes or listeners regular listeners
Speaker 1: to the podcast, So we would obviously love to hear
Speaker 1: about your experiences at how high altitude? Have have you
Speaker 1: ever experienced anything like what we've we're discussing here or
Speaker 1: have you simply have you never experienced it, or or
Speaker 1: perhaps you can just speak to the awe and majesty
Speaker 1: of the mountains. Perhaps you've visited some of the sacred
Speaker 1: mountains that we mentioned in the first episode, and you
Speaker 1: have a particular favorite you wanted to discuss. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Another question I have is, so,
Speaker 1: outside of Lord of the Rings, outside of skeletor Snake
Speaker 1: Mountain and Masters of the Universe and the Traveling Mountain,
Speaker 1: Fortress of the Beast and craull Um, are there evil
Speaker 1: mountains in mythologies and folklore that we uh we neglected
Speaker 1: to mention because I was I was looking around for him,
Speaker 1: and I, like, I say, the mountains tend to be
Speaker 1: uh you know, part of just a sacred uh ecosystem,
Speaker 1: sacred geography, or you know, their home to various beings.
Speaker 1: But like this idea of there being like a mountain doom,
Speaker 1: a place of of evil, you know, or or or
Speaker 1: a place that has been occupied solely by an evil force.
Speaker 1: I just didn't see as much of that, like, aside
Speaker 1: from a few mountain trolls and a few crampuses here
Speaker 1: and there, umu and certainly a few things that could
Speaker 1: maybe be classified as monsters that are thriving amid other
Speaker 1: magical creatures and spirits at say Kunlan Mountain. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: what are some potential examples here? I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I'm sure there must be mountains that
Speaker 1: are believed to be Hell or something like that, a
Speaker 1: place of evil gods, and that our physical mountains on Earth.
Speaker 1: But I didn't. I don't think I came across any.
Speaker 1: So bring us your monsters, is what I'm saying. Bring
Speaker 1: them unto us so that we might see them and
Speaker 1: consider them. In the meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head
Speaker 1: on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship. That's where you find all the episodes.
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