Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In It's Saturday,
Speaker 1: time for a vault episode. This is going to be
Speaker 1: part two of our Journey to the Sacred Mountain that
Speaker 1: began last Saturday. This episode originally aired on April nineteen.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoy it. Walk away quietly in any
Speaker 1: direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Comp out
Speaker 1: among the grasses and the gentians of glacial meadows in
Speaker 1: craggy garden nooks full of nature's darling's climb the mountains
Speaker 1: and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into
Speaker 1: you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow
Speaker 1: their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
Speaker 1: while cares will drop off like autumn leaves as age
Speaker 1: comes on. One source of enjoyment after another is closed,
Speaker 1: but Nature's sources never fail. I know that our bodies
Speaker 1: were made to thrive only in pure air and the
Speaker 1: scenes in which pure air is found. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, a production of I Heeart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: those quotes we just read were, of course from the
Speaker 1: great John. You're one of the great priests of the
Speaker 1: religion of the Mountains, absolutely a true American hero. I
Speaker 1: say that without a shred of irony, un important individual
Speaker 1: in the natural preservation efforts of the United States. And
Speaker 1: I like these two quotes because he's he's getting into
Speaker 1: the power and the awe of the mountains. And that
Speaker 1: first quote, and in that second he's talking about the
Speaker 1: air of the wilderness. And we're going to be discussing
Speaker 1: the air of the wildern us in this our second
Speaker 1: episode on Sacred Mountains. But I suppose we should we should,
Speaker 1: of course refer you back to the first episode. If
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to the first episode on Sacred Mountains,
Speaker 1: go back. That is the uh important first installment. But
Speaker 1: let's catch everybody up to speed and what we chatted
Speaker 1: about last time. Sure, well, last time we talked about
Speaker 1: holy mountains from religious and cultural beliefs around the world
Speaker 1: and common types of beliefs about holy mountains. We talked
Speaker 1: about the idea of mountains as the homes of the
Speaker 1: gods or as the bodies of gods themselves, as like
Speaker 1: entrances to other worlds, as pillars that hold up the heavens,
Speaker 1: as places of pilgrimage, as places where the gods once
Speaker 1: were or still dwell or sleep. There's almost an infinite
Speaker 1: array of ways in which mountains have been religiously significant,
Speaker 1: and so we talked about some reasons that might be.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are things having to do with perspective
Speaker 1: when one climbs a mountain and looks down at the earth. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are there. There's just the sheer fact of its size,
Speaker 1: I mean in a pretty basic sense. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: how important natural forms are and are the shaping of
Speaker 1: our cosmologies in our sense of self. Uh. We discussed
Speaker 1: like the main points along these lines in the last episode.
Speaker 1: We also, though, talked about stories expressed by many mountain climbers,
Speaker 1: though certainly not only by mountain climbers, of hallucinations during
Speaker 1: the journey of climbing a mountain, including the very common
Speaker 1: third man syndrome. Uh. The experience of sensing another person
Speaker 1: making a journey with you, who in fact is not
Speaker 1: there right, And it's very often um, I would say,
Speaker 1: a neutral apparition, Uh, you're help not a beneficial one.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, oh, my goodness, there's a monster
Speaker 1: beside me. It's more like, oh, well, there's uh. I
Speaker 1: thought I was up here alone climbing this mountain, but
Speaker 1: there's this this other fella, and that's comforting to know
Speaker 1: that it's not just me. Yeah. We read a section
Speaker 1: from an account by the mountaineer Frank Smythe, who wrote
Speaker 1: of his experiences attempting and failing to summit Mount Everest
Speaker 1: alone in nineteen thirty three, and he wrote in one
Speaker 1: section of his account, quote, all the time that I
Speaker 1: was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling that I
Speaker 1: was accompanied by a second person. And then later I
Speaker 1: remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder. And once, when
Speaker 1: after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try and
Speaker 1: eat some mint cake, I carefully divided it and turned
Speaker 1: around with one half in my hand. It was almost
Speaker 1: a shock to find no one to whom to give it.
Speaker 1: And of course there are also plenty of much more
Speaker 1: recent reports to the same thing, people having strange experiences, delusions, hallucinations,
Speaker 1: or at least apparently to you know, modern skeptical thinkers, hallucinations.
Speaker 1: It's very possible if people had these experiences in the
Speaker 1: ancient world, or if they're just less skeptically minded, they
Speaker 1: might think, you know, this was a real presence with
Speaker 1: me on the mountain. There was something super natural happening
Speaker 1: up there, right, there was something revolting about my mint
Speaker 1: cake that drove the spirit away. Now, it's clear that
Speaker 1: very high altitudes can have a number of health effects
Speaker 1: that could have neurological and psychological implications. These are generally
Speaker 1: thought to be caused by the lower air pressure at
Speaker 1: higher altitudes. This is understood to be the major cause.
Speaker 1: Though I think it's worth emphasizing that there are things
Speaker 1: that are still not fully understood about altitude sickness. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a whole They've been numerous studies
Speaker 1: over the years about individuals who are climatized to a
Speaker 1: high altitude environments. Uh, that's something we could potentially come
Speaker 1: back into an entire episode on. Yeah. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about altitude sickness that we
Speaker 1: still don't fully understand is why it affects different people
Speaker 1: so differently. Like you can't always predict whether a person
Speaker 1: will experience altitude sickness at a certain altitude, so the
Speaker 1: generally understood major cause of altitude sickness seems to be
Speaker 1: the lower air pressure means less oxygen is compressed in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere because you're up higher, so there's less atmosphere
Speaker 1: sitting on the area you're breathing, right, And it was
Speaker 1: an idea that we initially explored in the under pressure episode. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so this means you literally get less oxygen with
Speaker 1: each breath, and of course you need oxygen to survive.
Speaker 1: If you're getting less of it with each breath you take,
Speaker 1: you can begin to suffer negative consequences in the body
Speaker 1: and the brain. And meanwhile, you are perhaps climbing a mountain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're exerting yourself anyway, but it can happen even
Speaker 1: without exertion. That that's important to note. And exactly what
Speaker 1: altitude it sets in varies a good bit from person
Speaker 1: to person, Like we were just talking about, a reasonable
Speaker 1: figure at which a significant percent of people will display
Speaker 1: symptoms is sometimes cited to be eight thousand feet or
Speaker 1: but for each individual person, it's a toss up. You
Speaker 1: individually might be affected at a lower altitude or a
Speaker 1: higher altitude. It's it's hard to know for sure. If
Speaker 1: you haven't been there before. Um, it's usually said to
Speaker 1: be worse if you ascend quickly and don't give your
Speaker 1: body time to adapt to lower air pressure at higher altitude.
Speaker 1: So that is one thing. If you're expecting to be
Speaker 1: like hiking at a high altitude, it's good to give
Speaker 1: yourself 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 mountaintop, teleport to the lower
Speaker 1: 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, is 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,
Speaker 1: headache and that kind of thing. In much more severe
Speaker 1: cases of altitude sickness, you can have changes in the
Speaker 1: color of the skin, You can have tightness in the chest.
Speaker 1: You can have mental effects like you know, a loss
Speaker 1: of a loss of awareness, loss of coherence, or confusion.
Speaker 1: There can even be coughing up of blood or loss
Speaker 1: of consciousness. And there there are subsequent life threatening conditions
Speaker 1: that can come out of altitude sickness. One is known
Speaker 1: as high altitude pulmonary a demo or hape h ape,
Speaker 1: where altitude sickness leads to a build up of fluid
Speaker 1: in the lungs. This, if you experience it, is life
Speaker 1: threatening and you should act on this immediately. Another is
Speaker 1: high altitude cerebral ademo or hat, when altitude sickness leads
Speaker 1: to swelling of the brain, which is very dangerous and
Speaker 1: of course can cause all kinds of mental disturbances. And
Speaker 1: so obviously one question we might have is if people
Speaker 1: often report seeing things that aren't there in the mountains,
Speaker 1: to what extent can these be traced to known psychological
Speaker 1: or not psychological, known physiological conditions like cerebral dima. He
Speaker 1: absolutely and and as we mentioned in the last episode,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not looking at this is like this
Speaker 1: the soul uh cause or the soul um reason that
Speaker 1: one has mountain myths, but it could certainly a potential
Speaker 1: uh thing that augments them or feeds them in some cases. No,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned previously in the other episodes, there's no
Speaker 1: way that say, psychological disturbances as a result of you know,
Speaker 1: less oxygen reaching the brain or something like that could
Speaker 1: explain all the myths. So one reason for that is
Speaker 1: that many holy mountains aren't high enough to cause any
Speaker 1: altitude related symptoms. I mean, there are holy mountains that
Speaker 1: are just a few hundred meters high. So it's obvious
Speaker 1: that you know, these are these are geographical landmarks and
Speaker 1: they serve you know, they represent things to people. Doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be that somebody went up on there and
Speaker 1: had a hallucination that caused them to found a religion
Speaker 1: or a myth around the mountain. Though, we do want
Speaker 1: to point out that it's possible that in higher mountains,
Speaker 1: people going up into these altitudes could have contributed to beliefs,
Speaker 1: you know, strange supernatural beliefs about some mountains, right, and
Speaker 1: or the idea that in general, mountains provide some sort
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, loosening of the veil between this
Speaker 1: world and the next. Yeah, that's a great way to
Speaker 1: put it. So I want to call attention to one
Speaker 1: recent paper, in particular in the journal Psychological Medicine that
Speaker 1: deals with these phenomena of people high up in the
Speaker 1: mountains having strange and anomalous experiences. This was by Katerina
Speaker 1: Hoofner at All called isolated Psychosis during Exposure to very
Speaker 1: high and extreme altitude Characterization of a new medical entity,
Speaker 1: and this was published in So the authors here have
Speaker 1: examined about eighty three documented cases among reports from alpine expeditions,
Speaker 1: and they believe they've identified a new independent condition that's
Speaker 1: separate from altitude sickness and separate from any existing mental disorder.
Speaker 1: It's called isolated high altitude psychosis. Now, of course, psychosis
Speaker 1: is a set of symptoms and luty, I have, right, wait,
Speaker 1: what you 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 are in play, right. So
Speaker 1: the authors examined a list of documented cases of mountaineering,
Speaker 1: and they looked for signs of high altitude psychosis, and
Speaker 1: then they cross reference this to see whether there were
Speaker 1: always concurrent symptoms of physiological distress from high altitudes, such
Speaker 1: as high altitude cerebral a demo or hey. Obviously you
Speaker 1: 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 un fortunately a case where the numbers are
Speaker 1: not 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, five hundred meters,
Speaker 1: which is a totally different criterion than the last thing, obviously,
Speaker 1: so we're not going apple stapples here. We're just seeing
Speaker 1: what there is to to see about hallucinations at altitude.
Speaker 1: Brewger at All in n quote found hallucinatory experiences in
Speaker 1: seven of eight, or eighty eight percent of world class
Speaker 1: climbers who reached altitudes above eight thousand, five hundred meters
Speaker 1: without supplementary oxygen. Obviously, this is a pretty wild fluctuation,
Speaker 1: and I don't know for sure, but I guess the
Speaker 1: discrepancy here has to do with the methods they're using
Speaker 1: to select cases in these different studies. Right, you'd probably
Speaker 1: get very different numbers if you just check to see
Speaker 1: if climbers self reports psychosis versus say, proactively asking them
Speaker 1: if they've had psychosis. Yeah, this is one of those
Speaker 1: spreads of numbers that you know brings to mind the whole, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it just depends on how you torture the numbers,
Speaker 1: what kind of story you're going to get out of
Speaker 1: them exactly. I mean, I think one of the problems
Speaker 1: here is that we don't have anything consistent to work
Speaker 1: with going into the study. So so they had to
Speaker 1: try to come up with with the method of their own,
Speaker 1: and they know it's not perfect, but it's just to
Speaker 1: sort of get a rough idea of where to start
Speaker 1: looking at this problem. So in the present study, the
Speaker 1: authors found first of all, that psychosis of some kind
Speaker 1: often happens when you're at high altitude. Their sample, which
Speaker 1: they did from consulting existing literature, yielded a result that
Speaker 1: found quote hallucinations occurred in forty two percent or thirty
Speaker 1: five out of eighty three of the episodes that they
Speaker 1: surveyed at a mean altitude of seven thousand, two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty meters, and of these episodes, thirty four percent
Speaker 1: or twelve out of thirty five. Uh. The hallucinations occurred
Speaker 1: at the same time that there are signs that the
Speaker 1: person had a cerebral demo or HACE. They determined that
Speaker 1: high altitude psychosis can happen together with HACE or with
Speaker 1: other physiological effects, or without them. Therefore, they concluded that
Speaker 1: isolated high altitude psychosis or eyehap your coining should be
Speaker 1: considered an independent psychological condition related to high altitude and
Speaker 1: not just as a possible symptom of altitude sickness. And finally,
Speaker 1: they concluded that high altitude psychosis is associated with an
Speaker 1: increased risk of accidents or near accidents. That's kind of
Speaker 1: not surprising. Uh. Now they propose some hypothetical causes for
Speaker 1: these non HACE cases of high altitude psychosis. One would
Speaker 1: be like social and sensory deprivation in conjunction with psychological stress.
Speaker 1: Stress is often a common inciting factor for people who
Speaker 1: don't otherwise have him into illness to have hallucinations. Right,
Speaker 1: and then, of course, it's so varied depending on how
Speaker 1: much stress an individual is going to have in a
Speaker 1: given circumstance, and then how that stress is affecting their
Speaker 1: performance and their mental capacity. Yeah, and then you add
Speaker 1: social and sensory deprivation to that. They don't have anybody
Speaker 1: else there to talk to if their climbing alone, or
Speaker 1: or they have limited numbers of people there with them. Uh,
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 seeing. Another potential, uh cause they site is quote
Speaker 1: dysfunction of the temporal parietal junction and angular gyrus due
Speaker 1: to hypoxia, hypoglycemia and cold. And then finally they say, well,
Speaker 1: another possibility is just that HACE 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: hate 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 a about your your your your feelings
Speaker 1: of physical and mental health. Yeah, and of course cerebral
Speaker 1: adema is like that, that's really dangerous, you know, like
Speaker 1: if if you have this, you should be getting treated
Speaker 1: for it. That's not like a time to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll just power through and try going up to the summit. Now,
Speaker 1: this is interesting going back to what Frank Smith and
Speaker 1: the others have talked about with with their experience of
Speaker 1: what's known as third Man syndrome. The authors here found
Speaker 1: that when climbers reported perceptual disturbances of various kinds, the majority,
Speaker 1: though not all of them, but the majority of them
Speaker 1: were either neutral or even helpful and comforting. For example,
Speaker 1: a hallucinated climbing companion who protects and guides them, or
Speaker 1: 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. Climbers at 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,
Speaker 1: obviously there appears to be some weakness in the selection
Speaker 1: criteria for cases. But I guess in this kind of
Speaker 1: study you're limited by the fact that you can't just
Speaker 1: stick people, you know, random test subjects at the top
Speaker 1: of a mountain and see if they undergo psychosis. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're Also the authors point out there is survivor
Speaker 1: bias at play, right, We're hearing the stories of people
Speaker 1: who were able to report their stories, some people who
Speaker 1: did not succumb on the mountain or experience some sort
Speaker 1: of a fatal accident, or didn't have somebody with them
Speaker 1: who got to report what happened. Yeah, they say, for
Speaker 1: future studies, you you could perhaps simulate some conditions like
Speaker 1: this in chambers that simulate altitude with low oxygen or
Speaker 1: low atmospheric pressure. Also, you don't need to have a
Speaker 1: huge or hugely random number of cases if you just
Speaker 1: want to establish that sometimes people report psychosis at high altitudes.
Speaker 1: With no record of altitude sickness or cute sickness like
Speaker 1: he s now. We mentioned already that that one of
Speaker 1: the other factors here is that not all sacred mountains
Speaker 1: are enormous skyscraping um uh, you know, monuments to the
Speaker 1: sky God, right, not all. Most sacred mountains are probably
Speaker 1: not even tall enough for people to be reaching the
Speaker 1: same kinds of altitudes that are in this study, though
Speaker 1: some are. The authors your point out that most of
Speaker 1: these reports of symptoms reminiscent of psychosis among mountain climbers
Speaker 1: come from very high and extreme altitudes, so like thirty
Speaker 1: five to fifty meters or even above. So there're gonna
Speaker 1: be tons of holy mountains around the world that that
Speaker 1: do not even reach these altitudes. Nobody could could climb
Speaker 1: high enough to be at the altitudes like the ones
Speaker 1: being studied in this in this research, so i'd say
Speaker 1: whether the physiological or psychological effects of altitude contribute to
Speaker 1: these types of religious beliefs in some cases, especially at
Speaker 1: higher peaks, It's hard to know for sure, but absolutely
Speaker 1: it seems possible and even attempting. Origin story for some
Speaker 1: holy mountains and sacred peaks around the world yeah, one thing,
Speaker 1: and I may come back to this, the whole idea
Speaker 1: that most of these reported cases of another of this
Speaker 1: uh you know, this third man or what have you,
Speaker 1: is going to be neutral or beneficial. And indeed, when
Speaker 1: we look at all these different myths about holy mountains,
Speaker 1: um is, so many of them are about like the
Speaker 1: gods living there um. Like I wanted to find more
Speaker 1: mountain monsters. I truly did. I'm always looking for the monsters.
Speaker 1: And not to say there are not mountain monsters, certainly
Speaker 1: there um. There are traditions of things coming down from
Speaker 1: the mountains, crampits, etcetera. But it kind of seems like
Speaker 1: they're they're weighted in favor of at least the neutral deities,
Speaker 1: neutral spirits and what have you, uh, and and even
Speaker 1: beneficial beings as opposed to the monsters of say um
Speaker 1: Mount doom Um or the lonely mountain. And Tolkien, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we can. We will explore mountain monsters a little
Speaker 1: bit today, but maybe we can explore it more in
Speaker 1: the future. I'm just now I didn't think about this
Speaker 1: when we were preparing, but I just now remembered the
Speaker 1: mountain trolls of Iceland. Oh, that's right. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take a quick break. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll look at another study and we'll move
Speaker 1: on to a particular mountain creature that, yes, you might qualify,
Speaker 1: you might describe as a monster. Thank, alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right, what have we gotten next to? Robert? All right?
Speaker 1: So I was looking at a study this is one
Speaker 1: that you found. 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, well,
Speaker 1: you describe it and then we can discuss. Ok. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This one was titled why revel Lations have occurred on
Speaker 1: Mountains Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience. This was published
Speaker 1: in Medical Hypotheses from Autoto back It Old Land, SIB
Speaker 1: and 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 prefrontal 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. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Judaism, the burning bush uh this is where God
Speaker 1: speaks through the burning bush. This is from Exodus. Christianity,
Speaker 1: there's the transfiguration from the Book of Math to you.
Speaker 1: This is a in which Jesus's divine nature is revealed
Speaker 1: to onlookers. And then in Islam there's also the point
Speaker 1: where Allah speaks to the prophet Muhammad, and that is
Speaker 1: also like a mountain revelation. Now, one of the problems
Speaker 1: here is getting into the idea of insufficient altitudes, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'd seen the study brought up on a science
Speaker 1: blog somewhere, and I thought, um, it was interesting because
Speaker 1: it's touching on this question we're asking. But I saw
Speaker 1: it in the context of it being ridiculed because the
Speaker 1: main mountains that it's talking about aren't really that hot,
Speaker 1: you know, So they're not like super high mountains that
Speaker 1: would be likely to cause altitude sickness, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not dealing with him. Alayan peaks here, right, Um,
Speaker 1: this is what the paper says though about the idea
Speaker 1: of moderate altitudes. They said, although the revelations discussed here
Speaker 1: had occurred in moderate altitudes, it may be assumed that
Speaker 1: in subjects who are prone to mystical experiences, already moderate
Speaker 1: altitudes are sufficient to trigger revelation like experiences and revelations.
Speaker 1: So the argument here, then, I guess is, is, first
Speaker 1: of all, you know, not not everyone's gonna have the
Speaker 1: same reaction to high altitude like we've discussed, and that
Speaker 1: even moderate high altitude they're arguing, could be sufficient. Potentially,
Speaker 1: this is one of those more research needed areas, but
Speaker 1: it could be enough to push people's minds toward mystical experiences,
Speaker 1: especially if those minds are already uh susceptible to say,
Speaker 1: hallucination to voices or to the experience of the supernatural.
Speaker 1: And then the the the remembrance of supernatural experience. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny 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: don't imagine there could be this is room for a
Speaker 1: lot of theological discussion, uh, you know, in each of
Speaker 1: these three religions. But but yeah, but all three of
Speaker 1: these even as we as we were mentioning them, uh,
Speaker 1: we 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 yetti 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 for discovered one.
Speaker 1: What was it the Was there 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's like a
Speaker 1: costume or something. Right now, the yetie in modern Western culture,
Speaker 1: it has become just kind of a Himalayan variant of
Speaker 1: the sasquatch. You know, if I say yetie, you may
Speaker 1: just picture a big foot or skunk gape, whatever the
Speaker 1: regional variation of this creature is. And I do think
Speaker 1: that is important as we're moving forward to to think
Speaker 1: about the fact that there are variations of the wild
Speaker 1: man uh being in various cultures. Basically like a bipedal
Speaker 1: creature covered in hair that is seen all around the world,
Speaker 1: but has distinct origins in each case, right right, Yes,
Speaker 1: But I was looking. I wanted to get a little
Speaker 1: like a better snapshot of the this ape like beast
Speaker 1: um as far as like Himalayan traditions go. So I
Speaker 1: ran across a very very insightful piece titled Boutanese Tales
Speaker 1: of the Yettie by Kunzang Codin. Tales of the creature
Speaker 1: exist through the Himalayan region, and uh. The author points
Speaker 1: to the different names that are given to this entity.
Speaker 1: So into Tibet, there's gangs Me or glacier man. There's
Speaker 1: me Champo or strong man, and meet chin Po or
Speaker 1: great man Um. The sherpas Uh called it Yetie. The
Speaker 1: lep Shaws call it chew moon or snow goblin. I
Speaker 1: like that one, or Hello Moon or mountain goblin. And
Speaker 1: Nepaul there's Nilemu or Banmanchi. He didn't provide a translation
Speaker 1: translation for those, but I'm assuming some treatment on these
Speaker 1: various ideas, you know. Uh. And then the mutiniese say,
Speaker 1: me goy or strongman are also gred po. So you know,
Speaker 1: we get this idea of something like figure of of
Speaker 1: savage cold strength with possible. Um, you know, Goblin e
Speaker 1: qualities as well. So Childen writes that the megy idea
Speaker 1: here it dates back to the pre Buddhist Bond writings.
Speaker 1: The UH is the pre Buddhist animist religion. I believe
Speaker 1: we mentioned this briefly in the last episode. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: indigenous religion of Tibet. It came up because Mount Kai
Speaker 1: Loosh or Mount Kailassa in UH in the Himalayas is
Speaker 1: a peak that is holy, not just to Hindus who
Speaker 1: believe uh, some of whom believe that the Lord Shiva
Speaker 1: and Parvati dwell on top of Mount Kailash, but it's
Speaker 1: also holly to some Buddhists, chains and members of the
Speaker 1: Bond religion, the Tibetan indigenous religion and uh and apparently
Speaker 1: some Bond rituals call for the blood of Amigoy slain
Speaker 1: with a sharp weapon. Whoa, yeah, so yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is a pre existing idea. But then you get some
Speaker 1: Westerners involved, right, and then you get this idea exported
Speaker 1: and uh and and reignited in the Western mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: So British traveler William Hugh, Knight of the Royals, the
Speaker 1: Royal Society's club recorded a Yeti siding in nineteen o
Speaker 1: three on his way back to India from Tibet. And
Speaker 1: then there was another siding in eighteen twenty five by
Speaker 1: a Westerner by a Greek zoologist in a Tombazi, who
Speaker 1: described it like this. Unquestionably, the figure in outline was
Speaker 1: exactly like a human being walking upright and stopping occasionally
Speaker 1: to uproot or pull. It's some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It
Speaker 1: showed up dark against the snow, and as far as
Speaker 1: I could make out, wore no cloth. And then later
Speaker 1: you had print sightings and UH and so forth in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties that helped popularize the idea of the
Speaker 1: Yeti in the West. UM various films UH. Certainly television
Speaker 1: series like In Search Of helped to contribute to this idea,
Speaker 1: and today the interest interest in the Yetti continues, but
Speaker 1: there remains no proof that the creature exists. In fact,
Speaker 1: examination of preserved evidence of Yetti's tends to lean toward
Speaker 1: the intentional or accidental misinterpretation of of another animal or
Speaker 1: its handiwork. So DNA work from the past few years,
Speaker 1: for instance, points duh you know directly to at Asian
Speaker 1: bears as the source of the samples. So in all
Speaker 1: of this and any anytime we're talking about a YETI sighting,
Speaker 1: even in like the Himalayan region. You know, we can't
Speaker 1: discount hoaxes and various other reasons, but we when we
Speaker 1: consider the potential effects of hypoxia and uh and and
Speaker 1: these other like high altitude situations, which all I think
Speaker 1: in some degree or related to hypox Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we we might be talking more of a full blown
Speaker 1: hallucination and then it lower altitudes, the effect could just
Speaker 1: be enough to make the individual you know, see what
Speaker 1: they want to see when they glimpse a normal animal
Speaker 1: or another human being. So I found this idea of
Speaker 1: first of all, there is I did see this idea
Speaker 1: echoed in um Searching for the Yetty Mysterious Monsters two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, book by General for Rithkin. Now this is
Speaker 1: a kid's book. I want to be about this. So
Speaker 1: you normally we don't cite a lot of of of
Speaker 1: of kids book, but this one was. Actually I was
Speaker 1: reading through it. It's pretty good. Uh. It seems to
Speaker 1: to to balance the sort of mystical what if with
Speaker 1: a lot of legitimate skepticism. Uh. And then also I
Speaker 1: did see this idea also echoed in a couple of
Speaker 1: journals and books such as High Altitude Medical Science by
Speaker 1: you Dah Kushma and Vocal. And I think there is
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, there a lot of similarities between,
Speaker 1: for instance, that that yetty account that I read earlier
Speaker 1: and accounts of a third man right like here there
Speaker 1: was some other creature there and uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't human, but it was. It was hanging out, it
Speaker 1: was there. I glimpsed it. And then once you have
Speaker 1: this and and this is of course on top of
Speaker 1: a pre existing idea of there being some sort of
Speaker 1: a yetty creature in the mountains. Uh. And then once
Speaker 1: this idea gets becomes a part of of Western culture
Speaker 1: as well, then there's more room to misinterpret the the
Speaker 1: evidence or even uh, your senses. Now, I wonder if
Speaker 1: the if like a psychological thing kind of like the
Speaker 1: the climbing companion, the third man syndrome is going on here,
Speaker 1: what do you think it might be that would cause
Speaker 1: people to see a bipedal human like creature covered in
Speaker 1: hair as opposed to seeing you know, another just another
Speaker 1: human dress like them or to seeing like a dead
Speaker 1: relative or something, you know, one of these common hallucinations
Speaker 1: of comforting figures. Well, on the hair thing, I think
Speaker 1: certainly of one glimpse to bear that could throw you off.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've ever seen a bear in the
Speaker 1: in the flesh, you know it can be this weird,
Speaker 1: surreal and frightening experience. I mean, hopefully a little frightening,
Speaker 1: because as far as I'm concerned, if you encounter a
Speaker 1: bear and you don't have like a certain amount of
Speaker 1: fear that you're doing it wrong. Oh, I think there
Speaker 1: are good reasons why we see bears as objects of
Speaker 1: prehistoric religions. I mean, I think it's quite clear that
Speaker 1: that bear worship in various forms goes back a long way.
Speaker 1: That's one of those where it's kind of obvious why
Speaker 1: that would happen. Is this kind of like too many people.
Speaker 1: The bear would clearly seem to be like the king
Speaker 1: of nature. Yeah, this base that can also rise up
Speaker 1: on two legs and stand like us, that is seemingly
Speaker 1: slow and lethargic, but then full of inner g and ferocity.
Speaker 1: That also we got into this in our Winter People
Speaker 1: episode a couple of years back. A creature than in
Speaker 1: some cases uh digs its own grave and seems to
Speaker 1: die and then re emerge with life in the spring. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem quite mystical. You can totally see why
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 jettie and take one more break and
Speaker 1: we come back. We'll continue to discuss the topic. Thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. Now. We've been discussing our records
Speaker 1: of delusions, hallucinations and other just various strange sightings and
Speaker 1: encounters that seem to occur often at high altitude. Some
Speaker 1: possible explanations for what might be going on physiologically, neurologically,
Speaker 1: psychologically there, but we're gonna continue with this now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So really a couple of other just to examples of
Speaker 1: not mountain climbers, but individuals encountering some sort of phantom stranger. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a case of uh, Sir Ernest Shackleton, um
Speaker 1: he uh uh he encountered such an apparition. Also, Antarctic
Speaker 1: explore Peter Hillary Um actually encountered a presence that manifested
Speaker 1: as the double of his dead mother. Oh yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole ancestors appearing. Yeah, which which is important to to
Speaker 1: think 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 the hallucinations after they occur.
Speaker 1: Takes all of this into account. So um he he
Speaker 1: touched on all of this, and he pointed to four
Speaker 1: or so scientific explanations. Uh. That that that, he says,
Speaker 1: really really get to the heart of what's going on
Speaker 1: when when people like this encounter um uh some sort
Speaker 1: of spectral apparition or a third man, et cetera. First
Speaker 1: of all, isolation triggers the mind to hallucinate the normal
Speaker 1: feeling we get when we're working or traveling among other people,
Speaker 1: which seems to be a standard here. Uh. Then the
Speaker 1: rational 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 schema. This is the brain's image of our
Speaker 1: body and what it's doing is tricked into thinking you
Speaker 1: have a double, um, and ever up for a game
Speaker 1: of rationalization and story making. The brain then constructs a
Speaker 1: 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 yetty, 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.
Speaker 1: Then there's the mind schema. This is our psychological sense
Speaker 1: of self, and it's simply coordinating independent neural networks to
Speaker 1: solve the problem with survival and extreme situations. And the
Speaker 1: hallucination comes out of its function of making us feel
Speaker 1: like we're a single mind. Ah yeah, uh. But then oh,
Speaker 1: on the on the sleep deprivation, uh situation. He uh.
Speaker 1: He points to Charles A. Lindbergh's Transatlantic flight UM and
Speaker 1: Shermer quotes his writings, quote, the fuselage behind me becomes
Speaker 1: filled with ghostly presences, vaguely outlined forms, transparent moving writing,
Speaker 1: waitless with me in this plane, conversing and advising on
Speaker 1: my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving
Speaker 1: me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life. UM. Shermer
Speaker 1: also shared that his own brother in law, man by
Speaker 1: the him of Fred zeal Or Zile experienced a sense
Speaker 1: presence on both of his everest climbs. The first case
Speaker 1: involved frostbite and the lack of oxygen, and the second
Speaker 1: entailed his collapse from dehydration and hypoxia. Quote telling Lee,
Speaker 1: when I asked his opinion as a medical doctor, impossible
Speaker 1: hemispheric differences to account for such phenomena, Fred noted both
Speaker 1: times the sense was on my right side, perhaps related
Speaker 1: to my being left handed. The sense presence maybe the
Speaker 1: left hemisphere interpreter's explanation for right hemisphere anomali. Oh, this
Speaker 1: takes us back to our split brain episodes. That the
Speaker 1: idea of the the interpreter. Now normally this would be
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere interpreter. This Michael Gazaniga's idea of the
Speaker 1: interpreter being this function in the brain that sort of
Speaker 1: ties together disparate neural phenomena into one experience that that
Speaker 1: we sense as a single, unified whole and sort of
Speaker 1: tells a story that makes it all part of the
Speaker 1: same game. Where in fact, you know, the hemispheres, as
Speaker 1: was shown in the split brain experiments, can behave quite
Speaker 1: independently of one another. Yeah, but but we've got this
Speaker 1: 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 all anytime we discuss altitudes and pressure, I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of the fact that human beings are not a
Speaker 1: creature that evolved to thrive on the Earth. They're they're
Speaker 1: a creature that that evolved to thrive in a very
Speaker 1: thin atmospheric layer on the Earth, and and then only
Speaker 1: within certain ranges. And when we get out of those ranges,
Speaker 1: when we get out of there are layer that we
Speaker 1: we thrive in, we can run into problems. The other
Speaker 1: thing I'm reminded of is, Joe, have you ever been
Speaker 1: to a like a children's musical performance, preferably a band
Speaker 1: or an orchestra. I've been in that performance. I've been
Speaker 1: to one too. So you know how ideally if everybody's
Speaker 1: doing doing their job and the you know, the conductor's
Speaker 1: 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 that's kind of what's what's being described here at
Speaker 1: at high out too, 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 Gazanga'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 it,
Speaker 1: even though you are also the thing that's messing up.
Speaker 1: All right. So I'm not a mountain climber, I'm not
Speaker 1: a mountaineer. I've visited mountains. I've had I think I
Speaker 1: discussed like maybe a very limited reaction to an increase
Speaker 1: in altitude that was slightly noteworthy, But I know we
Speaker 1: have to have some mountaineers out there who are listening
Speaker 1: to the to these episodes or our 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 were 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 crull 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 ecosystem of
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, um, 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. That's 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.
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