Just Minds, a Garden, and a River – An Afternoon with Susan Blackmore

Some experiences rewire you a little. Not in dramatic, cinematic ways, but quietly – a bit like how sunlight soaks into your skin before you've noticed its warmth.

Last week, I sat in Dr Susan Blackmore's garden, pinching myself (well, more precisely my nose - to reality check). But no, this wasn't a dream – despite having had a few about exactly this in the nights before our meeting.

Why? Well, she's been an inspiration, an intellectual hero of mine since I first stumbled across her work as a teenager – the psychologist who started with out-of-body experiences and ended up reshaping how we think about consciousness, memes, and the illusion of self.

For me personally, she was one of the thinkers who saved a younger and more naïve me from wasting years chasing red herrings down spiritual cul-de-sacs, and helped redirect my attention toward the genuine wonders of reality. My career as a lucid dreaming teacher owes a lot to rational minds like Susan's. In short, her rigorous approach to these questions has influenced how I've developed my own work in consciousness exploration.

You might know her from The Meme Machine, her textbooks on consciousness, or perhaps from one of her TED talks. But what doesn't come through on paper is her warmth, her intellectual honesty, her complete lack of pretension – and a delightful sense of silliness that wouldn't be out of place in a classic Zen story.

This wasn't an interview by any typical "influencer" definition (and no, I don't consider myself an influencer... but you know, that word's a thing now).

There was no studio. No plan. No structure. Just tea in her garden, birdsong, and two people working in similar spheres, under a beautiful wisteria, following the threads of conversation wherever they wandered.

When the microphones died two-thirds of the way through (because of course they did – sod's law – and yes, it mirrored the dreams I'd had - and no, that wasn't a premonition, that's an example of dreams modelling reality potentials), we didn't notice. We were too engaged in conversation.

One thing that really struck me was the way Sue described meditation and consciousness: "You have to take the top layers off."

She explained that decades ago, stoned and exploring her own mind, this phrase came to her. Only recently did she fully understand what it meant – that our minds construct hierarchical models of reality, with raw sensory data at the bottom, and "all this crap" about our importance, goals, and anxieties piled on top.

Meditation, psychedelics, illness (and I'd absolutely add lucid dreaming) – they can strip away those top layers of self-obsession, revealing something more fundamental underneath.

Whether we were discussing free will, dreaming, or the nature of the self, she kept returning to this same core insight: look beneath the stories we tell ourselves.

We also touched on her famous out-of-body experience at 19 that launched her career ("I knew it with such conviction... It wasn't they who proved me wrong. It was me who proved me wrong"), we briefly touched on her debate with Jordan Peterson ("How dare he say I'm not an atheist!"), and why the self seems so real - yet dissolves under scrutiny.

What impressed me most is how she's maintained her intellectual playfulness after decades of deep thinking (which definitely isn't easy – this stuff can gnaw at your sense of meaning).

No defensiveness. No dogma. Just a mind still open to wonder.

After lunch, she casually handed me something unexpected – a gift – original, yellowing copies of Lucidity Letter, the 1980s newsletter that helped shape the early lucid dreaming research community.

They're incredibly rare now (only a handful exist). Yet she handed them over as if it were nothing, like sharing a biscuit. I made an inaudible internal squeak and tried not to overreact – but inside, I was pretty blown-away by the gesture.

Here was someone who influenced my younger mind, offering a quiet act of kindness, totally unprompted.

And then, after all that, she invited me for a swim in the river.

It was 11°C. Freezing. But somehow exactly the right thing to do – no theories, no models, just cold water and present moment (and a fair amount of shivering on my part).

I've shared our full conversation on my channel. It's not flashy. It's not designed to game the algorithm. But if you find yourself drawn to questions about consciousness, reality, and what it means to have a "self", I think you'll find something meaningful there.

It felt genuine. And genuine is becoming increasingly rare.

Watch the full conversation here