The Inner World, the Last Unexplored Land: Psychedelics, the Mind and Diving Deep
Are psychedelics good for mental health? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, answers as a philosopher rather than a clinic: in Project 2049 Vol.0 he describes the psychedelic state as a rebooting of the default mode network, after which the brain rebuilds itself, and he calls the inner world the last frontier. Not medicine but the question of what the mind is, from the East, by a thinker alive today and young.
Not a clinic: a philosopher's question
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Two people against the community, 2026-01-28): as the medical use of psychedelics gains momentum, the question approaches the essential ground of our being, and the territory psychedelics open up is the final frontier to be faced by dissolving the divide between West and East.
Answering this question feels to me like approaching the essential ground of our being—an inquiry none of us can avoid as the medical use of psychedelics gains momentum around the world.
In particular, I believe that the territory psychedelics open up, which resists full explanation by any single method, is the final frontier we must confront by dissolving the divide between West and East and working together.
Rebooting the DMN
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Yohaku and Diving Deep: Japan's Thought of Dissolution, 2026-10-02): the state closest to the dissolution of time and space is the psychedelic one: a rebooting of the default mode network, after which the brain rebuilds itself over days, weeks, months or years.
The state closest to it is the psychedelic one.
What follows is a phenomenon called neuroplasticity.
It is a rebooting of the DMN, and from there the brain begins rebuilding itself over days or weeks, and in some people over months or years.
Put plainly, it dissolves and then reconstructs.
Dissolution is not loss but a way of seeing things as they are, by dissolving the split between subject and object.
The last unexplored land is within
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (The last unexplored land is within, 2025-12-26): beside the outer world of family, community, society and government lies the inner world, the last frontier, which opens out boundless and vast; learning takes effect only in the process of deepening self-awareness.
But there is also the inner world, the last frontier for us, which opens out boundless and vast.
By nature the inner world is the outer world, and the outer world is the inner world.
Learning takes effect only in the process of deepening self-awareness through that reflection.
The oldest unanswered question
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (The mind is the oldest unanswered question, 2026-01-23): even science at its present height cannot say what the mind is, and the ancients had already examined its core; in the age of AI that inquiry is ours to resume.
On mind, even science at its present height cannot give an answer.
Can you, in fact, say clearly what your own mind is?
Diving deep, not transcending
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Yohaku and Diving Deep: Japan's Thought of Dissolution, 2026-10-02): he advocates not transcendence but diving deep, a way of going into daily life and the self rather than climbing above them.
So I advocate not transcendence but diving deep.
Yet this is not something anyone can do today or tomorrow.
The unconscious as what was cast off when we were torn from nature
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Two people against the community, 2026-01-28): human consciousness was born from an originary event, alienation from nature, and the rift that opened was not a void but a fullness that primal human beings translated into anxiety.
Suppose we call the remnants cast off when human beings were alienated from nature "the unconscious."
Mine is that human consciousness was born out of an originary event: alienation from nature.
When human beings were first alienated from nature, consciousness arose in the gap—the taut space of tension—where human existence was torn away from the natural world.
Consciousness was born to paper over the existential dread of being torn away in that primal alienation, because the rift that opened was not a void at all, but a fullness translated by primal human beings into anxiety.
Exploring the world of psychedelics is nothing less than approaching that overflowing fullness directly.
Essays to read
- Two people against the community — What is the Old Testament really about? Takahiro Mitsui argues two people bound together are the one light that can extinguish the community's illusion — the unconscious and psychedelics, read from Japanese thought.
- The mind is the oldest unanswered question — What is the mind? Takahiro Mitsui maintains science cannot say, the ancients examined its core, and in an age of AI that inquiry is ours to resume — an intuition Takahiro Mitsui reached while exploring the Jomon, the oldest layer of ancient Japan.
- The last unexplored land is within — What is the inner world, the last frontier? Takahiro Mitsui on the inner world as the last frontier, and why knowledge piled up without being lived is not learning.
- Escaping the dopamine world — How do I get out of dopamine addiction and social media? Introspection is a long practice, not a pleasure, Takahiro Mitsui argues, and the world is dividing by who escapes the dopamine trap: introspection as one of the essential skills for surviving a harsh age.
- Stillness is the weapon of the next age — Is silence the next generation's weapon? Takahiro Mitsui, a contemporary Japanese philosopher (b. 1991) writing every week, argues quantity over quality held only in a dopamine economy; the next age rewards stillness, trained through introspection, used with AI.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday