Last year summer I took some time out to produce and direct a short documentary film. The subject matter was aligned with one of the things that I write about here - philosophy of mind.
Years ago, when I was a psychology undergraduate, I was in halls, having an evening of alcohol-fuelled high jinks in the room of one my neighbours. He was a Greek mathematics student and he had invited some of his fellow Greeks along.
At a certain point in proceedings, one of the other Greeks (whose name was Anastasius) turned to me and said
“I’m gonna play a mind game with you”. As a psych student I was more than up for that.
“Imagine a door” he began. He paused for a moment to give me time to think “And then describe it to me”.
I spent the next 10 mins talking about my imagined door. Anastasius would occasionally offer very gentle prompts to help with my creativity. At that point I thought that it was a pretty lame psych game.
Then Anastasius asked me to open the imaginary door and describe what I saw behind it. It was a difficult question to answer. It felt like falling into a black hole of my creativity, so I simply opened the imagined door and blurted out what I saw –
“Nothing, just bright white light”.
Anastasius then told me that the door is meant to describe a person’s attitude to death, and what is behind the door is a representation of what a person feels is beyond death.
My response to his question immediately put me in mind of near-death experience reports of bright light. It intrigued me so much that over the years I played this game with various individuals. The results were always illuminating.
I long knew that I would one day attempt to capture this on film. Last summer (2022) I found myself with a bit of time and some money. I advertised on the r/Sheffield sub of Reddit and asked friends and acquaintances if they would be willing to participate. I only recruited subjects who were naïve about the purpose of the experiment. On one of the filming days, I nabbed a few passers-by off the street and some of these subjects provided some of the most interesting responses.
The results I think, are fascinating especially if viewed in the light of transpersonal theories of consciousness and NDE reports.
The running time of the documentary is 24 mins and 39 seconds and it is available on Vimeo.