The Void Starer: How Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist Discovered Cosmic Love

This isn’t the story of a guru. It’s the story of a pessimistic philosopher who stared into the void — and accidentally caught a glimpse of what psychonauts now call cosmic love.

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May 19, 2025

Arthur Schopenhauer didn’t believe life was beautiful. He believed it was unbearable. That suffering was a fundamental condition of life.

While other philosophers built castles of reason, morality, or progress, Schopenhauer stared into the void — and found a universe driven by blind, relentless suffering. He called it the Will — an insatiable force behind all desire, all striving, all pain.

The world, for Schopenhauer, was not a place to be improved, but endured.

At his worst, Schopenhauer could be downright cruel — once pushing a neighbor down a flight of stairs. She sued, won, and for the rest of his life, he called the court-ordered compensation an "annuity for the shrieker."

And yet, from this bleak foundation, Schopenhauer uncovered something profound — a strange kind of compassion that arises when we stop fighting, surrender the ego, and recognize the suffering in others as our own.

If this sounds familiar to anyone who’s taken a heroic dose of mushrooms — it should.

Because long before psychedelics were known for dissolving ego death and unleashing cosmic love, Schopenhauer described something eerily similar — a path to transcendence forged not through hope or bliss, but through the raw confrontation with suffering itself.

This is not the story of a blissed-out guru.

It’s the story of a bitter buzzkill of a philosopher… who accidentally stumbled upon a deep psychedelic truth.

Dark Metaphysics

At the heart of his philosophy lies the concept of the Will — a blind, irrational force, always desiring, always demanding, never satiated.

It's life’s engine, but it does not think.

It. Does. Not. Care.

Drawing on Kant’s metaphysics, Schopenhauer argued that the world we experience is not the world as it is, but as it appears to us filtered through the structures of our mind.

The Will is not a personal drive or a choice. It's a relentless force that pulses through everything. It’s what causes a plant to reach for sunlight, a storm to rage, or a person to desire, strive, and hunger.

“Awoken to life from the night of unconsciousness, the Will finds itself as an individual in a world without end or limit, among countless individuals who are all striving, suffering, going astray; and it hurries back to the old unconsciousness, as if through a bad dream.”

This is the core of what we might call a dark metaphysics — a vision of reality where striving is endless, fulfillment is impossible, and suffering is not incidental but essential. Even pleasures, he argued, are only temporary absences of pain. And when the illusion of satisfaction fades, the Will reasserts itself — demanding more.

Suffering, then, is not a glitch in the system — it is the system. Reality is built on a force that never rests, never fulfills, and never stops wanting.

The Will drives everything to strive one way or another.

And, even when we secure what we’ve been chasing, no desire stays satisfied for long. There is no final destination — only the chase. Life becomes a loop of craving and fleeting relief, followed by more craving.

This is why suffering is not a rare event. It’s the default state of any being ruled by the Will.

We are pulled forward by invisible threads of wanting, only to find that every reward dissolves the moment we grasp it.

Despite how grim it might look, Schopenhauer didn’t believe the answer was to ignore this truth or escape it with optimism or faith. Instead, he argued, we must confront suffering directly — and through it, come to recognize the same struggle in others.

That recognition, he said, is the birth of compassion. Not a doctrine or duty, but a felt truth — your pain is my pain too.

Ego Death Before It Was Cool

There comes a moment in the psychedelic experience where the sense of self begins to unravel. The individual that clings to identity, achievements, preferences, and memories begins to dissolve.

In the psychedelic experience, it's called ego death — a (temporary) removal of our attachment to self.

An even better term for this is ego dissolution because the ego doesn’t actually die during the experience — it merely loosens its grip.

In doing so, the experience shows you that it’s possible to separate from the ego and helps you become aware of the delusional world the ego creates for us.

In Schopenhauer’s world(s), ego dissolution is a central part of the denial of the Will.

We’ve established that the Will is the driving force behind nature, desire, and suffering. It’s also the root of the self or ego — the very thing that is, in the psychedelic experience, being overcome.

For Schopenhauer, true enlightenment doesn’t come from achievement, but from surrender. To deny the Will is to stop fighting, to cease desiring, to accept the futility of striving for permanent satisfaction.

Not surprisingly, this is the very process that occurs during psychedelic journeys.

When one lets go and allows the experience to unfold without resistance, peace and understanding often follows. Surrender is not weakness, but insight.

He described a state in which the individual turns away from the demands of the ego/self and is no longer gripped by personal striving. This is not a nihilistic void, but a shift in perspective — a step back from perceiving the self as the center of the universe and having a sense of interconnectedness.

Denial of the Will & Psychedelics

This surrender is a form of the denial of the Will, which in turn appears to be a philosophical analogue to what is experienced when psychedelics erode the walls of the self, leaving behind a startling clarity — an intimate experience with reality unfiltered by egotistical desires.

What emerges isn't ecstasy — it's quiet compassion.

Once the illusion of individuality is overcome, the suffering of others no longer feels distant. Their pain is felt as one’s own. Compassion, then, isn’t a moral ideal but a natural consequence of seeing behind the veil more clearly.

This shared experience suggests that what some encounter in altered states isn’t just emotional spillover — it’s a brush with something true: The self is not separate. And empathy isn’t taught — it blooms in the absence of ego.

There’s a curious humility on both paths. Neither celebrates transcendence as triumph; both recognize it as surrender. In stepping outside the self’s orbit, we do not escape suffering; we recognize it more fully, in ourselves and in others.

But that recognition isn’t despair. It’s the beginning of something else:

Compassion. Connection. Cosmic love.

Psychedelics may offer a glimpse. Schopenhauer offered a framework. Together, they point toward a kind of wisdom that doesn’t require belief — only attention, and a willingness to let go.

Even he, the original buzzkill mystic and cosmic pessimist, couldn’t resist putting it poetically in The World as Will and Representation (1819):

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.”

That’s not just dry humor. It’s the recognition that once you’ve seen through the Will — seen how all our grasping, wanting, and becoming is of a second order in reality — you are free to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

The Final Step: The Compassionate Pessimist

At first glance, Schopenhauer seems like the last person you'd expect to talk about love.

This is a man who was famously bitter, called the world “hell,” pushed a neighbor down the stairs, and built an entire philosophy around the inevitability of suffering.

And yet…

He explained that when we recognize the suffering in another and feel it as our own — not intellectually but viscerally — we momentarily pierce the illusion of the world and peek behind the Veil of Maya — behind the world as Will and Representation.

In compassion, the boundary between self and other collapses.

The moral impulse is then born not from duty, not from the social contract, but from direct felt recognition:

Your pain is also mine.

You are that.

Under the influence of substances like psilocybin or LSD an equivalent outcome is achieved.

The dissolution of the self leads to a merging with everything and a tidal wave of empathy, interconnectedness, and love.

What makes Schopenhauer’s view profound — and relevant — is that this insight doesn’t emerge from a place of bliss, but from facing suffering honestly.

There’s no rosy optimism here. He doesn’t pretend life is good. It is not. And that is exactly why compassion matters.

In a world defined by suffering, the choice to be kind — not out of hope, but out of understanding — becomes liberating.

True compassion doesn’t grow from naive hope, but from unflinching clarity.

In moments of love, empathy, and compassion, we break the spell of the Will — and at that moment, we are free.

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