Mainstream science attributes these altered-state experiences to humanity’s shared neural architecture, which evolved to recognize potential dangers in the environment. A 2025 neuroscientific review reframes Jung’s work as the interaction between brains: neural patterns that may be shared across individuals and shaped by social learning and neural attunement. From this perspective, the jester or the cowboy deer merely reflect shared neural architecture designed by common evolutionary pressures. “It may be that, for various evolutionary reasons, such potentially threatening stimuli have become hardwired into our brains,” French says. Some emerging theoretical models compare it to Jung’s collective unconscious, which individual consciousness taps into, bit by bit.