The Art of Manliness - #287： The New Frontier of Flow

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so a few years

00:00:18.880 ago i had writer steven kotler on the show to talk about his book the rise of superman

00:00:23.060 which is all about the science of flow that state of being fully immersed in the energy

00:00:27.940 and enjoyment of an activity since then steven has worked with high-level performance athletes

00:00:32.880 tech ceos and even navy seals as part of his flow genome project an organization dedicated to

00:00:38.880 helping individuals tap into flow states using the latest psychological research and technology

00:00:42.940 and after rubbing shoulders these various elite performers steven learned that there's an

00:00:47.460 underground movement of individuals who aren't just looking to flow to improve performance but

00:00:51.580 also to seek a state that steven calls ecstasis his latest book shares the research behind this

00:00:57.800 performance enhancing mental state and the extreme measures some folks are going to to get

00:01:01.760 into it it's called stealing fire how silicon valley the navy seals and maverick scientists

00:01:07.140 are revolutionizing the way we live and work today on the show steven shares what ecstasis is and why

00:01:13.620 it improves performance in sports business and even in military combat he then goes on to describe the

00:01:19.540 four accelerating forces in science that are allowing individuals to hack into ecstasis state more easily

00:01:24.740 and these include things like mind-altering drugs and zapping your brain with electricity

00:01:29.280 pretty crazy stuff we end the show discussing how average joes can get into ecstasis as well as the

00:01:35.420 ethical implications of this new ecstasis inducing technologies i mean are we bringing in a brave new

00:01:41.420 world here literally if you want a glimpse of what's coming in the world of performance enhancement in the

00:01:46.080 next 20 years you're not going to want to miss this show after the show's over make sure to check out

00:01:50.660 the show notes at aom.is slash stealing fire

00:01:53.960 steven kotler welcome back to the show thanks for having me good to be with you so we had you on the

00:02:09.880 show a few years ago to talk about your book uh becoming superman it was all about capturing the flow

00:02:15.000 state um you know that moment when you're doing something and things just seem to everything just

00:02:21.760 seems to click time seems to stand still and um you've been doing a lot of things with the flow

00:02:26.880 project trying to help people um get into that flow state but you've got a new book out where you you

00:02:32.520 delve deeper um i think it's related maybe maybe it's not i think it is related i mean how does this new

00:02:38.220 book stealing fire um sort of continue the work you started in becoming superman about getting into

00:02:45.700 this flow state it's a great place to start so let me quick overview um of stealing fire just so

00:02:55.060 people can orient for a second stealing fire is a book about a four trillion dollar underground

00:03:00.840 revolution and people hacking states of consciousness to massively increase performance

00:03:06.500 i started down this road as you mentioned in a book called the rise of superman which examined uh

00:03:13.600 flow states which are one particular altered state that have you know about 150 year track record

00:03:20.600 of kind of massively improving performance and about 150 years worth of science to kind of back that up

00:03:26.220 and i wrote rise of superman and and where stealing fire really came from and how these things link up

00:03:32.660 is you know my co-author in stealing fire is jamie wheel and together we uh we co-founded and run the

00:03:38.520 flow genome project we train organizations in the use of um flow states for performance and you know we

00:03:47.080 before stealing fire came out it was top athletes in the military primarily people with a like a

00:03:52.920 competitive interest in high performance shall we say and after stealing or after rises who ran came

00:03:58.520 out the work went kind of wild and everywhere and suddenly we were on wall street all the time and

00:04:05.140 we were on main street and we were talking to bankers and stockbrokers and biohackers and everybody

00:04:10.820 could possibly imagine a fortune 100 companies and didn't really matter where we went afterwards we'd give

00:04:17.320 our talk we'd present on flow and afterwards people come up to us and go yeah flow stuff is really cool

00:04:22.740 really interesting i think i'm doing some of it and i want to start doing more of it but what do you

00:04:26.980 think about blank and we met wall street guys who were zapping their brains with electrodes to alter

00:04:34.140 their consciousness before they were going on to the trading floor because it helped them make better

00:04:38.700 decisions faster decisions we met navy seals who were going on two-week science meditation retreats

00:04:46.120 we'd be at fortune 100 companies in silicon valley and we'd meet whole teams of engineers that were

00:04:51.660 micro dosing on psychedelics or whole teams of engineers that were going skydiving on the weekend

00:04:57.340 or and on and on and on everywhere we went people were using all these different technologies to sort

00:05:04.000 of change their state for performance improvement it was lots of different people lots of things going

00:05:09.900 on and they were harnessing more than flow it was it was a larger story than what i was talking

00:05:15.840 about in rise of superman focused on one particular altered state of consciousness but the total link

00:05:22.880 and then i'll shut up for a second but the real link was in decoding the science of flow we ended up

00:05:29.320 with sort of a rosetta stone for a lot of different altered states of consciousness and we basically

00:05:35.160 reproved something that was proved 100 years ago with the birth of psychology when a guy like william

00:05:41.100 james a harvard psychologist said hey there's a whole collection of altered states the so-called

00:05:46.680 ecstatic states um uh flow states psychedelic states meditative states contemplative states the states

00:05:54.540 that yogis seem to get into and you know sexually fueled altered states they all seem to share very

00:06:00.340 similar properties and they all seem to have the same impact on psychology and the same impact on

00:06:05.480 performance 100 years later we've got enough tools in neurobiology at this point to be able to look in

00:06:12.060 the brain and go oh my god he is right so all these things that we're seeing people hack while they are

00:06:19.380 bigger than flow they fit into this larger category of kind of ecstatic techniques things that produce all

00:06:26.640 the experiences that you might find north of happy all right so this is what you call in the book ecstasis

00:06:31.260 this is like what they're trying sort of a general term to describe these altered states yeah we

00:06:36.800 couldn't i mean you know all the freaking terms are loaded with cultural baggage so you know what when

00:06:43.560 we're working with the navy seals one of the guys uh in seal team six use that term and we it caught our

00:06:49.540 attention when you look it up it means literally to stand outside oneself and to be filled with insight

00:06:55.700 and inspiration and the standing outside oneself was accurate because in all the states one of the

00:07:02.160 things they all have in common doesn't matter what technique you use you could be using psychedelics

00:07:06.320 you could be using meditation could be using access work to trigger flow they all make that as you

00:07:11.620 pointed out your sense of self disappears right so you stand outside yourself you change the channel

00:07:17.840 on normal waking consciousness and as it turns out in all these states all of the brain's information

00:07:23.600 processing machinery gets fired up that's where a lot of the heightened performance comes from

00:07:27.580 that's why these are states of insight and information and heightened creative problem solving

00:07:31.980 and so forth so yeah you talked about so some of the traits of ecstasis are you mentioned one the

00:07:36.860 standing outside of yourself uh what is it about the self i guess the ego that prevents us from

00:07:45.840 reaching our top performance it's a it's a great question first of all and and and a very tricky one

00:07:52.020 because for certain we are not advocating hey get rid of your ego um permanently in some kind of

00:08:03.080 yogic eastern philosophy kind of way that doesn't seem to be useful you know the the if you look at kind

00:08:09.740 of all the progress we've made in the past 300 years it starts with the french enlightenment it starts

00:08:14.140 when somebody goes hey the ego the conscious mind that logical rational version of yourself that's the

00:08:20.220 version we should trust we end up with the scientific method the technological revolution and thus the

00:08:25.380 21st century right so we need those egos we just don't need them running the whole show and it turns out

00:08:33.860 switching the channel of consciousness dropping out of where we normally live that ego driven version

00:08:39.180 of ourselves and turning off the self helps solve certain very critical challenges most importantly

00:08:47.620 our creativity and if you think about this this is not hard to imagine the self part of part of the

00:08:54.640 being a human self comes with your inner critic that always on nagging defeatist voice in your head

00:08:58.980 and all of these states that inner critic goes silent so what happens when that happens first of all risk

00:09:06.080 taking goes up um which is really you know often a good thing um simultaneously creativity goes up

00:09:12.880 because you're no longer second guessing all of our neat ideas so it's like the floodgates open and

00:09:19.440 the brain clicks into brainstorming mode very very useful for solving certain kinds of problems gotcha

00:09:25.220 so uh besides the stepping out of yourself other traits of ecstasis are i guess a timelessness or time

00:09:32.320 seems to slow down a bit yep that's that so it helps to understand what's going on in the brain

00:09:39.620 um to talk about these characteristics the first thing that's happening is activity in the prefrontal

00:09:46.340 cortex the part of your brain that houses most of your higher cognitive functions starts to decrease

00:09:52.020 it's an efficiency exchange the brain is trading extra energy that help you focus in the present moment

00:09:58.200 um for non-critical functions non-critical functions start shutting down so the prefrontal cortex comes

00:10:05.460 offline the self our sense of self of that of being an eye is created by structures all over the

00:10:11.700 prefrontal cortex so as those structures wink out we can no longer create that sense of self same thing

00:10:18.020 happens to our sense of time time is a calculation performed by all these different structures in the

00:10:23.380 prefrontal cortex and david eagleman at stanford figured out that as they start to go out as this

00:10:28.340 efficiency exchange happens we lose our ability to process time right so we step into a timeless moment

00:10:34.340 what researchers call um the deep now it basically means past present and future get conflated and

00:10:40.740 you can only think about what's going on right in front of you at that moment this is also a big deal

00:10:45.540 for performance you think about most anxiety most fear is not present moment fear it's things that

00:10:54.340 could have happened in the past that you were trying to avoid happening again in the present things that

00:10:58.500 could happen but in the future that we're scared of so as a result performance again goes up because

00:11:06.100 anxiety goes down simultaneously the present is the only place in the data stream where you get the

00:11:12.500 most accurate information right memories are are very very flawed as we learn time and time again

00:11:19.220 and future predictions right nobody saw the 2007 crash coming um we're not very good at either so

00:11:27.220 we're very good at processing data in the present moment it's what we evolved to do so you get the

00:11:31.380 simultaneous boost in kind of data processing in the brain and anxiety decreasing so performance goes up

00:11:37.780 and then you get to the next step of the chain which is a sense of effortlessness and this has a

00:11:44.340 different root the effortlessness comes that shows up in all these states comes from the fact that you're

00:11:50.660 flooded with performance enhancing feel-good neurochemicals stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine

00:11:57.300 get flushed from our system as we drop into these states the self turns off we drop into timelessness

00:12:02.260 and suddenly we get this huge boost in motivation it feels like we're being propelled by a force that's

00:12:08.100 bigger than ourselves in other words we're really passionate about what we're doing we're driven by

00:12:13.780 purpose and meaning and motivation goes through the roof these states are intrinsically motivating good

00:12:19.780 all right so besides uh effortlessness another aspect or another trait of this ecstasis is richness what is

00:12:27.060 that yeah it's the last trait of that we subscribe to uh all these kind of north of happy altered states and

00:12:34.500 richness is short for information richness so i i mentioned earlier that uh in all these states

00:12:42.100 the brain information processing in the brain is massively heightened and again this has to do with

00:12:46.180 neurochemistry but what we see is in these states the brain takes in more information per second uh salience goes up so we

00:12:55.060 end up paying more attention to that information pattern recognition increases so we find more

00:13:00.180 links between that incoming information and older ideas and lateral thinking increases so we find

00:13:06.500 more links between kind of those older ideas combined with the incoming information and big kind of

00:13:11.780 lateral leaps aha insights so uh the richness essentially saw surrounds sort of the creative decision

00:13:19.220 making process as well which is sort of why one of the reasons you see creativity spike so much in these

00:13:24.260 states gotcha so um before we get into how individuals are hacking in to this ecstasis state what were people

00:13:33.780 doing before then because like uh you know in the book you said that people were able to get into this

00:13:38.500 status on their own even anciently so what were they doing um you know 100 years ago thousands of years ago

00:13:46.420 so uh mercia eladi the historian coined a great term which is uh techniques of ecstasy and techniques of

00:13:55.140 ecstasy were everything from chanting singing prayer meditation dancing uh you know endurance activities like

00:14:04.180 vision quests um all the way through uh through psychedelics um so you know the ways of altering our

00:14:12.740 consciousness haven't all that much changed there's a lot of new technology there's not a lot of new

00:14:18.340 pharmacology that's different but our brains are the same right they have all the same way so a lot of

00:14:24.580 the traditional techniques you know still work great and today we can gussy them up with a bunch of other

00:14:30.660 technology to make them work even better all right so uh let's talk about some of the insights we've

00:14:35.380 gotten that allow us to uh tap into that um easier so for example what do we what do we learn from

00:14:41.700 psychology in the past few decades that have made getting into ecstasis easier and more reliable

00:14:48.100 great question so um what you're dipping into is psychology is is the first of what we call uh

00:14:55.300 for the heck of a better term i guess the four forces of ecstasy and these are forces that are

00:15:00.180 accelerating very very quickly right now um psychology neurobiology technology and pharmacology

00:15:06.340 and really giving us a kind of a lot more room to maneuver and the story starts with psychology

00:15:12.820 and what what we examined is sort of the change in our versions of who we are in the world right

00:15:19.940 go back to the 1950s we were fairly limited right i mean even those of these they're stereotypes

00:15:27.140 they're not that far off you sort of had betty homemaker on one side and the strong silent masculine

00:15:32.660 type on the other and those were your acceptable versions of yourself which is fairly restrictive

00:15:39.220 today with our you know 78 different pronouns for gender sexualities at this point and things along

00:15:45.540 those lines we live in a much more expansive world our individual versions of who we are how we can live

00:15:51.940 in this world and what we can experiment with has widened greatly simultaneously psychology has through

00:15:59.140 the you know through the internet becomes something of a big data science so when you're approaching

00:16:05.220 slippery subjects like non-ordinary states of consciousness and their impact on our um psychology

00:16:11.460 you might not be able to get the rigorous data you'd be comfortable with but you can ask a hundred

00:16:17.220 thousand people the same questions so you can get a huge sample size and that allows us to sort of

00:16:22.660 work around some of the squishiness in psychology and is really um really helping us move faster right so

00:16:28.980 i mean what's some of that squishiness that we've been able to suss out thanks to technology so uh

00:16:33.860 i'm looking for my own work with flow in the 70s university of chicago uh chairman of the psychology

00:16:40.900 department mihai chikset mihai who's often called the godfather of flow created discovered flow is

00:16:46.020 measurable it's got 10 core characteristics and you can you can measure it using a psychological scale

00:16:53.060 the scale has been used with tens of thousands of people it's extremely well validated but it's

00:16:59.700 still squishy you're still essentially stopping somebody mid-task to say okay answer these questions

00:17:06.260 to figure out if you're in flow so first of all if you were in flow ahead of time you're not by the

00:17:10.900 time you're done answering the questions right um so we have been hard at work with a whole bunch of

00:17:16.820 other you know teams around the world to try to create a biophysical based flow detector so we can

00:17:23.780 look at certain data markers heart rate variability eeg things along those lines and be able to know

00:17:30.740 yes or no is somebody in flow so that's that's how things are shifting that way right and i imagine um

00:17:39.220 smartphones are helping with that as well because they have all these nifty things like features where you

00:17:44.500 can measure that stuff easily um and they even have things where like they can tell about your

00:17:49.060 mood based on how you're moving and things like that so you're able to get a lot more data yeah it's

00:17:52.900 getting so we were in a conversation um i don't even know if i should be talking about this but okay we

00:17:59.220 were in the conversation with the team in russia there uh there's a guy named paul ekman who discovered

00:18:04.980 that your face you make micro expressions on your face right you have no control over these this is

00:18:11.060 sort of like when you smile the upper corners of your eyes go up you can't do it automatically

00:18:16.500 which is why it's hard to smile on command but it happens naturally these things are hardwired

00:18:20.900 directly into our emotions in the tv show lie to me lie to me which they sort of made about this work

00:18:27.300 they sort of prophesied an ai capable of reading these things and determining your mood through your

00:18:32.180 facial expressions we were talking to a guy who has developed this software and they're thinking of

00:18:38.260 deploying it on planes for example so that literally the stewardess can like look at a readout and go

00:18:42.820 yeah guy in 2a is not in a good mood so it's getting really wild out there so what you know

00:18:49.220 what's what's what we can do on cell phones what we can do in the lab is even uh you know crazier but

00:18:53.940 you're totally right right and we'll get into some of the ethics of that um with that technology and

00:18:58.500 being able to hack into ecstasis more easily we'll talk about that in a bit but an interesting chapter

00:19:04.020 which i think is very timely because you're hearing a lot about it in the media is uh drugs

00:19:09.060 pharmacology um so what are we learning about uh from pharmacology about getting into ecstasis

00:19:16.020 so let me let me walk you through the whole progression because it's probably useful

00:19:20.420 the changes in psychology have given us way more permission to explore changes in neurobiology have

00:19:28.500 given us the way to kind of map and measure what's happening in our body and our brain when we're

00:19:33.300 experiencing the inexplicable pharmacology is letting us tune those experiences with increasing

00:19:41.380 precision and giving us access to them nearly on demand and technology is bringing that access to

00:19:47.940 scale so states that used to be experienceable by five or ten people around a campfire perhaps

00:19:52.660 can now be 500 000 people in a stadium so the first thing pharmacology is really doing is it's

00:19:59.140 giving us a lot more precision uh with these states i mean like right now i think i just heard on npr

00:20:07.140 a story about uh psychedelics right lsd that was this thing that was once part of the 60s and sort of

00:20:13.540 we banned it you know uh but it's starting to come you're seeing people use psychedelics or lsd to treat

00:20:19.140 things like depression or just to become more creative and you're talking like micro doses they're not like

00:20:25.060 yeah for sure i mean by the way cover of last month's issue of gq why your boss wants you to

00:20:31.140 do lsd at work so if right going very and by the way you know the data on psychedelics is pretty clear

00:20:41.700 um before the micro dosing revolution started happening uh it shows that roughly one out of ten

00:20:49.140 americans has an annual psychedelic practice does psychedelics at least on a yearly basis

00:20:54.900 so there's a huge swatch of the country that had been experimenting with with with psychedelics

00:21:02.260 kind of prior to this micro dosing which are sub perceptual doses right they don't you don't trip

00:21:08.260 um have been shown since the 60s in great experiments to amplify creativity problem solving all

00:21:15.380 all kinds of stuff so that's why you know when we were doing the research for stealing fire for

00:21:19.540 example what caught our attention was whole teams of engineers at fortune 100 companies who were

00:21:25.860 secretly micro dosing at work on a regular basis and this was not a one-off at one company this

00:21:31.860 was at a number of different companies that we bumped into this and it's not just lsd i mean it's

00:21:36.580 things like ayahuasca is kind of i've it's heard it's kind of hip in the entrepreneur world people go on

00:21:40.980 on these ayahuasca journeys to south america or um peyote is another one i mean so it's it's kind of

00:21:49.380 the bigger i think the bigger and more important point um and this is my favorite bit of research in

00:21:54.740 the book i think um bit of data in the book is that today we have options and here's what i mean

00:22:00.020 we're talking a lot of these substances we're now talking about as treatments for anxiety and depression

00:22:05.860 but some of the early work that really led in this direction uh began uh about 10 years ago where

00:22:12.500 people were looking at alternative cures for ptsd which is a devastating condition right 25 million

00:22:18.980 americans at any one time suffer ptsd it is completely debilitating um and the only things on the market were

00:22:28.340 ssris which don't really work for everyone they don't really seem to work for women at all they

00:22:34.100 definitely don't work in the severe cases and stop the stop the drugs and you're back where you started

00:22:40.340 right so not a very effective treatment so 10 12 years ago a guy named michael mitherhofer a

00:22:47.540 psychologist in south carolina uh teams up with the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic

00:22:52.740 research which is run by my friend rick doblin and they decided to test mdma which is technically

00:22:58.420 in a pathadelic it makes you feel more empathy um it's known on the street as ecstasy or molly

00:23:03.860 take your pick um as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and they looked at victims of

00:23:09.540 child abuse sexual abuse and war trauma so they tested vets from iraq and afghanistan and what

00:23:15.620 they discovered is one to three sessions of psychedelic therapy that means they administer

00:23:22.340 the drug and they do talk therapy with you for the period was enough to put symptoms of ptsd

00:23:29.220 into near total remission and so people got off their meds and it's been four or five years since

00:23:36.500 that study has been run um and they've stayed off their meds which is why the fda is now looking at

00:23:43.620 mdma as a treatment for just normal anxiety and depression now that's cool but here's the neater

00:23:49.380 point so about four years after they ran that study they re-ran that study this time instead of using a

00:23:58.180 psychedelic they substituted surfing which is packed with flow triggers so at camp pendleton in

00:24:04.260 california they put over a thousand soldiers through a surfing as a trigger for flow plus talk

00:24:10.900 therapy protocol same basic study as the mdma study they just switched the trigger mechanism and what

00:24:17.780 they found is that five weeks of surfing and talk therapy was enough to completely cure basically put

00:24:24.180 under remission ptsd in soldiers last year they re-ran that same study replacing surfing with

00:24:31.460 meditation they got the same results in four weeks so this is what i mean by options if you have a

00:24:38.900 tolerance for risk if you want to get yourself enrolled in a government study or do an illegal

00:24:43.620 substance and or you have a very quick time period that you need to get right in maybe that's the way to

00:24:50.500 go if you've got a little more time and you like outdoor activities flow and surfing is the way to

00:24:55.780 go if if it's you know if you're somebody who can learn to meditate and that works for you right we

00:25:01.220 have options we now know pretty clearly that these states are phenomenal at healing trauma lower anxiety

00:25:08.420 all that stuff and we can pick our poison pardon the pun that's the most important thing in the in the

00:25:14.500 end of the book we do put this into a formula that allows everybody to sort of because it's really hard

00:25:21.380 to do comparison contrast between these techniques how do i know what i want to do when and where so

00:25:27.140 we came up with a formula and i will tell you you know the formula is more about stack ranking multiple

00:25:32.740 activities because what the research consistently shows is the best way to maximize impact and this

00:25:38.660 is whether or not you're seeking you know heightened performance collaboration creativity productivity

00:25:44.420 or if you're seeking treatment for trauma and those sorts of things that blending techniques together

00:25:49.940 meditation works great meditation with a period periodic psychedelic practice seems to work better this

00:25:56.660 is recent research they were doing i think at oxford and so forth so we're starting to see you

00:26:01.860 know not only do we have options but the next level of research is what's the best mix and match

00:26:07.620 toolkit and it's totally different for every individual there's no you know that's why we gave you an

00:26:12.340 equation that lets you do this for yourself besides the pharmacology other another tool another option is

00:26:18.900 this technology that's hardware that's being developed that actually you can use to trigger uh

00:26:26.100 states of ecstasis and this is the uh the trans um cranial electrode like that's something you

00:26:31.940 yeah okay yeah yeah okay so uh i don't remember if we delve too deep into this earlier but uh one of

00:26:40.180 the things that happens when we move into these states uh is there's deactivation of the prefrontal

00:26:45.300 cortex right it gets it gets quiet in there which is why our sense of self goes away and time passes

00:26:51.220 strangely and so forth so what we've discovered is you can take a you can use transcranial magnetic

00:26:58.340 stimulation send a weak electromagnetic pulse through the prefrontal cortex knock it out and

00:27:04.260 induce an artificial flow state and just to give you a sense of how well this works for stuff they

00:27:10.980 did an experiment at the university of sydney not too long ago like last year two years ago where they

00:27:16.260 took 46 people and they gave them the nine dot problem to solve which is that classic test of creative

00:27:21.860 problem solving connect nine dots and four lines without lifting for your pencil from paper in 10 minutes

00:27:26.740 and normal conditions less than five percent of the population can pull it off and in their in their

00:27:32.500 group nobody did then they took a different group same size and they use trans-cranial magnetic

00:27:38.660 stimulation to knock out the prefrontal cortex put people in a 20 to 40 minute temporary flow state

00:27:44.420 and 42 percent of the people solve the problem in record time so really really poach it and by the way

00:27:50.180 one example if you want you know one of the crazier bits of research in the book

00:27:55.460 um and it's tucked into the neurobiology section but it's really kind of neurobiology and technology

00:28:01.780 coming together um back in 2000 1999 1998 andy newberg at the university of pennsylvania

00:28:09.220 neuroscientist decoded the first kind of spiritual experience he figured out uh the most common mystical

00:28:15.700 experience in the world that shows up everywhere is what's known as unity or cosmic unity it's the feeling

00:28:20.740 of becoming one with everything he figured out why the brain produces this feeling and i got to know

00:28:26.820 him at the time and i remember having a conversation about this uh and saying do you think we're going

00:28:31.780 to get very far with many other spiritual experiences soon and you know mystical states i was curious and he

00:28:37.540 said now i you know maybe a couple more in our lifetime 20 years later and pretty much every mystical

00:28:44.020 state trance state speaking in tongues prayer chanting meditation yoga on and on and on and on

00:28:50.180 out-of-body experiences near-death experiences um has been decoded even crazier we're starting to figure out

00:28:58.740 not only what's causing this stuff in the brain but we're starting with using vr simulations for example

00:29:05.140 to be able to reproduce these experiences in people so there's now a way to have an out-of-body experience in

00:29:11.300 vr there's now a way to have a doppelganger experience in vr these are the some of the rarest

00:29:17.700 kind of experiences in the history of the world and they're now available to flick the switch which is

00:29:22.740 really a very interesting development that is certainly going to push hard on a lot of religions

00:29:29.780 going forward right another technology you discuss in the book and one i've actually tried before

00:29:35.060 uh is uh transcranial direct current stimulation right it's like where you put like these electrodes

00:29:42.660 in certain parts of your brain and it somehow excites the neurons where you think faster or

00:29:49.060 whatever i know like athletes are starting to use this a little bit yeah i mean we're seeing it across

00:29:54.900 the boards it's the the open question with all these technologies what was your experience first of all

00:30:00.820 i didn't really experience anything like it tingled and that was it and i didn't that was

00:30:05.780 that was sort of where i was going because what we're seeing some of the people who are best at

00:30:09.860 this in the world are in the book advanced brain monitoring mikey siegel from the conscious hacking

00:30:14.180 movement these guys are really talented at this stuff and what the research seems to be showing more and

00:30:19.860 more is at least now at least where the tech is right now you really need a skilled practitioner

00:30:26.100 who because the stuff seems to be very individually customized and so you can you can you can have some

00:30:34.500 effects you know at a blanket level um though you know using eeg neurofeedback is probably better uh

00:30:41.460 if you're if you want one way in and i will also mention that i was talking to tim barris about this

00:30:46.180 at one point and he said you know if you get this wrong in a diy hacker kind of way you can make

00:30:52.180 yourself pretty stupid for a long time right right don't scramble your brain um and i thought there's

00:30:59.700 an interesting chapter uh you devoted and i wasn't expecting it it was a whole chapter dedicated to

00:31:04.900 burning man and what's interesting is um this is kind of uh timely for me because i have my brother-in-law

00:31:10.420 he works for a company that makes uh tactical electronic stuff for law enforcement and militaries make

00:31:18.340 basically like surveillance cameras drone stuff things and they're testing it at burning man and

00:31:22.980 well no like well his bot went to burning man and like was transformed by it and now he's like having

00:31:28.100 the whole company go to burning man um so that's awesome and by the way that's one of the reasons

00:31:35.700 it's in the book right i mean the reason and we it sort of is a chapter and isn't a chapter on

00:31:41.620 burning man it certainly opens that right and the point is we've got all these lab experiments we know

00:31:47.620 all this stuff works in the lab we really do um so the question was where is a place where the four

00:31:55.380 forces are showing up really at full force uh and what's happening there as a test bed for how this

00:32:03.300 stuff works in the wild and burning man whatever else you want to say about the event is the single

00:32:08.980 largest concentration of state-changing ecstatic technology on the planet everything is on display

00:32:15.780 there and all it was and you know we opened the book with a story about google who used so many

00:32:22.580 years ago burning man as a way to screen eric schmidt eric schmidt got the job as ceo burning man

00:32:28.900 because a ceo at google because of burning man and we opened that way and we said why are they doing

00:32:33.380 this what could this mean and where we go with it is okay these forces are showing up and what are

00:32:39.460 they producing and and the point is as you just pointed out first of all it's you know even though the press

00:32:44.900 coverage is is either kind of naked hippies doing drugs in the desert or you know lady gaga in a wild

00:32:53.140 costume in the desert um what's really going on in the hood when you go to the event is you find

00:32:58.340 tremendous amounts of people of money power and influence who are going to the event they're taking

00:33:03.780 the inspiration they're gathering there and i should pause to mention that burning man is called a

00:33:10.900 transformational festival it's actually a literal term and research done at oxford they found that

00:33:16.020 the same kind of neurobiological changes that you can get in meditation and chanting

00:33:21.460 in flow and all that stuff um shows up at burning man so it is literally transformational it puts you

00:33:28.260 into an altered state of consciousness and and it lingers research out of oxford shows that 75 of

00:33:34.820 people who attend have a transformative experience and 80 of those people that experience lingers in their

00:33:40.420 consciousness for weeks and months after the event and so we're seeing people like elon musk for

00:33:45.860 example going to burning man being struck by inspiration debuting the tesla roadster there

00:33:51.620 and getting the idea for the hyperloop there tony shea who runs zappos is literally reorganizing his

00:33:58.180 entire company um so that kind of burning man style holacracy can be put into the corporate world and

00:34:05.700 we're seeing this over and over and over and over again and the examples we drill down into in the

00:34:12.340 rest of the chapter are places where you would you know you wouldn't really expect it it's one thing

00:34:18.020 to say okay yeah people from silicon valley they're going to burning man they're getting inspired they're

00:34:21.780 coming back but what we document is burning man principles and that kind of inside and inspiration

00:34:30.100 that comes from attending the festival making inroads into things like intelligence gathering

00:34:35.300 disaster relief um at a really big deep level so it's not just a silicon valley innovation trend as

00:34:43.620 you pointed out it's now going into the security agencies a lot of other agencies we're seeing a lot

00:34:48.020 of government presence at the event um and we're seeing it kind of really bleed into all aspects of

00:34:54.660 culture at this point right i thought the the section about how the military is really interested

00:34:59.300 in how bernie man is organized because it's all bottom up and uh the military is you know trying

00:35:05.620 to shift towards that direction more of bottom ups to this command and control idea where i mean

00:35:11.860 they're putting people into group flow and what's great about that is one of the things that happens

00:35:17.940 when all those neurochemicals that show up do a lot of things as i've mentioned but they're also

00:35:22.900 social bonding chemicals so they amplify trust between people and collaboration cooperation and

00:35:28.900 things along those lines so when you get a bunch of people in group flow inspired that way they

00:35:34.420 function as a as like a seamless team right team performance just goes through the roof and that's

00:35:40.740 what they saw burners without borders which was a disaster response team that was organized

00:35:45.540 during katrina has now worked everywhere around the world every disaster you can think of but they

00:35:50.100 were significantly faster and more productive than fema right they they were getting job after job

00:35:56.660 after job after done well fit in was getting bogged down and bogged down and that you know caught a lot

00:36:01.940 of people's attention including the u.n right they went what the heck is going on how are you doing this

00:36:07.460 teach us yeah that's really interesting um so as i was reading the book i was thinking like this all sounds

00:36:14.180 really cool um but at the same time i was like you know it's kind of creepy too i feel like this could

00:36:19.460 easily be abused by corporations by governments right you have these things you can stick on your

00:36:24.660 head and change people's thoughts drugs i mean it sounded like and you talk about this in the book it

00:36:29.780 sounds like brave new world uh the novel um so i mean can't these ecstasis technology to create yeah

00:36:39.140 yeah absolutely thank you for bringing it up because i don't want this all to feel like sunshine

00:36:45.300 and rainbows because it's really not this stuff brings a massive amount of responsibility and

00:36:49.540 there's three pitfalls the most obvious one is hedonism right these are sticky states produced

00:36:58.420 by very very very addictive neurochemistry really powerful feel-good neurochemistry and that doesn't

00:37:04.820 mean matter like come walking in you know psychedelics have been proven time and time again not to be

00:37:10.260 addictive but it's still they're compelling in a deep way flow states are compelling in a deep way how

00:37:15.300 many you know athletes do i know growing up who just like lost their life to a ski town or a surf town

00:37:22.260 and you know spent a decade as a surf bum or a ski bum chasing flow states right you these are sticky states

00:37:27.860 they require a lot of responsibility um to play with them and um and and you you can't this isn't

00:37:35.380 just self-help right this isn't five to ten percent happier um it's huge boosts four hundred percent

00:37:41.620 heightened creativity five hundred percent heightened productivity huge boosts but you know if the book

00:37:46.820 was going to be about the self-help movement we would have called it borrowing a nightlight not

00:37:50.500 stealing fire right there's consequences involved here you have to be an adult about this stuff the

00:37:55.060 other issues that you brought up are probably just as sticky um we cover militarization and the

00:38:02.820 military has been interested in ways to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness since literally

00:38:09.460 we tell the story of john lilly's inventing of the world's first pleasure probe it's a brain implant

00:38:14.580 that stimulates our our kind of orgasm machinery and the minute he invents the thing um and he's at the

00:38:21.380 university of pennsylvania every every government three-letter agency you can imagine is at his door

00:38:27.620 and lilly doesn't want to give it to him he says look you in the wrong hands this can control a

00:38:31.780 person you could you know what like we can't do we're going to open source it but his boss says you

00:38:36.740 got to give him a presentation anyways so he does a couple months after that he got another guy from

00:38:42.900 the presentation contacts him and says hey we'd like to come photograph your your research with dolphins

00:38:47.300 and he again insists that it's got to be open sourced and nothing can be classified and two

00:38:52.420 years later john lilly's flipping through harper's magazine and he sees literally a photo of a man who

00:38:58.180 came to his lab standing next to what they call a nuclear donkey and they have literally taken a donkey

00:39:04.180 put his brain implant in the donkey's brain put a nuclear suitcase on its back and can steer it into

00:39:10.740 enemy territory through pleasure and pain so the very first time we invent one of these technologies

00:39:15.700 the military the sandia corporation co-ops it and from that point on like the stories are they're

00:39:22.740 absurd on one level they're tinfoil hat on another and they're downright frightening on this on another

00:39:29.060 level because we i mean there's a 50-year very visible track record been written about you know a lot

00:39:35.220 of places and you know packed into the x-files so we don't take it seriously but there's a 50-year track

00:39:40.580 record of people trying to militarize these technologies that's a dangerous dangerous

00:39:46.260 trend we talk about the kind of importance of cognitive literacy understand what's going on in

00:39:51.460 your brain how it works how you can use it and cognitive liberty right don't let other people rent

00:39:58.340 space in your head if you can avoid it and the the bigger issue on i think on the cognitive liberty front

00:40:03.620 i think the military is is problematic um but marketing is even more problematic we're seeing

00:40:11.300 an overall trend you these states you know i always tell people don't go shopping in a flow state you've

00:40:16.420 got heightened pattern recognition everything looks good you're going to come home with a bunch of

00:40:20.260 shit you did not want right the same thing is really true you take some of the most meaningful

00:40:25.700 potent states of earth and associate them with brands and you have a very powerful link and

00:40:32.660 advertisers and marketers are already you know working to exploit this length the whole field

00:40:37.780 of neural marketing which was you sort of like popped into consciousness back in the late 90s early

00:40:43.300 thousands and you know was sort of a little bit not taken seriously because it was early days

00:40:49.380 now the technology is getting really good and it's no longer early days and you know those those are

00:40:55.860 issues they're all very very real and with the forces accelerating and the fact that you know this is

00:41:00.660 already a four trillion dollar underground market the opportunity for entrepreneurs is everywhere

00:41:06.740 fantastic but also you know double-edged sword a little bit steven there's a lot more we could talk

00:41:11.380 about uh but where can people learn more about your book and your your work perfect question

00:41:16.420 stealingfirebook.com is everything you need about stealing fire uh if you want more about me

00:41:24.260 stevencottler.com s-t-e-v-e-n-k-o-t-l-e-r and if you want to know more about flow hacking it's

00:41:30.340 theflowgenomeproject.com and if you go to the flow genome project site by the way there's a free flow

00:41:35.380 profile anybody can take it um it's a tritology it says if you're this kind of person you're going to

00:41:39.700 find flow in these directions um so it's a really good place to start if you're interested in this

00:41:43.940 stuff and want to move forward fantastic stevencottler thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:41:47.780 my pleasure thank you my guest today was stevencottler he's the author of the book stealing

00:41:52.100 fire is available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find more information

00:41:56.340 about the book at stealingfirebook.com and also more about steven's work with the flow genome

00:42:01.940 project and his other writing at stevencottler.com also make sure to check our show notes at aom.is

00:42:07.700 slash stealing fire where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:42:11.860 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:42:21.060 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com our show is recorded

00:42:25.620 on clearcast.io if you're a podcaster and do remote podcast recordings it's a service that i've developed

00:42:30.820 my brother-in-law to make improve the sound quality on it you can check it out at clearcast.io

00:42:35.460 thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:42:40.020 in the comments

The Art of Manliness - March 16, 2017

#287： The New Frontier of Flow

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