The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 167. The Psychology of the Psychedelics

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

00:00:10.560 battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can

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00:00:48.080 the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:56.980 I'm Michaela Peterson. This is episode 20 in season four. This episode was recorded on March 2nd, 2021.

00:01:04.820 Dr. Roland Griffiths joins my dad. Dr. Griffiths is a professor of neuroscience, psychiatry, and

00:01:11.360 behavioral science, and director of the psychedelic and consciousness research at Johns Hopkins University

00:01:17.280 School of Medicine. He's the author of over 400 scientific research publications and has trained

00:01:22.800 more than 50 postdoctoral research fellows. He's been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health

00:01:28.800 and numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development of new psychotropic drugs. Dr.

00:01:34.080 Roland Griffiths and dad discussed the research with John Hopkins University. They spoke about how he got

00:01:39.760 into psychedelics and convinced ethic committees to approve his research, why he chose the scientific path,

00:01:45.760 specifics about his studies with psilocybin, transformations of cancer patients with family members,

00:01:51.280 the impact of psilocybin in existing institutions, the ongoing studies he's performing with long-time

00:01:57.700 meditators and religious leaders, how the integration of psilocybin may look in society, and more.

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00:04:26.500 right now. Headspace.com slash JBP. Enjoy this episode. Hello. If you have found the ideas I

00:04:35.700 discuss interesting and useful, perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book,

00:04:42.100 Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life, available from Penguin Random House in print or audio format.

00:04:51.380 You could use the links we provide below or buy through Amazon or at your local bookstore.

00:04:57.540 This new book, Beyond Order, provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas

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00:05:18.180 but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 Rules for Life,

00:05:24.260 and before that, Maps of Meaning. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the podcast.

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00:08:35.600 I'm very pleased today on this Good Friday, as it turns out, to welcome Dr. Roland Griffiths,

00:08:45.840 PhD professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences and director of the Center

00:08:51.600 for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

00:08:57.520 and author or co-author of more than 400 scientific research publications. And I should let those of you

00:09:05.120 who aren't that familiar with scientific enterprise know that three publications is roughly equivalent

00:09:12.240 to a PhD thesis, all things considered in the biologically oriented or psychologically oriented

00:09:18.880 research domain. So that means that Dr. Griffiths has been involved in something approximating 150 PhDs.

00:09:27.040 And if you just think about that for a minute, then you can understand what that means. About 20 years

00:09:33.040 ago, he initiated a research program at Johns Hopkins, which is one of the world's foremost universities,

00:09:40.080 investigating, of all things, transformative psychological experiences, the mystical type and

00:09:47.520 insightful type experiences occasioned by the classic psychedelic psilocybin, the active component in

00:09:55.600 what are popularly known as magic mushrooms. His research has indicated that the participants in his

00:10:02.560 studies rate their experiences of psilocybin use as among the five most personally

00:10:09.600 meaningful of their lives, and later attribute to them enduring positive changes in moods, attitudes,

00:10:16.720 and behaviors months to years after the experience. He's also conducting a series of intense related

00:10:24.080 studies of brain imaging and drug interactions examining the pharmacological and neural mechanisms of

00:10:30.880 psychedelic action. He's conducted a series of extremely interesting and well-received

00:10:37.920 therapeutic studies with psilocybin, including the treatment of psychological distress in cancer

00:10:43.600 patients, and more specifically fear of death, major depressive disorder, nicotine addiction,

00:10:49.920 so smoking cessation, anorexia nervosa, and various other psychiatric disorders. His research group has also

00:10:56.880 conducted a series of survey studies characterizing both naturally occurring and psychedelic occasion

00:11:03.360 transformative experiences, including mystical experience, entity and God encounter experiences,

00:11:10.640 near-death experiences, and experiences that have been associated with those who have had them with

00:11:21.440 reduction in depression, anxiety, and proclivity for substance use. He's also engaged in a series of ongoing

00:11:28.240 studies in healthy volunteers, in beginning and long-term meditators, and most interesting, as far as I'm concerned,

00:11:36.080 in practicing religious leaders. And so, well, any one of those topics would do for two hours, but we're going to try to delve into as many as possible in the next,

00:11:47.360 in the next, in this following conversation. And so, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me. I'm

00:11:53.680 extremely excited about this conversation and have been thinking about it for, for weeks.

00:12:00.080 Well, it's a great pleasure to, uh, to join you, uh, Jordan. Uh, uh, you and I met some, uh, 15 or 16 years ago at a,

00:12:11.840 at a retreat in California. Uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, and frankly,

00:12:18.320 as this work has unfolded and as I followed, uh, the, your fascinating, uh, uh, course, Maps of Meaning and, uh, and, uh,

00:12:28.880 your other, uh, books, uh, I really became intrigued by having a conversation with you about all this.

00:12:35.920 And so I'm very grateful, uh, for this opportunity and also, uh, delighted that you and Tammy are,

00:12:43.440 are now back, uh, in, in, in the land of the living, in the land of the living, right. Uh, so yeah, thank you.

00:12:53.920 Well, yeah, I was, I was really taken with our first meeting. I remember that that was just before you were

00:13:00.320 about to publish the first of what are really a series of revolutionary papers. And I would say

00:13:06.160 revolutionary, not only for their findings, but for the mere fact that they're being conducted at all.

00:13:11.840 I mean, the psychedelics burst into the West, into Western consciousness in the late 1950s and caused

00:13:18.200 so much trouble and distress that they were rapidly made illegal. And that was the end of research

00:13:25.580 really for what, 20 years more than that. Yeah. More than that. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought that was

00:13:31.980 a complete catastrophe because as a psychologist, my sense was that the most interesting possible

00:13:39.260 domain of study for a truly curious psychologist was the mystical domain that appeared to be opened

00:13:44.780 up by these psychedelic substances, which indicated something that we do not understand, in my opinion, at all.

00:13:51.500 Yeah, absolutely right. Uh, but by the time I got to, uh, graduate school, that was University of

00:14:01.020 Minnesota in, uh, in the area of psychopharmacology, which is a predecessor to neuroscience, uh, the idea

00:14:10.780 of studying psychedelics was entirely off the table. As a matter of fact, it was, uh, considered a third rail issue,

00:14:18.220 uh, to even, uh, suggest interest in that area. Right. It was a career-destroying interest.

00:14:24.620 Yeah. Yeah, it was. Let alone a pursuit.

00:14:28.380 Well, I was so interested meeting you when we met in California. We went to this conference on awe,

00:14:33.420 which actually turned out to be quite a good conference. We, it was a small conference.

00:14:37.100 There was about 30 of us, if I remember correctly, off for three days, for the full days. And, and

00:14:43.260 there were really, uh, a series of extremely interesting, um, experiences. We did laughing

00:14:48.700 meditation at one point, which I found extremely interesting and quite easy, but I couldn't duplicate

00:14:53.740 it myself at home. But I was really struck by you in particular, because you're, you're not,

00:15:00.940 there, there was nothing about you that I would have associated with the probability of

00:15:06.300 restarting the psychedelic, the investigation into psychedelics in, in the scientific community.

00:15:13.340 And that, that's a compliment. That's the deepest compliment, because it seems to me that the reason

00:15:17.580 you were able to pull this off is because you're, um, what would you call it, surprisingly sensible and

00:15:23.100 level-headed. And so that I'm very curious about why it was that it was you that was able to

00:15:31.420 get through all the regulatory, social career hurdles, psychological hurdles, all of that,

00:15:38.380 ethical hurdles, and actually managed to establish this research program and at such a prestigious

00:15:43.100 university. Why do you think you were able to do that? You know, um, part of it was the innocence

00:15:50.060 with which I came into the area. So I, I came into the area, um, having initiated a meditation practice

00:15:58.860 and I had been, yeah, I was trained as a radical behaviorist, uh, in psychopharmacology,

00:16:05.180 you know, and the, and which means, uh, that you don't pay any attention to, uh, uh, you know,

00:16:12.460 motives or thoughts, uh, those are irrelevant. You want to focus on behavior. That was my-

00:16:18.700 Yeah. Observable behavior. It's great scientific training to be trained as a rigorous behaviorist though.

00:16:23.740 Yeah. And, uh, but even in graduate school, I, you know, I was curious about interiority, uh,

00:16:32.220 and had tried to do some meditation, but like so many, uh, when I tried, it, uh, became, uh,

00:16:40.940 hopelessly difficult. Three minutes felt like three hours. And so I set, I set that aside. I went about

00:16:48.380 my, uh, developing my career in psychopharmacology at Johns Hopkins became, um, internationally

00:16:56.700 prominent in drug abuse pharmacology. And then 25 years ago started, uh, a meditation practice again.

00:17:06.060 And this time there was something fundamentally different about it. And I don't know why,

00:17:10.960 but I engaged with it and it, it became really intriguing to me. And there were, you know,

00:17:17.660 uh, states of consciousness that emerged from that, getting me to ask questions about the nature of

00:17:27.020 spiritual and transformative experience. Uh, you know, what's going on with meditation. I,

00:17:32.860 I didn't have a strong religious grounding or background. As a matter of fact, I had flunked out

00:17:39.340 of confirmation school and, uh, in the sixth grade. Um, but there was something really compelling and

00:17:48.460 it got me reading about different meditation traditions, different religious traditions.

00:17:55.100 I was trying to understand this whole area of spirituality and then, uh, came to be reintroduced.

00:18:03.740 And I was reintroduced incidentally by Bob Jesse, who organized that conference we went to.

00:18:09.980 And he's a engineer who founded, uh, a group called the council on spiritual practices.

00:18:16.140 And I got reintroduced to the idea, well, you know, Roland, if you're interested in

00:18:22.940 spiritual experience, if you want to investigate that, take another look at the psychedelics.

00:18:28.860 And, um, and, um, and, and so I came into this just out of raw curiosity, uh, and, and, and frankly,

00:18:40.220 I, I would have to say that my intrigue with the nature of these experiences was so compelling

00:18:48.460 that it made me question whether I should be allocating all my time to running around the

00:18:55.340 world and giving conferences and giving papers and doing studies on the next, uh, abuse liability

00:19:03.180 risk, uh, for a new, uh, uh, for a new compound.

00:19:07.820 And so, uh, that in itself seems quite remarkable. Okay. So let, let me summarize that to some degree.

00:19:14.060 So you, you had your, you had rigorous scientific training and of the, of the least mystical kind

00:19:20.460 possible in some sense, because that's a good way of characterizing behaviorism.

00:19:23.980 No concentration whatsoever on subjective experience and the reduction of everything

00:19:28.780 to measurable, uh, to, to, to, to that, which can be objectively measured. And I would say like

00:19:34.860 some of the most impressive work ever done in psychology was done by behaviorists like

00:19:38.460 Jeffrey Gray is a good example. He's an absolute genius. And that all came out of that behavioral

00:19:43.260 tradition. And so did, I think the field of neuroscience itself. So you established,

00:19:47.260 and then you established your credibility methodologically, but also as a communicator within that domain.

00:19:52.780 So what do you, what do you think you had for a publication record by the time

00:19:56.700 you started the meditation practice and, and followed this other interest?

00:20:01.580 Well, I mean, at that point I was a full professor. I had a long history of publication in

00:20:08.700 drug abuse pharmacology. And, and in that sense, we did measure subjective effects and, uh, euphoria and,

00:20:16.780 and things like that. Um, uh, uh, but I was, I was very well established in that field had done

00:20:24.700 also a whole parallel set of studies in animal behavior of pharmacology and drug abuse, looking

00:20:31.340 at physical dependence and drug self-administration. Uh, right. So there was no, there was no way by that

00:20:37.740 time of casually dismissing any interest that you might manifest. You'd already established yourself and

00:20:42.620 as, as, as a highly credible researcher. And so that was a precondition for, for the next move.

00:20:47.180 Why do you think your interest in this alternative domain, let's say, became so intense that it was

00:20:53.820 able to displace an already developed expertise and a fully functioning career in this other direction?

00:20:59.660 What, what was going on?

00:21:01.020 Well, there's, there's something very compelling about the nature of these transformative experiences.

00:21:10.460 And that's what, you know, we can describe the kinds of, uh, effects that emerge with the

00:21:16.380 psychedelics, but, you know, more than that in, in meditation, in prayer practice, you know, there's,

00:21:23.660 there really is, uh, there arises a sense of the ineffable and, and there are a lot of things tied to

00:21:33.340 that. But, uh, but, but meaning is, is, uh, integrally, uh, uh, involved in that. And, and that,

00:21:43.900 frankly, just became so compelling to me. As a matter of fact, it, it kind of dwarfed my interest in

00:21:52.380 drug abuse pharmacology to the point that I actually considered at one point, uh, dropping out of,

00:22:01.180 uh, scientific, uh, the scientific academy and, and going off to India, uh, to an ashram to do much

00:22:12.620 more intensive meditation practice. So.

00:22:15.340 And were there exist, were there existential reasons for that? Or was it merely a matter of where your

00:22:20.620 curiosity took you? I mean, so, I mean, you had a, you had a very well-established and productive,

00:22:26.860 and I would presume meaningful and engaging career. I don't know how you found the teaching

00:22:31.900 aspect of that. Were, was that rewarding to you as well? Or were you more a pure researcher?

00:22:36.060 A pure researcher.

00:22:38.220 Okay. Okay. But I mean, you had a fully functioning professional life at that point,

00:22:43.260 but, but, but something gripped you. And were there personal reasons for that? Or do you think

00:22:49.740 it was more a manifestation of curiosity?

00:22:51.820 I, I, I think it was raw, raw curiosity, but you know, what, once one enters into that

00:23:01.980 relationship of investigating this mystery of, of, of what it is that we're doing here, right? I mean,

00:23:09.180 this is, it's, it's, it's kind of the core existential mystery of being that I think comes

00:23:14.860 up in this. This is my framing now. At the time I didn't, you know, I didn't know how to

00:23:20.700 even contextualize this. I knew it was something that emerged from meditation. I thought it had

00:23:25.660 something to do with what religious teachings were about. I couldn't, I had, I just had no context for

00:23:31.980 putting that together, but it was, it was super compelling and it seems incredibly important.

00:23:41.660 And I would say if anything, it's, it's at least, you know, that, that interest and the importance

00:23:50.300 in it hasn't faded one bit for me.

00:23:53.660 So why did you decide then, instead of abandoning what you'd already created and journeying,

00:23:58.700 let's say to India to, for the, the second half of your life, that that's how the Jungians would

00:24:04.380 think about it, I suppose, is the spiritual part of your life. Why did you decide to continue

00:24:10.060 walking down the scientific pathway? And what do you think of that decision?

00:24:16.540 Uh, well, I think it's one of the best decisions I could have possibly made.

00:24:21.260 Um, uh, let's see. It, uh, it, it was what I knew. I mean, it was all the, all the tools I had. I,

00:24:31.100 I was in a unique position. I started reading the literature on psychedelics and going, huh,

00:24:35.820 this is, uh, this is interesting. And I, I wonder if this is true. And, and frankly,

00:24:43.820 I went into that first study and, and this, and this may have made me an acceptable person to take

00:24:52.540 this on. I went into that first study with a deep sense of skepticism. I was very happy with

00:24:59.580 what I was learning about the nature of these experiences from meditation. I was kind of put off

00:25:05.740 by the, what struck me as excessive enthusiasm among those people who have continued to be engaged,

00:25:13.740 engaged in psychedelics. Well, enthusiasm means to be filled with God's spirit. So it's exactly

00:25:19.100 the right word for, for, for people who've been avowed by psilocybin, let's say, or hypothetically

00:25:24.700 avowed by it. Excessive enthusiasm. And of course that is a danger. There's no, it's not like there's

00:25:30.300 any shortage of religious manias. I mean, that can manifest itself as part of a manic depressive

00:25:35.820 disorder. And you see, you see religious experience of a sort often in schizophrenic delusions as well.

00:25:43.500 So it's not like there's no danger there. There's plenty of danger.

00:25:48.860 I agree. And there, there still is. And the first study, the first study was, which, which one was

00:25:57.100 that? The first study was looking at a high dose of psilocybin and comparing it to a fairly high dose of

00:26:08.140 methylphenidate or Ritalin under, under very deeply blinded conditions.

00:26:14.780 So it was a good study because you used an active placebo, so to speak. Did you have a placebo in there

00:26:19.660 as well, or was it methylphenidate versus psilocybin?

00:26:22.780 It was just straight up comparing methylphenidate and psilocybin, but under deeply blinded conditions

00:26:29.500 where people knew that in the course of two or three sessions, they would have at least

00:26:35.580 one session in which they would get a dose of psilocybin. But they were also told that they

00:26:41.100 could get, I think it was 13 other psychoactive compounds. We recruited in only people who had

00:26:49.020 zero prior experience with psychedelics. So because the allegedly the, the profile of subjective effects

00:26:58.620 are so unique, uh, uh, that, that, uh, uh, people could unblind themselves by taking in naive people.

00:27:07.260 We also, uh, uh, uh, eliminated a potential recruitment bias of people who were right,

00:27:15.100 had good experiences. So we could actually, how did you convince the ethics committees that it was

00:27:22.700 acceptable to, to, first of all, to do this at all, and, and also the administrators at your

00:27:27.980 university. And second, that it was acceptable to use naive, uh, participants. Yeah. Why, why did they,

00:27:35.740 why did they, and do you think that in today's climate, do you think that that study would now

00:27:41.820 be possible if, well, let's say if you hadn't laid the groundwork for it? You know, I, I think partly it

00:27:52.060 was, uh, it was, uh, good luck and partly it, uh, it actually speaks very well of Johns Hopkins and their

00:28:00.460 ethic review, uh, procedures. So when I assembled that, uh, protocol with some help from the Council on

00:28:08.940 Spiritual Practices and counseling from Bob Jesse, when I assembled that protocol, I actually thought that

00:28:16.300 there's probably less than a 50% chance it would even be approvable because, because of these, you

00:28:22.300 know, ethical committees, it has to go through, you know, not only the Hopkins ethical committee,

00:28:28.140 but FDA and, and FDA hadn't approved a study giving a high dose of a psychedelic to a psychedelic naive

00:28:36.380 individual for, uh, I don't know, you know, 25 plus years, decades. Uh, and, uh, and so it was no

00:28:46.300 means clear that it would even, uh, even go, but, but it was so interesting to me. And as I said,

00:28:55.660 I was losing, losing comparative interest in the other things that I was doing that I thought, well,

00:29:03.100 you know, why not? Um, the, the ethical scrutiny that that got was, as was unlike, as you might

00:29:12.540 imagine, unlike any previous protocol or even any protocol since it went through many levels of

00:29:20.860 scrutiny within, uh, my institution, Johns Hopkins, including being looked at by the Dean and the

00:29:27.820 managing attorney's office and, and whatever. And I, and I'm, I have to say, I'm very proud of

00:29:34.780 Johns Hopkins as an institution. It's stunning that they did it. I can't believe that they did it.

00:29:40.220 I can't, what, what, what arguments did you marshal to, to put up against, because I mean,

00:29:45.660 it's so easy for a committee to, if they see risk, just to say no, because no is simple. The problem

00:29:51.180 goes away and no one's accountable for it. Yes, yes is complicated. And so like, how did you convince

00:29:57.180 some, this was a worthwhile endeavor, especially given your own skepticism at that point?

00:30:02.460 Well, it really came down to, uh, uh, science and risk benefit ratio. I think the big risk

00:30:10.940 that most institutions would have caved in on is a political risk, a reputational risk. You know,

00:30:18.300 what, you know, to be associated with psychedelics, look, that got Harvard.

00:30:22.220 Well, look what Leary did for Harvard. Yeah, exactly. And, but, uh, the committee at Hopkins that

00:30:31.580 looked at this, uh, really put the, the politics to one side and, and weighed the risk benefit ratio to,

00:30:42.060 uh, to the volunteers. What did they see as the benefit?

00:30:45.420 Oh, uh, in terms of just understanding the, the nature, let's see, we put it forward as a

00:30:54.140 comparative pharmacology study. Okay.

00:30:57.020 And so, and we had done a lot of work with comparative pharmacology. And in fact, I had a

00:31:02.620 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to compare what, one of my specialties at the time

00:31:08.940 was sedative hypnotics. And, and I had a, a grant that had proposed to compare ketamine, which is a

00:31:17.020 NMDA dissociative anesthetic with some other, uh, compounds. And, um, and so I, I, I modified it,

00:31:28.060 to say, well, we were going to look at ketamine, but I think we'll look at psilocybin and instead of

00:31:32.700 comparing it to a classic. Okay. So there was some incrementalism there because ketamine's already

00:31:39.100 like radically psychoactive, although perhaps not so much as a pure psychedelic, let's say.

00:31:44.700 So there was some incrementalism and, and you'd already got support from granting agencies and,

00:31:49.100 and you had all your credibility behind you. Yeah. And, and so what we could, what we could argue

00:31:55.260 is we're, we're looking at relative abuse potential, uh, here. Now the study as it's published,

00:32:01.420 which doesn't read out as that, but that, that was really, uh, how it was designed as a classic

00:32:08.540 comparative pharmacology study in which we could compare the effects of psilocybin to

00:32:15.260 methylphenidate in healthy volunteers. We had, you know, we could look at things.

00:32:20.380 Right. And so that's, that's, I can see that that would be, you could make a amount of

00:32:24.780 pretty straightforward, valid scientific argument for that. You have methylphenidate,

00:32:28.860 which is a standard psychomotor stimulant, basically dopaminergically mediated something

00:32:33.900 like cocaine. And then you have this strange psychedelic and they're the, the reason they're

00:32:38.940 addictive is not, or if they are, and of course there's tremendous discussion about that, but

00:32:43.660 they, they don't fit neatly into the category of other abusable drugs. And so that's, that is an

00:32:50.220 issue that's worthy. It's very hard to get animals to voluntarily take psychedelics,

00:32:54.700 at least regularly, whereas you can do it with cocaine with no problem. So I can see that,

00:32:59.580 that you can make a basic science argument right there. And so, and you said also abuse potential.

00:33:05.020 Okay. Okay. Okay. Fair, fair enough. I'm still stunned that they managed it, but,

00:33:09.100 but, but it's so interesting to see how much work and preparation and care

00:33:13.580 at all sorts of levels had to go into that before it was made possible.

00:33:17.100 And it, it's also even possible that maybe that caution was warranted because one of the things

00:33:23.020 that really strikes me about your research program is that it hasn't got out of hand.

00:33:27.900 Right. I mean, and that's what happened in Harvard in the early sixties, when Leary started

00:33:31.820 playing around, let's say with LSD, which you don't play around with, um, you've been able to really

00:33:37.020 keep this within a tightly bound scientific box while still, um, investigating and popularizing the,

00:33:44.780 the, the, the reality of the mystical experience for the participants. Okay. So you're, you started

00:33:50.700 the study, you had nine youth people, what happened?

00:33:53.100 Um, well, what happened is, uh, is the story that actually changed my career direction because

00:34:04.700 the results, you know, I was interested in, uh, spiritual experience. Uh, I, I, I put in

00:34:14.700 questionnaires into this study that had been used to measure naturally occurring mystical experiences

00:34:22.940 and Ralph hood, who may have been a participant in the meeting that we went to.

00:34:27.420 I think we met Ralph there. Yep. Yeah. Had a nice questionnaire. Um,

00:34:34.940 you know, but I, I wasn't sure what to entirely, what to expect and, and whether, uh,

00:34:43.180 the effects would, would live up to the, what struck me as, uh, exaggerated claims, uh, by, uh, the

00:34:53.660 psychedelic and enthusiast, uh, populations. Uh, but indeed what happened was, uh, under these

00:35:02.220 blinded conditions and both the guides were blinded and the volunteers to what, what drugs were administered,

00:35:09.260 uh, uh, uh, other than on some session that get a dose of, of psilocybin. Uh, and, um, and what emerges

00:35:19.740 number one, that, uh, immediately during these sessions that are done, uh, after careful preparation.

00:35:27.500 So they're, they're really curated experiences in which we meet with volunteers for eight preparation

00:35:34.140 hours prior to the session. And then they come in, they take a capsule there. We ask them to lay on a

00:35:41.500 couch for the duration of the session, which can be up to eight hours, six to eight hours. We encourage

00:35:47.980 them to use blind folds, uh, so that they're, uh, so that their visual system is cut off. We have them use,

00:35:58.620 um, earphones through which they listen to a program of, of music. And so it's an introvertive

00:36:05.740 kind of. Do they select the music or do you select it? We select it. What were your guidelines for

00:36:11.500 selecting the music? Well, uh, our, our main guide who played a very important role in our initial study

00:36:20.300 was, uh, Bill Richards. And he had actually done psychedelic work at, uh, Maryland Research Center

00:36:27.580 back in the 1970s. Uh, and so he had a strong bias toward Western, uh, classical music. And so our

00:36:39.660 initial playlist was very strongly influenced in that direction since that time.

00:36:44.780 Any particular composers? Like, was it heavy on Bach, for example?

00:36:49.340 Well, not particularly heavy, but it, it, it, yeah, it covered, uh, it covered a, a range of,

00:36:57.660 of, uh, classical composers. Uh,

00:37:00.700 Okay. I'm focusing on that because I mean,

00:37:05.900 music and dancing are components of psychedelic experiences that stretch back tens of thousands

00:37:13.580 of years. And so the fact that it's easy to skip over these details, in some sense,

00:37:17.900 you had people lay down, their eyes were closed. Okay. So they're not, they're not having a

00:37:22.700 sociological experience of psilocybin. They're having an interior experience. And then you use

00:37:28.380 music and God only knows what music does in it, in the final analysis. But, um, and it's, it's certainly

00:37:35.100 the case that, that, you know, there isn't a tremendous amount of space between classical music

00:37:40.460 and religious music. And so, so there's all sorts of things that you've done that are implicit in the,

00:37:47.100 uh, uh, experiment that are integral in some, some indeterminate sense to the outcome. Now,

00:37:53.420 these preparation sessions, eight hours. Okay. What are you doing with people during those eight hours?

00:37:58.940 And why?

00:38:00.860 Let's see. The preparation is, is, is, uh, really developing rapport and trust with them.

00:38:07.980 Yeah. These, these experiences are, can be hugely disorienting and they, and, uh, fear,

00:38:16.300 anxiety can arise in, at, at very strong magnitude. It's very important that people feel safe and cared

00:38:26.620 for. So I think of it that we're trying to create a container around these experiences. They have to trust

00:38:35.020 their, sometimes they're called guides or sitters. They really have to implicitly trust these people

00:38:42.380 to, to take care of them. Okay. So how important do you think, you know, because you said they have

00:38:49.180 to feel safe, but I would think that it's more that they have to be safe. And you know what I mean

00:38:55.740 that, that if this, this is why psychological research in particular is so likely to go astray because

00:39:01.740 it's validity depends on, on, on integrity in ways that aren't obviously measurable or

00:39:12.060 describable in a research paper. So, you know, I would think, and please correct me if I'm wrong,

00:39:17.180 that if you didn't have exactly the right sort of people, um, qualified, intelligent, insightful,

00:39:24.540 competent, caring, awake, all of that, and dedicated to actually taking care of the research subjects,

00:39:30.940 like none of this can be a show for that to work right. Cause this can go wrong very badly and it

00:39:36.620 didn't go wrong. So, so to, to, to what degree, how did you select the people who were going to serve

00:39:44.700 as the, as the protector slash guides? And, and what were you thinking about when you did that?

00:39:50.300 So in that initial study, Bill Richards, who I already mentioned, came, came in. So, so

00:39:59.980 Bill came in as someone who was, uh, already a strong believer in the power of these, uh, kinds of

00:40:09.260 compounds. So we, we actually, he was a perfect person to bring into, uh, uh, in that, in that role.

00:40:17.660 And was he associated with the council of spiritual practice? Was he a Bob Jesse contact?

00:40:22.940 He was actually. Okay. Okay. So you drew from that, that domain of expertise already.

00:40:28.540 Yeah. Yeah. And he's, and he's a psychologist in, uh, in the Baltimore area. And now, you know,

00:40:36.060 he, he may very well be, uh, uh, among the absolutely most experienced, uh, psychedelic, uh, therapists,

00:40:46.580 uh, uh, uh, uh, in the world. Uh, so, uh, he, he already came in with substantial experience.

00:40:53.940 He was our primary guide, uh, throughout that first, uh, study. And then, and he trained, uh, uh,

00:41:02.980 an assistant guide who's with us, uh, still Mary Casimano. Uh, and it was the pair of them

00:41:10.260 that in that very first study, uh, uh, that provided that, uh, rapport, trust and support,

00:41:18.100 uh, before, during and after. And it's, and the aftercare is also important. Uh, but that,

00:41:26.020 that relationship is, is critical and you're right. People, they have to feel safe and they,

00:41:33.380 and they have to be safe. And, and, and that's the value of doing this under, uh, within the

00:41:40.980 institutional structure of something like Hopkins, because people know that what we're doing is

00:41:46.500 giving them a compound that, that, that we know to be psilocybin in this case, synthesized

00:41:53.460 psilocybin in, in capsules. Uh, and it's done with, under medical supervision. And if anything went

00:42:02.900 a miss medically, we're, yeah, we're capable of intervening and, and medical intervention is

00:42:11.460 very rare. I mean, these things, these drugs turn out to be remarkably safe. Um, uh, but they,

00:42:19.780 they can, these kinds of sessions certainly can go off the rails. And, uh, and so that's the,

00:42:27.060 that's the nature of that preparation and caring and, and being with them

00:42:32.260 in the session. We've probably been, uh, possibly more conservative than we need to.

00:42:38.900 Our sessions even today, uh, involve two sitters or guides there throughout the whole duration of the,

00:42:47.460 of the six or eight, eight hours. Uh, so people are tucked into their couch. They're asked to go

00:42:54.580 inward. Uh, we, we're not, um, we're not guiding the session per se. We're asking them to pay attention

00:43:04.580 to their own experience as it unfolds. We'll check in with them. What about mindset? Like what,

00:43:11.540 what do you tell the people about how to prepare psychologically for the experience? What, what,

00:43:16.980 how are they informed? How, what, what do you want? How do you want them to react?

00:43:22.980 Uh, let's see. We want them to go in and be deeply curious about what they have to learn.

00:43:30.820 Okay. So you want them to be open and let it go and let it happen. And you say, we'll take care of

00:43:37.140 you, but you can let it happen. Yeah. Yeah. Let it go, be open, trust, you know, and, and we,

00:43:44.420 and we prepare them, uh, uh, to not necessarily expect, but, uh, but not rule out the possibility

00:43:54.340 that what may emerge in during the session is something that they'll find absolutely terrifying

00:44:01.780 or anxiety producing. Okay. So they know that. Oh, oh, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Okay. And so I

00:44:07.620 almost, how often do people encounter? So, I mean, the experiences are exceptionally profound

00:44:13.140 and range across the full range of emotional significance. In fact, past the normal ranges

00:44:18.260 of emotional significance. So how frequently in the experience is the negative end of the human

00:44:25.600 experience magnified? Um, actually quite frequently. So in our, in our first study, about 30% of volunteers

00:44:36.320 would have said, uh, actually rated it at the end of the study that sometime during the experience,

00:44:44.720 they had an experience of fear of, or anxiety that they would rated extreme. Now, very often those are

00:44:52.640 short lived experiences. And to the extent that they drag out over long periods of the session,

00:45:00.700 uh, the outcomes are going to generally be less, uh, less favorable. But I, I think it's a, it's actually

00:45:09.380 a very sobering statistic that in spite of all the selection we do, I mean, we've already screened out

00:45:16.420 people for whom we don't think we can develop rapport and trust. We've screened out, uh, individuals,

00:45:24.700 um, uh, you know, with borderline personality disorder, for instance. Uh, and so, and, and so we've

00:45:33.200 already selected a group of people who are open and curious, uh, we're giving them all this time and

00:45:41.140 attention, yet about 30% will experience some significant anxiety during those sessions. What's

00:45:49.360 important is that it's very, very rare for anyone who has a session of, uh, under these kinds of

00:45:58.380 conditions to report after the session that they feel as though, uh, their life satisfaction, you know,

00:46:06.640 has been decreased. Most people, even if they have a difficult experience, will interpret that experience

00:46:14.500 in a context of meaningfulness. And, and in some cases, it's actually through the doorway of the, uh,

00:46:24.520 the, the most difficult portions of the experience that the greatest learning comes up.

00:46:31.320 So let, let's, let's dive into that a little bit. I mean, I know historically, I know it, it appears as

00:46:37.800 though historically when people were preparing for experiences of this sort, that they would often go,

00:46:42.880 undergo a process of, of ritual purification. And, and I, I'm going to just abandon the ritual part of

00:46:50.420 that and assume that what they were doing was attempting some moral purification, that they

00:46:56.060 were settling their accounts, that they were trying to ensure that they didn't walk into the experience

00:47:00.880 with, with karmic, excessive karmic baggage that they could conceivably shed, that they were very

00:47:07.580 careful to prepare themselves so that their consciences weren't weighing on them any more heavily

00:47:12.520 than they needed to. And when, when people undergo these negative experiences, but still emerge,

00:47:18.320 uh, let's say with the judgment that that was worthwhile, what, what's the essential nature of the

00:47:26.120 negative experience? I mean, it's not contentless terror. It's, it's, it's not that in unformed,

00:47:34.340 it's more personal. Well, the interesting piece of it, Jordan, is that it can take many, many different

00:47:43.220 forms. Uh, so, um, so, you know, one example that we give is because psilocybin is a, so very often has a lot

00:47:54.600 of visualizations attached to it, either, uh, uh, either imagery and sometimes realistic imagery or

00:48:03.680 patterns or whatever. And we, and so we'll say, well, for instance, if, and this can happen, uh, if during

00:48:11.760 the session, uh, a demonic figure, you know, comes up and starts to approach you, um, your, your job

00:48:21.480 is to be interested in curious about it, to recognize that this is a display of consciousness.

00:48:30.500 We will, we'll often say there's nothing in consciousness per se that can hurt you.

00:48:37.740 And, and what you, what we want you to be is interested in this. And so instead of reifying an

00:48:47.300 image in your mind, so take the demon, instead of reifying it, and if you do, you'll either choose

00:48:54.260 to run from it, and then you'll spend the entire session running from this demon that's going to

00:49:00.440 annihilate you until you're exhausted and the psilocybin's gone. Or alternatively, you may choose

00:49:07.660 to fight it, but, but by fighting it, you've also reified it. Uh, and what we really want you to do

00:49:14.820 is be really interested in it and be curious about it. And so it's terrifying. It's, it's a construct

00:49:23.300 created by you for you, probably to, to, to terrify you, uh, and, uh, be interested in it and, and curious

00:49:35.580 about it. And, and it's through that recognition through, although the hair on the back of your head

00:49:42.920 may be standing on end, you know, we would much rather have you approach it, uh, and in effect,

00:49:51.360 ask it what it's doing there. What, what, what am I to learn from this? And what the guarantee is,

00:50:00.480 is that what, whatever the nature of that is, and it can take any number of forms and it's not

00:50:09.160 necessarily a monster or just visual, but whatever it is, is not, is not going to be static. I mean,

00:50:17.360 unless you reify it, unless, unless you make it static, if you actually investigate it, it's going

00:50:24.460 to start changing. And then initially it actually might become more terrifying. Uh, but it can't,

00:50:32.640 it can't and won't continue to do that. It's going to dissolve and it may dissolve into something

00:50:37.940 disgusting or beautiful or transcendent or silly, uh, but it's going to change. And, and your job is

00:50:47.780 just to stay with the experience and recognize that you're empowered in a way to approach whatever

00:50:57.020 it is that emerges in consciousness. And my, my own sense, I'd be, and I'd be very curious about how you

00:51:05.520 interpret this from a clinical psychological, uh, point of view. But my, my sense of that is that

00:51:13.060 that's a hugely empowering experience for people to have, that they have literally faced the dragon.

00:51:21.600 They have faced the greatest terror, whatever form it's taken. And they, and they've come out

00:51:28.020 recognizing that they're, they're safe, they're empowered. And that, and that, that can be a,

00:51:35.740 a life-changing experience in and of itself. Because after you really have been there with the,

00:51:44.380 with the, the, the demon, the worst demon of your dreams and faced it down and, and looked it in

00:51:51.520 its eyes and realized it's actually nothing other than an object of consciousness, nothing other

00:51:57.680 than yourself, then what is it in life that can put up an obstacle with that much, uh, fear, uh,

00:52:09.940 for you? It's, it's very much like a classic initiation ceremony. I mean, the, I mean, one thing

00:52:15.680 that clinicians have agreed upon, regardless of their school of thought, let's say, is that

00:52:21.740 voluntary exposure to what, to obstacles in your path that are threatening or disgusting is almost

00:52:34.580 inevitably curative. And it seems that the rule is that that which you approach voluntarily shrinks as

00:52:43.880 you approach it and you grow. And, and if you run the reverse happens and you can play that out

00:52:51.140 very straightforwardly, if you're a behaviorist, because if someone's afraid of an elevator, then

00:52:55.720 you have them stand 10 feet from the elevator and then nine feet and then eight feet. And

00:52:59.800 not only do they learn that what they learn is that they can withstand the fear. That's what

00:53:05.660 generalizes. And you don't get symptom substitution the way the psychoanalysts thought, because

00:53:10.560 you're probably not counter conditioning the fear. What you're doing is showing the person that

00:53:15.340 there's more to them than they thought. And, and there isn't anything more salutary than that.

00:53:20.960 And that is precisely why you're encouraged, let's say in mythological stories to confront the dragon

00:53:25.640 and get the gold. Um, that that's the basic story. And it's, and the, the, it's very interesting how

00:53:33.760 that becomes portrayed in a psychedelic experience. I mean, what do you make? Okay. Well, there's two

00:53:39.520 directions there. I'd like to continue the discussion of the study. Okay. So what happened

00:53:44.260 to you as a consequence of running this study and how did that influence what you did? And,

00:53:50.320 and then what happened culturally as a consequence of reporting this study?

00:53:56.680 So I, I, I, I think the, the most interesting fight and unexpected finding for me, uh, was, was,

00:54:05.700 I, I, I was deeply interested in the nature of that initial experience. But the most interesting

00:54:12.560 thing to me occurred when people returned two months later. So this first study, we were giving

00:54:19.320 sessions at two month intervals. So people would come in, they would have their session with, you know,

00:54:24.900 they would, uh, the guides would meet with them intermittently beforehand that, and then they would

00:54:30.540 come back for the second session. They'd sit down in my office and, and, uh, and this is just a vivid

00:54:36.820 memory. It was one of the very first volunteers. And I asked them, well, so, uh, so, you know, what do

00:54:45.520 you think of the first session? I'm just curious as to what you're thinking. And the person said, you

00:54:50.720 know, I think about that, uh, every day. Uh, that's, you know, that's among the most important experiences

00:54:58.880 of my whole life. And I thought, what? I mean, now at this point in my career, I've given, uh, you

00:55:09.140 know, dozens and dozens of different psychoactive drugs to people, both healthy volunteers and drug

00:55:14.960 abusers at, at high doses. Oh, how high was the dose in like typically among street users, two grams is a

00:55:23.400 moderate dose for psilocybin of the actual mushroom, four grams, I think five grams is what Terrence

00:55:28.500 mechanic called the heroic dose. Isn't it? What kind of dose were you giving in that? This is

00:55:33.180 equivalent to five gram dose. Oh, so this was not a trivial, uh, pharmacological experience.

00:55:39.260 This was like over the top. Well, well, it's an, it's an, it's an, it, that's in the, it's right at

00:55:45.200 the top. It's not, it's not a beginner's experience in some sense. It's, it's the full-fledged thing.

00:55:50.420 Yeah. Okay. How did you settle on the dose?

00:55:55.460 Well, um, well, we, we wanted to provide a strong test of, of what it was that, uh, psilocybin could

00:56:05.580 do. That, that is the same dose, although we, we met, we did it on a weight basis, but it's the same

00:56:13.300 dose, uh, that Walter Pankey gave in the famous Good Friday experiment. And given that this is Good

00:56:20.240 Friday, we can reference that. That was the study done in Harvard, you know, back in the very early

00:56:26.660 sixties. Uh, but that, and, and they, uh, and there were, and there were some limitations to that study,

00:56:35.600 but, uh, in effect, many of the things that we showed was, were consistent with what they had

00:56:42.120 ended up, uh, reporting. But we knew from the literature that, uh, psilocybin at that dose had

00:56:49.180 been given safely in, in, in various studies. So we, we thought that there wasn't any great

00:56:55.760 value in, uh, studying a range of doses, nor could we afford to do so because this, uh, study was

00:57:05.380 supported partly through, uh, uh, a preexisting grant, but also through significantly through

00:57:12.920 philanthropic support. Um, uh, so. Okay. So people came back two months later and they said this and

00:57:21.680 you listened, which is also extremely interesting because it did violate some of your presuppositions,

00:57:26.960 even though you were curious about this. Yeah. I, so it just was hugely, uh,

00:57:34.040 unprecedented in my experiences. Someone would say that experience I had two months ago,

00:57:42.920 I think about every day and it's among the most important experiences of my life. And,

00:57:48.480 you know, my first thought was what kind of life experiences do these people have? This is,

00:57:54.860 this is, seems absurd to me. And when you quiz them about it, they would say, well,

00:58:00.260 you know, when my first child, my, was born, my whole life changed, you know, uh, you know,

00:58:08.140 I'll never forget that when my father died, you know, uh, that's, you know, a huge life changer.

00:58:17.060 They say it's, it's, it's, it's kind of like that. And so, and so they're, they're describing it in a

00:58:23.400 metric, uh, you know, across their life experience that actually makes a whole lot of intuitive sense.

00:58:29.300 Major existential episodes. Yeah. And, but, but it's so different than any other psychoactive

00:58:37.740 drug I had ever looked at. So I was accustomed to measuring acute effects and describing those acute

00:58:46.000 effects. And, and, and so, you know, if you give cocaine or an opiate or, uh, um, you know,

00:58:55.120 or a dissociative anesthetic, uh, and ask someone a week later or much less, uh, than a couple of

00:59:03.620 months later, well, what was that like? You know, they'll tell you, but they're drawing on memory,

00:59:08.920 you know, Oh yeah. You know, we got drunk and we had a good time and we laughed a lot. Uh, you know,

00:59:16.140 but, um, but, um, but if you said, well, is, is, is that important to you? You know, it, it, it wouldn't

00:59:24.400 be unless, unless they've learned not to drink that much. Uh, but, but this has, this has embedded

00:59:31.480 existential personal meaning of the, of, of kind of the deepest order. And so after those interviews,

00:59:41.000 we put together another set of questionnaires that we have used since then, and that's actually

00:59:45.900 rating these experiences with respect to your entire life experiences. And so just replicated

00:59:53.720 across now, a variety of studies, uh, we can show that, you know, it, it's usually 80 to 90% of people

01:00:04.880 rate these experiences in the top five of their life. And in that first study, I think 30,

01:00:11.700 rated it as the single most spiritually significant experience of their entire life. Uh, so, so it's

01:00:20.160 of that order of magnitude. Right. So now you went in there with this, this, um, some a priori skepticism,

01:00:26.660 but you'd also been gripped already at that point by some intuition that there was something in that

01:00:32.340 domain of experience that was crucially important. And so now people came back and said, well, look,

01:00:37.480 I've experienced that. And, you know, it had a huge impact on me. And so what happens next in your

01:00:43.240 research? Where do you take that? You, you develop this new questionnaire. What's the next study and why?

01:00:49.900 Well, yeah. So it interfaced with my own experience because, you know, I'd been involved with meditation.

01:00:57.980 I appreciated aspects of the primary mystical experience. And we can talk about that, that those

01:01:04.400 are the qualities of the acute experience that seem to predict these longer term attributions of

01:01:13.460 meaning and spiritual significance. Right. So you, you, okay. So were there people who took the

01:01:18.380 psilocybin that didn't have the mystical experience and that didn't report the long-term effects or was,

01:01:26.260 was everyone who was effect, was everyone affected by the psilocybin regardless of, of

01:01:30.700 that? No, there's some, there's some variation and some people will not have, uh, classic mystical

01:01:38.960 experiences. And some people won't have classic mystical experiences yet. We'll describe them as

01:01:46.520 meaningful, but, but overall the, uh, those people who have these experiences that we describe as

01:01:57.060 classic mystical experiences are the ones that will report, uh, enduring positive changes. And

01:02:05.340 there's a good correlation there. And what kind of changes are they reporting? Sorry, I also interrupted

01:02:09.700 one of your points there. Yeah. Let's see. So, um, so they're reporting, you know, in the, in the most

01:02:18.360 general terms, uh, you know, positive changes in attitudes about themselves, about life, uh, their, uh,

01:02:28.440 their, uh, emotions, uh, uh, behavioral changes, spirituality are, are all, are all changed.

01:02:39.700 In ways that are, uh, uh, that are, that are felt to be, uh, deeply meaningful and significant.

01:02:50.380 Right. So things are better. So they report that their lives are better, but it's not hedonic better,

01:02:55.940 like cocaine better. It's not psychomotor stimulant better. It's philosophical better. And, and I mean,

01:03:02.340 that's why I think your findings on this increase in trait openness are so absolutely, well, they're

01:03:08.180 unbelievable. First of all, they're so powerful. It's just, and I have no idea in the final analysis

01:03:13.540 what to make of them, but it is really something stop me if I'm wrong, but it's, it's like a

01:03:18.860 philosophical deepening and it is better conceptualized as an expansion of, of the experience

01:03:24.920 of significant meaning rather than, uh, uh, a generalized rise in positive emotion. Like you

01:03:31.540 didn't get an increase in extroversion, which is the positive emotion dimension. You got an experience

01:03:36.100 in openness, which is the creativity dimension. And it's also associated with revelatory thought,

01:03:42.100 right? Because openness looks like the, the trait that we would identify as creativity and creative

01:03:48.360 people, um, are generative in their ideas, right? They're intuitive. They have these insight

01:03:54.140 experiences that you were also interested in. They're able to make associations between distant

01:04:00.240 thoughts and observed patterns. And if you're high in openness, you're also interested in ideas. You

01:04:06.640 tend to be philosophical in your outlook. You have a strong affinity for fiction and narrative. All of that

01:04:12.460 clumps together. And your research, maybe we can go there next, is you showed that after a single dose

01:04:19.140 mystical experience on psilocybin, people moved the equivalent of from the 50th percentile to the 85th

01:04:26.100 percentile in trait openness, one standard deviation. And so that's, and that was permanent. Okay. So,

01:04:33.980 so talk about that and what the hell happened and what do you think is happening neurologically?

01:04:39.540 Yeah. Well, let me, let me back up to, uh, the acute experience and describe components of that because it,

01:04:47.800 it, that explains then I think how people are looking back at these experiences. So the key features of this,

01:04:55.820 so-called primary mystical experience. And we, and we now have developed a very good, uh, questionnaire

01:05:02.060 that's psychometrically solid and can measure this. The key features of this are this sense of unity,

01:05:11.160 this sense of the interconnectedness of all people and all things. And that can be experienced

01:05:17.100 both, um, introvertively. And that is that everything is within, or it can be experienced

01:05:25.620 extrovertively in the, in the whole, you know, the literature on mystical experiences, you know,

01:05:32.200 outside of, of drugs, uh, you know, was, was laid out in the, in, in, in, and, and set forth this kind

01:05:39.420 of template. So there's this sense of the interconnectedness of all people, all things, the unity.

01:05:47.060 Yeah. The meaningful interconnectedness, right? That, that, that somehow that's all connected,

01:05:51.840 not just connected, but also that the entire pattern of connection has some transcendent or

01:05:57.160 ultimate significance that's hidden from us. Yeah. Let me go into the other qualities. So it's that

01:06:02.440 unity that's accompanied by a sense of sacredness or reverence. So there's something about this

01:06:09.160 experience that's felt to be deeply precious. If you don't want to use a, a word that's tinged with,

01:06:16.520 uh, spiritual implications, but there's something deeply precious about it. And then there's the

01:06:23.460 noetic sense. Not only is it precious, it's absolutely true. And, and for most people, they will

01:06:32.080 endorse it's more real than everyday waking consciousness. It's, it's more real than real.

01:06:39.800 And, and then there, there are sub factors to the mystical experience and that's positive mood,

01:06:47.740 transcendence of time and space and ineffability. One of the first things that people say in coming

01:06:53.460 out of these experiences, when I walk into the session room and ask them, well, you know, tell me

01:06:58.960 about your experience. They'll, they'll kind of look down and, and maybe smile or look baffled. And they

01:07:07.040 say, you know, I can't even put this into words. And, and I'm thinking, okay, well, that's one of the

01:07:12.140 six criteria here. So what I think is that this sense of unity, the fact that there's some sense

01:07:22.860 that we're all in this together, this is all interconnected. There's a wholeness there that's

01:07:29.600 precious and it's absolutely true. And, and, and, and with that, it may be that noetic quality that

01:07:38.480 it's absolutely true might account for why these experiences then are sustained. They have enduring

01:07:45.660 effects because people believe that there's some fundamental truth value in what they have learned.

01:07:53.980 It's not like getting drunk and saying, yeah, I had, I had a great time, but you don't learn anything,

01:07:59.960 you know, important, you know, on how to conduct your life going forward other than maybe not drink so

01:08:07.140 much. Uh, you know, but this is something at a, at a very, uh, at a very personal level. And, and then I think

01:08:16.700 that, that, that explains a lot of, of how it is that people then, uh, come to, uh, change. So very

01:08:28.940 often, uh, uh, uh, you know, there's a level of meaning making. I mean, this is right, right down your,

01:08:39.920 your alley, uh, George, there's a level of meaning making that comes out of these experiences.

01:08:45.580 Uh, uh, that end up rewriting the personal narrative that the person has about themselves

01:08:53.700 and about the plate, their place in the world. And, and that accounts for these, uh, enduring

01:09:02.540 changes and the fact that people then become behaviorally much more flexible. Um, because if that,

01:09:11.020 if that narrative structure is changed, then the analogy I think of is you're rewriting the

01:09:17.560 underlying operating system. And, and with that, everything can change. People can change their

01:09:24.140 life courses in ways that they were unimaginable. Okay. So let me, let me make a couple of comments

01:09:30.060 about that. And you tell me what you think about this. Okay. So when I've looked at, I think of the

01:09:36.080 operating system as it has a narrative structure fundamentally. And the reason for that is that

01:09:41.740 we have to know how to behave and narratives are about behavior. And so, and narratives address

01:09:48.080 the question of how we should behave. There's a perceptual element too, because you have to

01:09:52.880 perceive in order to act. And so your perceptions are very tightly linked to your behavioral aims.

01:09:58.220 And, and that's quite clear from the hardcore psychological literature. Okay. So my sense of,

01:10:05.040 of the, of the deep narrative, because I think that the world is best construed, and I do mean best

01:10:11.760 construed as a place of order and chaos, and that, that can be technically described the distinction

01:10:17.000 between those two, and that there's a battle between good and evil going on against that background.

01:10:21.680 Now, I want to talk about the good and evil background a bit because it pertains to this

01:10:27.080 rewriting of the narrative. So I look at stories like the story of Cain and Abel, which is a very

01:10:33.500 ancient story. And it's clearly a story of good against evil. And it's a, it's a, it's a foundational

01:10:39.560 story because it's really in the Western culture, in the narrative tradition, it's the story of the

01:10:47.440 first two genuine human beings, because Adam and Eve are made by God, but Cain and Abel are born.

01:10:52.660 They're the first actual people. And one of them is a murderous, genocidal psychopath, and the other is

01:10:59.880 a hero. And so you see that dichotomy there instantly. And so Cain is the adversary, the dark

01:11:08.600 narrative, the dark force, let's say. And why? Well, what happens to Cain is that he struggles

01:11:15.240 and sacrifices like we all do. We make our sacrifices in the present, and we assume that

01:11:21.960 by doing so, the benevolence of the world will manifest it to us. That's why we're willing to

01:11:28.520 forego gratification and to work. That's all sacrifice. And so Cain sacrifices, but God rejects

01:11:34.800 his sacrifice. And the story is brilliantly ambivalent about why. And the reason that's a brilliant

01:11:40.500 ambivalence is because you can work diligently and make the proper sacrifices as far as you're concerned

01:11:47.100 and yet fail, which means that all that work, all that foregone gratification, that pact with God, that

01:11:54.560 what is it that God has with the Israelites? There's a name for that. Covenant. The implicit covenant

01:12:04.120 has been broken. And Cain responds to that with tremendous anger, right? He raises his fist against the

01:12:10.120 sky and shakes it and says, ah, this should not be. And then he takes revenge. He says, I will destroy

01:12:16.360 what is most valuable to you. And so he goes after Abel, who is an ideal person, whose sacrifices are

01:12:22.360 welcomed by God, and he kills him. And then all hell breaks loose in the aftermath of that in Cain's

01:12:28.040 relatives. And the more I delved into that story, the more it shocked me. I couldn't believe that much

01:12:36.400 information could be packed into what's essentially 12 lines. Okay, so now imagine that in each of our

01:12:44.140 souls, we have this competing tendency. You know, we see the suffering and the horror of our lives,

01:12:50.420 the vulnerability and the mortality of everything that we love and cherish and our failure. And that

01:12:57.180 turns us against being. You talked about being at the beginning of this. That turns us against being.

01:13:02.000 And then there's the other part of us that maintains faith and that strives forward, but each of us is

01:13:09.360 an intermingling of those. And so the rewrite seems to me to be something like the revelation that the

01:13:17.280 positive end of that set of propositions is actually true, that things are interconnected, that things are

01:13:25.260 fundamentally good, that love and truth can actually prevail. And that gives some experiential

01:13:32.000 weight that can be used as a counterposition against that destructive cynicism. And the psychedelic,

01:13:39.220 the mystical experience seems to allow for that transformation. Does that seem, what do you think of that?

01:13:47.240 Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, there's something hugely curious about the nature of these experiences,

01:13:57.100 because they appear to be strongly biased toward this benevolent sense of wonder.

01:14:07.880 Yeah, and that's associated with that certainty of truth, which is not what you'd expect, right? Because

01:14:12.440 it's not that easy to make a powerful, credible case for benevolence and truth. We're not even wired

01:14:19.160 that way, because we overestimate, like we over-experience the magnitude of negative experiences.

01:14:25.720 We're more sensitive to them. So it's surprising that that would emerge. It's unlikely.

01:14:31.800 Yeah, well, but isn't it interesting? I mean, you know, the fact is, you know, that these experiences

01:14:38.340 that occur with the psychedelics, you know, are very much part of naturally occurring experiences of

01:14:47.060 this type. So there, you know, there can be conversion experiences or religious experiences

01:14:52.500 that come out in, you know, under various conditions, either spontaneously or in prayer practice,

01:14:59.540 you know, in breath work. So, I mean, to me, you know, I conclude that we're, we're wired to have

01:15:09.060 these kinds of experiences. What?

01:15:12.100 Yeah, so that, that in itself is an absolutely radical claim. You know, I mean, I've gone after

01:15:17.460 some of the Darwinians that I've, the atheistic Darwinians that I've talked to for failing to take

01:15:22.900 into account what I regard as the, the preponderance of scientific evidence indicating that the

01:15:30.580 religious instinct is real and that it's biologically grounded. It's like, okay, it's real,

01:15:35.300 it's biologically grounded. What do you have to say about that from an evolutionary perspective,

01:15:39.620 then? Is that, is that a spandrel? It's like, no, because it looks like it's central to the development

01:15:44.180 of human culture itself. Not only is it not a spandrel, it's like the opposite of a spandrel.

01:15:49.380 And so what are we, what are we supposed to conclude if we conclude that the religious

01:15:52.740 instinct has actually evolved? It's deeply biological, and it speaks of like a benevolent

01:15:58.500 and truth-oriented teleological reality. That is not the way our culture is constructed.

01:16:07.060 Well, I was, this is the question I was, was kind of posed to you. What, what's going on here?

01:16:13.300 I, it's...

01:16:14.100 Now, well, that's exactly what we're trying to figure out, isn't it? Just what the hell is going on here?

01:16:18.260 Yeah, what the hell is going on? And, and, and, and just to reflect it back on,

01:16:27.300 was it a good decision to follow this? I mean, what's more important than this, Jordan? What's

01:16:33.780 more important than finding out what's going on here?

01:16:37.540 Well, I can't believe, like, I actually can't believe how important this is.

01:16:41.620 You know, I mean, I've been studying the psychedelic literature for 20 years, and, and in as deep a

01:16:48.580 manner as I can possibly manage. And every time I think I have some grasp on how important it is,

01:16:53.380 I learn something else, and I think, oh, it's way more important than I thought it was. It's,

01:16:57.940 it's of crucial significance. Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's of central, it's literally of central

01:17:05.140 significance. It, it's literally of central significance. And so now it needs to, it, and,

01:17:10.180 you know, partly why I was so interested in talking to you is I'm trying to figure out,

01:17:14.180 it's like, okay, well, what happens if we take this seriously? Like, if we start to actually take

01:17:18.420 this seriously, with dead seriousness, what, what's the consequence of that? You know, and so,

01:17:25.780 all right, so, so let's look at the, let's look at the fear of death. That's the place I want to go

01:17:31.140 next. And there's a couple of things I'm interested in about that. The first is that

01:17:35.060 there, so you have this study showing that cancer sufferers take psilocybin and they show a marked

01:17:42.020 reduction in the fear of death. And, and that gets stranger the more deeply you investigate it. And

01:17:48.740 there's these ancient Eleusinian mysteries that seem to be associated with something like the

01:17:54.740 experience of a voyage to the land of the dead, an encounter with ancestral spirits,

01:18:01.620 a religious transformation, and then, and then the, the, the eradication, or at least the,

01:18:08.740 the diminution of, of the fear of death. But all of that mythological baggage, so to speak,

01:18:14.980 went along with the experience. So there's, there's a, a journey of some sort to a place of some sort

01:18:22.740 that seems to have commonality across different individuals, strangely enough, that results in this

01:18:30.260 pronounced transformation of the existential consideration of mortality itself. So it's, again,

01:18:42.980 of sufficient significance so that there's no end to how deeply you can investigate it. So

01:18:48.900 tell me about that experiment and what you saw happening and, and what you've made of it.

01:18:56.740 So, uh, these were cancer patients who met diagnostic criteria for significant anxiety or depression

01:19:04.820 secondary to their cancer diagnosis. And, you know, as, as you, as you well know and can appreciate when

01:19:11.780 someone's facing a life-threatening illness, uh, that can be hugely disruptive to them. Uh, so the, uh,

01:19:22.260 the study was a simple study. It was blinded, uh, and done very rigorously. Uh, but people ended up

01:19:30.980 getting a, a high dose of psilocybin at some point. And after doing so, their depression anxiety drops just

01:19:40.740 precipitously, it remains completely low out to the six month point. And, uh, another group that ran a

01:19:49.540 parallel kind of study did a follow-up five years and it's, and they're still reporting those kinds

01:19:55.220 of effects. So these are the, those kind of enduring, uh, changes. So, you know, what's going on there?

01:20:01.940 Um, well, it, it, it's, it's a, it's a mixture. Part of it is, uh, a different attitude about death and

01:20:11.300 dying. And we're actually, um, analyzing data from a huge survey right now on changed attitudes about

01:20:18.900 death and dying secondary to, uh, psychedelic exposure and comparing that to the kinds of changes

01:20:26.180 that people have, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that occur naturalistically, such as near death experiences,

01:20:33.620 where you get that same kind of, uh, shift. Uh, so that's, that's certainly an element, but that,

01:20:42.260 you know, but there's also, um, related to that is this sense of benevolent unity, that there's

01:20:52.660 something about this mystery that we find ourselves in. So something cropped up. Let me tell you about

01:21:01.140 it and tell, so I've, when I've, uh, so our life is dependent on death because our cells are constantly

01:21:12.740 dying and, and if death isn't regulated properly within us, we get cancer, for example. So the,

01:21:21.220 the fact of our healthy existence is actually paradoxically dependent on death itself. The

01:21:27.300 proper amount of death keeps us healthy. And you know, it's so interesting because that's also true

01:21:32.660 psychologically is that you have to let old concepts die and, and they don't like to die. It's, it's a

01:21:40.260 painful experience to have the old you die in, in the light of new experience. It's painful enough so

01:21:45.380 that people will resist it, but there's a, there's this benevolent death that's a reparative mechanism.

01:21:51.460 And when, when I've allowed my intuitions to extend themselves as far as possible, I think, well,

01:21:55.700 that's, that's true of, of, of being itself, is that in the manner that we can't comprehend, death plays

01:22:03.700 a restorative role. It's, it's, it's something like the precursor to resurrection.

01:22:11.220 And God only knows where that idea goes, but, but, and I believe that these mystical experiences

01:22:16.900 provide a window into that, that there's this mechanism of death at work, but it's a reparative

01:22:21.300 and, and creative mechanism, all things considered. It's building towards something that we, that we

01:22:27.460 have a, that we have an intuition of and want to participate in and, and are tortured by our

01:22:32.580 conscience for not participating in. And, and a glimpse of that

01:22:41.300 a glimpse of that

01:22:42.180 It at least shows you that there's more going on than you think, that there's more going on

01:22:54.580 than you want. So, so much of hopelessness is a consequence of prematurely, if premature closure.

01:23:00.260 I am certain this is hopeless and pointless. Well, that mystical experience can dispense with that

01:23:08.820 certainty. I'm not so sure that I know what's going on. I'm not so inclined to, to be, what,

01:23:15.700 to be, to not have doubt about my own skepticism. So, all right, so back to the, to the study.

01:23:24.500 Well, let me just, let me just pick up on that because one of the questions that I found myself

01:23:31.540 asking people as they enrolled in the study is, you know, so, you know, what do you, what do you

01:23:37.780 think happens when, when you die? Uh, and it, it's a very interesting question to ask, ask people. And,

01:23:47.700 you know, and there are those who say, uh, it's computer, it's lights out, it's unplugged,

01:23:54.420 that's, you know, that's it. Uh, um, after these kinds of experiences, there's a crack in that

01:24:03.620 doorway. There's less certainty, uh, uh, about, about that. And that's, and that is part of this,

01:24:12.820 uh, part of the kinds of changes that come about, uh, with these, uh, experiences. Uh, there's,

01:24:22.900 you know, a shift in, in worldview, uh, a shift in the, a sense of the nature of consciousness,

01:24:32.900 maybe having an eternal quality to it. And that can be tinged with spirituality. If someone, uh,

01:24:40.180 interprets it within a, in a religious, uh, framework, there's something enduring, uh,

01:24:47.060 about that. And so the certainty that everything ends at the moment of death is, uh, it comes into

01:24:57.860 more significant, uh, uh, question very often with these kinds of experiences, but I don't think

01:25:05.140 it accounts for everything. Uh, there, there are people who come out of these experiences still

01:25:11.140 saying, well, yeah, I don't, I don't believe in, uh, you know, and any kind of afterlife or anything

01:25:19.380 existing, you know, but there is a sense that they may have of the elegance and the beauty and the

01:25:27.300 benevolence of the entire process that just makes them feel filled with gratitude

01:25:37.140 for the opportunity to be a sentient being and have this experience. There's something celebratory

01:25:45.300 about that. Why gratitude? Why that emotion in particular? Do you, did you focus on?

01:25:51.540 I think that's, actually, I, I think that's the core to, to what, uh,

01:25:58.180 uh, very often, well, at least what I, uh, believe comes out of these, uh, experiences.

01:26:06.580 There's a sense of wonder that comes out of the, of the mystery of what it is that we don't know.

01:26:12.420 I mean, you know, there is this hard problem of consciousness, but most people don't contemplate

01:26:18.020 it very, very seriously. Uh, with a psychedelic, it's, it's almost impossible not to be astonished

01:26:26.340 by how much, and, and humbled by how much you don't understand about the nature of your own mind

01:26:33.780 and the nature of reality. And, and so we're confronted with this mystery of what is this

01:26:43.060 about? How, how is it, you know, that we're these highly evolved beings, you know, who that have

01:26:51.300 developed the capacity to sense things, to walk, to talk, we've developed societies, uh, we've developed,

01:27:00.020 you know, science as a methodology we can communicate. And on top of all that,

01:27:07.860 the astonishing fact is that we're aware that we're aware that if we, and that wouldn't have

01:27:13.300 to be the case, and that's the hard problem of consciousness. And, well, I think there's even a

01:27:18.420 harder problem, which, which, which the mystical experiences seem to shed some light on, which is

01:27:24.100 to what degree is being itself dependent on consciousness? Because there is the problem

01:27:29.780 of consciousness, but there's the problem of being. What does it mean that things are? Well,

01:27:35.060 it seems to mean, or at least you can make the case, that, well, things aren't unless they're

01:27:40.100 experienced. Because what sort of being is there in the absence of any experience whatsoever? It's,

01:27:46.740 it's, all there is, is all you can do is construct the hypothetical picture of what being would be

01:27:53.140 like in the absence of consciousness, as a conscious creature would formulate that. That's the best you

01:27:58.900 can do. But that's still dependent on consciousness. And so there's a real mystery there, which is,

01:28:04.500 you know, and I don't think it's a mystery that's properly addressed by, I mean, I'm an evolutionary

01:28:09.780 biologist for all intents and purposes in my, in my orientation, but a reductive materialism doesn't

01:28:18.100 address that problem. And there's many other problems it doesn't address as well. And it,

01:28:22.020 it doesn't address them if you take them seriously. It's like, there is some relationship between

01:28:27.220 consciousness and being. And, and I don't see how that can, it's, that's not easily explained by making

01:28:33.540 consciousness an epiphenomenon of matter. That just makes matter more mysterious,

01:28:38.180 as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't get rid of the problem.

01:28:41.860 But there, therein comes the gratitude, right? The very, the, the very fact that we are,

01:28:49.380 are gifted with this experience of experience.

01:28:53.540 Well, I ended my last book with, with, with a chapter, be grateful in spite of your suffering.

01:28:59.780 And that was the end of a two book cycle of thinking. And I put it at the end as the

01:29:05.860 culmination, like, what's a

01:29:09.860 final moral rule? Well, that's it, because that's the ant, that's the antidote to Cain.

01:29:16.660 You know, and I take Cain's argument seriously. It's a serious argument. Are things so terrible that

01:29:22.260 they shouldn't exist at all? Well, you know, you can accrue a fair bit of evidence in favour of

01:29:27.460 that hypothesis. It doesn't lead to the right place. It makes everything worse, as far as I can

01:29:32.740 tell. And I haven't encountered a situation, personally, where gratitude wasn't better than

01:29:40.740 its alternative. And the alternative seems unbelievably destructive. Resentment, I think,

01:29:45.940 is the opposite of gratitude. And resentment can be a salutary emotion in that if you notice its

01:29:52.100 emergence in your life, it signifies something that you should pay attention to. But I have seen

01:29:56.820 nothing about it that's positive as something to be cultivated. You certainly don't teach your

01:30:01.540 children to be, you know, if you sit down and have a discussion with your wife about what sort of

01:30:05.860 children you want, you never say resentful. Everybody agrees that that's toxic beyond

01:30:13.540 tolerability. And so we know there's something wrong with it. And it is extraordinarily, well,

01:30:18.580 I think it's extraordinarily interesting that you focus on that particular experience.

01:30:23.860 And I think that's a humbling as well, that gratitude.

01:30:27.140 Oh, it's hugely humbling. Yeah. I mean, the thing, I mean, the first experience,

01:30:33.220 you're looking into the existential mystery, right, of a being. And, and, and it's a, it's a mind boggling

01:30:42.580 proposition that initially is, uh, uh, is unfathomable. Um, and, and then, and then from that, uh,

01:30:55.700 emerges this gratitude for that opportunity. And, and if we want to circle back to the, the cancer

01:31:03.860 patients, it's that gratitude, you know, for the opportunity to live, whether or not they,

01:31:10.740 they, they, they, they believe that something occurs after death, there's a, there's a celebration

01:31:18.420 of life and, and, uh, very often a joy. It's, it's, it's really quite remarkable to see how people

01:31:28.180 who have been so transformed, how they interact with, uh, family members who are, you know, turn out

01:31:36.500 at that point to be more distraught than they are very often. And so how do they, how do,

01:31:41.540 what sort of transformations do you see in their actions with their family members?

01:31:46.260 Oh, they're reassuring. I mean, they'll say, you know, I'm, there's a realism to the seriousness of

01:31:53.220 their condition. Uh, and so, you know, they'll say, this is, this is very sad. I'm dying. I'm,

01:32:00.980 I'm going to leave. Uh, but it's okay. Uh, it's, it's, it's okay. Everything is all right.

01:32:10.660 Yeah. So, so the transformation is so radical that not only do they suffer less with regards

01:32:16.580 to their own mortality, but they're transformed sufficiently so that they can now attend to

01:32:20.660 others, despite the fact that they are the people that have the fatal illness.

01:32:24.260 Yeah. They, they become the caretakers in the, in the family unit. And it also has the potential

01:32:30.980 for totally shifting end of life care, because if you're not, if you're no longer grasping

01:32:37.540 to every shred of every minute of life, you know, there's a, uh, uh, a deep interest in connecting

01:32:47.460 and staying connected. And so you're much less likely to elect to go in the hospital and, uh,

01:32:54.500 and, and under, uh, incredibly, uh, brutal conditions, uh, you know, to achieve those last

01:33:04.980 days or weeks. Um, so, so it, it, the potential actually, in terms of large kind of cultural change

01:33:13.700 to change death and dying and how we handle that as a culture is, is very significant.

01:33:20.020 Yeah. Why psilocybin? Why did you pick psilocybin?

01:33:28.260 Uh, well, a couple, a couple reasons. Um, one, its duration of action is clinically manageable. So

01:33:38.900 it's not too short. If you, if you, if you did intravenous DMT, that's a matter of

01:33:47.540 15 or 20 minutes. And this gives you a longer period of time to have an experience and then

01:33:55.220 to reintegrate that experience. Uh, but it's not nearly as long as something like LSD, uh,

01:34:02.260 which is like a 12 hour time course, which is just taxing for everybody and, and pretty clinically

01:34:09.940 unmanageable. Uh, there's, uh, there's a sense, but, but I don't think we have good data on this,

01:34:19.220 that, um, uh, that psilocybin can be gentler than LSD, uh, psychologically. I, and I'm not positive

01:34:29.220 about that, but you know, the most important piece of it is that, um, most people can't spell

01:34:36.180 psilocybin and it, and it simply didn't have, uh, the cultural baggage that LSD did. Uh,

01:34:45.620 so, uh, and I think it, it turns out to be a really good pick for a model system, but there are

01:34:53.700 literally thousands of other compounds that could be synthesized that are going to have

01:35:00.820 a different influence on the nature of consciousness that should be and will be explored over time.

01:35:08.900 I've been reading this book recently, The Immortality Key by Brian

01:35:13.300 Murarescu, and he's making a case that has been made by other people, although he makes it in a very

01:35:19.140 interesting way and a very original way. Um, it's reminiscent to me of John Allegro's work from the

01:35:25.060 early late sixties, late sixties, which sort of got pilloried at the time because, well, that was

01:35:30.660 just when LSD and all the psychedelics were being made illegal and Allegro was sort of dumped, jump,

01:35:36.180 lumped in with the hippie types and ignored. I read The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross years ago and I

01:35:41.940 thought he's a linguist and he claims to have gathered an immense amount of, uh, linguistic

01:35:49.700 data suggesting that early Christianity was a mushroom cult. And I couldn't assess his claims

01:35:57.300 because I'm not a linguist, but it certainly looked to me at the time like it was an extraordinarily

01:36:01.860 serious book. And I read it and I thought, I have no idea what to do with this information.

01:36:07.460 I can't tell if it's credible or not. And if it is credible, well, well, then what? Like,

01:36:13.780 what in the world are we supposed to do with this? And then Murarescu, he's making a strong case that

01:36:19.940 the Eleusinian mysteries were, which upon, in which the Greek society that gave rise to the West,

01:36:27.380 let's say was embedded, was deeply embedded within a psychedelic religious tradition that was actually

01:36:34.420 an integral part of the culture, not some peripheral element, but a central element,

01:36:40.420 that that was also the case with the cult of Dionysius, the god of the wine, and that Christianity

01:36:46.740 took many of the mysteries, including the sacrament, from the Dionysian cult.

01:36:52.020 And so I think, and I certainly think that the Book of Revelation bears

01:36:56.660 all the hallmarks of a classic psychedelic experience.

01:37:03.140 So then I'm thinking, well, what are you supposed to think about that exactly? I mean,

01:37:07.700 I take the fact that our society is Judeo-Christian and its underlying narrative structure extremely

01:37:12.420 seriously. I think that's true as a fact, whether it's the right way for things to be is a different

01:37:18.820 question, and also an important question, but I have no idea how to conceptualize our relationship

01:37:29.300 with psychedelics. Let me tell you my most paranoid thought about this, okay? You tell me what you

01:37:33.940 think about this. So on the one hand, you have this, the most extreme idea on the one hand is that

01:37:38.660 psychedelic experience is a gateway to something that's actually divine, and God only knows what

01:37:45.140 the significance of that is. But here's another thought. There's this, you know that parasites

01:37:53.620 can hijack nervous systems. So there's this one example of, I may not get this story exactly right,

01:38:00.100 but there's this parasite that hijacks ants' nervous systems and the insects. It makes them climb up

01:38:06.420 like a stalk, and they pincer themselves to a leaf, and then their body fills up with the parasite spores,

01:38:12.020 and they explode, and the parasites go everywhere. And so the parasite has evolved to hijack the

01:38:17.380 ant's nervous system. And there's plenty of examples of parasites doing that sort of complex thing over

01:38:23.220 time. There's a cat, a parasite that lives in cats, that makes rats more, less fearful. And they're more

01:38:31.940 likely to be caught by cats, which is quite interesting. And so then I'm thinking about

01:38:35.700 psilocybin. And it's this mushroom, and it produces this chemical, and nobody really knows what good the

01:38:42.260 chemical is to the mushroom. And it has this immense effect on us. And like, have we been using

01:38:48.020 psilocybin for 500,000 years? And have we been distributing its spores everywhere? And is it a

01:38:54.420 parasite that's hijacked our nervous system? And the way it's done that is by producing this religious

01:38:59.540 experience that we value? I mean, that's the most devastating materialistic critique of this

01:39:05.220 psychedelic idea that I've been able to formulate. And I mean, one piece of counter evidence to that,

01:39:11.700 I think, is the fact that I think the evidence seems to suggest that the psychedelic experience

01:39:18.740 is salutary from the perspective of mental and physical health, rather than destructive. But

01:39:24.180 it looks like we've been using mushrooms for God only knows how long. I mean, it's certainly tens of

01:39:36.660 thousands of years. It's certainly at least as far back as the last ice age. And God only knows how

01:39:43.140 far back it is before that. As a biological thinker, say, what are your thoughts about that?

01:39:54.180 Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I can take that, take that on. I don't, I don't understand that. I mean,

01:40:06.900 it's a, yeah, it's a huge mystery. And yeah, what, yeah. And what role do these experiences play

01:40:18.260 in the evolution of culture? So, you know, let's start with that one.

01:40:24.900 Well, and so, yeah, what roles do religions play in the evolution of culture? And you know,

01:40:30.980 a really important and central role, right?

01:40:33.460 Yeah, well, the central role, like it looks to me like integrated cultures,

01:40:38.580 there's no distinction between their ritual and their dance, and their music, and their stories,

01:40:45.300 and their religion. That's all one thing. It's, and it's, it's the central source of meaning

01:40:50.180 that enables them to live as individuals, and that unites them as a people. So that seems clear. So

01:40:56.980 you can't just push the religious idea off to the side. That's a mistake. And I think the data for that

01:41:03.620 are in. And so it's central. Well, now it seems shaped by these psychedelic experiences. So

01:41:09.540 what the hell are we supposed to make of that? I don't even know how to, what to make of that,

01:41:17.060 either epistemologically, you know, as a theory of knowledge, or ontologically.

01:41:21.620 I don't know what that says about the structure of reality itself.

01:41:27.300 Well, let's see, it provides an evolutionary explanation for why,

01:41:31.460 yeah, why that might have been conserved, right? That there's, there's something super adaptive

01:41:41.220 about the religious experience in terms of evolution of culture and organization of culture.

01:41:47.700 Well, I think, look, when I've tried to reduce this, I mean, that experience of awe. So we went to a,

01:41:53.140 we went to a whole conference on that. So if you see someone that you really admire,

01:41:59.460 that shades into awe. And you can see that in, in the effect that celebrities have on the,

01:42:05.140 on the public, it's a parallel, it can be paralyzing. So the admiration, there's a continuum

01:42:11.540 between admiration and awe. And then you can easily make the case, I think, that admiration

01:42:19.220 is the felt sense of the instinct to imitate. So you see children, maybe they'll hero worship someone,

01:42:27.460 and then they, they'll imitate them, they'll copy them, they find someone who's in that zone of

01:42:31.980 proximal development, and they start to copy them. Or they'll take on the identity of a hero or heroine

01:42:39.320 in a movie, my, my little granddaughter, who's three, for a year now, literally a year. She has

01:42:46.600 two names, Scarlett and, and, and Ellie, Elizabeth. And we kind of call her one or the other. And if you

01:42:53.160 ask her, is she Scarlett, she'll say yes. Is she Ellie? Yes. Is she Pocahontas? Yes. Is she Scarlett,

01:43:03.860 Ellie or Pocahontas? Pocahontas. One year. Now she watched that Disney movie over and over,

01:43:10.640 and she has a Pocahontas doll. But, and, but she's picked that figure, and that's quasi mythological

01:43:16.960 figure, obviously, not a historical figure. She's picked that as her identity. And I see that as

01:43:25.220 we can, we can imitate people. We talked about reality and hyper reality before. Well, you can find

01:43:32.140 someone you admire, and they're real. Or you can find someone who's a mythological figure,

01:43:36.460 and they're hyper real. And the hyper reality is so adaptive that imitating the hyper real is more

01:43:42.440 adaptive than imitating the real. And that's, to me, the, that's the essence of the religious

01:43:47.240 instinct. It's to derive the hyper real, and then to imitate that. And I think that's what worship

01:43:54.260 means, essentially, all with everything stripped away. And so that's a profound instinct, because human

01:44:00.500 beings are unbelievable mimics. I mean, that, that's a very underappreciated element of our cognitive

01:44:07.400 architecture, a fundamental element. And that, that instinct to admire and experience awe facilitates

01:44:20.840 that mimicry, and that increases the probability of the manifestation of complex adaptive behavior.

01:44:26.360 Okay, so, and then what does, what, that makes of the religious domain something real, as far as I'm

01:44:35.140 concerned, even real from the biological sense. But that deepens the mystery of the involvement of

01:44:40.240 the psychedelics in that. Like, are they, are they parasitizing that? Are they, like, cocaine hyper

01:44:46.020 stimulates the psychomotor stimulant system. Well, does psychedelics hyper stimulate the imitation awe

01:44:52.780 system? And, and is that an illusion? Or is it, in fact, the revelation of something deeper?

01:45:01.560 Yeah, to, yeah, to circle back to the ontological question. So, just recently, I listened to a lecture

01:45:09.600 that Francis Collins gave. Now, so, Francis Collins, you may recognize, is director of the National

01:45:17.440 Institutes on Health. And he was also the director of the Human Genome Project. You know, so, so he's as

01:45:28.540 strongly credentialed a scientist as one can have. And yet, he's absolutely confirmed Christian.

01:45:38.960 Uh, and so he was giving a lecture on the reconciliation of, I think he called it harmonization

01:45:47.700 of a scientific and religious worldview. Uh, but he was, he was laying out his arguments for the

01:45:56.040 existence of, of God. And one of them is what would be his claim. And it's an interesting claim,

01:46:06.480 and you could argue it, but the existence of moral law, that there is an absolute moral law.

01:46:13.000 Look, you know, you, I looked at Jack Panksepp's work, you know, and he shows that you see complex

01:46:17.720 morality emerging rats in play, play, iterated play, which is a crucial issue, right? What pattern of

01:46:24.700 behavior is sustainably optimal across repeated social interactions? Well, you know, you hear all

01:46:31.560 these postmodern critiques say of more of, of hierarchical structure because of its, its predication

01:46:37.720 on power. I think, no, no, corrupt hierarchies are predicated on power. Functional hierarchies are

01:46:44.580 predicated on reciprocal, uh, on reciprocity, on productive reciprocity. You know, I was talking to

01:46:51.580 this, this Jocko Willink, who was the commander of Fallujah in, in, in, in, in the 20 years ago,

01:46:59.040 and he's a real warrior type, you know, like a real intimidating person physically and mentally for

01:47:04.580 that matter. Um, he talked about his Navy SEAL training and, you know, he said, well, we were

01:47:10.440 taught it was pounded into us to have the back of the guy next to us. It wasn't like every powerful

01:47:16.680 clambering ape for himself, not at all. In these intensely competitive hierarchies, which would be,

01:47:24.840 you'd think as pure a manifestation of the power motive as would be possible. Power is not the

01:47:29.720 guiding ethos. And he said quite clearly, no, your men won't attend to you unless it's reciprocal.

01:47:35.580 You, they have to know you have their backs. And he, so, and he made also a very sophisticated case for

01:47:43.120 the development of verbal intelligence and the ability to communicate in strategizing and,

01:47:47.560 and also in taking care of your team. And so I don't believe that, um,

01:47:54.360 so what am I getting at in relationship to your, to your last point?

01:48:01.240 This, this religious, this emergent ethic, this natural law. Okay. So imagine now hierarchies are

01:48:08.160 organized around an ethical principle, if they're to be stable and productive across long spans of time

01:48:12.620 and a pattern that pattern emerges cross-culturally, it's reciprocal productivity is something like

01:48:18.320 that. It's more, there's more to it than that. Okay. Now you're selected for your success in those

01:48:24.700 hierarchies based on your ability to manifest that pattern, because that'll push you up the hierarchy

01:48:30.140 that increases. As far as I can tell, that increases your attractiveness as a potential mate

01:48:34.980 substantially. And so I think you can make a very deep biological case for the, even for the

01:48:41.420 emergent evolution of an ethical sense. And, and I think that does speak to people in the voice of

01:48:49.160 their conscience. And that is part of, but then you think, well, if that's part of existence,

01:48:54.940 how deep a part is it? How built in is it? You know, and I don't, I, and that I suppose depends

01:49:02.300 to some degree on how crucial consciousness is to being. Okay. So back to, back to the gentleman that

01:49:09.520 you were discussing, he was talking about a natural ethic. Yeah. Well, I think as, as a pointer to God,

01:49:20.680 something absolute about the nature of what moral law is. And from that standpoint, if, if you're willing

01:49:30.220 to go that route, then maybe these experiences are actually pointing to something that is absolute

01:49:37.420 and true and informative. Do you think that's true? I don't know. I'm a scientist.

01:49:48.580 Look, it's fine to be investigating it, you know. Yeah. No. I don't want to pin you down.

01:49:54.100 No. Let's see. You know, my, I'm trained as a scientist. My default is to be deeply curious and

01:50:04.700 to be deeply skeptical. So. Right. Which is the right, right attitude towards all of this.

01:50:09.800 And so my, my response always is that I believe in the data. And so, and so that remains an open

01:50:16.820 question, but it's certainly fun to toy with as a, as an, as an alternative framing of what's going on.

01:50:26.680 I mean, we're in the middle of this huge, huge mystery.

01:50:32.620 So.

01:50:37.680 Historical significance. What do you think of the theories associating early Christianity and the

01:50:43.480 sacrament with, with the, with the ingestion of psychedelic substances?

01:50:48.700 I don't, I don't know. Certainly it's quite plausible. I mean, the very, the, if you, if you read the

01:50:59.420 accounts of the, uh, Aleutian mysteries, uh, and, and the kinds of experiences people had,

01:51:07.380 it sure sounds like a psychedelic experience, at least, uh, some of those accounts. But we also know

01:51:14.560 that those kinds of experiences can be engendered naturally as well. Uh, and so I, I, yeah, I, I don't

01:51:22.740 want to discount that, you know, that as a possibility. There's actually some, you know, some, the, the

01:51:31.540 psychedelic proponents, the enthusiasts, you know, think that what we're laying down is the, you know,

01:51:39.040 the future. This is the most valuable tool there is, you know, to open up to these kinds of

01:51:45.880 experiences. And I see it actually quite differently is, is, you know, we're learning about the capacity

01:51:52.700 of the, of the human species of the organism to have these experiences. And what I would suspect is

01:52:00.920 that in, you know, 10, 20, 50 years, uh, psychedelics are going to be very considered very

01:52:08.840 crude tools to engender these things. We're going to have, you know, much better ways and more precise

01:52:16.160 ways to intervene in, in this process to occasion experiences of, of this, uh, of this sort.

01:52:25.760 But to go back to your question, so what, yeah, is this plausible that it has played a role? Uh,

01:52:33.220 it's certainly plausible. It, I, it seems quite unlikely that it accounts for

01:52:39.060 you, the entirety of, uh, of these kinds of transformations.

01:52:45.540 It still leaves all sorts of things unsolved. Like, I mean, why did the worship of Dionysius

01:52:50.140 transform into the worship of Christ, for example? I mean, we, even if there's psychedelic

01:52:54.800 continuity there, that, that's a question that we can hardly pose, let, let alone answer. And

01:53:01.060 it, it, it, I'm also extremely curious. I mean, this place, do you think it's reasonable to

01:53:08.360 conceptualize the, the destination place of a trip as a place? I mean, that's what myth,

01:53:19.480 that's what Greek mythology appears to do. That's what the mythology of the underworld appears to be

01:53:23.800 about, as far as I can tell. What, what, what do you think about, we've talked about how psychedelics

01:53:32.460 shed a different light on the structure of reality as we perceive it, but people also report going

01:53:38.940 places that aren't here exactly. They're, and that the, the idea, the shamanic idea that the,

01:53:45.640 the universe is a tree, I believe that that's the tree of, of, of size, essentially, that that's the,

01:53:53.500 realm from the subatomic to the cosmic. That's how that's portrayed in the, in the primordial human

01:53:59.000 imagination. And the shaman report traveling up and down those levels. And that's not out of keeping

01:54:05.480 with the experiences that people report on psychedelics, unsurprisingly, because hypothetically,

01:54:10.120 they're derived from the same domain. And then there's the entity problem as well, especially with

01:54:15.300 DMT. I know Rick Strassman, who studied DMT so intently, and I have never met Rick, but my impression

01:54:21.260 from reading him is that he was a pretty buttoned down sort of guy when he got into the psychedelic

01:54:25.860 field, he, he wasn't driven in there from the hippie end of things. It was more from the, you

01:54:31.780 know, skeptical intellect type or direction, but he, he appears to have been so shocked by what the DMT

01:54:38.240 experience produced in terms of reports from people that, you know, well, it was shocking to him to say

01:54:45.940 the least. And no wonder, because it seems that everyone who takes DMT reports going somewhere very

01:54:50.660 fast, and encountering all sorts of alien entities. And, but they also describe that as hyper real. And if

01:54:58.740 you object that those are figures of the imagination, or even union archetypes among those who would know of

01:55:03.800 that sort of thing, that, that that's not an acceptable explanation, appear, apparently. So what do you

01:55:11.440 make of that? Yeah, and well, this story with Rick Strassman is interesting, because it was literally

01:55:18.000 so disquieting to him that he ended up stopping his research, because he had such a, a high rate of his

01:55:26.920 participants, you know, talking about encountering entities within that, that he, he didn't know how to

01:55:39.120 manage that. So one of the surveys... Yeah, and who does? Right? Because it's, it's just, what do you do with

01:55:47.100 it? What do you do with data? Like, you know, so you said you go where the data drives you, and fair enough, but

01:55:51.500 sometimes the data itself is, you don't know what to do with it. And the DMT experiences certainly seem to fall in

01:55:59.060 that category. Yeah. So, so we've run a number of interesting survey studies, and you mentioned them at the

01:56:06.660 outset, one about God encounter experiences, and the other about entity encounters with, with DMT. And, and, and we did

01:56:18.680 it, this is a survey study, we, we actually ended up getting data on 2500 people who had had a DMT

01:56:27.980 entity encounter experience, and, and, and we gave them detailed questionnaires about the nature of those

01:56:35.780 experiences. Most of them ended up feeling that they had encountered a sentient, and very, and a conscious,

01:56:47.280 benevolent, often sacred other in these experiences, which was surprising to us, because we,

01:56:54.860 based on the literature, I had thought that these entity encounter experiences might be something

01:57:01.140 different than that. But importantly, most of the people claim to come out of the experience with a,

01:57:10.560 with a different sense of, of reality. They can, they, the majority of them continue to

01:57:19.980 think that the entity existed after the experience continues to exist. So what? So they're not mere

01:57:29.060 figments of the imagination. No, absolutely not. They're, yeah, their conception of reality has been

01:57:35.760 shifted in a, in a really fundamental and primary way. And so that's, that's, that's haunting. Now,

01:57:44.520 one of the curiosities is that in a different survey, when we asked people about God encounter

01:57:50.660 experiences, and we did that naturally occurring God encounters and psychedelic occasion, God

01:57:56.480 encounters, it actually was much of the same story. People felt that they were in the presence of a

01:58:02.360 conscious, intelligent, benevolent entity, caring entity, and their worldview shifted. But these were

01:58:11.400 people who went into this framing it in terms of a spiritual, religious experience, the DMT people,

01:58:19.760 you know, very often didn't have a religious orientation to begin with, you know, yet they come

01:58:25.840 out with these beliefs. It's, um...

01:58:30.400 And we should point out to everyone who's listening that DMT is the active ingredient in the Brazilian,

01:58:35.780 in the Amazonian ayahuasca, which is also a complete mystery in and of itself, because nobody can figure

01:58:40.700 out how those shamans figured out how to make that stuff. So, yeah. Uh, and with, and the ayahuasca

01:58:49.520 DMT is, uh, ingested along with a compound that, um, uh, that slows its elimination. So it changes the

01:58:58.020 entire, uh, time course. And in my sense, although entity encounters can occur with psychedelics, generally,

01:59:05.940 my impression is that the intensity of these kinds of entity encounter experiences and the probability

01:59:13.340 are much greater with, this is smoked DMT, uh, or, or in the case of Rick Straussman, it was

01:59:21.000 interbanus DMT, but it's a very fast onset. Right. Well, and that's pharmacologically relevant because

01:59:27.780 one of the, one of the determinants of the effect of a drug is maximum blood level, say, or brain

01:59:33.920 level, but another is the rate at which that level is attained. So, which is why injected cocaine is

01:59:40.120 so much more potent and also dangerous than, than say, orally administered cocaine. Same with most

01:59:46.800 drugs. So that rapidity of onset is relevant. So, I mean, do you have any ontological sense of what's

01:59:56.100 happening in the DMT experience? Well, before I do, before we go to the ontological sense, the DMT

02:00:02.860 experience maps onto naturally occurring entity encounter experiences. So, you know, we have a

02:00:10.580 whole history of, uh, of people reporting, uh, uh, alien encounter experiences or alien abduction

02:00:19.020 experiences. And if you really look at that, those descriptions, they're much more similar than

02:00:26.080 different to what we're seeing with the, the DMT. So I, I would come. Yes. Which makes things even

02:00:32.460 weirder, I would say. Well, weirder and, and maybe not that in the same sense that we're biologically

02:00:40.600 wired or predisposed to have these kinds of experiences, but then ontologically, what, what do you,

02:00:49.080 what do you make of, make of them? And, you know, when, you know, certainly when I had read alien

02:00:56.540 encounter literature, I, you know, just a priori, I was entirely dismissive of it.

02:01:04.420 Who was, that was Mack, right? At Harvard, very well-credentialed psychiatrist. He was,

02:01:09.440 he had his tail put in a complete knot by his investigations of, uh, the alien encounters,

02:01:14.560 because what he showed was that he figured that people who were reporting this would have an

02:01:19.300 extensive history of psychopathology of one form or another. But when he did the analysis,

02:01:23.760 there was no evidence for that. And so Mack, Mack ended up believing that, that, well, that something

02:01:29.640 real had happened to these people. And of course that did his career no favor. And, but which is

02:01:34.900 also, I would say, an indication of how strongly he came to believe that. Yeah. And, and there've been

02:01:40.940 other, other studies, uh, done, uh, uh, since then. So I, you know, I think we're, we're talking about

02:01:49.080 the same kind of process now, you know, what's going on and what does it mean? Boy, I don't know.

02:01:57.680 I mean, it sure seems on, unlikely at a priori. Well, I, I don't know. I don't know what to make

02:02:06.080 of it. I, one of the striking features of the DMT encounters was that the attributions made to the

02:02:13.580 entity really mapped onto the same kinds of attributions that people, uh, describe, uh, in

02:02:22.060 their God encounter experiences. So those are more similar than, uh, than different. Now, if you,

02:02:28.560 if you read that DMT literature, you get, you know, other wild descriptions of, you know, alligators and

02:02:35.060 insectoids and mechanical clowns and yeah. Yeah. It's really, it, it, it, it just makes things weirder

02:02:43.400 the more you read about the experiences. It is, but you know, having 2,500 cases, you know,

02:02:50.640 we were looking at, is, is there a modal description, you know, are these going to look

02:02:54.820 like the alien greys or something like that? Well, no, not at all. It's just a smear of, um,

02:03:02.620 you know, of, uh, descriptors, uh, of, of what they think they, uh, encountered. And, and, you know,

02:03:12.760 and I, you know, what I wonder with the God encounters, I mean, if that's not the same kind of

02:03:18.480 mechanism at work and, uh, and maybe there's less visualization, maybe it's less likely that

02:03:25.700 there's going to be, uh, um, you know, uh, um, uh, you know, a sense of, uh, encountering an embodied

02:03:37.020 other, uh, but there's something ineffable, more ineffable about, uh, some of those experiences.

02:03:43.860 Uh, okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull us in another direction because there's definitely,

02:03:50.040 there's other things I really want to get your opinion about, um, many things. Let's start with

02:03:55.660 your studies in religious leaders. Like, what are you doing? What, what motivated you to do that?

02:04:04.740 What, why are, yeah, I really want to know why you're doing that, what you think will happen,

02:04:08.240 what the cultural significance, because it's such a wild thing to do. Like you've got, you've already

02:04:12.660 established the fact that these mystical experiences are reliably inducible. And now you're pulling in

02:04:18.760 figures of, of significance in religious communities. So that's another thing I can't

02:04:27.320 believe you've managed to do, but why, and, and what are you seeing and, and what do you think's

02:04:33.280 going to happen? Well, let's see. So I'm a little bit handicapped in how much I can say about that

02:04:40.320 specific study, but let me describe that line of investigation. So that came, it, you know,

02:04:46.780 it just comes out of my own deep curiosity about the nature of these experience and their, uh,

02:04:53.680 and their spiritual religious significance. So we started out with healthy volunteers and we've done

02:05:00.260 a whole bunch of stuff with patient populations. So, you know, the, where the rubber meets the road

02:05:06.760 here in our culture immediately is these drugs as therapeutics and they're going to be very powerful.

02:05:12.900 Yes. Cause you've had amazing success with smoking cessation, for example.

02:05:16.580 Smoking and depression and end of life. Uh, and there's good evidence for, uh, alcoholism and,

02:05:24.200 and there are a variety of other targets now. And the, and the excitement is that, uh, we may have

02:05:31.400 transdiagnostic efficacy because the very nature of these experiences are so fundamental to rewriting

02:05:39.060 the operating system, if you will, that the kinds of changes that can come about can cut across a

02:05:45.480 variety of psychiatric diagnostic categories. But so there, that, that work is going on.

02:05:52.500 So a psychiatric drug that's not hampered by diagnostic, um, um, diversity, essentially.

02:05:58.400 Yeah. I mean, it's not going to work with everything obviously, but, uh, you know,

02:06:03.400 but I think its application is going to be much broader than any psychiatric.

02:06:07.880 Well, and as you already pointed out, we're not very good at this yet.

02:06:11.380 Like you've been investigating this for how long?

02:06:15.460 Well, 20 years now.

02:06:16.980 Right. Right. So, you know, all things considered a drop in the bucket.

02:06:21.140 Yeah. Um, so this other line of investigation, uh, you know, grew out of, uh, my interest

02:06:28.400 in meditation. So we started with healthy volunteers. We then, we did some just parametric

02:06:35.460 work, just, uh, figuring out dose effects and replicability and stuff like that. And then

02:06:41.260 we went on and we did a study in beginning meditators, people who were interested in taking

02:06:46.840 on a meditation practice and who were, uh, uh, psychedelic naive. And what we showed is

02:06:54.400 again, the mystical experience drives long, long-term trait level changes of the type that

02:07:01.760 you mentioned in terms of openness, but there's a number of other trait level changes that occur

02:07:07.260 very often in a pro-social direction, uh, you know, gratitude and altruism and that sort of thing.

02:07:14.740 We then did a study in long-term meditators. And of course that came right out of my interest.

02:07:21.520 So the question there was, well, what about people who have spent decades exploring the

02:07:28.140 nature of their mind and, uh, and have developed some capacity for sustained, uh, investigation

02:07:36.540 of that sort? What do they make of these experiences? Uh, and that study we're writing up, but I can,

02:07:44.200 I can say that, um, um, um, most of those long-term meditators found those experiences to be

02:07:52.480 astonishing just as everyone else has. So that's very crucial, right? Because they've,

02:07:58.640 they're already, they're initiates already in some sense, but this is pushing them past where

02:08:03.080 they've already gone and radically. Yeah. And they, and they attribute positive changes to their

02:08:09.860 sitting meditation practice and to their, uh, sense of, of, uh, uh, awareness and daily life,

02:08:19.020 which is really the core of what meditation practices is cultivating. So all the same kinds

02:08:25.640 of positive attributions and, and saying that it's facilitates their engagement. None of them would say

02:08:33.740 that it's a sub psychedelics are a substitute for what the, the meditation practice because meditation

02:08:40.400 results in the stability of, uh, of awareness that psychedelics certainly do not. So then the next

02:08:50.140 step was, uh, uh, religious professionals. And we are, uh, collecting the last data on that. It was a

02:09:00.060 study that was run jointly at Hopkins and NYU, and we have made a pact in the study team not to

02:09:08.540 talk about any results until we're ready to, uh, publish, but, but I can tell you, I can,

02:09:16.060 I can give you a broad brush stroke of what we're thinking there, uh, of course, and that-

02:09:21.140 And hoping perhaps maybe, because we, we, maybe we can close this off with a little bit of discussion

02:09:25.960 about, you know, the potential impact of this. I mean, I'm very interested, for example,

02:09:31.500 in the decline of religious belief across the West and there's a, there's a necessity for

02:09:36.860 revitalization and, and well, back to, back to the religious leaders.

02:09:43.440 Yeah. So that's the question. What, so among people who have made career commitments to,

02:09:52.840 uh, to ministry and, and, and to supporting people's spiritual growth, what, what happens

02:10:03.140 with them with a, with a psychedelic experience and, and how does that fit with their ministry,

02:10:12.600 uh, their engagement in that and, uh, and their belief.

02:10:17.440 Do you plan to do long-term efficacy studies? Like, I'd be really curious if you're,

02:10:21.580 your psychedelic enhanced ministers, let's say, were then more credible proponents for their

02:10:29.160 community and their congregations were disproportionately, for example, or perhaps not

02:10:35.100 likely to grow. Uh, we probably don't have the power to, uh, address that question. We'll certainly

02:10:44.320 follow these people up, uh, and the initial study we have follow up to, uh, 12 months and, and, uh, and

02:10:53.860 we're doing a lot of qualitative, uh, uh, work on this. Um, I think, I think what I can say without,

02:11:02.320 without saying anything specific about the data is, uh, uh, that the results are not inconsistent with

02:11:12.320 that, that, that we have seen in healthy volunteers and beginning meditators and long-term meditators,

02:11:18.540 uh, that, uh, that is, there's something astonishing about these experiences and I'll, I'll have to,

02:11:26.820 uh, leave it at that. But, but I think the implications are, are, are important. I mean,

02:11:34.400 the, so the question is, yeah, how does this, uh, interact with faith, uh, traditions and, um,

02:11:45.480 and that, that's going to be an interesting story to tell and, uh, and to have unfold, but I don't

02:11:51.960 think I can say anything further about it. Yeah. Well, yeah. Fair, fair enough. Fair enough. Um,

02:11:59.260 I guess I'm, I'm, so I can, backing off the study per se, I mean, you know, there's something about

02:12:07.760 these experiences that speak to the ineffable, uh, and, uh, and, and this whole project of

02:12:19.100 organizing community around, um, around investigation and cultivation of,

02:12:28.060 of, of the, um, fruits of those kinds of experiences. And I think that's hugely consequential.

02:12:38.060 So one of the, one of the features of the, you know, that I've already discussed of the primary

02:12:44.480 mystical experience is this sense of the interconnectedness of all people and it's sacred

02:12:49.820 and it's true. And, and, and, and from that arises this sense of, uh, pro-social sense of altruism,

02:12:59.700 a sense that we're all in this together. Well, if that isn't the golden rule, and if that doesn't,

02:13:06.700 you know, speak to the nature of, you know, most ethical and moral traditions.

02:13:14.060 Okay. So I want to unpack that for a minute because it's so surprising. Like you can go over

02:13:18.940 that quickly and it doesn't sound surprising. It's so the drugs are producing an expansion

02:13:24.840 of human experience. That's meaningful and positive, but it's not hedonic precisely. It,

02:13:32.020 that isn't the system it's affecting. So that's unbelievably crucial. It's something other than

02:13:37.780 cocaine. It's something other than incentive reward. Okay. So now it's lasting and it's, it's,

02:13:45.000 and then there's the pro-social element and the, and the uniting element. So it's philosophical,

02:13:50.260 but it's also ethical. And all of those things are radical surprises, right? It could be philosophical

02:13:58.740 without being ethical and, and it could be positive without being philosophical. And then the,

02:14:06.200 the fourth thing is, is the, that, that feeling of truth that is associated with it too. So it's got

02:14:12.000 this deep cognitive element. That's also surprising. These are, these aren't things that you would

02:14:18.400 suspect or predict there. And they do differentiate these drugs substantially from other drugs of abuse

02:14:24.480 completely qualitatively. And so people come out, they're more pro-social. And so you think that's a,

02:14:34.020 that's a, uh, uh, exaggeration or a strengthening of, of our, of our, of our inbuilt reciprocal

02:14:42.040 ethic. Like the, so you see, you see an expansion of the philosophical with the radical increase in

02:14:50.420 openness and, and hypothetically associated neural transformations. Well, now you see a, on, uh,

02:14:57.260 a strengthening of that ethic that's associated with this profound underlying narrative readjustment.

02:15:03.720 It tilts people to the positive. It tilts them to the reciprocal and the interactive. It gives them

02:15:10.180 a deeper faith. It's hard to see how all of that couldn't be of significance to religious communities.

02:15:19.100 And then the question is, well, what should be, what do you talk, how do you talk to religious

02:15:24.860 people about this? Especially if they're more on the conservative end of things, because

02:15:28.500 a less conservative hypothesis could hardly be imagined, right? It's the psychedelic origin of

02:15:35.240 the deep Judeo-Christian ethic. That's, that's a radical idea. And it, it brings up this question,

02:15:42.620 well, we lost this technology, essentially something like 2000 years ago in the West, except in

02:15:48.880 underground places. Do we reincorporate it? How do we reincorporate it? And what does that mean on

02:15:54.780 the religious front, like the conservative religious front with regards to say practice?

02:16:00.400 Well, but again, I would say it doesn't have to be psychedelics. We're going to, we're going to

02:16:05.300 learn more about the nature of these experiences and who knows, I mean, there may be a way to do this

02:16:11.520 with, uh, you know, electro, uh, cranial stimulation, you know, or, or, uh, you know,

02:16:17.980 other kinds of, of manipulations. I'm going to object to that just for a second. Well,

02:16:23.920 and I have a specific reason, you know, because I, I think that's, uh, uh, a careful argument and an

02:16:31.120 appropriate one, but I don't think your data support it because you just told me that even the

02:16:36.960 experienced meditators, for them, it's a qualitative transformation. And so you, and so you, you've

02:16:43.300 already got a population that have been using disciplined technology, right? And good and good

02:16:48.760 for them. You know, Eliade, Mircea Eliade believed that the shamanic transformation in its pure form

02:16:56.100 wasn't drug mediated, but I think it looks to me like I have a great respect for Eliade. I learned a

02:17:02.400 tremendous amount from him. I think, I don't think the evidence supports that claim. I think the

02:17:07.360 psychedelics are doing something that is in addition to what discipline practice. I mean,

02:17:12.420 who knows what happens if you practice for 35 years, let's say, and that's all you do. But,

02:17:17.700 but I'm, it isn't obvious to me that this can be duplicated on the non-chemical front.

02:17:24.580 Oh, let's see. I don't disagree, agree with you. I mean, this is the most powerful intervention we have

02:17:31.660 for, for, uh, for creating at high probability, these kinds of experiences. We don't, nothing comes

02:17:40.080 close to it. Well, and there's an intensity issue too, right? It's not just probability, but also

02:17:44.760 intensity. Yeah, no, absolutely. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to refine this further

02:17:51.480 and that there might not be another way to do it. Right. It also doesn't mean that disciplined

02:17:56.780 practice is not advisable and that caution isn't the appropriate byword. Yeah. Yeah. But there,

02:18:03.000 you know, there could be other physiological interventions, you know, that aren't, aren't

02:18:09.040 psychedelic drugs, aren't, you know, serotonin 2A, uh, agonists. So all I'm, all I'm scoping out is

02:18:18.220 that this is going to continue to unfold, uh, scientifically just, but to, to get back to the,

02:18:26.440 the implications. So, so these experiences are, are hugely pro-social and ethical, uh, or speak to,

02:18:37.560 you know, basic ethics. And so, you know, I've concluded and it, it, it sounds to some like an

02:18:45.680 overstatement, but I don't think it is that actually unpacking this, this whole situation

02:18:52.020 is crucial to the survival of our species because that impulse. Well, that's what the masters of the

02:18:59.540 Ellicinian mysteries proclaimed, that what they're doing, that we would all die without that. We

02:19:05.780 couldn't live without it. And, and so if we can understand this, the kinds of experiences that

02:19:13.720 give rise to mutual caretaking, then we, we have the ability to solve all kinds of horrors that,

02:19:21.240 you know, our cultures have, uh, imposed on us. Uh, and, you know, there, you could imagine, uh,

02:19:28.840 uh, interfaith dialogues that could, uh, uh, come out of exploration of these kinds of experiences

02:19:38.540 experiences across faith traditions when, and I, and my guess will be, uh, that the discovery is going

02:19:47.360 to be, well, wait a second, the bedrock core in, this is the kind of perennial philosophy, the bedrock

02:19:54.860 core of most of these traditions is really quite similar. Uh, and, uh, and so, so whether,

02:20:04.380 whether, whether the future is integrating this into existing religious institutions, you know,

02:20:12.940 or, or, or seeing a evolution of our cultural institutions, you know, that can incorporate

02:20:21.060 this sort of thing is, uh, you know, is I think a question. One of the things, uh, that is disquieting

02:20:30.820 to me is that the ability of these experiences to shift worldview is potentially really cult destabilizing

02:20:41.920 to existing cultural institutions. Yeah. Well, that's what happened in the sixties. And it's no

02:20:47.480 wonder there was such like, we underestimate the magnitude of these processes at our peril. God only

02:20:54.060 knows what's happening at the bottom of them. Yeah. So it is a genie that we maybe can't do without,

02:20:59.940 but it's still fire to mix. It is fire terribly. And I, and I think that accounts for the history of

02:21:06.800 psychedelics having been discovered in some cultures and then forgotten or suppressed. I mean,

02:21:13.320 look what happened in, uh, you know, when the Spanish, uh, came over to Mexico. I mean, they actively

02:21:20.220 stamped out the use of psychedelics. And, and, and I think, I think at the core, if we're not careful,

02:21:29.360 they can be destabilizing to culture and then culture is going to come, come back and demonize

02:21:35.660 them as is exactly what happened in the sixties. So I'm, I am concerned about the excited movement

02:21:44.380 toward decriminalization and legalization. And before the, before the, the, well, there's a,

02:21:50.860 let's say an ecstatic spiritual domain of religiosity, and there's a dogmatic

02:21:54.640 discipline, traditional end of religion. And, you know, the spiritual types, and they have the

02:22:01.540 personality for this are always opposed to the dogmatic types, but you know, those two things

02:22:06.580 have to exist together. Carl Jung said was one of the most brilliant things he ever said was that

02:22:12.000 the purpose of religious structures is to stop people from having religious experiences.

02:22:17.220 And he was, he was, he was referring to this destabilizing effect that, uh, uh, an untrammeled

02:22:26.300 mystical experience can have psychologically and sociologically. It's, you just can't have

02:22:31.680 a million separate religions pop up without everything disintegrating. And so we have to figure

02:22:37.900 out how to place the genie inside the bottle. And, and I mean, this is why what you've done is part

02:22:45.620 of the reason it's so fascinating to me, because for some reason you've been able to get the balance

02:22:50.640 between tradition and discipline and empirical reasoning and careful rationality and skepticism.

02:22:58.500 You balance that with this intense focus on your own curiosity, your sense of meaning, and

02:23:03.440 brought those together and managed it institutionally. So something that you did worked, it's right.

02:23:09.620 And taking that apart and figuring out how that can be replicated, let's say,

02:23:15.160 that's a, that's a crucial future task. And the decriminalization, I understand that. But,

02:23:22.340 you know, one thing we can encourage anyone who's listening to this, uh, to consider is none of this

02:23:28.280 should be done lightly. It should be done within an ethical framework. You should do it with the

02:23:32.500 highest possible intent and reverence. And yeah. And there, and there are real risks. Uh, so,

02:23:39.260 you know, our people are, are carefully, uh, screened, you know, we're really concerned about

02:23:45.780 precipitation of enduring, uh, uh, psychotic illness, uh, schizophrenia. Uh, you know, we have avoided,

02:23:54.660 uh, administering to anyone with a bipolar disorder that remains to be investigated. Maybe it'll work,

02:24:01.920 maybe it won't, uh, probably, uh, and, um, uh, and, and certainly, uh, the, the risk of, uh, of people,

02:24:13.800 uh, engaging in dangerous behavior if, if it's not, if they're not in a sufficient container. And

02:24:19.900 that's where you do get people, you know, running into traffic or, uh, or committing suicides or

02:24:27.540 homicides. So, so this isn't to be taken lightly, but Jordan, if I can just come back to kind of

02:24:35.980 culturally and how do we integrate this? I'm almost thinking of this now in terms of an evolutionary

02:24:43.380 sense that we, you know, are, we have to evolve the cultural institutions that can, that can create

02:24:54.000 the containers around these experiences such that they don't threaten our existing institutions,

02:25:00.520 which are going to become reactive and demonize them and shut it down and, and figure out the

02:25:06.940 intelligent use of these compounds. And so, so, and you're doing that as a scientist and now you're

02:25:13.080 inviting religious leaders to participate in that process, which seems to me to be, I mean, are they,

02:25:18.740 so just out of curiosity, for example, you'll have this group of religious leaders,

02:25:22.880 this assembly of religious leaders who've now undergone this experience. So will they commune

02:25:28.480 and will they discuss collectively the implications of this? Like, you know, because it's necessary to

02:25:36.400 start thinking about how those social structures might, might be evolved. You, you have this first

02:25:43.300 batch of people who already have made an ethical commitment and a disciplined choice. It would be

02:25:49.620 fascinating to, it seems to put them together for three or four days and say, well, look now,

02:25:55.320 what do we do with this? You're in a, they're in a unique position and, and to see what the,

02:26:02.860 what answers might arise from that. Yeah. Harvard School of Divinity is, uh, uh, initiating a

02:26:11.800 psychedelic chaplaincy program. I'm, and I'm not sure of all the domains of that, but yeah.

02:26:17.620 That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, so, so, do you have,

02:26:25.400 do you know when that's going to be launched? Let's see, I think they, uh, I think they have

02:26:31.300 declared that I'd have to go online, but, uh, they're actually, that should solve some of their

02:26:36.960 enrollment problems. Well, yeah, but that's also relevant, right? It's like, look, okay, now you've,

02:26:45.200 you've, you've, you've cottoned on to something here that, that attracts people. Well, that's to

02:26:50.060 be paid attention to because the church is having a terrible time attracting people, especially young

02:26:54.780 people. And so that can't be ignored, especially if those institutions are necessary.

02:27:01.480 But right now we have no path forward within our culture for approval of administration of, uh,

02:27:09.820 psychedelic to, uh, to, uh, to well persons. We're, we're capable of doing these studies

02:27:17.200 as research projects, but, but, uh, we don't, and we have our, our FDA that approves drugs, but they're

02:27:29.080 approving them, uh, to treat conditions of either psychological or, or physical suffering,

02:27:38.880 uh, right. And, and so, so this is part of the co-evolution that's needs to happen.

02:27:48.060 And existential insufficiency isn't enough of a psychiatric diagnostic category to, to, to

02:27:53.560 qualify, but I'm really quite serious about that. I mean, you know, lots of it's, it's the,

02:27:58.500 the sense of futility, meaningless and nihilism, that's not rare. And it's, it's not harmless by any

02:28:07.480 stretch of the imagination. At minimum, it's staggeringly demoralizing at maximum. It's, it

02:28:13.520 motivates all sorts of terrible acts of commission, not just omission. And it, it, it warps and, and,

02:28:20.600 and hurts our, our, our entire society. It's not a trivial problem that we don't know how to deal

02:28:26.820 with our own mortality, for example, and no bloody wonder it's a complicated problem.

02:28:30.760 Yeah. So, so that, you know, so that's, that's one pathway forward is application in, uh, in death

02:28:42.840 and dying. Right. And, and, and initially to get approval for people who have some psychological

02:28:51.780 distress, but you could imagine that actually changing the culture. You know, it's not going

02:28:57.500 to happen overnight. You know, we're probably talking about a multi-generational process,

02:29:02.860 but you know, once. We can move pretty quick when we're motivated now, you know, let me ask you one

02:29:09.320 more thing about this integration issue. Like, so you've given these drugs to spiritual leaders. So

02:29:17.020 then I would think, okay, here's a question. You situate your neck, your research project in a

02:29:25.740 cathedral. And you administer the psilocybin as a sacrament with the music, with, with, with the

02:29:34.580 entire transformation mass apparatus. Because, you know, if it's reasonable to administer to

02:29:42.440 spiritual leaders, at least hypothetically, it's reasonable to investigate what happens when you put

02:29:47.340 it in an intense, I mean, a lot of work went into a cathedral. A lot of work went into that music,

02:29:53.160 the entire ritual, and the idea of the, of what's actually happening being made explicit.

02:29:59.520 You know, I mean, those experiences are already powerful. God only knows how you might multiply

02:30:05.720 them with the power of, of all of that imagery and pageantry and tradition and layers and layers of

02:30:13.080 meaning. Yeah. So going back to the original Good Friday experiment conducted at Harvard,

02:30:20.140 it was done in a good Friday service, uh, with seminary students, uh, a number of whom had

02:30:29.320 mystical experiences, not all of whom, whom did, but that's, that's what you're talking about. I mean,

02:30:35.880 those are kind of set and setting conditions, uh, that, you know, would be really interesting.

02:30:42.980 We have looked at this under such a narrow range of conditions. I mean, you know, we're putting

02:30:48.300 people on a couch with the eye shades. Well, you do everything you can to make it sterile,

02:30:52.380 except the music, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we're, we're creating the introvert of the

02:30:58.500 experience, but we yet, yet to be explored as the extrovert of and, and just experimentally,

02:31:05.440 as you can appreciate, there's, you know, a whole lot more going on there. So it's,

02:31:09.420 it's, it's a, a rougher experimental paradigm to control. Yeah. Yeah. You could, you could carve

02:31:16.220 that in stone. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you, Jordan. This is, uh, delightful to, uh, to speak

02:31:28.460 with you about this. Yeah. Well, there's so many more things I would like to ask you about, but

02:31:32.480 that was pretty good for two hours. So I'm, uh, I'm so much looking forward to reading the

02:31:39.240 results of this spiritual leader study. And, um, well, maybe we can, uh, circle back once we've

02:31:45.360 published where the long-term meditator study is, uh, on its way out and we'll have the religious

02:31:52.300 professional study, hopefully out within the next, I would hope year. Maybe we can circle back and talk

02:31:59.180 a little bit further. That, that would be, that would be great. That would be great. So, all right.

02:32:04.340 Well, um, happy good Friday, if that's a thing that can be said. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan.

02:32:11.040 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I really appreciated that the discussion and, uh, I'm well, I think your work

02:32:18.160 is of, well, it's of, of what would you say incalculable import? I mean that technically,

02:32:25.400 I don't really know what to make of it, but it's, it's great that it happened and hopefully

02:32:32.240 it'll be for the good. Let's hope that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if it fits so closely with many

02:32:37.900 of the themes that you have, uh, that you have developed and, uh, and advocated for that,

02:32:45.560 it's just really exciting to be able to talk to you about it. So, thank you.

02:33:02.240 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 10, 2021

167. The Psychology of the Psychedelics ｜ Roland Griffiths

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