187 Dr. Bruce Damer: Psychedelic-Assisted Innovation & The Science of Flow

[00:00:00] ck: Our guest today is Dr. Bruce Dahmer. He is the founder of Minds, an organization pioneering the science of breakthrough insights for humanity's greatest challenges. He is a leading astrobiologist who is co authoring a leading hypothesis that helps answering two big questions in science.

[00:00:21] ck: How did life originate on earth and where might we find it in the universe? Welcome to Noble Warrior, Bruce. Thank you, CK. So you're here because of our mutual friend, Pablos Holman. Who, uh, interview you first, when I first heard that podcast, I was immediately intrigued because you use terms like psychedelic assisted innovation, which we'll ask you in a moment, but you also share a very personal story about how you use ayahuasca as a way to neutralize to cure your sense of dissociation from the body.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] ck: So as a recovering cerebralist, personally, who also was helped by ayahuasca to get into the body, get into the mind, get into the heart. If you don't mind sharing that story a little more for people who are listening. I would very much appreciate it.

[00:01:16] Bruce: Yes, it, CK, it's, it's kind of my hero's journey, I realize, in retrospect, and this was 10 years ago, and when I was 9 years old, my father told me that I was adopted.

[00:01:29] Bruce: So just sort of sitting on the side of my bed, talked about it, and for me, it was not such a big deal. Uh, but it's, it, it explains something, it explained why I felt kind of separate from the family. I felt like a sort of separate being in the universe is floating along through space. Uh, and it wasn't until like 40 years later in the jungle, uh, with ayahuasca, with that amazing cure, healing medicine [00:02:00] that I managed to actually re experience my conception and birth.

[00:02:06] Bruce: And it's almost like when, when you have some deep programming, like core microcode that you don't know is there, but you, or how it runs, but you can sort of feel it. For me, that microcode was a pain in my gut. It was a literal pain down below a certain level of my body. And it kind of kept me emotionally away from it.

[00:02:28] Bruce: And it kept me in my head. So perhaps in the sixties, if they'd had people looking and characterizing little kids like me, they would have said I was autistic. Or at least, at least on the spectrum, but they didn't. So I was sort of let alone to do what I wanted to do. But by the time I was in my forties, I realized that it was time to work on that pain in the gut, that microcode.

[00:02:54] Bruce: And it came one night with ayahuasca, and that pain in the gut was [00:03:00] literally sort of figuratively the embryo of me that was unborn still. So it's almost like I came out of my mother's womb into a receiving ward where I'd be adopted, you know, a couple weeks later, but part of me never left. And so that pain unwound into kind of an embryo form.

[00:03:19] Bruce: And this, these are all allegories, but they're, they're powerful when you're within them. And I could actually nurture birth and, you know, Give love to that that pain and it dissipated and later on when I studied more of the healing arts I learned that that's actually the the major Practice of healers is to become their own caregiver for their own parts their own internal family system parts or you know You know pain bodies as Eckhart Tolle used to talk about Uh, if we take them in and we become the wise elder for them, we can unravel the [00:04:00] situation, unravel the kind of energy that's being put in, uh, the unsatisfied needs in some sense.

[00:04:08] Bruce: So that's how, that's how I had my healing and then having had that healing, I was able to have a revealing. I was able to go back. to the origin of, in a sense, the common birth of life, which I've been working on for decades, but seriously for 10 years with Dave Deamer at UC Santa Cruz. And I went through a kind of birth, uh, the birth of the protocell trying to divide itself.

[00:04:36] Bruce: Into the first two sort of daughter living cells, the transition from prelife to life. And I was witness to that. I was an experiencer of that. And that led to the insights behind the hot spring hypothesis that was published years later. And is now kind of swept through the entire field of astrobiology.

[00:04:59] Bruce: So in a [00:05:00] sense, those two things are paired. One's own origins, one's own birth story. Being a journey right back to a point of when we were made conceived and then growing in the belly and then birthed to the birth story of all of life, not just humanity, but every living organism and there's there are parallels.

[00:05:24] Bruce: There's beautiful parallels in there. And I was able to take that hero's journey across the transom between those one very personal thing and one a very embodied universal, uh, which also was a personal experience and then bring that back into science. And that's the key, right? Because we have, All of us on visionary journeys have a lot of visions, but how do we land them in the world?

[00:05:53] Bruce: So,

[00:05:54] ck: uh, Bruce, I really appreciate how great of a storyteller you are, because [00:06:00] in, I don't know, three minutes, you were able to really tap into a lot of very important life questions, such as purpose, such as being in service of the greater. Right, such as, you know, overcoming trauma and or original trauma in, in finding a new narrative, new allegory, new story that empowers us.

[00:06:23] ck: So there's a lot of different directions we can go to, but I want to ask you this very question. And then before I say that, I love to have you here, namely because not only You are doing the type of psycho spiritual medicine work, the kind of, um, emotional healing and all these, but you're also a scientist.

[00:06:43] ck: We can, you know, kind of jump around a little bit to talk about multiple things. Okay, having said that, uh, coming back to your ayahuasca story. Often we go through these type of plant journeys, plant medicine journeys, psychedelics, etc. [00:07:00] we see things, lots of visions, fractals, fantastical, you know, non dual experiences.

[00:07:07] ck: However, often, There is no sophistication to interpret whatever grandiose visions, but you did. So do you think that if you didn't have either the idea of IFS, internal family systems, or the idea of the, how the protozoa, you know, this type of, you know, primordial soup comes to life, you think you would have been as fruitful, uh, if you didn't have those ideas?

[00:07:38] ck: Original ideas to being with, you know, you know what I'm saying?

[00:07:42] Bruce: Yeah, I do see. Hey, I, I think that because I didn't do psychedelics or journey until I was 36 years old, I, I took my first, you know, medicine or elixir magic potion, whatever you'd call it, uh, upon meeting Terrence McKenna [00:08:00] back in the late 90s.

[00:08:00] Bruce: So Terrence actually in a, in a real sense, turned me on. You know, he introduced me to hyperspace and I introduced him to cyberspace. So, that was our, our exchange, uh, him here at the farm at Ancient Oaks and me at his place in Hawaii. But, um, I waited. I waited because I felt my system was pretty sensitive.

[00:08:24] Bruce: You know, if you, if you're on the spectrum, and I definitely, you know, believe I still am, you're a sensitive soul, and Caution is, I think, uh, prudent, and you, if you will, in, in these areas, because we can be tilted off, uh, off of our foundation, I think a little bit more easily, and adoptees are also, uh, they have challenges in life that, in the literature, uh, adoptees are, uh, 200 percent more likely to be hospitalized with, with psychiatric conditions.[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Bruce: So there are all those, those factors. And of course, I grew up in the big sort of anti drug. drug war era or war on drugs era, uh, in the 70s and 80s. And there really wasn't much, uh, around, there wasn't much available. That, that scene had come and gone and people had gone to prison and, and it, the scene was different.

[00:09:23] Bruce: So, And I was a nerdy kid. I was interested in computing and programming and those sorts of things. And, this is the last point, it's the most important, which is, I believe I was doing what I now call endo tripping, or tripping on the natch, as Terrence would say, without substances, without an exogenous substance.

[00:09:45] Bruce: I, I was taken over by downloads, you know, when you read about Albert Einstein or many of these sort of scientific mystics, they'll often get to a state where they're just absolutely taken over by a visionary solution. You know, of [00:10:00] course this was Nikola Tesla and technology, but many, many scientists sort of sought the visionary state or the mystical condition.

[00:10:09] Bruce: and swam with their equations, if you will. And science sort of begrudgingly accepts those kind of characters because they often make the breakthroughs. They're often at the front edge, so they're not necessarily thrown out of the society, but they're just, they're tolerated. And there are many, many examples, Francis Crick and many numerous examples in, in, in science.

[00:10:35] Bruce: And, and so, I was a sensitive system and I avoided psychedelics. I didn't take, I avoided aspirin or cannabis, for example. And I only approached psychedelics after meeting Terrence because I felt, well, this guy's not cracked. He's a little cracked. You know, his egg is a little cracked, but he's a decent, wonderful human being, a great [00:11:00] mind.

[00:11:01] Bruce: And in some sense, he would be a great guide. He'd be a great introducer. So it was late in life. And I had coming in the natural tendency to trip, to, to secure my observer's position during a visual download storm, where these conditions would come in and I would pull myself back into a little observer camera and witness it and even run a recording.

[00:11:29] Bruce: system. So I was kind of set up for my first mushroom trip. As, as stormy and, and totally highly weird it was, I could still sit in the observer position. In a sense, sort of sitting in the Eastern traditions and Eastern mystical traditions, sitting outside, sitting with the Atman or, you know, sitting in that position, observing my system rolling, sometimes being me, but other times not [00:12:00] being me.

[00:12:01] Bruce: And because I knew I would learn and I wouldn't necessarily be able to navigate, but I could hold a safe space for me as I went through the transition. So maybe that's another part of a hero's journey is being able to be separate from what is going on.

[00:12:21] ck: Yeah, I mean, So, so the question is, now I can kind of ask in, in two parts, right?

[00:12:27] ck: Cause one part is about the interpretation of these fantastical visions or experiences that one have. And one presume, I assume that, uh, if you don't have the proper, uh, frame or paradigm or understanding, then it wouldn't, it would just be, Oh, this is a great fantastical vision. What else is on the channel?

[00:12:50] ck: Move on. Right? And it wouldn't have any kind of direct meaning to anything, to one's life, to even a greater contribution to science, [00:13:00] etc. But someone like, like a Crick, as an example, he was thinking about a scientific problem, he already has the understanding of physics and biology and so forth. So when he saw the vision during his experience, he can say, Oh, let's look at it as a, as a, as a double helix.

[00:13:18] ck: Aha. Right. So same as you. So, so that's on the, on the, on the realm of interpretation. But another realm that you had talked about is. Your proclivity to sensitivity and as such, you develop a certain skill of being able to see yourself as a, as a, as a observer. And that's a skill that you develop over time before you had your first experience.

[00:13:44] ck: Is that an accurate reflection of that?

[00:13:46] Bruce: That's totally accurate. And in a sense, it's the note taker. So, and apologies for not getting to your first question, but actually this is a roundabout route of saying that. The note taker, or the [00:14:00] observer, or in some sense the critic, is the peer review on what's going on.

[00:14:06] Bruce: Now of course, you're not going to peer review your own healing, it's just, there's a certain intelligence that's under, unfolding in that. But in the revealing phase, where a question is taken up or some answer is downloaded, the observer or the peer review note taker is kind of nudging it along. So for example, in the question of the origin of life, I came into it with about six or seven years of heavy duty Discussions with Dave, going to scientific conferences, seeing where all the science had gotten and stopped, and realizing that there's the big gap right there.

[00:14:49] Bruce: There's the hole in, in the story. And, I had done previous endotrips to get all the way up to this point where the great chasm [00:15:00] appeared. And during my psychedelic trip, which was actually a low dose ayahuasca journey, and I think I discovered a kind of repeat DMT infusion technique by ayahuasca. Uh, you know, doses.

[00:15:19] Bruce: How do you do that? Uh, well, just like the DMT, uh, extended DMT studies that are going on at Imperial College now, they actually have a little bolus that squeezes in a dose of DMT and then there's a saline flush and then there's the next one and they keep people in DMT states over an hour. that kind of a thing.

[00:15:42] Bruce: But I was taking a relative microdose of ayahuasca in Peru and then bumping with another relative microdose and at the same time doing my practices, my silence practices, my listening practices, being part of the [00:16:00] music, being part of the energy of the jungle in the shaman's container. And all of that winds together.

[00:16:07] Bruce: I call that winding a vine where I has only one thread and there are many other sort of spiritual and physical threads to make the cordage of a truly integrated, tremendous pathway or rope to climb. And I developed that over several years. So then bringing the scientific question into that space, having developed all those previous practices, I would also push the button on endotrips.

[00:16:37] Bruce: So I would bring the endotripping system online, go into my media library, pull previous endogenous trips off, like seeing protocells in hot and cold water, for example. or having a vision for how polymers self assemble and create co joined sets. And these had all been kind of thought experiments I'd [00:17:00] done previously, but they were very vivid in my mind.

[00:17:02] Bruce: And I could pull them off the shelf and stitch them together into a movie really quickly. So that during the psychedelic assisted AYA trip, I ran a movie in high speed. And that movie took me back through time to the place where we think life began. And then the open question opened up. And then I let go.

[00:17:25] Bruce: I let go of all of that sort of run up. It was all preloaded and can the visionary state deliver? And it's, whether it's coming from my own consciousness or from some kind of mind at large that Aldous Huxley talked about way back in Doors of Perception, I was just open to any source. And the delivery was extraordinary.

[00:17:49] Bruce: It was just, it was outside of, I think, my cognitive ability to, to do it. Because just as previous, uh, sort of [00:18:00] psychedelicists in the biochemistry space, where they became the very structure that they're studying. So they had to know the structure of it. Many of them talk about becoming that structure.

[00:18:11] Bruce: Like Dennis McKenna talks about becoming photosynthesis. And literally, and he was struck during that, that experience of the vividness and the detail of becoming the photon and traveling, you know, through chlorophyll. Basically a tunneling, quantum tunneling energy and the total vividness which you would never get from reading about it in a textbook.

[00:18:39] Bruce: So the simulation was far beyond Dennis prior knowledge. It was vivid and high resolution and possibly quite accurate. And and so that's an example of the run up the set setting in the setup to to have a solution download and then the [00:19:00] back end challenges, how were you running a note taker, you know, like an AI note taker, then how do you encapsulate all of that and interpret it into language?

[00:19:12] Bruce: That works, say, as an engineering design for a spacecraft or, you know, a theory of the origin of life or a better way to run a company. How do you unravel that? And that's an entire other skill set that Minds is, is focused on.

[00:19:27] ck: So, so before we go there, I, by the way, Bruce, I appreciate. The way you speak about this, you know, much like a systems designs engineer, you talk about the, you know, the set and setting the setup and preloading a la, you know, Tony Robbins, like priming effectively, or priming your brain to think about this thing.

[00:19:46] ck: And I really love the active, the vivid visualization, really imagine yourself in the light passing through this. You know, chlorophyll to have a photosynthesis effect, you know, to [00:20:00] make it visceral, to have an embodied experience of what's it mean to go through a photosynthesis experience, right? So I love all of that.

[00:20:08] ck: Um, I do have a follow up question for you though, uh, as a experienced journeyer, um, here, here's a, here's a nuanced question for you. So often people do psychedelics for healing purposes, right? And then we're perpetually healing. Nobody's ever quote unquote heal as a, you know, I have now healed, check the box, done, complete, right?

[00:20:34] ck: Um, how do you, how do I say this? How do you keep focused, right, at the same time also not being attached? Because often these medicines, psychedelics, will show you things that's not even something that you're even thinking about. So you may have a very strong intention that you want to do a thing or solve a problem or come up with an idea.

[00:20:57] ck: And then how do you navigate that [00:21:00] space so you're not fixated by this thing that you wanted to do versus being open to this other thing that may be even more important, maybe serendipitous, that the medicine wants to show you from the depth of your consciousness.

[00:21:11] Bruce: Yeah, I, I think people can get very fixated on something and we, we see fairly tragic and sometimes humorous, uh, Outcomes of people having a vision in psychedelic space and then trying to manifest it in the world.

[00:21:28] Bruce: And I think this is where the inner critic comes in, and the inner note taker, and the inner peer review, and then having colleagues. Having a system to come to you and say, no, you shouldn't build a pyramid shaped restaurant floating on the Amazon. This is not a good idea. That was one, one example from history of somebody who was dead set on doing that.

[00:21:53] Bruce: Uh, and, and peer review and respecting the process of having to pass muster, having [00:22:00] to do due diligence. On these things and be willing to cast them aside. You know, I think Steve Jobs said, uh, fail off and fail early. Like, and don't go, don't get it. Don't fall too much in love with your ideas or your design.

[00:22:17] Bruce: Try to break it. And this is the idea of Karl Popper's idea of falsification. If a, if a theory or hypothesis is proposed, you should propose ways to completely break it down and falsify it. And then you should, you yourself try to, to falsify it. And it's a huge thing in science when people get super attached to one model.

[00:22:40] Bruce: And it takes off in a generation, they say science would advance one funeral at a time, you know, when these people who are very influential, who drag all these graduate students and colleagues along with them on an idea that just doesn't pan out. So the openness to, uh, having [00:23:00] your closely held thing broken, uh, is, is so important and it's important in life.

[00:23:06] Bruce: I mean, it's important and. People tell their own story about their own makeup and then they get too fixated on it and they get limited by their self told story. Even though they think it's totally informed by medicine work, it's, it's still not allowing them to evolve. And to have a strong community around them that says, Okay, we've heard this.

[00:23:30] Bruce: You tell the story of your own origins and your own microcode all these times. What if it's not the complete story? What if you've trapped yourself? And, um, let's, let's figure out how to help you break out of that. And, and what you see when that happens is there's a relief in the individual. I've been in sessions where, Oh, really?

[00:23:54] Bruce: That's not the story. And there's a sudden relaxation. In because they realize there's a [00:24:00] greater truth and they don't need to put all the energy into the story similarly in in in science Uh or an engineering design now, of course in engineering It it gets made into a product that fails in the marketplace Or something like that and then then it's detrimental it hurts a lot of people to to have a solution that isn't really worth investing in Um, so so we have to test I think your point we have to be open to to other ideas always and open to critique and falsification always, even in our own personal story.

[00:24:37] ck: Yeah, I was actually asking more in the journey itself. How do you, you know, keep your eyes on the question that you want to ask, but not But also be open to whatever the medicine wants to show you from the depth of your subconscious. But I'm glad you talked about sort of the afterwards. How do you make sure that whatever visions or interpretations, [00:25:00] whatever downloads you have, it's vetted by, you know, I call them noble allies, right?

[00:25:04] ck: People who are trusted advisor who can help you bet. This is actually a good idea to go build a pyramid ship restaurant on the top of the Amazon. Probably not a good idea, right? Oh.

[00:25:16] Bruce: Yeah, during the journey, CK, what I find, here's how it runs for me. Uh, I put in the request, you know, a heartfelt request to be able to work on this, and then I forget about it.

[00:25:31] Bruce: Because whatever is going to happen is going to happen in the journey. It may not happen in that particular session at all. Totally happy with whatever happens. Uh, but if it shows up, It usually shows up as something that your imagination can't even engage with. It shows up as an image or an apparition, if you will, or a landscape starts to come in.

[00:25:58] Bruce: And it's [00:26:00] sophisticated and often very fully formed. And the best you can do is listen for what To do, ask the question, what do I do? So during diving into the hot little pool, I asked into the ether, I asked what I thought of at the time as some greater intelligence that was running this IMAX 3D movie.

[00:26:23] Bruce: What do I do? And the answer is always the same, is become it, become it now.

[00:26:29] Speaker 3: Like,

[00:26:30] Bruce: be the actor, be, embody it. And so I became a protocell, the one that seemed to catch my attention was the most advanced one, ready to divide. And so in that sense, there's no stick handling this. The best you can possibly do is try to have your observer camera running super high stroboscopic camera to try to record it, to get the clearest recorded memory of it.

[00:26:58] Bruce: And then later on, pull it out [00:27:00] of, out of that memory bank and rerun it. Even to the sense of running the emotion, speaking it out. Then taking notes, then drawing, all those sorts of things, because truthfully, you know, the, the ineffable experience, the one that can't be Englished, you know, words can't describe, you, you can barely have just a snapshot, just a facsimile of those amazing sort of high spaces.

[00:27:27] Bruce: Uh, this is sort of past the ineffable when, when there's a teaching happening. Or there's a delivery happening, but it's really sit back, you have to receive, you have to be open and on receive. You're not engaging it, you're not like saying, and next, and what, what happens, etc. It's, it's a huge flood, it happens in seconds to maybe a minute.

[00:27:51] Bruce: Uh, and then you feel the declining energy, at least I do. I feel a tug at me where it's a tractor beam almost [00:28:00] pulling me out of that space because I can't stay there. It's just, it's too high. These are time limited things. And during the tractor beam phase, I just let go to the tractor beam to be pulled out, not then after it tried to question or analyze it, just rerun it and rerun it.

[00:28:20] Bruce: Ask it questions a day later, a week later, a month later, try to keep it in its purest form. So there's a little part of our mind that wants to tell, package it, and explain it, and I always sort of keep them out. We, we just sit with the purity of what that was, because it's, it's never going to get more exquisite if we start packaging it and, you know, writing movie screenplays about it or something, or trying to, trying to turn it into something that's not.

[00:28:52] Bruce: But then to get the science out of it, there's, there's kind of a beautiful path, because what it is, I think it's, [00:29:00] it's a suggestion of the wiggle of a truth, of a major truth, and as long as you can get the interpretation of what it's telling you that might actually be common sense in some cases. For

[00:29:14] ck: me, it's most of the time, it's like, ah, it's so simple, it's staring me in the face.

[00:29:19] ck: It's exactly, and

[00:29:20] Bruce: to get it into its more, most purely described landed language as the simplest, most common sense. Kind of thing. And even in scientific solutions like I was working on. When people look at it, they go, Oh, why didn't we see this all along? It just, if we'd only run our experiment for another hour, we would have seen this effect.

[00:29:44] Bruce: We wet and we dry and we dry and we wet again. And we see the polymers floating around in their protocells. And then when they dry down, they're more complex. It's like, Oh, no one had seen that before. Just keep running the experiment. So [00:30:00] the visionary download was all to get me to see something that was.

[00:30:04] Bruce: Now seen as obvious by scientists around the world and used every day.

[00:30:11] ck: I mean, often, what is, I can't remember exactly how it's, the, the, Signs of a width, brevity, signs of a, of the width or something, uh, I'm, I'm butchering the quote, but simplicity, ultimately is, is the most Sophisticated, um, expression, right?

[00:30:32] ck: So I really appreciate how you said it. However, I do also have a follow up question to what you just said about maintaining this ineffable recording of this experience to the highest degree possible, and then don't analyze it, don't deconstruct it, but just engage with it. Ask a questions, which was counterintuitive.

[00:30:58] ck: Actually, I was, I was, I was [00:31:00] thinking he would say something along the line of, let's dissect it a thousand different ways and write a screenplay about it using your quotes, right? That's what I thought he would say, because as a scientist, at least my perspective is to be. An observer, I'm going to try to write as many notes of it as possible, hence my analytical skills very high, but that wasn't the answer you gave.

[00:31:26] ck: So I'm curious now, how were you able to maybe shut down, maybe turn down the hyper analytical skill that you have and just to, just to purely record this 360. In as many K as possible of a resolution.

[00:31:45] Bruce: I think in case of psychedelics, it's being in the lower dose territory. Because if you're in a high dose, you actually even lose the accessory access.

[00:31:56] Bruce: You lose the ability to access and record [00:32:00] memory. in the high dose state. So I think that there's kind of a sweet spot. And there's kind of a sweet spot in blending in other practices. Like bringing the aware, like meditation, bringing meditation online, breath work, bringing breath work online to come into the body.

[00:32:18] Bruce: You know, your diet matters a lot, and so there, there, you didn't just eat a double cheeseburger, and then your whole system is focused on digesting that, and it's going to change your experience utterly. So, a fasting diet, um, and, and discipline, sort of mental discipline. So, for example, the night before my first Ayah trip, there was a crowding in, in my consciousness of all the It's almost like little beings inside me that wanted to experience the trip this way, and do that way, and wanted to travel to La Charrera, which is only a couple hundred miles away.

[00:32:56] Bruce: This is where Terrence McKenna and Dennis McKenna had their [00:33:00] big 1971 download that they had there. So there was curiosity. And I, I had the common sense and discipline to tell them all to be quiet. That this experience wasn't to be loaded up with all these expectations and it was more sacred and more precious than any of these desires and none of them were allowed in, in the gate.

[00:33:25] Bruce: And it was going to be what it was going to be and the purity of it and the newness of it. It was going to be a new encounter with something never had, you know, happened to any, to me or any of the me's. And so everyone get quiet and just listen. Because something greater is coming than we've ever, ever touched in the past.

[00:33:47] Bruce: So it's almost like, you know, you're preparing to jump out of your airplane for the first time, uh, do a skydive or something like that. There's a certain calm because, you know, You [00:34:00] can't be in analytical space. You're going to be very quickly overwhelmed with airflow and sound and pressure on the body and tumbling and the fact that you're now free floating.

[00:34:10] Bruce: You've got a core fear, the fear of falling, you know, which goes all the way back to our oldest simian ancestors who, if they fell from the tree, they were doomed. And so everything about us is to hang on and see your first skydive. There's just no way. And so you prepare yourself for that kind of ineffable opening, that kind of contact.

[00:34:34] Bruce: And, and it's a kind of, it's a form of respect as well. So then we're not bringing all that baggage. And we even turn off our analytical mind. But then we, during a skydive, After that initial rush of that first experience of being in zero g, basically, your, your analytical mind does come back online through training.

[00:34:55] Bruce: It's like, okay, check your gear, you know, where is everybody [00:35:00] else? Make some eye contact, say something into your microphone, listen to what people are saying to you. Is your body in the right position and you start to get that, but you're not going to have that in the first few seconds. I think skydive trainers know that people are kind of in shock in those first few seconds.

[00:35:18] Bruce: So in some sense, the onrush of the first psychedelic puts people into a shock, a state of shock. And I think we, it behooves us as a civilization to prepare people much better than we do for that skydive, that initial, those initial, uh, trips, especially a high dose trip.

[00:35:41] ck: Um, are you an experienced skydiver?

[00:35:43] ck: Is that why you use that metaphor?

[00:35:46] Bruce: You know what? I have never done it. But I know many people who do. And, uh, I love that. Would I have the courage to do it? So my fear of it is exactly that. But it's It's, [00:36:00] it's the unknown. Now I probably, it would be probably one of the great experiences of my life is people often report not just the cortisol and the chemical rush, but the, uh, pure embodiment that it is.

[00:36:15] Bruce: So I just came up with that metaphor because perhaps it is in my future and it is something that is, uh, my, I would have to be pushed screaming toward the door. Uh, but, uh, I know I've been there before and, uh, It's always been a big payoff.

[00:36:35] ck: Yeah. Well, I've done it once and once wasn't enough. And with the way you described it, I was like, Oh, it sounds like Bruce knew what that experience is like.

[00:36:48] ck: Um, okay, cool. So is there anything else you want to double click on? You know, this, this Psychedelic assisted innovation. Because I thought it was really a [00:37:00] good concept, because for me, um, I'm fortunate enough where I'm healed enough, where I'm not dwelling the negative thoughts and emotions of my life, where I'm neutral, and I'm looking for these type of experiences to help me You know, get to a higher level of performance, higher level of, uh, uh, awareness, higher level of flow, such that I can be of higher service to people around me.

[00:37:28] ck: Right. So that's, that's the frame that I have around it. So when you, when you said that, I was like, aha, that's. what I've been trying to tell people, but I just didn't have the words for it. And so you've been doing this for quite some time. In Pablo's conversation, you said you had protocols and up the wazoo.

[00:37:45] ck: So, you know, if there's anything you'd like to share about the protocols, that'd be great.

[00:37:50] Bruce: You know, it's, it's different for people who are different people, different chemotypes and phenotypes, and if you will, different backgrounds. [00:38:00] Uh, but I think that if we look back into deep history, You know, the, the Eleusinian mysteries of 1600 years of a potentially psychedelic right in Greece, which could have turned on civilization, right?

[00:38:14] Bruce: It brought us from the upper Paleolithic into cities and governance and mathematics and all these things and aqueducts, you know, suddenly, relatively suddenly. And these initiation rights, which are universal across. Uh, tribal civilization for young men, especially because of the uninitiated young man is a frightening thing to behold in some cases.

[00:38:42] Bruce: Um, the, uh, so it's deep, this kind of thing through either ordeals or, you know, psychic poisons, if you will, visionary states, a near death experience, uh, physical challenge. I think humans [00:39:00] need it, uh, and they probably need it in their teen years. So if they don't get it in their teen years, maybe they're seeking it with psychedelics later on.

[00:39:09] Bruce: Maybe people are seeking to self initiate. To sort of cast off a lot of baggage and so it's old idea now psychedelic assisted innovation goes back to the 19th century with people like Fritz who Ludlow talking about his experiences experience with nitrous oxide in those years and then mescaline in the early 20th century and there was one particular day in 1953 that Humphrey Osmond, who is a British researcher in Saskatchewan, Uh, using psychedelics for healing, for therapy, drove down to Los Angeles with a bottle of mescaline, you know, on his passenger seat to visit his friend Aldous Huxley.

[00:39:58] Bruce: And gave him a couple of [00:40:00] tablespoons of mescaline. And Huxley went through the doors of perception. He went into altered states for the first time. And Huxley was one of the great thinkers and intellects of the 20th century. You know, he had, written some of the most profound, uh, books about society. And a year and a half later, uh, The Doors of Perception book came out about his experience, and that launched psychedelics in the West.

[00:40:28] Bruce: And then a year after that, Humphrey Osmond coined the term psychedelic. He came up with the term. So these are the true, in a sense, fathers of modern psychedelia. Now the morning after Uh, Huxley's first mescaline trip, they had a conversation and we know about this because a book of their published letters came out about five years ago, a couple of hundred letters correspondence and, uh, Osmond reports that, you know, the morning after Osmond's Uh, we [00:41:00] discussed the following thing as being the most important project, uh, to gain outsight into the world.

[00:41:06] Bruce: Clearly, these substances, you couldn't call them psychedelics have a term for them, allows you to have insight into yourself, into your psyche. But what about outsight into the world? And then they cooked up this project to bring Albert Schweitzer and Carl Jung and, uh, Albert Einstein and 50 or so of the top thinkers, uh, in the world into psychedelic sessions.

[00:41:33] Bruce: And this is 1954. So this is se I think 70 years ago. And they went to the Ford Foundation for money, and they never could get a dime out of the National Institutes or the Ford Foundation or any donor. They need to raise 50 or a hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot at the time to support these sessions.

[00:41:52] Bruce: And they were wanting to see if these substances were tools of the intellect, where they could, you know, can you imagine Albert [00:42:00] Einstein, you know, could have tripped on acid and then maybe either given up his quest for a unified field theory or actually solved it, you know, one of the ways, but it would have been fascinating to see how these minds reacted and it kind of went underground.

[00:42:20] Bruce: So it was in the intelligentsia in the 50s from Cary Grant to potentially John F. Kennedy and the owners of Collier's magazine, uh, sort of high class people were taking LSD in the 50s into the 60s and then it exploded on the streets in the mid 60s. But just before it got criminalized in 1966, Willis Harman and the young Jim Fadiman published a study of 26 professionals taking mostly masculine And working on their problems on, on, on problems.

[00:42:54] Bruce: And as you can see in the, uh, uh, fantastic Netflix [00:43:00] series by Michael Pollan in the very first show, it says that 66 percent of the harm and study participants had breathtaking and original solutions. Either the day of, after the acute period, When it, when it's sort of raging or in the weeks to follow and the, the full published reports of what these, these, uh, participants were able to do in their minds and their ideation are, is breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking.

[00:43:29] Bruce: And then it was all stopped, just as psychedelic as a therapeutic practice was stopped and either had to go underground into the subculture or was just not. Okay, to be a scientist researching it. So was innovative breakthroughs or create creative catalysts as Harmon called it. And that's what the Center of Minds was established about this time last year to bring back to bring back the science around psychedelics, assisting [00:44:00] innovation as elixirs more than as medicines.

[00:44:04] ck: I love that. I mean, what a great story. I mean, the first time I hear about this idea was the father of, uh, the founder of holotropic breathing. I believe his last name is Hoffman. I recall correctly. Stan Grof. That's right, Grof. Yeah, he, he was interested in this very topic as well. And then unfortunately, you know, this, the government stepped in, so he stopped everything and was like, ah, I wish there was more research on this.

[00:44:32] ck: I'm so, I'm so glad that you're bringing it back, making it more mainstream and engaging all your esteemed colleagues to ask these type of questions. So, what have you found the last couple of years?

[00:44:47] Bruce: We're at just the beginning. Uh, so for example, we have, we're going to just announce our first funded study, and it will be at UT Austin, uh, in Greg Fonzo's [00:45:00] lab.

[00:45:00] Bruce: The study will be led by Manoj Das, who you should definitely have on the show here. Um, and it's, they're going to give people psilocybin, and Test their recall capacity. So it's so called episodic memory. And it's called the FLEX model. And it's, if it works, it's kind of a breakthrough on how memory works.

[00:45:23] Bruce: So, what you can do in terms of psychedelic research around creativity is study how cognition itself works and watch Watch your mind in the scanner as it's doing creative flow. Watch what it looks like. Does it, does it have a pattern? Does, does a flow state have a distinct pattern? Of course, this has been a question taken up by many others over the years.

[00:45:48] Bruce: But then I also mentioned Imperial College where they're doing the extended DMT experience. To my mind, that's a tremendous gateway because, you know, in ayahuasca, you're getting a [00:46:00] small amount of DMT over an extended period because the gut isn't breaking down the dimethyltryptamine. It's allowing it into the bloodstream and there's a gradual dosing that's going on.

[00:46:12] Bruce: Uh, and so by doing it in the lab. Or in a really nice setting, sort of a creative setting, can we, uh, have people take up creative, uh, to go into flow states, create creative flow states during that kind of practice. And it's very, very promising. So the early results of the extended state DMT studies are really promising.

[00:46:36] Bruce: And the interesting thing about DMT is it's naturally occurring in your brain. Anyway, uh, so it's, it's an endogenous subject, substance. So perhaps endo tripping or visionary download are these altered states that come upon us maybe because of DMT's action, the DMT we're making. Or it may be a combination of DMT and serotonin, for [00:47:00] example.

[00:47:02] ck: Um, I'm I'm my medicine of choice is ayahuasca, you know, just because of the rituals, right? The experience and the multi modality of it all the music and all of it, right? So that's my personal choice. I'm curious from your perspective, um, you have had ayahuasca experience. And the way that you're talking about it, it sounds more molecule in medicine versus like a sacrament.

[00:47:30] ck: So, because of course you're a scientist, so you have to speak that way, right? But I'm also getting a little, since you have a lot of reverence and respect for this, can you maybe kind of nuance a little bit of how do you discern, you know, you know, your role as a scientist, but also your personal practice, maybe projecting, tell me if I'm projecting.

[00:47:52] ck: Okay. of the respect you have for these type of medicines and traditions.

[00:47:56] Bruce: I think the wonderful thing is that we live in a time, [00:48:00] uh, when we can really have both. We can have a deeply held respect for a cultural practice at the same time as we might try to pare it down to its, you know, Causes and causal effects and, and look for the things and even to the point where the group that I went go to, uh, do ayahuasca in Peru, I talked to the guy that was cooking down the brew.

[00:48:28] Bruce: And he said, you know, we use a highly scientific approach to making aya here. And he showed me the entire practice of basically winding the vine into these pill shaped forms and then interleaving the chacruna leaf in precisely measured quantity in the pill shape so that when they cook it down, the pill shape just goes into the pot, they're boiling it down, and they get a perfect boil down.

[00:48:56] Bruce: And it doesn't get too hot, and it doesn't get too dilute, so then [00:49:00] they end up with this paste at the bottom that then they can store for long periods. And this, this, the community, which was partially indigenous and partially, uh, mestizo, sort of mixed communities, was using kind of Western medicine.

[00:49:16] Bruce: Techniques to create more powerful brews and then trying admixtures and, you know, he would literally talk about, uh, we think that the DMT content is higher and the harmalines are etc, etc. But when we get to the jungle. were in the full reverence of the container. So that practitioner was fully engaged in both the pulling it apart to its recipes and the molecules and in the celebration of the really power, the superpower of holding it in the right container with the right music, with the right timing.

[00:49:55] Bruce: and the right intuition and the right connection with the nature [00:50:00] that we were in. And I, I sought to do the same. I sought to let myself go over to the, their full technology. They have a technology. They have a fantastic cultural technology. And in fact, glimpsing some of what the shamans do. Uh, watching our particular shaman at his work, the fact that he could non locally sense a person's state, uh, the, what moved him around the room, what moved him into action was often mysterious.

[00:50:35] Bruce: But then when I got to know him a lot better, it was a whole set of skills that you would think of as almost, uh, supernatural type skills, and they just use them on a daily or weekly basis. And we established a real collaboration and a partnership, and at times I would, he would ask me to assist him. And so I started to learn some of [00:51:00] those skills.

[00:51:01] Bruce: Uh, and Simon Ruffell, who, uh, is an amazing fellow who is walking across this boundary. So, Simon, I met him in the UK last summer, and he's joined Mines as our chief medical officer. And he runs a center in the jungle, in the Amazon, and he runs laboratory and, you know, qualitative studies of everyone coming through, because they work with veterans down there.

[00:51:27] Bruce: And so he's a scientist. With a couple of degrees in in this area, who is also a ship people. He is a PhD and ship people. So he's fully able to, you know, converse, and he's been through training, shamanic training, and this is many, many years Simon's done this. And when I met Simon, uh, I talked to everyone else at Mines.

[00:51:51] Bruce: I said, we need to really add Simon to our, our organization because he will represent that. Because Simon and I both [00:52:00] agreed that the technology and the craft that is practiced in. Bye. These indigenous or partially indigenous Western mixed communities is extremely refined and highly developed and sophisticated and they really are at that edge.

[00:52:18] Bruce: So, in some ways, in terms of the science of the, the elevated state and the worlds that it opens up, they are at the, at the very frontier and they are. pushing it and testing it constantly and checking themselves constantly and watching people fall and watching people go into places and guiding them pulling them back and so I think that for minds, we then decided we need to bake this in so that we're not coming at it from an entirely western model of science.

[00:52:55] Bruce: And because we, we want to understand the best that [00:53:00] humans can bring to this and the best that, that humans can become through this.

[00:53:08] ck: Yeah, I appreciate the way you articulate it, Spruce. Um, thank you. I mean, it's obvious to me that you have reverence and respect for these traditions, which is unfortunately rare.

[00:53:24] ck: You know, I think the attitude, Uh, at least modern medicine or research is very reductionist, like, Hey, let's isolate the molecules. The molecule can just do the thing and that's that. Well, what about the, the, the lineage, the training, the things that we don't yet understand? And

[00:53:45] Bruce: that's, that's where the FDA, you know, failed us last summer.

[00:53:50] Bruce: where they were not qualified to, to approve or deny a practice that involved a total integrative psychotherapy [00:54:00] with MDMA and the entire community around it. They're not set up as an agency. As you were pointing out, it's one molecule, one condition. And so the FDA, we actually don't even have an agency that can regulate This kind of thing doesn't exist me and so they don't, you know, it's a high risk for them and organizations like government agencies don't like risk, so they reject it while they, uh, give approval for drugs that become street, uh, narcotics, basically very dangerous and and it's so.

[00:54:37] Bruce: So, in some sense, we have to become a bit more shamanic, uh, as, as, and adopt more of these practices because we have to study and know the ways of the brujo, for example, the shaman with the cities or the superpower that uses it to abuse, to build more power and abuse people. [00:55:00] And the brujo problem is a big problem throughout society.

[00:55:05] Bruce: Uh, but it certainly is in, in, in that world. So how, who's, who's giving us guidance there? Um, Brujo's are universal across finance, business, religion, are

[00:55:20] ck: the human condition, right? How do I use this tool and weaponize it for my own gain? Kind of a thing.

[00:55:27] Bruce: Yeah. And just, they're doing the, they're gaming it. Uh, but you know, that's a whole other topic, but the thing is that we, by being exposed to.

[00:55:38] Bruce: To this kind of thing. I think it's going to reconnect us with those skill sets. We had, you know, we had those kind of skill sets when we were hunter gatherers. Because we had to. Those sorts of groups, skill set, group mind, skill sets, reading, the reading of nature, the knowing of our own nature. When a little [00:56:00] baby comes, people sense into that personality.

[00:56:03] Bruce: They already kind of have a map of what that being is going to be like. So then certain people come forward to assist in that little child as they grow because they kind of know that personality, can feel it. And, and so how to create the healthiest member of the tribe they can, because that's all they've got.

[00:56:25] Bruce: If, if, if they have someone that isn't the healthiest or isn't supported in the way that makes them the strongest, then that affects everyone. So those, those kinds of skills and the stories they tell each other, cultural memes, you know, we've allowed just a willy nilly out of control memescape to emerge that is super damaging for, I'll give you an example, if you, in the early 70s or even the late 70s, if you tried to get approval for a study where Uh, You would take young people, [00:57:00] give them a, a screen that they would have to look at like 500 times a day and be exposed to different images, some of them disturbing, some of them funny, you know, they would be sitting in a room and they were given the screen every time it lit up, they had look at it, it would be considered cruel and unusual and cruel and dangerous punishment that would would affect their development.

[00:57:27] Bruce: It would probably shatter their ability to concentrate, disconnect them from emotion, and create crazy, crazy kids. And you wouldn't get that approved anywhere if you if you had proposed that. What did we do? We rolled that out to the entire population And then we rolled platforms that are even harder on cognition.

[00:57:52] Bruce: You know, they're into children as young as four or five years old. We just rolled it out as a society. [00:58:00] So we're going to be dealing with the consequence of that. Uh, and it, it, we just, we did, we put a crazy making system in front of several generations. So what consequence do you get from that? Now, it could be that psychedelics will help some of them land back in their bodies and cast away all the crazy cobwebs that have grown as a result of all this, or that they're just different humans.

[00:58:30] ck: Actually, on that note, a quick question, Bruce, because, you know, we're right now we're talking about embodiment and then you alluded to it in the visions that you encounter as well, right? So let me, let me ask a very pointed, direct question. Have you considered making, um, an experiment, uh, a study around psilocybin plus embodiment exercises as a way to activate the mind body connection more?

[00:58:58] ck: I think that could be kind of an [00:59:00] interesting idea, no?

[00:59:01] Bruce: It is, it is a very potent idea. And in fact, in, in my own experience, you know, most, most psychedelic session, research sessions don't involve movement. Uh, and yet, in our, you, you'll probably agree that in, in psychedelic sessions, whether it be, uh, in a, in a rave floor, if raves still happen, or, or in the jungle, or in a maloca somewhere, movement is just natural.

[00:59:30] Bruce: So in the Sanzo Daime tradition, movement is just baked in. And so their group embodiment is really core to the Daime's tradition of using, using these medicines. And yet we just haven't seen it. So you're absolutely correct that The study of the, of embodied, uh, psychedelic experience. If people are, some people can't get up and, and move at all because they're going [01:00:00] through process or they're, they're really fully dissociated into that process.

[01:00:04] Bruce: But then I always found in our group, later in the session, we'd be And in some kind of dance or movement or light show, because we were a group that was very celebratory, had a lot of actors in it. Oh, really? Yeah, there was always there's something called the cabaret that would happen. Oh, someone who would

[01:00:24] ck: actually literally perform

[01:00:26] Bruce: Yeah, they were literally performed.

[01:00:27] Bruce: So it would be like fourth or fifth night We would have the cabaret and it was like everyone's done. They've gone through the dishwasher You know, the dishes are dried and they're put away and now it's time to go to another place which is celebration and, uh, bring what you can to bring joy and magic to the group.

[01:00:49] Bruce: So the cabaret would, would, uh, start.

[01:00:53] ck: Hey, Bruce, as an, as an aside, I don't know if you ever had the Brazilian style of ayahuasca. Have you ever had it?

[01:00:59] Bruce: Never have. [01:01:00] No. Okay,

[01:01:00] ck: great. So this, this may be a, um, possible direction. We can talk offline another time. Okay. Thanks. I really, so obviously there, for those who are listening, there are different styles, right?

[01:01:10] ck: Colombian, Peruvian, Shipibo and Brazilian. And inside of those traditions, they have different, different tribes leading with their unique expression. So what I like about the Brazilian style is they bring this idea, so alegria, which in the English words are only joy. And there's not joy from a place of bypasses.

[01:01:35] ck: The joy of being alive.

[01:01:37] Speaker 3: If

[01:01:38] ck: you're your head's in the bucket, or if you're uncomfortable, they could still if you're struggling with something, it could still be quiet level of joy, much like what Viktor Frankl said about men's search for meaning, like there is a sovereignty agency to be able to choose [01:02:00] joy of whatever qualities we encounter.

[01:02:02] ck: So Solagria, lots of music, dance, Something that you may want to look into, we can talk a lot about.

[01:02:08] Bruce: Absolutely, because it, the, talk about the set and setting, uh, because you can undergo healing through joy, as you can through sorrow and feeling completely lost or isolated. And in some sense, you have to return to joy anyway, uh, for the healing, whether it be the, the joy of release.

[01:02:31] Bruce: Or somebody checking in on you, just a single person checking in on you.

[01:02:37] ck: Yeah. So one of the questions that your assistant sent over, you know, was, which was really interesting. I never heard of it before. It says that MINDS aims to catalyze a fourth wave of psychedelic research. Tell us more about the fourth wave.

[01:02:51] ck: What does that mean for you and how is it different than previous waves?

[01:02:56] Bruce: Yeah. I brought this up in 2022 at [01:03:00] Dennis McKinnon's conference where I came out of the closet, the psychedelic scientist's closet, and I sort of looked back and thought, okay, we're in a wave of psychedelic research and practice for therapeutics.

[01:03:13] Bruce: You know, MDMA assisted psychotherapies, one, one channel. Um, But then prior to that, there was a, uh, wave of, uh, personal exploration, uh, opening the Western mind to the mystical, for example, all the creative output of the 60s and later that seemed to have been catalyzed by that. And, but before that, there was, uh, a deeply held indigenous practice, community based practice, even within religion.

[01:03:49] Bruce: And so it seemed to me that. Uh, there was, this was more like a distinct path. It was a fourth path, uh, about the intellect, [01:04:00] about discovery and insight. Um, the calmed, as, as David Nutt told me, this will come to the prepared mind. So, in, in some real sense, I thought this is a unique thread. And we can call it the fourth path and try to try to get it, uh, illuminate it a little bit better.

[01:04:23] ck: Okay, so let me ask a follow up question. What do you mean by prepared? You know, because you alluded again and alluded to it earlier, you waited until you're more stabilized, until you have more skills to be the observer in spite of whatever intensity that's happening. These are all things that you personally got prepared, right?

[01:04:43] ck: So in terms of this idea of the fourth way, being ready for the prepared mind, what are some of the qualifications, shall we say, of Someone who is prepared.

[01:04:57] Bruce: Yeah, I think, you know, there's, there are [01:05:00] many examples through history, but if you're working on a major and tricky problem, like it might have to do with climate change.

[01:05:10] Bruce: So we had a neighbor here whose house unfortunately burned down in a major fire we had three, four years ago, but he formed a company. And he formed the company out of a medicine journey. Uh, he had a clear vision, but he had been doing previous companies, but he was from South America and he'd been watching deforestation in his home country and wondering how on earth do we slow this down?

[01:05:38] Bruce: Because this is absolutely devastating. It's the lungs of the planet, if you will. You know, the Amazon rainforest or sort of the lungs of the planet. Um, and he had a vision during his medicine journey, which was if we only could tell where trees are growing and how rich a forest [01:06:00] ecosystem it is, we could compute its value to carbon credit markets.

[01:06:06] Bruce: And he formed the company to take satellite, real time satellite imagery and AI and everything else to look at. where the healthy forests were, which would have the maximum carbon sequestration, formed a business, started getting, uh, purchase agreements with Apple and Microsoft and many companies that are looking for places to buy carbon, to trade or buy carbon credits.

[01:06:31] Bruce: And now it's exploded. It's a, it's a large venture. And so now they find themselves back in South America and Central America working with people doing active, healthy forest planting, not just monoculture type things, actually on the ground. So he was able to realize his years of frustration and growing up in that environment burst out of him because he had had [01:07:00] several previous ventures.

[01:07:00] Bruce: He knew what to do is prepared in that sense, but his driving force in his almost his heartfelt passion and tearing heartfelt feeling of the devastation of force and where he grew up led to that beautiful insight. Thank you That is now leading to reforestation, uh, and a system that's like a closed loop system of, of support and an example for everybody else.

[01:07:28] Bruce: So, I think he, his prepare, he was not only prepared in mind, but also in body, soul, and heart. He was totally all in. He just couldn't figure out how do I make a difference. And the company I think now has 70 employees and there's news every day about them on, on social media. And I'm just so, it's such a beautiful example of this at work.

[01:07:53] ck: I love that. I love that. By the way, um, there's a beautiful example of this [01:08:00] work from the indigenous people down in Brazil in the Amazon jungle. The leader of, the spiritual leader of that initiative is Benki Piako. I believe planted like 2 million trees and like by hand over there. So anyways, again, another off topic.

[01:08:16] ck: I think we can, I can send you that guy so you can connect them and so forth. So as a follow up question to that, the prepare mind, the person that you described sounded my body soul, he was ready. I was speaking to a impact investor the other day, or actually an angel investor the other day. And he was talking about the best kind of founder for him are those who are wounded because they're going to overwork and they're going to burn themselves out in order to improve themselves successful to end up making money.

[01:08:50] ck: Right. That's for him. That was the perfect type of archetype. So a lot of people who get into business, uh, they're a little bit wounded, [01:09:00] so they want to be successful as a way to prove their self worth and so on and so on. And I know that's not what you were talking about, the prepared mind. So, for you, as a place to support people, to want to do this, how do you vet those who are wounded versus the prepared mind?

[01:09:18] ck: Does that kind of make sense, what I'm asking?

[01:09:20] Bruce: It does, and it brings something quite beautiful, CK, which is the idea that psychedelics or the entire practice, the practice of medicine, the entire surround, you know, in its full, beautiful complexity, brings healing as it also delivers revealing. And in some sense, we could see a whole generation of business leaders who go into psychedelic spaces through curiosity or through the fact that they are self knowing and self authoring, and they know that there's a pain.

[01:09:54] Bruce: They know like the pain in my gut. They know they have to work on something that is just [01:10:00] making them unhealthy or behave on in a healthy way. So they go into medicine work for the healing. And as a result of that, they're able to open up these flow states like after around 2005. So I, I met Terrence in the late 90s and I had my first mushroom journey.

[01:10:19] Bruce: Uh, with his help, uh, in 1999, so I'm, I was a complete newbie, but it changed my life in a, in a substantial way that one night. And then four or five years later, I had tried a number of other classic psychedelics. in what were fortunately very good settings with very good people here in Northern California.

[01:10:41] Bruce: I was very fortunate to be connected to that community. And so I noticed that my mental flow state was really opening and I had less fear. I'd become fearless in terms of, you know, you can imagine, here's a guy that's in computing [01:11:00] wanting to work on the origin of life. And you, you could have a serious inferiority complex or imposter syndrome, right?

[01:11:08] Bruce: Because there's so much knowledge that I didn't have. But then I met my mentor who gave me enough training so that I could speak to rooms of Nobel Prize winning chemists, you know, and not make a complete fool of myself, but make sense to them because I was working on the bigger picture. But the flow state that I unlocked enabled me to create that.

[01:11:32] Bruce: And create that opening and, and so it's like, perhaps this is true for future business leadership that if they're, if they go through the healing to get the revealing, you know, if they, if that's a carrot on the stick for them, all so be it, then they are coming in as more healed, balanced, better business leaders.

[01:11:53] Bruce: And your friend will find that his, his returns on investment are going to be far superior. They're just going to be better at building [01:12:00] companies. Um, yeah. And, you know, so we, we, we could actually even do a study of existing business leaders that are having good serial success and what's the overlap between them and doing their work, their inner work.

[01:12:16] Bruce: Is there, is there a clear signal yet there, or are things still driven by the need to play the game?

[01:12:25] ck: Yeah, I mean, I actually asked Nicole this very question, this very topic we're talking about, because she's a venture capitalist as well, and she's into consciousness work, and I asked her this very question, right?

[01:12:39] ck: And her point of view was, yeah, sure. You know, if you come in from a wounded place, you may work extra hard and burn yourself out, but that's, there's no longevity in that. And then also there's a lot of liability because you're investing millions of dollars in this person, which is all of a sudden, you know, have rage quit or [01:13:00] make some ridiculous, you know, versus someone who.

[01:13:04] ck: is doing the work and a little bit more balanced. We're all human, of course, but more balanced and can use their, their minds to make the wisest decision. They can with a council of people around them to help them make the best choice. Which one do you want to invest in? When I'm investing in the crapshoot for longevity, I mean, you know, do your zone.

[01:13:28] ck: Um, I do have one more question for you, um, Bruce, in your conversation You share a particular protocol, which I tried you, you said, you drink coffee and you had a low dose of, uh, what do you call that nicotine gummy or the mint burst. So I am a practitioner of hot bay. But then I was like, Oh, Bruce's thing is much cleaner.

[01:13:58] ck: I don't need to do hot pay with [01:14:00] tissues and all those things. I tried it, I was like, Oh yeah, it worked. Are there other protocols to help you personally unlock flow state that maybe you can share with me and the rest of the people who are listening?

[01:14:12] Bruce: For me, uh, pranayama breathwork. Like if I get up, my head is cycling, but I'm not fully online.

[01:14:20] Bruce: And my little worrier, There, there are always undone tasks, right? So overnight in your dreams or in your subconscious, you're worried or still worried that these things weren't done the previous day. So it's like waking you up and I have to silence that. So if I go and do a pranayama type breath work, uh, which is sort of breathifier, uh, I modified, uh, the art of living.

[01:14:46] Bruce: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's practice and I added some of my own stuff. Finishing with a mantra, because I felt that if I sang, do some kind of singing and it doesn't have to be of anything, any language, [01:15:00] when you do that type of vibratory singing, and I think, you know, you see many practitioners do this. The vibration causes the interior of the body to go into rest.

[01:15:13] Bruce: It's almost like if you were made up of an inner kindergarten of your parts, you know, in your parts work, if they hear singing, they're going to chill out and listen, just as they'll listen to a beautifully told story in a kindergarten. And so singing to those parts, plus the breathing and getting the oxygen in the body, uh, And with the pranayama, with the pastrika, where you pull down and you do that pumping breath, every time I do that, I push my thought out and I turn my mind off.

[01:15:48] Bruce: So I turn my mind completely off because it wants to have the whole day. It wants to run the CPU the whole day, you know, and the GPU and everything else. And if I can get it to shut off in [01:16:00] the morning and take a pause, It interrupts that incredible drive to consume all cognitive resource, and you know what I'm talking about.

[01:16:10] Bruce: And then what happens in, through that entire practice, by the time I get to singing my mantras, after my 40 breaths and all this stuff like that, all kinds of clarity just settles in. Like a blue clarity, and then new little things come in like, Hey, to handle the situation with so and so, this is a better approach.

[01:16:31] Bruce: It's almost like a flow state starts because I interrupted the pattern of do do do with this other pattern and only took 20 minutes and then the vector of my entire day goes off in a completely different direction and I make better interactions and better decisions and I decide not to do things that I was hellbent on doing because of a bigger picture opening up.

[01:16:55] Bruce: And it's self regulation. It's, it's realizing that we have to, [01:17:00] we have to pull down on the parts that want to run the entire and want to have their hands on the steering wheel of the bus. And take their hands off that bus steering wheel for a while, and then they start running around in the bus, finding other things to do.

[01:17:17] Bruce: And then the bus driving is a lot better. I love that. Then, of course, there are other days when there's a shit ton of stuff that's just coming down at us, and we're in, we're in the athlete mode. Like, we're in, like, getting ready for the thousand yard dash. And you don't really need to do that because everything's in tune.

[01:17:36] Bruce: Even the high octane part, the body, everything, so some kind of a workout, uh, to energize the body is better. So it really depends, I think, on the style of work. And like if I'm about to go to do a major speech, I'll do a completely different check in. Like, I want to quiet my speech making. And open [01:18:00] my ear and my eye so that when I get in front of the audience, I make connection with the audience and I'm not in my head thinking of the story I'm going to tell because if I don't make the connection with the audience, look at each one of them, breathe properly and be embodied, it won't go well.

[01:18:16] Bruce: No matter what story I've got, I'll just rush into it and people will feel the dissociation and disconnection. So I think it depends on what you're doing in the day, but the breath work is the go to. Guaranteed go to for me.

[01:18:32] ck: I appreciate you sharing that, you know, as, uh, again, you know, the younger CK is easier to point finger to the recovering, uh, cerebralist.

[01:18:45] ck: These type of somatic practices, uh, hugely helpful, you know, so that the inner saboteurs, the inner critic isn't right away. Take over the, the, the driving wheel and start running the day, right. Get a little bit of [01:19:00] spaciousness. You know, move the unprocessed energies and then get into flow, create more spaciousness, and then clarity will come, and then solution will come accordingly, so.

[01:19:11] Bruce: And the interesting thing about the nicotine is it gets you there, nicotine is almost like a psychedelic. It jumps you over the transom into a really different mental state, and you can see why artists, you know, and writers are smokers. Because boom, you're, you're almost instantaneously in a state of equanimity, feeling better, and you're, you're, you're not as triggered.

[01:19:36] Bruce: So chemistry matters. And maybe what Jamie Wheal warns us is, yes, use those tools as a writer, but they're addictive. Don't use them every day. You know, those types of, and nicotine is, is a, it's a powerful, you know, psychoactive substance. But, uh, I found when Pablo was saying, yeah, I have all these things that happened [01:20:00] to me in the morning and what will help me to a state of equanimity?

[01:20:03] Bruce: And I said, this works for me, but in the low dose in the sensitive mind, you know, take a one and a half, not a three. Uh, and watch your potential for becoming addicted to it or dependent upon it.

[01:20:18] ck: Oh, you know what? There's a question I totally forgot to ask you. Because you advocated for low dose ayahuasca or all these other compounds that you've experimented already.

[01:20:28] ck: What do you think about microdosing ayahuasca? Just the vine? Okay. It's,

[01:20:34] Bruce: it's quite plausible, uh, because the, uh, the shaman that we worked with, he used to joke about me in ceremony because I was taking such tiny amounts. He would turn to me because I wanted to get down to a twenty fourth of a regular dose and because it was a thick kind of oily consistency, it wasn't diluted in water, I could actually titrate it onto my tongue.[01:21:00]

[01:21:00] Bruce: And I knew exactly what I was getting and he would turn to me and he would say, tonight's rule is a full cup. You know, you look at me like, cause I had never taken the full cup. Uh, but it's the, the, the great, uh, father, if you will, or, or progenitor of microdosing is Jim Fadiman, who he, who was at the Harman study in 1965.

[01:21:24] Bruce: And I just talked with his coauthor and they're coming out with a book. Microdosing guide in February will be coming out worldwide in multiple languages with a beautiful audio. Book and it will be the first definitive full throttle micro dosing book

[01:21:42] ck: Oh, wow,

[01:21:43] Bruce: and it's it's coming our way and I think it's gonna have a big effect It's gonna really land a lot of sort of the mythology and practice and and some of the science now So watch for that.

[01:21:54] Bruce: I think it's going to be a game changer They've worked full out on it for three years [01:22:00] and, oh yeah, Jim, Jim has a lifetime of experience in this.

[01:22:05] ck: I actually met Jim at a, at the TED conference. Um, so he did, but this was a decade ago and we didn't really talk, but we just shook hands. But anyways, uh, I'm really excited for that.

[01:22:18] ck: I think it may tie well with the idea of dietas. I don't know if

[01:22:22] Speaker 3: you know much

[01:22:22] ck: about the concept of dietas, literal amounts, little ayahuasca, You get accustomed to deepening your visceral experience with a particular plant, and you have a relationship with it, da, da,

[01:22:35] Bruce: da, da.

[01:22:37] ck: I'll be curious to know Jim's perspective as a scientist who studied microdosing and how he maybe tied the two together.

[01:22:44] Bruce: The point I forgot to get to, which was my shaman who was laughing at me for microdosing, he later on said, Uh, I take an eighth. I, I take an eighth. I might take a third and then I might bump with an eighth, but [01:23:00] often I'll just take one eighth dose. That's all I need. So he was kind of getting past the humor saying this is a good territory to be in.

[01:23:10] Bruce: Because if you have a relationship with the medicine You don't need to overload your system. You have a dance. You have a sensitivity. When I first met him, he, we'd never met before. This is, you know, 15 years ago. He looked into my eyes and said, you're sensitive to the medicine. And I said, I don't know why, but I think so.

[01:23:31] Bruce: Because I'd never taken it. And so he and I had that relationship down to the point where he talked about his microdosing. Uh, and how he would do it throughout the evening, um, and then he would take himself and take a break and have a cup of coffee, which I found to be kind of interesting because he wanted to be kind of really clear and present, not fall asleep for the rest of us.

[01:23:54] Bruce: But, um, he was also microdosing and then at, at one point in the jungle, I [01:24:00] started to, to do more of a dieta where I took a small, small amounts with, uh, like once or twice a day. And to see if I could continue in that state. So I sort of started in that, along that path, but that was the time to finish.

[01:24:16] Bruce: There's always a time to say goodbye, I think, to a practice.

[01:24:21] ck: Bruce, what a fascinating man you are. Thank you for the work that you've been doing for all these years. I so appreciate and enjoy our conversation. Thank you for, you know, heading and leading minds. I think it's much needed. I can't wait to see and also help.

[01:24:40] ck: Um, about developing new ways of helping people uncovering new innovation. I think the terms you used was psychedelic assisted innovation. How exciting. So I'm definitely a fan already. So thank you so much for being here on Noble Warrior.

[01:24:56] Bruce: Thank you so much, CK, for having me. And, and, uh, [01:25:00] we'll see you, uh, in some ceremony someplace, uh, where we could sit together, look into each other's eyes and, Share the most, uh, uh, remarkable visions.

[01:25:14] ck: Look forward to that.