1 00:00:00,547 --> 00:00:01,927 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Wonder Cabinet. 2 00:00:04,228 --> 00:00:05,248 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Anne Strainchamps. 3 00:00:05,568 --> 00:00:06,448 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Steve Paulson. 4 00:00:06,908 --> 00:00:12,469 [SPEAKER_00]: Has anything ever happened to you that fundamentally changed your understanding of what's real? 5 00:00:12,829 --> 00:00:18,950 [SPEAKER_01]: An experience that rocked your core beliefs, like maybe a spiritual awakening or a mystical breakthrough? 6 00:00:19,330 --> 00:00:21,431 [SPEAKER_00]: We heard a story like this recently. 7 00:00:21,931 --> 00:00:29,072 [SPEAKER_00]: This was at a small gathering of scientists and philosophers at what seemed like a pretty normal kind of science talk. 8 00:00:29,636 --> 00:00:31,098 [SPEAKER_02]: All right, good morning, everyone. 9 00:00:31,438 --> 00:00:34,761 [SPEAKER_02]: Today we'll talk about consciousness, pure and simple. 10 00:00:35,102 --> 00:00:38,926 [SPEAKER_02]: Consciousness, awareness, I take them to be identical. 11 00:00:39,526 --> 00:00:45,953 [SPEAKER_01]: This is Christof Koch, a renowned neuroscientist, beginning one of his standard lectures on the science of consciousness. 12 00:00:46,233 --> 00:00:49,357 [SPEAKER_01]: And then midway through his talk, he suddenly switches gears. 13 00:00:50,101 --> 00:00:53,442 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to talk about two experiences and their possible implications. 14 00:00:53,462 --> 00:00:55,642 [SPEAKER_03]: So one is I had an experience of this. 15 00:00:55,702 --> 00:00:56,842 [SPEAKER_03]: I was breathing something. 16 00:00:57,282 --> 00:01:00,023 [SPEAKER_00]: The something was a powerful psychedelic. 17 00:01:00,363 --> 00:01:03,264 [SPEAKER_03]: And then within six seconds, the entire world disappears. 18 00:01:04,064 --> 00:01:07,845 [SPEAKER_03]: I had a psychiatrist there and the guide and my wife were there. 19 00:01:08,425 --> 00:01:09,105 [SPEAKER_03]: They observed me. 20 00:01:09,125 --> 00:01:13,866 [SPEAKER_03]: I was just sitting there, rigid, moaning quietly or whining with eyes wide open. 21 00:01:13,886 --> 00:01:17,907 [SPEAKER_03]: But what I experienced objectively was just this bright light that people talk about. 22 00:01:18,547 --> 00:01:19,367 [SPEAKER_03]: There was no time. 23 00:01:20,568 --> 00:01:25,834 [SPEAKER_03]: There was this entire universe that I felt becoming identical to, and there was no will. 24 00:01:26,055 --> 00:01:28,137 [SPEAKER_03]: There was just awareness of everything. 25 00:01:28,517 --> 00:01:30,940 [SPEAKER_03]: I know it sounds woo-woo, but that's what I experienced. 26 00:01:32,122 --> 00:01:34,364 [SPEAKER_03]: And it left me completely discombobulated. 27 00:01:35,500 --> 00:01:39,761 [SPEAKER_03]: There wasn't anything, you know, physiologically wrong with me, but it left me profoundly shaken. 28 00:01:40,502 --> 00:01:49,785 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, at the time I was 65, so by the time you get to 65, you have a pretty firmly established metaphysical view of what exists and what doesn't exist. 29 00:01:50,165 --> 00:01:56,487 [SPEAKER_03]: But it totally shifted the, sort of, was like an earthquake in shifting the tectonic plates of my ontology. 30 00:01:56,747 --> 00:01:59,748 [SPEAKER_03]: An experience lasting under an hour that can permanently mark you. 31 00:02:00,463 --> 00:02:02,911 [SPEAKER_03]: You wake into a different reality. 32 00:02:03,613 --> 00:02:04,817 [SPEAKER_03]: It's really quite remarkable. 33 00:02:04,837 --> 00:02:06,321 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a distinct before and after. 34 00:02:07,565 --> 00:02:16,333 [SPEAKER_00]: Christof was talking at the Island of Knowledge, the small think tank in Tuscany where scientists and philosophers and writers come together to talk about big questions. 35 00:02:16,974 --> 00:02:19,636 [SPEAKER_00]: We've been recording interviews there for the past couple of years. 36 00:02:19,996 --> 00:02:23,199 [SPEAKER_01]: And the topic this time is there purpose in the cosmos. 37 00:02:23,559 --> 00:02:25,501 [SPEAKER_01]: And Christof had come with some answers. 38 00:02:26,002 --> 00:02:28,184 [SPEAKER_00]: Steve, you've followed Christof's work for years. 39 00:02:28,324 --> 00:02:30,005 [SPEAKER_00]: You've interviewed him a bunch of times. 40 00:02:30,606 --> 00:02:31,707 [SPEAKER_00]: What was different this time? 41 00:02:32,267 --> 00:02:33,468 [SPEAKER_01]: It was really surprising. 42 00:02:33,728 --> 00:02:38,512 [SPEAKER_01]: So the thing to know about Christof is that he helped launch the modern science of consciousness. 43 00:02:38,692 --> 00:02:47,158 [SPEAKER_01]: This was back in the 1990s when he and his mentor, the famous biologist Francis Crick, really made consciousness a respectable scientific discipline. 44 00:02:47,678 --> 00:02:56,144 [SPEAKER_01]: They studied what are called the neural correlates of consciousness, essentially pinpointing those brain functions that correspond to specific mental activities. 45 00:02:56,384 --> 00:03:00,446 [SPEAKER_00]: So he was, at that time at least, what we'd call a scientific materialist, right? 46 00:03:00,566 --> 00:03:00,787 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 47 00:03:01,107 --> 00:03:10,592 [SPEAKER_00]: Meaning his assumption was that all conscious experience, thoughts, feelings, awareness, is produced by and manufactured in the brain. 48 00:03:10,933 --> 00:03:13,354 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the standard neuroscience model today. 49 00:03:13,694 --> 00:03:22,900 [SPEAKER_01]: And for years, Christof was the president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, where hundreds of scientists are doing this very fine-grained research into neural circuits. 50 00:03:23,620 --> 00:03:32,002 [SPEAKER_01]: But then a few years ago, Christof had his first psychedelic experience, and then he had a few more, and his entire worldview turned upside down. 51 00:03:32,342 --> 00:03:33,842 [SPEAKER_00]: This must be incredibly rare. 52 00:03:34,262 --> 00:03:40,483 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I can't think of another major scientist today who's undergone this kind of transformation in basic beliefs. 53 00:03:41,183 --> 00:03:46,164 [SPEAKER_01]: But Christof has always had this yearning to understand the fundamental nature of reality. 54 00:03:46,584 --> 00:03:51,025 [SPEAKER_01]: He grew up a devout Christian in Germany and then rejected those religious beliefs. 55 00:03:51,691 --> 00:03:56,681 [SPEAKER_01]: but he never lost his hunger for more meaning in his life, for what you might call ultimate truth. 56 00:03:57,363 --> 00:03:59,567 [SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to understand what happened. 57 00:03:59,988 --> 00:04:01,351 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is a great story. 58 00:04:01,792 --> 00:04:02,313 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's listen. 59 00:04:03,209 --> 00:04:08,791 [SPEAKER_01]: So Christof, for years, you have been at the cutting edge of the science of consciousness. 60 00:04:08,851 --> 00:04:16,053 [SPEAKER_01]: And back in the 1990s, of course, you and Francis Crick really pioneered the study of the neural correlates of consciousness. 61 00:04:16,073 --> 00:04:18,514 [SPEAKER_01]: And for decades, this has been your life work. 62 00:04:18,534 --> 00:04:25,736 [SPEAKER_01]: And then more recently, you have become fascinated by certain life-changing transformative experiences. 63 00:04:25,776 --> 00:04:28,157 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering what took you in that direction. 64 00:04:29,399 --> 00:04:30,239 [SPEAKER_03]: Curiosity. 65 00:04:30,660 --> 00:04:40,045 [SPEAKER_03]: I've read my entire life about people, so-called mystics, including some of the foundational figures in Western science. 66 00:04:40,125 --> 00:04:46,769 [SPEAKER_03]: Pascal, for example, the French physicist in the 17th century who co-invented probability theory. 67 00:04:47,829 --> 00:04:51,551 [SPEAKER_03]: People who had extraordinary experiences that were transformative. 68 00:04:51,591 --> 00:04:55,593 [SPEAKER_03]: What I mean by that is there's a distinct before and after this event. 69 00:04:56,294 --> 00:05:02,497 [SPEAKER_03]: And after the event, many of these people change their lives or change their goals or change their attitude in some fundamental way. 70 00:05:03,097 --> 00:05:11,742 [SPEAKER_03]: We all know change is difficult, but here a brief episode of something you experience can profoundly and radically transform you. 71 00:05:12,502 --> 00:05:17,065 [SPEAKER_03]: We now know also this can happen during so-called near-death experiences. 72 00:05:17,765 --> 00:05:26,530 [SPEAKER_03]: And of course, we also know now this can happen during psychedelic, that particular type of psychedelic experiences can also lead to these transformative events. 73 00:05:26,590 --> 00:05:29,312 [SPEAKER_03]: And so I was just curious. 74 00:05:29,712 --> 00:05:31,633 [SPEAKER_01]: But why at that point in your life? 75 00:05:31,813 --> 00:05:39,738 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we'll get to your personal experiences, but you spent decades studying the brain, studying consciousness, but it seems like at a certain point, 76 00:05:40,658 --> 00:05:45,159 [SPEAKER_01]: you wanted to have some of these life-changing, transformative experiences yourself. 77 00:05:45,179 --> 00:05:46,139 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm wondering why. 78 00:05:46,259 --> 00:05:47,860 [SPEAKER_01]: Why do this in your 60s? 79 00:05:49,340 --> 00:05:57,522 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, so as a student of consciousness, I'm a big believer in the motto of the Royal Society, nullius in verba, take no one's word for it. 80 00:05:58,062 --> 00:06:05,704 [SPEAKER_03]: So I grew up at a time when the public message was your brain on drugs, you know, the fried eggs, et cetera, and drugs was drugs was drugs. 81 00:06:05,724 --> 00:06:09,945 [SPEAKER_03]: But then, of course, you realize there are very different types of medicines or drugs. 82 00:06:10,605 --> 00:06:14,808 [SPEAKER_03]: Many people claim that under psychedelics, their consciousness expands. 83 00:06:15,148 --> 00:06:19,251 [SPEAKER_03]: So clearly, it seems to be a way to radically change your conscious experience. 84 00:06:19,571 --> 00:06:25,135 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, if you're a student of consciousness, I mean, this is a legitimate scientific subject to explore. 85 00:06:25,155 --> 00:06:28,017 [SPEAKER_03]: Is it true that it changes your consciousness? 86 00:06:28,078 --> 00:06:31,700 [SPEAKER_03]: And then you can, if that's the case, then you can study it scientifically. 87 00:06:32,180 --> 00:06:36,724 [SPEAKER_03]: So as you said, I came to psychedelics rather late in life, and then it's just extraordinary. 88 00:06:37,284 --> 00:06:40,436 [SPEAKER_03]: For me, they were enormously positive, these experiences. 89 00:06:40,697 --> 00:06:42,384 [SPEAKER_03]: These were all psychedelic experiences. 90 00:06:42,942 --> 00:06:48,024 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, under the influence of various types of psychedelics and associated ceremonies. 91 00:06:48,164 --> 00:06:52,005 [SPEAKER_03]: So it's different from you just take a little white pill and you have it. 92 00:06:52,025 --> 00:07:05,130 [SPEAKER_03]: There's typically these entire ritual ceremonies associated with it, whether that's an ayahuasca or the American Indian ceremonies, or you go to some particular weekend retreat where you sing and dance and all of that. 93 00:07:05,150 --> 00:07:07,271 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's important because it sets your mind. 94 00:07:07,471 --> 00:07:08,712 [SPEAKER_03]: It's all about set and setting. 95 00:07:09,532 --> 00:07:18,836 [SPEAKER_03]: And because my belief in what I will experience profoundly determines what I actually experience, we also call this the placebo effect, right? 96 00:07:18,896 --> 00:07:30,101 [SPEAKER_03]: When I have all my friends who tell me and I read it in the literature that you can have these powerful experiences, then you're much more likely to have a powerful experience compared when you don't know anything about that. 97 00:07:30,861 --> 00:07:37,764 [SPEAKER_01]: And to put this in perspective, I know this wasn't just a science experiment for you to, oh, let's see how my consciousness works. 98 00:07:37,784 --> 00:07:38,845 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you've had this... 99 00:07:39,408 --> 00:07:42,235 [SPEAKER_01]: this yearning for something more, going back to your childhood. 100 00:07:42,255 --> 00:07:46,063 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you grew up Catholic — a rather devout Catholic, right? 101 00:07:47,222 --> 00:07:57,733 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I grew up as a Catholic, as you say, and I certainly also grew up with this platonic notion of truth with a capital T. And that's what you do as scientists. 102 00:07:57,793 --> 00:08:04,640 [SPEAKER_03]: You explicitly or implicitly, you pursue an ever better description of what you think of as reality. 103 00:08:05,220 --> 00:08:10,826 [SPEAKER_03]: And over time, we believe our description of this reality becomes better and better, and we call that scientific progress. 104 00:08:11,266 --> 00:08:15,468 [SPEAKER_03]: But then, of course, you also keep on asking the question, well, is this all there is? 105 00:08:15,708 --> 00:08:17,309 [SPEAKER_03]: What truly is reality? 106 00:08:17,389 --> 00:08:18,709 [SPEAKER_03]: How is it constructed? 107 00:08:19,389 --> 00:08:25,112 [SPEAKER_03]: This search for final and ultimate answers and truth has never ceased. 108 00:08:25,152 --> 00:08:25,872 [SPEAKER_03]: I still have it. 109 00:08:25,912 --> 00:08:30,614 [SPEAKER_03]: And so, yes, partially that also drove me to search out these types of experiences. 110 00:08:30,958 --> 00:08:33,260 [SPEAKER_01]: Was it looking for the divine? 111 00:08:33,280 --> 00:08:35,643 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe going back to your childhood in a way. 112 00:08:35,663 --> 00:08:39,187 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what was this larger truth or maybe the truth with a capital T? 113 00:08:39,447 --> 00:08:40,628 [SPEAKER_01]: What were you after, do you think? 114 00:08:40,668 --> 00:08:42,530 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, as you look back on your own personal history. 115 00:08:42,550 --> 00:08:44,593 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to know the ultimate answers for everything. 116 00:08:44,613 --> 00:08:45,854 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 117 00:08:46,234 --> 00:08:47,835 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, divine or not? 118 00:08:48,115 --> 00:08:56,577 [SPEAKER_03]: I have lost the belief in a divine, you know, personal God, like, you know, we think of him an old man sitting above the clouds and, you know, do intervening in the universe. 119 00:08:56,657 --> 00:08:59,658 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think and I have not had any experience like that. 120 00:08:59,718 --> 00:09:01,579 [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't think I'm looking for that. 121 00:09:01,659 --> 00:09:01,759 [SPEAKER_03]: But 122 00:09:02,199 --> 00:09:05,080 [SPEAKER_03]: Like many people, I'm looking for a final answer. 123 00:09:05,121 --> 00:09:13,985 [SPEAKER_03]: Now, that may be totally illusory, and of course I know at some cognitive level that I'm going to go to my death without having this, because how would I even know it? 124 00:09:14,385 --> 00:09:18,987 [SPEAKER_03]: However, some types of experiences, really, you believe this is it. 125 00:09:19,047 --> 00:09:21,969 [SPEAKER_03]: You have come to the heart of the universe, and this is it. 126 00:09:22,429 --> 00:09:30,033 [SPEAKER_03]: And then you take it back into regular life, and you talk about it, and all of it seems very faint and ineffable is the term that... 127 00:09:30,553 --> 00:09:31,293 [SPEAKER_01]: No people use. 128 00:09:31,753 --> 00:09:35,914 [SPEAKER_01]: So you were after trying to get to the heart of the universe. 129 00:09:36,174 --> 00:09:40,175 [SPEAKER_01]: We should talk about maybe your first big experience, your first big psychedelic experience. 130 00:09:40,195 --> 00:09:43,456 [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about that, and how close did you get to the heart of the universe? 131 00:09:43,736 --> 00:09:45,696 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, there are different experiences I've had. 132 00:09:45,716 --> 00:09:53,358 [SPEAKER_03]: The first one was just, you know, suddenly you find yourself there, typically outdoor, you know, in forests, et cetera, and you find yourself in the Garden of Eden. 133 00:09:53,398 --> 00:09:55,158 [SPEAKER_03]: That's the best way to describe it. 134 00:09:55,498 --> 00:09:56,998 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's just amazing. 135 00:09:57,098 --> 00:09:58,859 [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, you cry very often. 136 00:09:58,899 --> 00:10:04,159 [SPEAKER_03]: It's just this transcendent feeling of beauty in the natural world. 137 00:10:04,220 --> 00:10:14,661 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can just get totally lost in the canopy of a tree or a blade or, you know, you look at a bee or mesmerized by a bee flying around and you just think it's the most beautiful thing ever. 138 00:10:14,681 --> 00:10:21,222 [SPEAKER_03]: And you hear this pounding, you know, you feel sort of this is the sound that, you know, it's the heart of the beating universe. 139 00:10:21,302 --> 00:10:24,663 [SPEAKER_03]: It's just this near ecstatic experience. 140 00:10:24,883 --> 00:10:26,144 [SPEAKER_01]: This was on psilocybin. 141 00:10:26,745 --> 00:10:28,426 [SPEAKER_03]: This was on magic mushrooms. 142 00:10:28,746 --> 00:10:28,946 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 143 00:10:30,367 --> 00:10:39,915 [SPEAKER_03]: And it's truly, I mean, I can see why people called it magic mushroom because it was, you take a world like we all experienced and suddenly it becomes, you realize the miracle of existence. 144 00:10:39,975 --> 00:10:40,635 [SPEAKER_03]: Why is this? 145 00:10:41,036 --> 00:10:42,957 [SPEAKER_03]: It makes you open to these obvious things. 146 00:10:42,997 --> 00:10:43,257 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 147 00:10:43,577 --> 00:10:51,764 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, how often do you think about the fact that actually just sheer bloody existence is miraculous and nothing in science explains why there's something rather than nothing. 148 00:10:52,224 --> 00:10:56,252 [SPEAKER_03]: or the astounding beauty of the world, in particular the natural world. 149 00:10:56,272 --> 00:11:03,407 [SPEAKER_03]: So you reacquaint yourself with old truths that somehow you know abstractly, but now it's really very viscerally. 150 00:11:05,270 --> 00:11:12,835 [SPEAKER_03]: And then another experience I've had, because people told me this is sort of a very powerful tool and you want to try it, and I did. 151 00:11:12,995 --> 00:11:26,343 [SPEAKER_03]: And there I had an utterly terrifying experience that I will never, that I have no desire whatsoever to repeat, where you just come to something very close to near-death experience, where the entire world disappears, your body disappears. 152 00:11:26,864 --> 00:11:34,789 [SPEAKER_03]: Although you're there with eyes wide open, as reported by people who saw me, you don't see anything, you don't hear anything, you don't feel anything. 153 00:11:35,529 --> 00:11:39,571 [SPEAKER_03]: The only thing that I perceived was this point of icy bright light. 154 00:11:40,591 --> 00:11:42,432 [SPEAKER_03]: There wasn't a left or right, up and down. 155 00:11:42,632 --> 00:11:45,473 [SPEAKER_03]: All space had collapsed into this one point. 156 00:11:45,974 --> 00:11:51,216 [SPEAKER_03]: There wasn't even time, in the sense that this moment wasn't too long, it wasn't too short, it simply was. 157 00:11:51,476 --> 00:11:58,379 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, the river of time, to use Jamesian language, that we always are immersed in, just at that point, simply stopped. 158 00:11:58,499 --> 00:12:00,179 [SPEAKER_03]: I was in the ever-present now. 159 00:12:01,672 --> 00:12:05,053 [SPEAKER_03]: And then no self, no Christof, no voice, no body, nothing. 160 00:12:05,393 --> 00:12:06,614 [SPEAKER_03]: So it wasn't me. 161 00:12:07,194 --> 00:12:09,034 [SPEAKER_03]: It was just experience. 162 00:12:09,054 --> 00:12:12,496 [SPEAKER_03]: So it was a very powerful experience, but it was just three things. 163 00:12:12,536 --> 00:12:15,197 [SPEAKER_03]: This bright light, terror, and ecstasy. 164 00:12:15,277 --> 00:12:17,577 [SPEAKER_03]: This strange combination of terror and ecstasy. 165 00:12:18,378 --> 00:12:18,738 [SPEAKER_03]: That's it. 166 00:12:18,858 --> 00:12:19,958 [SPEAKER_03]: That's the only thing there was. 167 00:12:20,038 --> 00:12:20,538 [SPEAKER_03]: Nothing else. 168 00:12:20,618 --> 00:12:22,419 [SPEAKER_03]: No, you know, I didn't relive lives. 169 00:12:22,479 --> 00:12:25,640 [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't, you know, no scenes from my life came back. 170 00:12:25,700 --> 00:12:27,601 [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't encounter any spirit or anything. 171 00:12:27,641 --> 00:12:28,521 [SPEAKER_03]: There was just this. 172 00:12:29,281 --> 00:12:31,342 [SPEAKER_03]: And this was on 5-MeO-DMT. 173 00:12:32,579 --> 00:12:34,270 [SPEAKER_03]: This was on a different substance, yes. 174 00:12:36,352 --> 00:12:45,994 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, what's remarkable that you inhale whatever you inhale, and then within three or four breaths, whatever remains of you, you encounter some sort of void. 175 00:12:46,534 --> 00:12:50,975 [SPEAKER_03]: And then an hour later, you're back to tell the tale. 176 00:12:50,995 --> 00:12:52,975 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, first, of course, you're totally confused. 177 00:12:52,995 --> 00:13:00,797 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I cried, I stripped, I went into fetus position, all of that, because it's this profound, terrifying experience where you lose all. 178 00:13:01,257 --> 00:13:05,618 [SPEAKER_03]: What it teaches you as a student of consciousness, space and time are optional. 179 00:13:06,558 --> 00:13:17,744 [SPEAKER_03]: As Immanuel Kant, the German transcendental idealist philosopher, argued already 250 years ago, purely based on reason, we believe it's a given that things always occur somewhere and at some time. 180 00:13:17,804 --> 00:13:19,325 [SPEAKER_03]: No, that's a construct of our brain. 181 00:13:19,685 --> 00:13:22,787 [SPEAKER_03]: And under certain conditions, your brain doesn't have those constructs anymore. 182 00:13:23,107 --> 00:13:24,368 [SPEAKER_03]: Same thing with the notion of self. 183 00:13:24,408 --> 00:13:27,570 [SPEAKER_03]: The notion of self is a construct that's very stable. 184 00:13:27,650 --> 00:13:30,772 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I need this to survive and to evolve and to be successful. 185 00:13:31,192 --> 00:13:33,233 [SPEAKER_03]: But under other conditions, there is no more self. 186 00:13:34,748 --> 00:13:41,735 [SPEAKER_01]: When you say space and time is optional, I mean, I get it that you had no sense of space and time. 187 00:13:41,775 --> 00:13:48,622 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it sounds like maybe that's just this weird experience you're having on this very powerful drug. 188 00:13:49,523 --> 00:13:52,787 [SPEAKER_01]: But can we really say space and time disappears there? 189 00:13:53,642 --> 00:13:58,224 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the only reality I'm acquainted with is the reality of my experiences. 190 00:13:58,344 --> 00:13:59,984 [SPEAKER_03]: Everything else is inferential, right? 191 00:14:00,404 --> 00:14:08,027 [SPEAKER_03]: And at that point, my experience, there was no more, I mean, space had collapsed into this singularity and time had stopped flowing. 192 00:14:08,547 --> 00:14:15,910 [SPEAKER_03]: Now, of course, we know perfectly well, no, we live in a four-dimensional space-time continuum, as described by relativity in my own experience. 193 00:14:16,290 --> 00:14:17,991 [SPEAKER_03]: But the question is, is that just a good... 194 00:14:18,731 --> 00:14:25,954 [SPEAKER_03]: practical operational model that allows me to, you know, to predict where the planets are and build, you know, interplanetary rockets? 195 00:14:26,555 --> 00:14:28,976 [SPEAKER_03]: Or is it actually the ultimate truth of the matter? 196 00:14:29,056 --> 00:14:30,656 [SPEAKER_03]: Is space and time actually out there? 197 00:14:30,676 --> 00:14:34,018 [SPEAKER_03]: And this is a question, of course, that goes back, you know, this is ancient philosophy. 198 00:14:34,638 --> 00:14:38,260 [SPEAKER_03]: And in quantum mechanics, that question becomes much more difficult. 199 00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:43,986 [SPEAKER_03]: But also you can argue that ultimately that is a construct of all of our minds, not just my mind. 200 00:14:44,667 --> 00:14:54,097 [SPEAKER_03]: It's absolutely necessary for things to be here at a particular place and at a particular time, but that may not reflect the actual matter of the fact. 201 00:14:55,506 --> 00:15:02,567 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the other interpretation of this is you had this very powerful hallucination, and then you came out of it an hour later. 202 00:15:02,587 --> 00:15:06,048 [SPEAKER_01]: You sort of came back to, you know, everyday reality, but it was... 203 00:15:06,788 --> 00:15:10,689 [SPEAKER_03]: I came back to everyday hallucinatory so-called reality. 204 00:15:10,729 --> 00:15:12,730 [SPEAKER_03]: That's a common sense where we can agree. 205 00:15:12,790 --> 00:15:16,190 [SPEAKER_03]: We all see there's this glass of water, you know, this glass of grape juice. 206 00:15:16,530 --> 00:15:18,691 [SPEAKER_03]: And, of course, as evolved creature, we had to do that. 207 00:15:18,791 --> 00:15:24,132 [SPEAKER_03]: If we all, you know, have different views of reality, you know, we wouldn't have evolved. 208 00:15:24,692 --> 00:15:33,139 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but the question to ask here as a scientist and as a philosopher, you know, is it really true that one is a hallucination and the other one is sort of reality? 209 00:15:33,179 --> 00:15:34,220 [SPEAKER_03]: That's one way of viewing it. 210 00:15:34,260 --> 00:15:37,863 [SPEAKER_03]: That's sort of the common physicalist material interpretation. 211 00:15:37,883 --> 00:15:42,366 [SPEAKER_03]: But a different interpretation might be, no, ultimately everything is mental. 212 00:15:42,546 --> 00:15:43,567 [SPEAKER_03]: Everything is phenomenal. 213 00:15:43,727 --> 00:15:45,068 [SPEAKER_03]: Everything is experiences. 214 00:15:45,449 --> 00:15:48,751 [SPEAKER_03]: And out of this mental, we construct reality. 215 00:15:49,772 --> 00:15:53,554 [SPEAKER_03]: And the physical, ultimately, that might also be a construct. 216 00:15:53,575 --> 00:16:01,800 [SPEAKER_03]: This metaphysical view is known as idealism and, of course, has a long and storied history in Western philosophy and in other people's philosophy. 217 00:16:02,060 --> 00:16:08,244 [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like you have moved in that direction as you're trying to make sense of these incredibly powerful experiences. 218 00:16:08,644 --> 00:16:14,328 [SPEAKER_01]: The old view, the physicalist view that, yeah, it's just a hallucination, that really doesn't cut it with you anymore, right? 219 00:16:14,348 --> 00:16:14,468 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 220 00:16:17,807 --> 00:16:25,350 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, so after this first experience, I was still sort of, you know, it didn't radically change my metaphysical view. 221 00:16:26,030 --> 00:16:37,514 [SPEAKER_03]: And then more recently, two years ago, I had a more straightforward mystical experience where, you know, again, the self, you leave the gravitational field. 222 00:16:38,094 --> 00:16:40,415 [SPEAKER_03]: I left the gravitational field of planet ego. 223 00:16:41,116 --> 00:16:42,816 [SPEAKER_03]: We all live on this planet ego. 224 00:16:42,996 --> 00:16:44,917 [SPEAKER_03]: It's always about me, me, me, me, me. 225 00:16:45,567 --> 00:16:46,508 [SPEAKER_03]: Not you, but me. 226 00:16:47,168 --> 00:16:52,150 [SPEAKER_03]: In my better moments, I can think about you, but ultimately it's always with respect to me as a subject. 227 00:16:52,251 --> 00:16:57,653 [SPEAKER_03]: But just like astronauts can leave the planet and become weightless, we can become selfless. 228 00:16:57,673 --> 00:16:59,454 [SPEAKER_03]: We can lose the sense of self. 229 00:17:00,055 --> 00:17:03,476 [SPEAKER_03]: And so this was another experience like that, selfless. 230 00:17:03,576 --> 00:17:11,861 [SPEAKER_03]: But in addition, I felt myself, I don't want to describe it in detail, but I became identical with the universe. 231 00:17:12,321 --> 00:17:13,822 [SPEAKER_03]: I know it sounds terrible woo-woo. 232 00:17:14,542 --> 00:17:16,825 [SPEAKER_03]: But that's what my experience was like. 233 00:17:17,186 --> 00:17:24,335 [SPEAKER_03]: And I saw in my purview whatever remained of me apprehended the entire universe. 234 00:17:25,477 --> 00:17:26,719 [SPEAKER_03]: It became identical to it. 235 00:17:28,127 --> 00:17:35,012 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this leaves you, certainly left me profoundly, profoundly discombobulated and confused. 236 00:17:35,192 --> 00:17:37,634 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I was walking around late at night. 237 00:17:37,674 --> 00:17:39,955 [SPEAKER_03]: My wife, you know, she was there. 238 00:17:39,995 --> 00:17:42,117 [SPEAKER_03]: She, you know, tried to talk me down. 239 00:17:42,717 --> 00:17:48,641 [SPEAKER_03]: And then every day, literally every day since then, I think about it and about the metaphysical interpretations. 240 00:17:48,741 --> 00:17:53,565 [SPEAKER_03]: And so, yes, my experience was that ultimately everything is possible. 241 00:17:54,205 --> 00:18:06,078 [SPEAKER_03]: The only stuff that I'm familiar with, which is sights and sounds and feelings of boredom, of seeing, of dreading, of imagining, of consciousness, of the mental. 242 00:18:06,358 --> 00:18:11,304 [SPEAKER_03]: So this is the view of the universe that says ultimately what exists only is this... 243 00:18:12,471 --> 00:18:13,433 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there are different names. 244 00:18:13,473 --> 00:18:16,939 [SPEAKER_03]: So the German idealist Arthur Schopenhauer calls it the will. 245 00:18:17,060 --> 00:18:21,228 [SPEAKER_03]: Other people call it cosmic consciousness or universal consciousness. 246 00:18:21,568 --> 00:18:24,454 [SPEAKER_03]: There's sort of only this singular mind. 247 00:18:25,387 --> 00:18:29,789 [SPEAKER_03]: And then the question is, the mystery is, most of the time we are not in that state, right? 248 00:18:29,829 --> 00:18:33,591 [SPEAKER_03]: Right now, I don't access your mind, you don't access my mind. 249 00:18:33,611 --> 00:18:34,811 [SPEAKER_03]: You have to ask me a question. 250 00:18:35,271 --> 00:18:41,174 [SPEAKER_03]: And so under certain conditions, Huxley, the person who's... Aldous Huxley, yeah. 251 00:18:41,474 --> 00:18:51,138 [SPEAKER_03]: Aldous Huxley, whose book, The Doors of Perception, sort of kicked off the age of Aquarius, he talks at the reducing valve, which I always thought somewhat silly, naive. 252 00:18:51,178 --> 00:18:54,600 [SPEAKER_03]: The brain isn't just a reducing valve, but I think there's a deep truth in there. 253 00:18:54,860 --> 00:19:00,922 [SPEAKER_01]: And just to clarify, I mean, by the reducing valve, he was saying that in ordinary life, we have too much input. 254 00:19:00,942 --> 00:19:03,282 [SPEAKER_01]: So the brain has to kind of shut out most of that stuff. 255 00:19:03,402 --> 00:19:06,543 [SPEAKER_01]: And it sort of shuts out these extraordinary experiences. 256 00:19:06,603 --> 00:19:09,864 [SPEAKER_01]: But then with a psychedelic, you suddenly have access to... 257 00:19:09,924 --> 00:19:10,424 [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. 258 00:19:10,564 --> 00:19:14,085 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it has to do with the loss of self, which is always about me, right? 259 00:19:14,705 --> 00:19:20,467 [SPEAKER_03]: Ultimately, with me as subject and everything this chairs with respect to me, and you have a certain relationship to me, etc., 260 00:19:21,187 --> 00:19:49,813 [SPEAKER_03]: And when you lose that, no matter what technique, whether you're meditating or whether you're doing long distance running or you're in a trance, like in certain types of Christian sects or in other tradition or using psychedelic medicine or being a dancing Sufi, you know, these dancing dervishes, I think people have invented an amazing variety of techniques to reduce the sense of self, to become sort of selfless 261 00:19:51,533 --> 00:19:54,815 [SPEAKER_03]: and thereby apprehend this larger reality. 262 00:19:55,015 --> 00:19:55,235 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. 263 00:19:56,256 --> 00:19:57,977 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, hold that thought for a moment. 264 00:19:58,017 --> 00:20:04,140 [SPEAKER_01]: And when we come back, Christof will talk about what science can and cannot explain about mystical experiences. 265 00:20:04,931 --> 00:20:06,172 [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, it's Anne. 266 00:20:06,472 --> 00:20:08,033 [SPEAKER_00]: I am so glad you're joining us. 267 00:20:08,433 --> 00:20:11,454 [SPEAKER_00]: We have some amazing guests lined up for the weeks ahead. 268 00:20:11,574 --> 00:20:12,955 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really excited about them. 269 00:20:13,375 --> 00:20:14,096 [SPEAKER_00]: And here's a tip. 270 00:20:14,476 --> 00:20:24,600 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you know this already, but if you follow Wonder Cabinet on Apple Podcasts, those new episodes will show up automatically, like a little weekly gift in your podcast feed. 271 00:20:25,101 --> 00:20:25,801 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you like it. 272 00:20:29,449 --> 00:20:30,489 [SPEAKER_03]: This is Wonder Cabinet. 273 00:20:30,649 --> 00:20:41,271 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Steve Paulson speaking with the neuroscientist Christof Koch at the Island of Knowledge, the small think tank in Tuscany, and we're talking about the metaphysical insights from his psychedelic experiences. 274 00:20:42,992 --> 00:20:46,833 [SPEAKER_03]: Why do you think you had these extraordinary experiences? 275 00:20:46,853 --> 00:20:53,114 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you've talked about the intention going into it, the set and setting, because some people take these psychedelics and 276 00:20:53,614 --> 00:20:57,381 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they have a big experience, but their life doesn't get turned upside down. 277 00:20:57,761 --> 00:21:00,766 [SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like your life almost got shattered, kind of in a good way. 278 00:21:01,528 --> 00:21:02,509 [SPEAKER_01]: Metaphysically, yes. 279 00:21:02,529 --> 00:21:03,371 [SPEAKER_03]: Metaphysically, yeah. 280 00:21:03,511 --> 00:21:04,934 [SPEAKER_03]: So why do you think that happened to you? 281 00:21:05,660 --> 00:21:08,242 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't think I'm much different from anyone else. 282 00:21:08,602 --> 00:21:12,866 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it depends on your, again, on the set and setting, your mindset. 283 00:21:12,966 --> 00:21:17,210 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you sort of consciously or unconsciously looking for something like this? 284 00:21:17,370 --> 00:21:24,075 [SPEAKER_01]: And given my history and you brought up my religious upbringing, it may have been more likely. 285 00:21:24,696 --> 00:21:26,818 [SPEAKER_01]: Also, it was completely unexpected. 286 00:21:27,418 --> 00:21:38,240 [SPEAKER_01]: I've tried once or twice to repeat this experience, but now my self always gets in the way because my self doesn't want my brain to lose itself. 287 00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:39,640 [SPEAKER_01]: The self doesn't like this. 288 00:21:39,660 --> 00:21:42,861 [SPEAKER_01]: The self is this very powerful mode of the operating system. 289 00:21:43,081 --> 00:21:52,482 [SPEAKER_01]: You can think of the mind being an operating system running on the brain, and it fiercely resists that by doing all sorts of cognitive tricks so you don't go there, so you don't lose yourself. 290 00:21:52,882 --> 00:21:56,263 [SPEAKER_01]: In this case, it was totally spontaneous, unexpected behavior. 291 00:21:56,463 --> 00:21:59,064 [SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly it happened, boom, which is, of course, a character. 292 00:21:59,104 --> 00:22:21,895 [SPEAKER_01]: So William James, one of the best writers, you know, the American sort of father of American psychology, wrote this beautiful book in 1902, The Varieties of Religious Experiences, which is essentially a large part of that has to do with these, what he called religious experiences, although he already alludes to certain similar experiences under nitrous oxide, which at his time was, of course, was already a thing. 293 00:22:22,476 --> 00:22:22,816 [SPEAKER_01]: So... 294 00:22:23,416 --> 00:22:27,357 [SPEAKER_01]: Huxley, again, talks about this act of unearned grace. 295 00:22:28,237 --> 00:22:30,137 [SPEAKER_01]: Because he also asks, why now? 296 00:22:30,937 --> 00:22:35,978 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an act of unearned grace that I don't feel responsible for. 297 00:22:35,998 --> 00:22:36,938 [SPEAKER_01]: It just happens. 298 00:22:37,158 --> 00:22:40,939 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's a fantastic thing, because you do bring almost universal. 299 00:22:40,959 --> 00:22:45,140 [SPEAKER_01]: They come with an extraordinary sort of emotional benefit. 300 00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:46,820 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the very opposite of nihilism. 301 00:22:46,860 --> 00:22:48,240 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it's interesting. 302 00:22:48,260 --> 00:22:51,421 [SPEAKER_01]: A recent philosopher made this remark that typically these experiences 303 00:22:52,401 --> 00:22:55,543 [SPEAKER_01]: make people lean towards idealism. 304 00:22:55,563 --> 00:23:03,507 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, away from being cynic, away from sort of being nihilistic, but now perceiving purpose in the universe. 305 00:23:04,827 --> 00:23:07,388 [SPEAKER_01]: In some way, we don't apprehend this. 306 00:23:07,549 --> 00:23:08,429 [SPEAKER_01]: Quite remarkable. 307 00:23:09,229 --> 00:23:12,031 [SPEAKER_03]: So I find your story absolutely fascinating. 308 00:23:12,131 --> 00:23:18,354 [SPEAKER_03]: And my little armchair psychoanalysis here, let me try this out on you, and you can tell me how I get it wrong here. 309 00:23:18,454 --> 00:23:18,594 [SPEAKER_03]: So 310 00:23:18,986 --> 00:23:24,612 [SPEAKER_03]: you've had this incredibly successful career, top of your profession, you know, in terms of the study of consciousness. 311 00:23:24,672 --> 00:23:28,076 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you're at all the major conferences talking about this. 312 00:23:28,136 --> 00:23:35,203 [SPEAKER_03]: You and Francis Crick pioneered this whole new way of studying the brain and sort of isolating the neural correlates of consciousness. 313 00:23:35,844 --> 00:23:39,167 [SPEAKER_03]: And then you have these experiences 314 00:23:40,261 --> 00:23:49,769 [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe, here's my attempt at psychologizing you, maybe you felt like, you know, doing sort of that kind of science that you've been doing for decades, maybe you hit a wall. 315 00:23:50,130 --> 00:23:53,252 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you sort of felt like you weren't really breaking new ground. 316 00:23:53,513 --> 00:23:57,276 [SPEAKER_03]: And for whatever reason, you wanted to take this in a more personal direction. 317 00:23:57,296 --> 00:24:00,839 [SPEAKER_03]: You wanted to have these profound, direct experiences. 318 00:24:01,079 --> 00:24:06,644 [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe because you realized that, oh, the science that you had been doing can't really take you there. 319 00:24:08,156 --> 00:24:10,457 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's a very reasonable explanation. 320 00:24:11,177 --> 00:24:20,521 [SPEAKER_01]: Because as you said, the neural correlates of consciousness, what are the mechanisms in your brain that ultimately give rise to any one conscious experience, that's a purely empirical operational problem. 321 00:24:20,621 --> 00:24:22,082 [SPEAKER_01]: At some point we'll know the answer. 322 00:24:22,122 --> 00:24:31,206 [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be these neurons doing this thing or these molecules or this microtubuli or whatever that does this thing that gives rise to love and hate and desire and dread. 323 00:24:31,926 --> 00:24:33,767 [SPEAKER_01]: But of course, you want to know more. 324 00:24:33,807 --> 00:24:36,029 [SPEAKER_01]: You want, you know, okay, so what does that mean? 325 00:24:36,589 --> 00:24:38,971 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you have other type of experiences? 326 00:24:38,991 --> 00:24:42,834 [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, the thing with consciousness is you never know it from the outside. 327 00:24:42,854 --> 00:24:45,376 [SPEAKER_01]: You've got to experience this yourself. 328 00:24:45,456 --> 00:24:49,058 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, as Viktor Frankl spoke, the man's search for meaning, right? 329 00:24:49,499 --> 00:24:50,880 [SPEAKER_01]: Like most of us, I look... 330 00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:51,900 [SPEAKER_01]: for meaning. 331 00:24:52,901 --> 00:25:00,646 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, as you get older, the question, given my finite horizon that I have, the time that I've left to look for meaning becomes shorter. 332 00:25:00,726 --> 00:25:03,608 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you begin to explore other avenues. 333 00:25:03,648 --> 00:25:03,868 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. 334 00:25:04,889 --> 00:25:16,136 [SPEAKER_03]: So obviously this kind of experience, and given your whole background as the scientist of consciousness, it raises profound questions, philosophical questions, scientific questions about the nature of consciousness. 335 00:25:16,216 --> 00:25:17,197 [SPEAKER_03]: And as you know, the 336 00:25:17,638 --> 00:25:28,879 [SPEAKER_03]: the dominant model among most neuroscientists for decades has been consciousness is generated by the brain, you know, by various brain states, and that induces whatever's happening in the mind. 337 00:25:30,145 --> 00:25:31,425 [SPEAKER_03]: Have you changed your thinking about this? 338 00:25:32,186 --> 00:25:34,046 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so certainly operational is no question. 339 00:25:34,066 --> 00:25:35,727 [SPEAKER_01]: I continue to be a neuroscientist. 340 00:25:35,747 --> 00:25:40,888 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we're doing experiments in mice on psychedelics because we can study the mechanism. 341 00:25:41,848 --> 00:25:44,049 [SPEAKER_01]: Science is a fantastic tool. 342 00:25:44,089 --> 00:25:49,911 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a practical, operational, pragmatic tool to understand and manipulate our environment. 343 00:25:50,951 --> 00:25:55,817 [SPEAKER_01]: But we have to be extremely skeptical to take its metaphysical view at face value. 344 00:25:56,117 --> 00:26:02,185 [SPEAKER_01]: So yes, the brain and the mind have this very close, you know, like two sides of the coin relationship. 345 00:26:02,225 --> 00:26:05,168 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe consciousness is just the way how complex 346 00:26:06,109 --> 00:26:22,730 [SPEAKER_01]: pieces of matter like my brain that's a piece of furniture like any other field from the inside or maybe we are all part of a larger reality that's ultimately mental something that science cannot study because its tools don't work there and that's okay with me I'm sort of I'm an empiricist 347 00:26:23,331 --> 00:26:27,454 [SPEAKER_01]: And whatever you experience, you have to include into your full view of reality. 348 00:26:27,494 --> 00:26:36,099 [SPEAKER_01]: And we may have to, at the end of the day, revise the naive, commonsensical, realist view of reality that science gives us. 349 00:26:36,499 --> 00:26:40,822 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you're talking about the phenomenology of the experience, the actual experience itself. 350 00:26:40,862 --> 00:26:43,343 [SPEAKER_03]: And I guess the question is, can science take us there? 351 00:26:43,583 --> 00:26:52,088 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you've said that brain science will keep advancing, will be able to probably isolate particular neural connections that might lead to these experiences you've had. 352 00:26:53,989 --> 00:26:54,469 [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know. 353 00:26:54,689 --> 00:26:56,170 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, can it actually explain these? 354 00:26:56,210 --> 00:26:58,512 [SPEAKER_03]: Or could it possibly explain these experiences? 355 00:26:59,593 --> 00:27:01,194 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't rule out anything. 356 00:27:01,594 --> 00:27:05,577 [SPEAKER_01]: Science, you know, it's very rash to say science can't do this and that. 357 00:27:05,637 --> 00:27:07,819 [SPEAKER_01]: People have said that over the last 300 years. 358 00:27:07,859 --> 00:27:09,800 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we can never explain what life is. 359 00:27:09,820 --> 00:27:12,222 [SPEAKER_01]: We can never explain what other stars are made out of. 360 00:27:12,643 --> 00:27:16,666 [SPEAKER_01]: People have made career out of arguing these positions, and then science can. 361 00:27:17,246 --> 00:27:21,069 [SPEAKER_01]: So right now, I think the view that most scientists have 362 00:27:21,369 --> 00:27:29,772 [SPEAKER_01]: explicit, implicitly articulate this so-called materialism or physicalism, I think is inadequate, at least, and it's very likely to be wrong. 363 00:27:30,372 --> 00:27:31,832 [SPEAKER_01]: But of course, it works spectacular. 364 00:27:31,852 --> 00:27:35,714 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to emphasize that science just, you know, works within its domain. 365 00:27:35,834 --> 00:27:45,197 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the most powerful technique that humanity has developed to build things like mRNA vaccines, quantum computers, but of course, also, you know, nuclear bombs and other things. 366 00:27:45,217 --> 00:27:46,117 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just really good 367 00:27:46,577 --> 00:27:48,978 [SPEAKER_01]: at predicting things in the material environment. 368 00:27:49,138 --> 00:27:50,399 [SPEAKER_01]: But let's not take it too seriously. 369 00:27:50,739 --> 00:27:57,582 [SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't necessarily mean that only the material exists, or maybe the material itself is an expression of something mental. 370 00:27:57,982 --> 00:28:00,063 [SPEAKER_01]: And science right now is unable to tell us that. 371 00:28:00,911 --> 00:28:06,573 [SPEAKER_03]: So you've had these extraordinary experiences and you've said your worldview has changed in some ways. 372 00:28:06,893 --> 00:28:10,774 [SPEAKER_03]: You said you lost your fear of death with this powerful 5M. 373 00:28:10,794 --> 00:28:12,475 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a psychological fact. 374 00:28:12,515 --> 00:28:15,456 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not a metaphysical fact. 375 00:28:15,576 --> 00:28:18,877 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I'm coming back to your personal psychology here. 376 00:28:19,877 --> 00:28:22,598 [SPEAKER_03]: Do you live any differently now because of these experiences? 377 00:28:22,618 --> 00:28:25,679 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, has this changed you kind of in a, I don't know, practical way? 378 00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:36,130 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel, in general, I just feel much more hopeful, much more positive about life in the universe. 379 00:28:36,430 --> 00:28:39,313 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I understand there are lots of problems on the planet. 380 00:28:39,513 --> 00:28:41,676 [SPEAKER_01]: I get all of that and I'm worried about some of them. 381 00:28:42,236 --> 00:28:45,660 [SPEAKER_01]: But somehow I just have this even more unshakable belief. 382 00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:46,941 [SPEAKER_01]: We all live differently. 383 00:28:47,922 --> 00:28:54,488 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's almost like, you know, Candide in Voltaire's book, we live in the best of all possible worlds. 384 00:28:54,568 --> 00:28:56,469 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know people make fun of that attitude. 385 00:28:56,489 --> 00:29:08,760 [SPEAKER_01]: But and just the sheer, as I said, that the miracle of existence and we should appreciate this and be expressed grateful and compassion for all suffering, for all conscious creatures, people and beings. 386 00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:09,760 [SPEAKER_01]: and animals. 387 00:29:10,660 --> 00:29:14,161 [SPEAKER_03]: So one final question, because I know you've got to go in a couple of minutes here. 388 00:29:14,521 --> 00:29:18,382 [SPEAKER_03]: I mentioned the other night that my radio partner and I are starting this new podcast. 389 00:29:18,402 --> 00:29:19,982 [SPEAKER_03]: We're calling it Wonder Cabinet. 390 00:29:20,403 --> 00:29:26,264 [SPEAKER_03]: And we're coming up with sort of this exercise, like if there was an imaginary wonder cabinet. 391 00:29:26,284 --> 00:29:31,205 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, wonder cabinet obviously is drawing on the history of the cabinet of curiosities, you know, going back centuries. 392 00:29:31,245 --> 00:29:31,365 [SPEAKER_03]: But 393 00:29:32,209 --> 00:29:42,673 [SPEAKER_03]: For the modern wonder cabinet, if you were to put something in that cabinet, you, you, Christof, it could be an object, it could be an experience, it could be an idea, a concept, anything. 394 00:29:43,713 --> 00:29:46,615 [SPEAKER_03]: What would you want to put in the wonder cabinet now? 395 00:29:47,055 --> 00:29:47,535 [SPEAKER_02]: A toad. 396 00:29:49,676 --> 00:29:51,657 [SPEAKER_02]: No, what do you mean, a toad? 397 00:29:51,977 --> 00:29:52,397 [SPEAKER_02]: A toad. 398 00:29:54,438 --> 00:29:55,278 [SPEAKER_02]: You'll figure it out. 399 00:29:57,631 --> 00:29:58,151 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm serious. 400 00:29:58,712 --> 00:29:59,172 [SPEAKER_02]: Look it up. 401 00:30:00,213 --> 00:30:00,933 [SPEAKER_02]: A toad. 402 00:30:01,233 --> 00:30:01,614 [SPEAKER_02]: A toad. 403 00:30:02,874 --> 00:30:07,097 [SPEAKER_03]: A toad as in, like, the toad venom of 5-MeO-DMT? 404 00:30:07,137 --> 00:30:09,839 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that would be the obvious thing that I would... A toad. 405 00:30:10,299 --> 00:30:10,619 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. 406 00:30:10,980 --> 00:30:11,360 [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. 407 00:30:12,881 --> 00:30:14,022 [SPEAKER_02]: That's Christof Koch. 408 00:30:14,442 --> 00:30:21,446 [SPEAKER_03]: He is the former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and he's now the chief scientist at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation. 409 00:30:21,827 --> 00:30:25,309 [SPEAKER_03]: His most recent book is called Then I Am Myself in the World. 410 00:30:25,798 --> 00:30:34,121 [SPEAKER_00]: Christof joined us at the Island of Knowledge think tank in Tuscany, where scientists and philosophers come together to talk about some of the big ideas of our time. 411 00:30:34,601 --> 00:30:38,083 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll bring you more of those conversations and discussions in the coming months. 412 00:30:38,463 --> 00:30:44,785 [SPEAKER_03]: Support for Wonder Cabinet's Island of Knowledge episodes comes from Dartmouth College and the John Templeton Foundation. 413 00:30:45,049 --> 00:30:50,271 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, as always, to our audio engineer, Steve Gotcher, and our digital producer, Mark Riechers. 414 00:30:50,672 --> 00:30:54,233 [SPEAKER_00]: Wonder Cabinet is based in Madison, Wisconsin, and Vershire, Vermont. 415 00:30:54,693 --> 00:30:55,574 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Anne Strainchamps. 416 00:30:55,854 --> 00:30:56,754 [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm Steve Paulson. 417 00:30:57,195 --> 00:30:58,655 [SPEAKER_03]: We would love to hear from you. 418 00:30:58,675 --> 00:31:04,918 [SPEAKER_03]: So send us questions or comments at wondercabinetproductions.com and sign up for the newsletter while you're there. 419 00:31:05,278 --> 00:31:05,758 [SPEAKER_00]: Be well. 420 00:31:06,239 --> 00:31:06,959 [SPEAKER_00]: See you next time.