Stealing Fire

by Steven Kotler

  16. neuroscientist Michael Persinger’s God Helmet: Jack Hitt, “This Is Your Brain on God,” Wired, November 1, 1999.

  17. Palo Alto Neuroscience: Author interview with Mikey Siegel (who advises the company), 2015. Also see www.paloaltoneuroscience.com.

  18. David Nutt’s: For the entire equasy and ecstasy story see David Nutt, Drugs—Without the Hot Air (Cambridge, England: UIT Cambridge, 2012), pp. 1–30.

  19. Headlines across the country read: For example, Christopher Hope, “Ecstasy ‘No More Dangerous than Horse Riding,’” Telegraph, February 7, 2009.

  20. Ecstasy is a harmful drug: Nutt, Drugs—Without the Hot Air, p. 20.

  21. exchange between Nutt and the home secretary: Ibid, pp. 20–21.

  22. “Government minister claims alcohol more dangerous than LSD!”: Jack Doyle, “Alcohol More Dangerous than LSD, Says Drug Advisor,” Independent, October 29, 2009.

  23. Aside from some foul cutting material: Alexander Zaitchik, The Speed of Hypocrisy,” Vice, June 30, 2014.

  24. The 1.2 million Americans who tried meth: This is from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse 2012 data, https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/methamphetamine/letter-director.

  25. Intel researcher and author Melissa Gregg: Melissa Gregg, “The Neverending Workday,” Atlantic, October 15, 2015.

  26. Hamelin is a town of about fifty thousand people: The town of Hamelin has a great website detailing the Pied Piper story: http://www.hameln.com/tourism/piedpiper/rf_sage_gb.htm.

  27. According to the Luneburg Manuscript: “The Disturbing True Story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin,” Ancient Origins, August 14, 2014, http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/disturbing-true-story-pied-piper-hamelin-001969?nopaging=1.

  28. Historians continue to debate the Pied Piper of Hamelin: See, for example, http://www.medievalists.net/2014/12/07/pied-piper-hamelin-medieval-mass-abduction/.

  29. “[It’s] a sense of total annihilation”: Stanislav Grof, The Adventure of Self-Discovery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 30.

  30. Why evangelical megachurches are booming (with over six million attendees every Sunday): Jesse Bogan, “America’s Biggest Megachurches,” Forbes, June 26, 2009; C. Kirk Hadaway and P. L. Marler, “Did You Really Go to Church This Week: Behind the Poll Data,” Christian Century, May 6, 1998.

  31. Communitas” is the term: Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), pp. 94–113

  32. “Exaggerations of communitas”: Ibid., p. 129.

  33. “I am beginning to comprehend”: “The Triumph of Hitler,” History Place, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-will.htm.

  34. According to Fuhrer confidant, Ernst Hanfstaengl”: Peter Conradi, Hitler’s Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hansfstaengl, Confidant of Hitler, Ally of FDR” (New York: Carroll & Graff, 2004), p. 45.

  Chapter Four: Psychology

  1. As Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson later noted”: John Tillotson, Sermons Preached on a Number of Occasions (London: For S. A. Gellibrand, 1674).

  2. Oprah Winfrey teamed up”: Jesse McKinley, “The Wisdom of the Ages, for Now Anyway,” New York Times, March 23, 2008.

  3. A New Earth attracted ten million: Oliver Burkeman, “The Bedsit Epiphany,” Guardian, April 10, 2009; Jennifer Fermino, “Pope Francis Tells Crowd of 20,000 ‘God Is Living in Our Cities’ at Madison Square Garden Mass, Closing Out NYC Visit,” New York Daily News, September 25, 2005; Alice Philipson, “The Ten Largest Gatherings in History,” Telegraph, January 19, 2015.

  4. He grew up in the rubble of postwar: “Eckhart Tolle Biography,” New York Times, Times Topics, March 5, 2008; Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Novato, CA: Namaste, 2004).

  5. This was the era of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit”: Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2002).

  6. “The Beat Generation was a vision that we had”: Jack Kerouac, “Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation,” Esquire, March 1958.

  7. Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem: Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights, 2001).

  8. Harvard of the Human Potential Movement: Gregory Dicum, “Big Sur without the Crowds,” New York Times, January 7, 2007.

  9. So central was Esalen: Emily Nussbaum, “The Original Existentially Brilliant ‘Mad Men’ Finale”,” New Yorker, May 18, 2015.

  10. largely laid by Dick Price: Jeffrey Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 69.

  11. notes author and modern religious historian Erik Davis: Lee Gilmore, Mark Van Proyen, AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), p. 23.

  12. As an early Esalen motto put it: Kripal, Esalen, p. 9.

  13. So Erhard repackaged an assortment of Esalen: Erhard remains a polarizing figure and his career is subject to competing and conflicting interpretations. For a couple on either side of that debate, see Steven Pressman, Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), and William Bartley, Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1988).

  14. boasts corporate clients including Microsoft: Peter Haldemannov, “The Return of Werner Erhard, Father of Self-Help,” New York Times, November 28, 2015.

  15. they describe their central practice as OMing: www.onetaste.us.

  16. “The search for personal transformation”: Patricia Leigh Brown and Carol Pogash, “The Pleasure Principle,” New York Times, March 13, 2009.

  17. To put this in perspective, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger: “Women Working 1800–1930,” Harvard University Library Open Collections Program, http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/sanger.html. And it didn’t stop there. Morality, especially of the sexual stripe, has been actively legislated. In Mississippi, for example, you are still forbidden to explain polygamy, let alone practice it. In Arizona, they prudently limit the number of sex toys to two per house.

  18. University of Pennsylvania neurologist: Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 88.

  19. Social scientist Jenny Wade: Jenny Wade, Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil (New York: Gallery Books; 2004).

  20. the French research group Sexualitics: Antoine Mazieres, Mathieu Trachman, Jean-Philippe Cointet, Baptiste Coulmont, and Christophe Prieur, “Deep Tags: Toward a Quantitative Analysis of Online Pornography,” Porn Studies 1, nos. 1–2 (2014): 80–95.

  21. But in 2010: Meriss Nathan Gerson, “BDSM vs. the DSM,” Atlantic Monthly, January 13, 2015.

  22. one of the fastest-selling books in history: Anita Singh, “50 Shades of Grey is Bestselling Book of All Time,” Telegraph, August 7, 2012.

  23. Pressure in the throat or colon regulates the vagus nerve: Anish Sheth and Josh Richman, What’s Your Poo Telling You? (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007).

  24. A 2013 Dutch study found that kinky sex: A. A. J. Wismeijer and M. A. L. M. Van Assen, “Psychological Characteristics of BDSM Practitioners,” Journal of Sexual Medicine (August 2013): 1943–52.

  25. Megachurch minister Ed Young: Gretel C. Kovachnov, “Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage: More Sex,” New York Times, November 23, 2008.

  26. In the 1990’s Britton became interested in near-death experiences: Willoughby Britton and Richard Bootzin, “Near-Death Experiences and the Temporal Lobe,” Journal of Psychological Science 15, no. 4 (April 2004): 254–58. Also, the original author interview with Britton took place for Steven Kotler, “Extreme States,” Discover, July 2005, http://discovermagazine.com/2005/jul/extreme-states.

  27. Then Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Roland Griffiith: Katherine A. MacLean, Matthew W. Johnson, and Roland R. Griffiths, “Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness,” Journal of
Psychopharmacology 25, no. 11 (November 2011): 1453–61; R. Griffiths, W. Richards, U. McCann, and R. Jesse, “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” Psychopharmacology 187 (2006): 268–83. Also see Lauren Slater, “How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death,” New York Times, April 20, 2012; Steven Kotler, “The Psychedelic Renaissance,” Playboy, April 2011.

  28. In 2012, psychologist Michael Mithoefer discovered: Michael C Mithoefer, Mark T Wagner, Ann T Mithoefer, Lisa Jerome, and Rick Doblin, “The Safety and Efficacy of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Subjects with Chronic, Treatment-Resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The First Randomized Controlled Pilot Study,” Journal of Psychopharmacology 25, no. 4 (April 2011): 439–52.

  29. In her book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), p. 250.

  30. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman: Rob Hirtz, “Martin Seligman’s Journey from Learned Helplessness to Learned Happiness,” Pennsylvania Gazette, January/February 1999.

  31. In 1998, after being elected: Martin Seligman, “Building Human Strength: Psychology’s Forgotten Mission,” American Psychological Association Newsletter 29, no. 1 (January 1998).

  32. Kegan spent three decades tracking this group: Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). Kegan’s work is vast, dense, and worthy of extended study for anyone interested in the field of adult development. Along with coauthor Lisa Lahey and others, he has also written Immunity to Change and How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (among countless other academic papers and monographs). We have deliberately streamlined his categories of higher adult development for the lay reader, combining transitional self-authoring and self-transforming, or what his colleague Bill Torbert calls the strategist and alchemist stages into that leading 5 percent that we reference. For additional models of adult development, see Harvard Business School’s Ron Heifetz’s notion of technical versus adaptive leadership, Chris Argyris, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Bill Torbert, et al. For a current dive into the scholarship and debates within the field, Angela H. Pfaffenberger, ed., The Postconventional Personality (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011) is a good place to start.

  33. But in all of this developmental research: Author interview with Susanne Cook-Greuter, March 2009. This was literally in the footnotes of one of the earliest studies of advanced stages of adult development—the “.01%ers” who had reportedly tested as having stabilized postconventional consciousness. As the sample size was tiny—less than ten people—these reports can only be taken anecdotally, but they are nonetheless intriguing. See also Paul Marko, “Exploring Facilitative Agents That Allow Ego Development to Occur,” in Pfaffenberger, ed., The Postconventional Personality, p. 99. For another survey of the role of peak states and advanced development, see Allan Badiner’ and Alex Grey’, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002).

  34. Fifty years ago, psychologist Abraham Maslow: Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962).

  35. A 2012 study published in Cognitive Processing took it further: Referenced in Pfaffenberger, ed. The Postconventional Personality, p. 27. Primary citations: S. Harung, F. Travis, A. M. Pensgaard, R. Boes, S. Cook-Greuter, and K. Daley, “Higher Psycho-Physiological Refinement in World-Class Norwegian Athletes: Brain Measures of Performance Capacity,” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 21, no. 1 (February 2011): 32–41. See also Susanne Cook-Greuter, “Making the Case for a Developmental Perspective,” Industrial and Commercial Training 36, no. 7 (2004): 275–81; H. S. Harung and F. Travis, “Higher Mind-Brain Development in Successful Leaders: Testing a Unified Theory of Performance,” Journal of Cognitive Processing 13 (2012): 171–81. See also Robert Panzarella, “The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Peak Experiences” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1977), for an additional study involving musicians and artists that demonstrated a relationship between frequency of peak states and overall “self-actualization.”

  36. Boston College’s Bill Torbert found: David Rooke and William Torbert, “Seven Transformations of Leadership,” Harvard Business Review, April 2005, p. 7.

  Chapter Five: Neurobiology

  1. There’s a bit of southern folk wisdom: Raff Viton and Michael Maddock, “Innovating Outside the Jar,” Bloomberg, July 29, 2008.

  2. Nicole Kidman: Julia Neel, “The Oscars 2011,” Vogue, March 1, 2011.

  3. When seriously depressed patients received Botox injections: Lenny Bernstein, “Using Botox to Treat Depression. Seriously,” Washington Post, May 7, 2014.

  4. But when Botoxed subjects were asked to empathize: Pamela Paul, “With Botox, Looking Good and Feeling Less,” New York Times, June 17, 2011.

  5. Our facial expressions are hardwired: Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed (New York: Holt, 2007), pp. 1–16.

  6. The body, the gut, the senses: Jack Meserve, “Your Brain and Your Body Are One and the Same,” New York, November 19, 2015.

  7. we’re smart because we have bodies: For one of the best breakdowns of embodied cognition, see Guy Claxton, Intelligence in the Flesh (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). Also see Samuel McNerney, “A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition,” Scientific American, November 4, 2011.

  8. If someone gave you a cup of icy cold water: Lawrence Williams and John Bargh, “Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth,” Science, October 24, 2008, pp. 606–7.

  9. Or consider Harvard psychologist Amy: https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=enhot and Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (New York: Little, Brown, 2015).

  10. Weightlessness, weightedness, and rotation: Author interview with Jimmy Chin, 2013.

  11. “[movement sequences] have an impact on stress”: Peter Strick et al., “Motor, Cognitive, and Affective Areas of Cerebral Cortex Influence the Adrenal Medulla,” PNAS 113, no. 35 (2016): 9922–27

  12. Her name is Ellie: A demonstration of Ellie at work is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejczMs6b1Q4.

  13. constant state of impression management: Author interview with Skip Rizzo, 2015.

  14. And people prefer talking to Ellie: Tanya Abrams, “Virtual Humans Inspire Patients to Open Up, USC Study Suggests,” USC News, July 9, 2014.

  15. In 1999 Steven Spielberg had a problem: “Inside Minority Report’s Idea Summit, Visionaries Saw The Future,” Wired.com, June 6, 2012, https://www.wired.com/2012/06/minority-report-idea-summit/.

  16. Chris Berka, the founder of Advanced Brain Monitoring: Author interview with Chris Berka, 2015.

  17. In a related study run in Barcelona: Author interview with Chris Berka, 2015. ESADE has yet to publish these results, but Thomas Maak, ESADE professor of people management and organization, gave a 2013 TEDx talk about the study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvOLbYChYcw&spfreload=5.

  18. Dr. Andrew Newberg doesn’t look like a rebel: Author interviews with Andrew Newberg, 2015–16. Also see Steven Kotler, “The Neurology of Spiritual Experience,” HPlus, September 16, 2009. If you’re really curious about early research in neurotheology and looking for a less technical introduction, check out Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, How God Changes the Brain (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010). More technical is Andrew Newberg, Principles of Neurotheology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010).

  19. Arzy, in 2011, became interested: Author interview with Shahar Arzy, 2016. See also Shahar Arzy and Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). Also, for a more general work on the brain’s ability to produce autoscopic phenomena (out-of-body experiences, doppelganger experiences), see Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self (New York: D
utton, 2015).

  20. The Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia: Abulafia is one of the most interesting figures in Jewish mysticism. A lot has been written, but a great place to start is Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).

  21. He also found a way to study this phenomenon in regular subjects: This experiment was really a variation on earlier work done by Olaf Blanke (Arzy’s Ph.D. thesis advisor). See Olaf Blanke, Bigna Lenggenhager, and Jane Aspel, “Keeping in Touch with One’s Self: Multisensory Mechanisms of Self Consciousness,” PloS One, August 5, 2009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006488.

  22. Abraham Maslow once famously said: Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (Chapel Hill, NC: Maurice Bassett, 2004), p. 15

  23. the one in four Americans now on psychiatric medicines: “Total Number of People Taking Psychiatric Drugs in the United States,” CCHR International, https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs/.