Tom Bilyeu: Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You are here my friends because you believe
human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same
as actually doing something with it. So our goal with this show and company is
to, introduce you to the people and ideas that are going to help you actually execute
on your dreams. All right, today's guest is hard to fit in
the box! He is the Executive Director of the flow genenum
project and has been tapped to help unlock employment performance by Fortune 500 companies
such as, Cisco, Nike, Google and Red Bull, but he is also well versed in mystical experiences
and Burning Man. Growing up he took huge risks as an adventure
athletic, willing to risk everything for those fleeting moments where he was outside of himself
and free of the monkey mind, but realizing how dangerous and clumsy of an approach it
actually is, he and his partner Stephen Cutler have committed to delivering the elusive state
of flow, from the world of reproduced mystism to the world of hard science, by mapping the
genium flow with scientific rigor by 20:20. This endeavor has already made him the recognized
expert in the four trillion dollar altered states of consciousness economy, and turned
him into a much sought after speaker and consultant on the neuro physiology of ultimate human
performance. His work ranges from advising high growth
companies and hedge funds to running expeditionary leadership courses and helping optimize the
most elite warriors on the planet. Half of the things I came across him I researched,
I had to look up to fully understand and every new thing I encountered made me feel like
this guy is the ayahuasca spirit guide for an elevated and optimized daily life. Please help me in welcoming the co-author
of the relentlessly intriguing book 'Stealing Fire, how Silicon Valley, the Navy Seals and
Maverick Scientists are revolutionizing the way we live and work. The midwife of transient hypo frontality himself,
Jamie Wheal. Tom Bilyeu: Welcome! Jamie Wheal: Thanks for having me and it is
good to see you again. Tom Bilyeu: Dude, good to see you again, very
good to have you on the show. I don't normally start with diving in to terms
and defining things, but I have a feeling where we are going to go with the end of this
interview, is going to get pretty interesting, may be a little esoteric. So why don't we start with what are the states
of altered consciousness? Jamie Wheal: Sure, I mean altered states of
consciousness means anything other than waking normal. So that can include everything from dreams
to visions to schizophrenic states, its a whole broad spectrum. In our book 'Stealing Fire', we actually kind
of narrow that down. We focus on what John Hopkins psychiatrist,
Stan Grafkow non-ordinary states of consciousness and under that, we zeroed in on three big
categories, meditation and mystical states. In this case, can classical sitting meditation
and the thing that people are familiar with but then also, any of the states that are
produced by dancing, by movement, by sexuality by these days smart tech ... whether its little
things on your phone or more complex devices, So any of those states. Flow states which as we've discussed are those
moments of in the zone, performance, again typically found in athletes, and then psychedelic
states and there has been this recent renaissance in sanction research, in chemicals that interact
with our neuro chemistry and produce very pronounced and fairly persistent different
or altered states of consciousness. So those are the three, meditation, flow and
psychedelic states, under which we then had to come up with a bigger name or term, and
since the baby boomers and hippies kinda ran a lot of them into the ground, we can't use
any of that language. We have to wind the clock all the way back. So let's go all the way back to what origins,
back to the Ancient Greek and we figured okay 'ectasis' which in the Greek is the 'entesy'
for the word ectasy, which if you get beyond the club drug reference sort of literally
means 'that which moves us beyond ourself'. So non-ordinary states are those that typically
take us out of everyday waking consciousness or I am self aware and have an inner narrative
going on, to those states beyond that and then there is a whole host of additional qualities
we can talk about. Tom Bilyeu: You've likened the inner narrative
to our inner 'Woody Allen', that is exactly what it feels like. Someone who is essentially heckling you within
your own life, which is painful to know that it is coming from your own mind ... How much
do you know about what they have done with severing the corpus callosum in creating literal
duality in peoples minds? Jamie Wheal: Yes, I think that is Sam Harris
in his book 'Waking Us' talks about that ... I think it is one of the most fascinating parts
of that book and I think it gives us a great, empirical kind of AB testing, on what do we
think of ourselves? and to what extent is our consciousness or conscious waking part
the part that can point a naming and call it out, actually calling the show? and actually,
neuro scientist David Eagleman, who is a dear friend of ours and on our advisory board and
teaches at Stanford, in his book 'Incognito' and several of his others, he makes that great
case too. It's like basically, our conscious mind is
no more than the headlines on the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Compared to the entire weeks news. So the fact that what we think of us as ourselves
and what we are actually in real time able to name point and talk about is a percenta
most, of all the data we are experiencing, all the sensations and inputs, is fascinating
and/or terrifying, depending on your point of view and potentially liberating. If we can get access to more of that bit stream
then we can integrate it into our choices, our decisions and even our inspiration, we
have access to a lot more bandwidth ... its like going from dial up to fiber optic in
a heart beat. Tom Bilyeu: Is that why this has become your
life's work? Jamie Wheal: I mean I think, may be on a cognitive
level, on an intellectual level, but really its become my life's work because I realized
it is the only thing that makes me tick. It is the only thing that gets me out of bed
in the morning ... we have inside joke! First rule of flow club is you never talk
about flow club, "like don't talk about it, just go do it, live it, shut up". So for me I just realized I am a lazy unmotivated
bastard when it comes down to it. Tom Bilyeu: You and me both. Jamie Wheal: So I just noticed that and I'm
like wow! And then I noticed everybody else too, which
it felt like we are drowning in information and we are starving for motivation. So like new ideas about top ten lists about
how to live better or be more productive and all that kind of stuff. I think there is a false promise there, because
that's not the weak link. The weak link is do I have enough drive in
myself to do these things. If we can unlock intrinsic motivation, if
we can unlock the "I can't help do this because it fulfills me", then we can connect that
to long term development, then I think we have something much more potent and potentially
transformative than post it notes or affirmations. Tom Bilyeu: Talk to me about the four trillion
dollar economy that's grown up around people's desire to mess with their own bearing chemistry? Jamie Wheal: This is kind of a crazy story
actually, because we had mapped the neuro biology of the flow stake, that is the genium
of the flow, which is part of our organization. So we realized ah, when you are in 21st century
normal, it has a very consistent signature. It is fast beta brain waves, it's pre-frontal
cortical activity, a lot of kind of fighter flight stress hormones, but they are just
left on slow drip ... so [inaudible 00:07:41] cortisol ... are not surprisingly our heart
rate variability is all over the place, jagardy look like the stock market, instead of a nice
sign wave. Our postures are often hunched, our respiration
is partial and shallow, poor air exchange, pulled up C02, brain is not getting fully
oxygenated. There is like a predictable stack, and when
we feel, like most of us feel most of the time it looks like that under the hood. Alternatively, in these non-ordinary states,
all that stuff shifts and it shifts to the right on a nominal 2 by 2 chart of it, and
it becomes slower brain waves - alpha or theta. It becomes deactivated or hyper activated,
brain activity in different regions lighting up and turning off. It requires neuro transmitters that flush
out the stress chemicals and replace them with reward and feel good chemicals, dopamine
endorphins and those kinds of things, respiration tends to become more relaxed and belly breathing. You get better air exchange, posture tends
to follow, shoulders relax and fall back, head above shoulders - all these kinds of
things. You are wow! So that is an interesting signature. What we realized, was this actually applies
not just to flow states. This applies to meditative states. This applies to other mystically induced states. This applies to psychedelic states and we
realize okay, now we've got almost a Rosetta Stone ... If you remember back in I think
it was in Napoleon's era, they discovered that tablet that had Greek demotic Greek and
Egyptian hieroglyphics all saying the same sentence, all in one place. So they could translate and they could de-code
the grammar of it. That unlocked access to these languages that
had been hidden. Well that genome flow became our Rosetta Stone,
and it let us unlock. Flow states with a domain of artists and athletes
and meditative states with the domains of mystics and meditators or sort of saints you
know pias folk, monks and, then psychedelics were hippies and ravers and none of those
communities would ever talk to each other. They would walk past each other on the street
and not bat an eye, and we were like "wait a second, actually your practice are the doors
you are going through are all completely different, but the place you are getting to remarkably
similar". So as soon as we had that insight ... well
let see our we full of it or is this just a hypothesis that doesn't bear out, and we
said lets actually do a hard economic analysis and lets take a look at how much time and
money are people spending seeking those states, that profile, that signature. Tom Bilyeu: Right
Jamie Wheal: And so we backed into it and we took a look at the obvious, lisett and
lisett pharmaceuticals. So everything from alcohol, tobacco, nicotine
all the way over to legal and illegal marijuana, all the to on and off prescription pharmaceuticals,
oxi content, pain killers, psychiatric meds, that whole neck of the woods. That was over 2.2 trillion dollars! Tom Bilyeu: Jesus! Jamie Wheal: Just alone, then we went into
not just compounds that we could adjust to shift our state, but the entire psycho therapeutic
self help space, "help me, coach me, or teach me to get out of my waking state consciousness"
... feel happier etc and that was billions more. Then we took a look at emassive media. The idea of emissive media ... we talked about
IMAX, we talked about even about binge watching ... Netflix has done all their algorithms
and the idea that even that the next show pops up before the last one finishes, is like
they have coded it, and they have even found that comedies aren't good for binge watching
... but what is, is serial dramas, so that is why House of Cards are ... I'm now hung
up on a cliff hanger, I cant wait to have the dopamine hit the reward of the next thing
.. I thought I was just going to just watch one and go to bed, six of them later, it is
3 am and I am still going to go for that last son of a bitch to get my pay off, right ...
So those are all the categories and we realized, IMAX - giant 40 foot screens, huge sub woofers
... the ability to be in the dark, unlike a sensory deprivation tank, I lose the boundaries
of myself, I am connected to other people who are booing and gasping and clapping and
cheering, the sound ... George Lucas, famously said "movies are 50% audio", and so huge sounds,
huge screens. We travel further, we pay more for those tickets,
we just stream them at home or got to our local cineplex. So that is a state shifting choice we pay
a premium for. Tom Bilyeu: And you said something you were
like, we don't go that far out of our way and pay the additional premium to see better
movies, we go there to feel something more. Jamie Wheal: Yes, that's is the premise or
pay off of IMAX. You know you lose yourself more. Tom Bilyeu: Right. Jamie Wheal: For two or three hours, project
onto the screen, mirror in your arms and all that kind of thing. Our brains aren't evolutionary wired, to distinguish
between what is on the screen and what we are actually perceiving through our own eyes
... that those initial silent movies with the train coming and everyone bailed out of
their seats, right! So, that is the premise of IMAX. Binge watching we have just talked about,
that notion of it gets out of hand. Right, I planned one, I ended up watching
eight ... that is a sign of the neuro chem happening. Streaming pornography is a great example,
because if you think about it, why do we do it? There is no evolutionary pay off. If I succeed at watching porn, I do not propagate
the gene pool one bit. But what I do do, is I create a state of pronounced
physiological arousal and a state of sated neuro chemistry, that I find appealing and
if you think about that one ... there is a book called Salt, Sugar, Fat by Pulitzer Prize
winning New York Times author, who basically talks about how the food industry has hacked
what they call the bliss point. Tom Bilyeu: Oh yes. Jamie Wheal: Right, and they literally, they
schemed for it and this is why we have Chillies, TJ Fridays and the Cheese Cake Factory. They basically figured out that salt, sugar
and fat, all three, very rare sensations. Salt essential mineral you can only get it
in salt lakes and certain places, sugar was only available in berry season for two weeks
- no refrigerators no shipping but two weeks berry season or honeycomb and that was it,
and fat easy to spoil. So any time it is in our evolutionary history
we had access to that stuff, it was the single was get as much as you can while you can. And now, we can't stop, we can't turn it off. So you get two krispy kremes between a bacon
cheese burger and that is the thing man, that exists in the world believe it or not, and
people lose their minds and so 70% of adults, American men are obese, right! Tom Bilyeu: That's crazy. Jamie Wheal: So you put sexuality in that
same category. So food, water, sex - three primary evolutionary
drivers and now we have untapped excess to perennially sexually available mates with
no contest from peers. Because we provided access to all this stuff,
now in ways that were never ever available. People have no checks and balances any more. So the ability to have massively over shoot
the market in pursuing these states is absolutely there and is a clear and present danger. So all things ...
Tom Bilyeu: Do you think we need checks and balances? Jamie Wheal: I mean I think the evidence would
suggest that without them, if we just provided unlimited access to things that use to have
natural ebbs and flows, you tend to get access and you tend to get addiction, destruction
and distraction. Tom Bilyeu: Lets talk about drugs? I am soup, I am a total woose about drugs. I don't do drugs. I tried smoking weed, I fucking hated it. I drink but soup but occasionally, I just
don't mess exogenously with my neuro chemistry very often. I am terrified of psychedelics but I am so
intrigued by what lies on the other side, like one do you think ... I am going to say
a necessary doorway? Is it a massive accelerator? And, why should it or shouldn't it be more
readily used by people? Jamie Wheal: That is a bunch of questions. So first things first. If there is a premise for our book at all,
that I would want people to take away its that the door matters less than the destination. Tom Bilyeu: Okay, but aren't some doors going
to be easier than others? Jamie Wheal: Yeah, we even talk about it in
one of the later chapters which is literally the ectasis equation. People always ask us what is the best way? Tom Bilyeu: Trust me that is on the list of
questions. Jamie Wheal: What is the best way? And we say look man, it depends. It depends on your timeframes, your risk tolerances. Tom Bilyeu: My timeframe how long I have to
get into it? Jamie Wheal: Yes, because if you wanted to
say "hey I am risk averse, I have all the time in the world, and I want the safest surest
way", I would say dedicate "respiration practice and contemplation, go forth and have fun and
see me in 10 years". If you are like "I am desperate to have some
meaning" ... lets take for instance a specific case study, Iraqi who is suffering from PTSD. Tom Bilyeu: Perfect. Jamie Wheal: So, you have time, money and
access and you can choose your path and your risk averse, "go learn to meditate". "I am not sure I can live another day in my
mind the way it is", then stronger interventions may be necessary.\
In fact, MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychdelic Studies), has been doing profound
federally sanctioned research with trauma sufferers. So it is war veterans, as well as sufferers
of childhood abuse and sexual abuse. So folks who life has happened to them in
ways that are unfair, unsustainable and the burden of that wounding is literally killing
them. As little as one session with MDMA and for
those folks that don't know, the core pharmaceutical ingredient in what folks often know as ectasy
or molly. When you ingest it it goes indirect to your
serotonin system and it also releases dopamine and oxytocin. So you have serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin
coming into your system and it tends to leave people feeling ... particularly if they have
been traumatized, they can relax, they can feel safe, they can feel secure, and they
are basically having the ability to go and re visit those traumatic events in ways that
don't trigger their nervous system into fighter flight again. In conjunction with skilled therapeutic talk
therapy, the ability for that to release them. In fact one ... it has been so successful
it has been screwing up their stats. Tom Bilyeu: Stats? Jamie Wheal: MAPS, as they do this research,
because the protocol was for three sessions stretched over six months. There has been more than one, one [inaudible
00:18:13] is like "I did one session I'm good". Tom Bilyeu: Wow! Jamie Wheal: "Save my life, I am not coming
back". Tom Bilyeu: MDMA? Jamie Wheal: Yes, but in conjunction with
talk therapy, very supervised and very structured ... Johns Hopkins university is doing studies
and YU is doing studies, UCLA is doing studies and MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association
... MAPS.org you can check in on those websites. The good news is that their evidence has been
so overwhelmingly pronounced effective, that the FDA has approving it not just for trauma
but also for anxiety and depression. Tom Bilyeu: Wow! Jamie Wheal: And that is now in stage 3 clinical
trials I believe. Tom Bilyeu: Like how does the brain rewire
that fast? Jamie Wheal: Yeah, I think that is a great
question and it doesn't just happen. The short answer is I don't know why? or how
it does? But I would say that it does and it is not
just pharmaceutical intervention. So the MDMA trauma stuff ... actually if you
wind that story back it first began in 1990s with Willoughby Britton at Brown University,
and she was studying NDE survivors (Near Death Experience) folks. And she was like look I am a trauma researcher,
when people are traumatized that usually is a bad thing for them, but people who have
had the tunnel of white light breakthrough an epiphany moment, come back and the thing
that should have traumatized them actually leaves them happier than ever. And she measured that with time it takes to
get into REM sleep and this is just an interesting notion. So back to your point of about our conscious
mind ... Tom Bilyeu: This gives me the chills. I didn't realize there was something measurable
out of this. Jamie Wheal: Oh my god it is crazy ... so
like back to the notion of conscious minds, the top 1 per cent, you can test how long
does it take me to go and fall into REM sleep at night and predict with clinical accuracy
whether or not I am going to be depressed six months from now. Tom Bilyeu: Wow! Jamie Wheal: So I won't even feel depressed
yet. Six months from now I am going to be in the
dumps feeling like the world is at me and I don't like my relationships and my job sucks,
but six months early you can tell me that. Hey, its taken you ... you are dropping to
REM sleep too early. So basically less than a 100 minutes, less
than 60 minutes. If I drop into REM total clinical sign I am
going to be depressed. Tom Bilyeu: So not how fast you fall asleep. Jamie Wheal: No, no. Tom Bilyeu: How fast you got into [crosstalk
00:20:13] Jamie Wheal: And the sooner I go into REM
that is more of risk factor. Tom Bilyeu: Really. Jamie Wheal: The longer it takes me to get
into REM. So here is the fact, is that 90 minutes is
about average. NDE survivors were clicking it over a 100
to 110 to 120 minutes before they dropped in REM and, brain scans were showing their
neurology, their neuro networks were permanently rewired as a result of that singular cathartic
experience. So you are like, what is going on here. Obviously the trouble with NDE studies is
you can't repeat them in a lab. You can't nearly kill people to see if cool
stuff happens. Tom Bilyeu: Can't you? Jamie Wheal: Right, so Roland Griffiths at
John Hopkins, had a more elegant solution. NDE's are accidental roll of a dice and we
can't schedule that and how do we find more people that are truly facing mortality, and
can we recreate this in some way? So he basically took terminal cancer patients
and introduced three grams of siliciden. It was enough that people got to an interesting
place but not so much they had to manage wild and wooly experiences. Four out of ten reported it being the most
meaningful experience of their lives, period, straight up, most meaningful thing I have
ever done and I think 7 or 8 out of 10 said it was top 5 and the results were persistent
for 1 month, 3 month, 6 months. Basically as long as they continue to survey
them. Tom Bilyeu: So then why don't people do more? Like Steve Jobs, for real though, that would
be my question. So that is the reason why I don't do it because
my assumption is that the answer is dangerous. Right, there is one of the chapters in your
book called 'Burning Down the House'. So we stole fire from the gods and we did
all this amazing stuff, but we can also burn down the house. And so I guess it fascinates me with drugs,
because if I knew it was safe, I would do it. So where is that critical threshold, why isn't
anybody ... and I was going to say Steve Jobs said everyone should do it once, but he didn't
say everyone should do it weekly or daily. So what is it that makes people back off? Jamie Wheal: There are several different things. One, we just have to refine our terms. So drugs is a bit of a clumsy category, right. We are not talking about amphetamines, we
are not talking about cocaine, we are not talking about opioids and heroin and any of
those things. We are talking about a credible specific and
refined subset that psychedelics of which most of the ones we are talking about interact
with the serotonin system specifically. Tom Bilyeu: Okay. Jamie Wheal: So that specific category is
fairly unique in its properties and may have, and has some of the benefits as well as known
issues that you have to be very mindful of, but they are not physically additive, there
is very low ability to overdose any of those kinds of things are not on the table, but
the specific category. Tom Bilyeu: Right. Jamie Wheal: That said, there are state sanctions,
states of consciousness, there always have been. Right, and whether its way back in the days
of the Catholic church ... In fact, even like neolithic era, if you look
at early cave sites in Western Europe, you have burned hemp seeds and mortar and pestle
for opium, for poppy seeds, no alcohol. The Alcohol complex as anthropologist call
a cultural movement began around the Mediterranean, so even the Old Testaments stories like Noah,
fermented grapes and all that kind of stuff, right ... So Alcohol complex began there and
funnily enough fueled a warlike in nomadic bunch of people that migrated out of the Mediterranean
and the alcohol complex took over Europe in interesting ways. So, we enforce, even today the smoke break,
the coffee break and happy hour. We enforce those even though on considered
rankings of most harmful substances that are broadly used alcohol is number one, it beats
heroin. Tom Bilyeu: What? Jamie Wheal: Heroin is number 2 ... alcohol
does social harm ... ethanol other than the fact that it is so deeply inculturated and
we love to raise a glass and there is all these wonderful gillions amounts of film,
TV, advertising that reinforces it. Ethanol sucks. Tom Bilyeu: Is anyone looking at the brain
while they are doing this? Jamie Wheal: Exactly. So Robin Carhart-Harris, Imperial College
of London, has just in the last three years studied using LSD with patients to put them
through fMRIs. So now I can precipitate the experience with
world class measurement devices. Tom Bilyeu: Right. Jamie Wheal: And what he found was two things. Really interesting. So the first was that our ego ... when people
talk about ego disintegration, you know like practitioners ... they were actually right. Like our egos, there is not a single spot
where it lives, it is a network and if you knock out even one or two of those nodes,
the whole thing powers down. Tom Bilyeu: And what are you shutting down,
the prefrontal cortex? Jamie Wheal: It is subtler in more neurons
than that these day and that is what's so cool. The new tech is advancing and our ability
to put people in interesting states while under the measurement devices, because these
are big giant million dollar machines. The first thing is that the ego is in network
and the destabilizing or knocking out even a couple of nodes will shut the whole thing
down. You will get that moment of selflessness,
Woody Allen goes away, that stuff ... But the other and this goes back to why Fetterman's
micro dozing was so interesting, is that under those conditions, while your brain is metabolizing
and neuro transmitting LSD around the circulatory and the serotonin is happening, you are getting
connections between parts of your brain that normally never talk to each other. Tom Bilyeu: What creates that connection? So its not going to malanation it happens
too slowly. So what is the mechanism there? Jamie Wheal: In that literal sense, I think
it is neuro transmitters and it is probably literally the serotonin system ... there are
several different receptor sides firing and talking to each other and they normally don't. Tom Bilyeu: Right. Jamie Wheal: So its like skip level neighbors
calling out the window, right. And those far flung connections ... I mean
that literally is the mind expansion element and its super practical. You see this is the thing, it is not just
"oh wow, I have never thought that an oak tree comes from an acorn". Mind blown, you know its like "can I work
on real hard stuff, that's in my life, that has practical applications, real world constraints
and can I navigate" ... Tom Bilyeu: Do you know some of the things,
the patternable stuff that came out of that? Jamie Wheal: The linear electron beam accelerators
like hardcore, super high tech stuff. And of course that the ...
Tom Bilyeu: Are those guys still doing it, that's my real obsession? Jamie Wheal: Everyone is doing it ... the
bottom line is Silicon Valley, we go up there and we speak to teams of engineers and we
are like, here is the flow states and here is how to manage your day and they are like
"hey man our whole engineering team is micro dosing, what do you think about that?" And I am like "really, can we talk about this
off campus". So the bottom line is like Silicon Valley
as just an exemplar or emblem, a lot of the stuff. There is a lot of executives that are using
transcranial magnetic stimulation, so that ...
Tom Bilyeu: Now that doesn't freak me out. Jamie Wheal: Exactly, I recommend TMS to everybody
that is interested. It is like okay, if you are risk averse ..
Tom Bilyeu: So tell people what that is? Jamie Wheal: So transcranial magnetic stimulation,
it almost looks like those mirrors, those lights that dentists have in their offices. You can line it up over the front of your
brain and it basically sends magnetic pulses through whatever part of your brain you are
talking to. The typical way they do it, is they test it
and you just end up with a natural response like "grab your thumb" and they are like "now
it is over the right zone" and they do fifteen to 20 minute sessions on a daily basis and
it basically, just defrags your cognitol pod drive. Its FDA approved for depression, which obviously
the largest target market, let's go through those hoops and it performs it ... and it
is as effective as Prozac ... It is basically like a month long protocol. Not many insurers will pay for it, so it is
spending, 15k-20k for a batch. So that's prohibitive, but a lot of people
are using it off label. So, what they are finding is that by basically
pulsing it with magnetic activity and then level setting all of your neuron connections,
when they power back up ... It's almost like a hard reboot on your computer that has been
on too long, you end up with cleaner pathways and connections and greater ethicacy. So that is being used off label by a lot of
executives. It is also being used by colleagues of ours. Tom Bilyeu: How do they shutdown? Jamie Wheal: It depends but of them is dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex, so you can absolutely target that ... and other colleagues of ours did
doppler research, target [inaudible 00:28:24] snipers, archery all these measurable things,
how long does it take you learn stuff. They are using it to basically mechanically
engineer the flow state. So rather than say "hey you've got to roll
a dice or spin the tumbler and get lucky", they are saying "hey sit here" ... boosh one
session "you've got 20-40 minutes where you are not going to be your normal self and go
crush it and see how fast you learn stuff". The acceleration and learning in those instances
was up 490%. Tom Bilyeu: What was the name of the company
that was doing that? Jamie Wheal: Advance Brain Monitoring has
been one of them for sure. Tom Bilyeu: Give the stats on how much faster
you can learn a language ... it goes from like? 6 months to 6 weeks. Jamie Wheal: 6 months to 6 weeks. Tom Bilyeu: That's crazy, so what are they
doing in the brain to get into that state and why does it allow you to learn so much
faster? Reading that in the book, I was like Jamie
and I are going to this place, they are going to zap me and we are going to learn something
really really fast. Another thing is I want to advance my Greek,
so let's go. Jamie Wheal: The simplest thing that those
guys have been doing and you can do this a thousand and one different ways, but is straight
up - EEG feedback, so electrical activity. Can I steer myself without 20 years of meditation
practice! Tom Bilyeu: With a bio feedback and watching
my waves ... Jamie Wheal: Can I just use visualization
of my actual real time data to help me learn, to control it faster? Yes is the short answer. So can I move out of distracted fast moving
data into something slower and more receptive, like alpha theta? Tom Bilyeu: Have you seen people get into
gamma states? Jamie Wheal: Yes and in fact a seasonal meditator
is Tibetan lineage monks have a far higher spike in gamma than almost anybody else. Gamma waves for the folks that don't know,
that's like your eureka moment of "shazam I got it" ... I read a paper in Plus One the
journal, which was three different types of meditation and comparing the incidences of
gamma frequency based on the different meditative style. So they are not like tentatively done, and
meditators can do it ... but now which unique traditions do it better. So the idea here is, you can either do it
the old school way, decades of practice, flying blind but with lineage instruction or, we
an accelerate it now and we can say "hey can I use additional contemporary tools and tech
and can I accelerate my feedback loops, and can I start doing it faster. Once I can do that" ... It's not that I just
gain access to information I haven't learned or earned, but it is to say that I can put
myself into the most receptive and accessible state possible to then go and do that
Tom Bilyeu: Do you think it is more important that it is learned and earned, versus just
being able to zap yourself or to take a drug like ... for me the idea of shaving 30 years,
I don't care if people think it is cheating? Jamie Wheal: Yeah, so that's another one,
you asked why doesn't everyone do this and the question is about pharmacological supplementation. But these days, it is getting into tech supplementation. It is getting into VR and AR and the question
is, what we talk about is the notion about the skin bag bias, the idea if it's inside
my body and I have earned it that is real and true and, if it comes from outside it
is cheating or short cut and not real, and the answer is just "really, your sure about
that" ... It is like basically, the moment you slow that down, so where is the edges
of that argument, you realize there are no edges. It is arbitarium subjective and it is culturally
ingrained. The reality are we are clever monkeys making
shit up all the time and we are forever influencing ourselves. I mean, you go to Boulder and it's like god
damn like Lake Wobegon. You look at a Montessori class in Boulder
and all the kids are just perfect and beautiful and than, you see the mother and the father
and they are like all 5-12 climbers slash pro cyclist slash mountaineer PhDs and they
have self-selected. Right, we all do this. We do it casually and informally and then
we also do it deliberately with what we eat, we are tall now and five hundred years ago
we weren't. We are constantly modifying ourselves. Tom Bilyeu: Lets get crazy, have you read
'Evolving Ourselves'? Jamie Wheal: No. Tom Bilyeu: Ah my friend you have to read
it, so a big part of their whole thing is that national selection doesn't exist any
more. It is purely unnatural selection. 50% of the earth's dry land mass is covered
by things that we have decided to let grow, so whether that's wheat, corn or whatever. We've decided that, we've decided what species
live and die, we are looking at ways to bring back a wooly mammoth through cloning. It's like literally we have taken over natural
selection ... what we have done to humans with the way that we impact our micro bio
even just caesarian birth and how that impacts a child. Jamie Wheal: Head size. Tom Bilyeu: Having bigger heads, smaller hips. Having kids later. Every five years over 35 that a woman pushes
back having a child, its a 14% increase in the likelihood that the child will be obese. The heavier the mother is, the more likely
the child is to be obese. So you get this generational stats ... They
talk about how epigenetic factors, the changes we make to our own environment to ourselves
now can echo for four generations ... which is fucking crazy ... So if you take a rat,
zap its feet and then make him smell almonds, then do nothing else ... One rat zapped his
feet and made him smell almonds, his great grandchildren will still be freaked out by
the smell of almonds. Jamie Wheal: Yeah, yeah. Tom Bilyeu: Am I the only one freaking out
about that? That is what? That is crazy. So we have completely taken the stuff over
... That all triggered in me because this whole notion of whether it is internal or
whether it external - a) I don't think we have grips on now - what is external and external? Whether it be height, intelligence whatever
that we are taking control over and breeding in and out, that is a nasty word to say ... but
that is essentially what is happening, but now we are going to be taking over from a
technological perspective from a chemical perspective and what are we going to be okay
with altering? Right, what do you think? - In fact let really get controversial my
friend. What do you think about performance enhancing
drugs? Jamie Wheal: Well the short answer is we have
always been using them. Right, you go back to the early revival of
the Olympics, marathoners were having glasses of wine, some of them were taking bumps of
cocaine. Tom Bilyeu: That would help. Jamie Wheal: For sure, it is always been happening. The Incas had the highway that ran the strip
of Andes, that was 11 or 12 hundred miles. They would have their runners use basically
... literally freeze dry, leave it out at night and pound it, freeze dry potatoes and
other stuff and cocoa leaves and the sons of bitches were like pony express on steroids. They could cover 11 hundred miles in four
days. Tom Bilyeu: Wow! Jamie Wheal: Back in the day. Tom Bilyeu: Wow! What? That's crazy. Jamie Wheal: So the idea that there was some
earlier purer state when none of this happened and we didn't modify anything is a fiction. Even go back to oh we use too much technology
and we've been wounding and hurting the environment, we need to get back to mother earth ... even
the notion of just the primal overgrowth forest is a fiction. I mean fire has been used since neolithic
times by humans as a technology, it's arguably the most potent technology we've ever invented. So when Europeans came here in the 1600s and
they are like "oh my gosh, there is game everywhere and there is park, park like forest we can
ride our horses through" ... Indians have been managing that landscape to promote game,
basically game husbandry for millennia, before you guys showed you. So the idea that there is some earlier purest
state is a pipe dream and a false premise, we have always been modifying our environment,
we have always been modifying ourselves. We have always been modifying the plants and
foods we eat. Michael Palin calls it the boutineer of desire,
that we shaped our plants and our plants shape us. They make us feel ... including intoxicating
plants ... they make us feel good therefore we grow them, we help them make sex, we help
them propagate, so it is us. We are clever monkeys with a opposable thumbs
and always have been. The notion of where is it going next? Tom Bilyeu: Don't you think that it is accelerating. We are doing [crosstalk 00:36:28]
Jamie Wheal: Even just take VRs as an example, let alone like ergogenic manipulation and
that kind of pick your child kind of stuff. Even just VR, there have been studies now
that are showing people are getting VR hangovers when they take it off, and it is interfering
with.. Tom Bilyeu: What does that mean? Jamie Wheal: So the first thing people notice
in VR is like, oh this is weird and there is a lag and they get sea sick. They are improving latency and it is going
to get better, but that was the first thing, but now enough people are doing it and spending
enough time in it, that what's happening when people are spending a lot of time in it and
taking off the head sets, and there is psychological depression. There is the sense of the world is just flat
and grey and I am not like the superstar avatar slinging laser beams. Right, so this kinda sucks and I am stuck
in traffic and my lunch is late and also neuro biological. So its like my visual system has been attuned
to this simulated environment, but I am not getting the stibula inputs, I am not getting
the proprioceptive inputs, so its all coming in through my retina and then I take that
off, and my cerebain is out of whack and people are literally getting hangover affects ... its
a bit like being on a boat too long and you get back on the pier and you have sea legs. People are getting 3D legs when they come
back into waking state reality. So the question is are we going end up just
jacking ourselves involuntarily to the matrix, instead of being imprisoned there ourselves. Tom Bilyeu: So here's my big fear. Have you read the comic DMZ? Jamie Wheal: I don't think so. Tom Bilyeu: So my mission in life is to get
people to understand that fucking comic books contain so much cultural wisdom, because you
don't have to actually produce it. You can do a hundred billion dollar budget
movie and your just the drawing. So whether you are drawing somebody sitting
in the ling room or something of a cosmological scale it does not matter. So they explore fascinated ideas and the DMZ
explores the notion of the US in the middle of second civil war and, it is so unnerving
now, to read it now. It came out ten years ago, may be a little
bit more and at the time I felt a little insulated from anything like that, but now it's getting
a little bit crazy. How does what you guys are covering in Stealing
Fire, because I think it does, touch on the deviceness that we see, not just here in the
US but broader, like how do we use the technologies to transcend that? Jamie Wheal: That is a massive fascinating
question. The simplest is to say, "these techniques
of ectasy" which is [inaudible 00:38:53] versus Chicago way back when ... but the notion of
technologies or tools we can use to create prompt ectasis, to step outside ourselves. Those can be used back to the 1984 brave new
world split, they can be used for the better angels of our nature. They can help us become more expansive, more
creative. Heal trauma, prompt cooperation, collaboration
and innovation or they can be used to absolutely hijack our impulses and drives. Push all of our pleasure seeking buttons,
sell us more shit. It can leave us fat and happy and on the couch. The option is up to us, it is a bit like in
Star Wars, hundred percent force 'Yoda' awesome, 80% force 'Anakan' scary as hell. So ectasis at 80% can be pretty much whatever
you want it to be. Fully expressed it has these innumerable positive
benefits. So one of the questions, there is like the
old Yates line from that poem the 'Second Coming' which speaks a bit like your DMZ comic,
which is the the best lack old conviction are the worst filled with a passionate intensity. Tom Bilyeu: That's great. Jamie Wheal: Phew
Tom Bilyeu: That gives me the chills. Jamie Wheal: What mis-shapen beast, its hour
come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem waiting to be born. Tom Bilyeu: Wow! Jamie Wheal: We have the ability through ectasis
to literally step beyond ourselves. To have these experiences of expand and prospective
. To have these experiences where we just get out of our own way and we see men we are
connected to each other, men love beauty, truth. Worth taking a stand for, basic decency. There should be no reason why we can't reclaim
honor, courage, duty, sacrifice, patriotism, democracy. This is not about left and right, this is
about fear or love. I think if know where we are today, you can
make a case, you don't have to buy into it, but things are accelerating. A lot of people are experience that. It feels like everybody mythologies are starting
to smash and crash into each other. Right, one group saviors is another group's
antichrist, and its all happening literally like the matria. If you go on YouTube and you google matria
the world teacher, the Buddhist world teacher, there are christian fundamentalist that are
absolutely convinced that a) it might have been Obama, b) the matria is actually the
antichrist in drag. Your like what is going on? You've got the Matrix and you've got Star
Wars, you have [inaudible 00:41:23] and you've got Isis. You've got all these real and imaginable narratives,
all getting swirled sucked down the drain of time and space, and they are starting to
slam into each other and blend and merge in a way that is overwhelming us. We literally don't know whether to shit or
go blind, and the reality is, what if all of that is just the skin of ... it does not
matter what flag you are flying, it doesn't matter what uniform you wear. The real separation is are you coming from
a place of love or coming from a place of fear and control. These abilities to step outside ourselves,
the abilities to see more, feel more and know more, is the chance to give the best someone
their own conviction. That's where we are ... It's like have that
courage to say enough, enough with the insanity, enough with the inhumanity, and it is not
can I trip out and it's not can I escape from my life and responsibilities. Its can I just set down my butt long enough
to step up to the high ground to step up to the mountain and look around and say "I see
where we are and I see what needs to be done, and it doesn't matter whether I get the prize. It doesn't matter whether my part is insignificant
or pivotal, it is just that I have to play it". If we all do that, just the tiniest little
things, it is the smile at the grocery store. Nod to a neighbor, its a conversation from
a liberal to a conservative we both care about the same things. Lets honor democracy, lets honor each other,
this isn't complicated. The ability to get beyond falsism into a solution
where you can hold more than one perspective. That is what ectasis gives us. It gives us the ability to wake up to what
is possible. To grow up and mend where we are broken and
to show up and do that which needs to be done. Tom Bilyeu: How do we get that scale? Jamie Wheal: Well, there is a short answer
and there is a longer answer. It is fundamentally open sourcing these techniques
of ectasy. We have the keys to our cage these days. We have the ability to get rid of neurotic
'Woody Allen', we really do. That's imminently possible, we don't have
to burn a lot of cycles wondering if we can. The keys to our cage are the keys to the kingdom. Its the same thing. So, meditate, all the smart tech, all the
neuro science, all these access point is here. All the information is here. Don't die wondering ... go find it and go
find it with the fastest, cleanest, safest method that works for you, but go find it. Then, let's go back to being people and let's
go back to mending this world. Tom Bilyeu: I have one more question for you,
but first where do these guys find you online ?
Jamie Wheal: Well the simplest right now is 'StealingFirebook.com' and our goal is to
get this information out to everybody that needs it, and really help support an open
source revolution in consciousness and culture. This stuff has always been mediated by middle
men and gatekeepers and that's the most interesting thing. Right now it is not one Spartacus, it is not
Prometheus, we all Prometheus now, and by having this information and sharing it ... that's
my biggest hope and we have run all the scenarios and there is a lot of ways this doesn't work
and I think the one way I can see it is a small band of dedicated rebels, right, doing
the impossible just in time. Tom Bilyeu: That's awesome. You've almost certainly touched on it, but
please put a fine point on what's the impact you want to have on the world? Jamie Wheal: I mean I think it's sharing knowledge
that people can use to wake themselves and each other up, and live the fullest life possible
without apology or compromise. Tom Bilyeu: I like that a lot. Jamie thank you so much for coming on the
show today, man that was incredible. Guys you are going to want to dig into this
man's world. When I first encountered him the first thought
I had was, this is the real life most interesting man in the world, the deeper that you go into
the things that he is thinking about exploring, the way that he is explored it, we are going
to have bring him back. I didn't get to ask 10% of the things I wanted
to ask him. You've got to hear him talk about relationships,
he is unbelievable we will get to that at some point. Guys, that was an incredible message. You are going to want to read the book 'Stealing
Fire' it goes into detail the neuro science, the how's, the why's the where. How you can actually achieve this stuff. The dangers. What awaits on the other side. All of that stuff which warrants further exploration. It is such an intriguing book, I promise with
every page that you turn you are going to be drawn further into asking a question. You don't necessarily have to agree with answer,
but the argument that they are presenting is pretty undeniable. As Jamie said, we have the ability to step
outside of our ego centric universe and really see things fresh and whether that's to be
able to have a breakthrough in your own business or, whether that's to be able to see some
of the political stuff that we are dealing with in a new light, to be able to see a new
way forward. It doesn't matter, those are all the things
that are contained with the universe that can be effective, whether its straight up
meditation or whether you are braver than I and you take the psychedelic route, but
it is all there to be explored. So boys and girls if you haven't already,
this is a weekly show so be sure to subscribe and until next week my friends you are legendary. Speaker 3: Hey everybody, thanks so much for
joining us for another episode of Impact Theory. If this content is adding value to your life,
I want to ask that you go to Itunes and Stitcher and rate review. Not only does that help us build this community,
which at the end of the day is all we care about, but it also helps us get even more
amazing guests on here to share their knowledge with all of us. Thank you guys so much for being a part of
this community and until next time be legendary my friends. How did we do? If you rate this transcript 3 or below, this
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