Speaker 1: The thing about the brain is if you surprise it,
Speaker 1: that's when it pays attention. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Yeah, thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is James Kingsland, a science and medical journalist
Speaker 1: with twenty five years experience working for publications such as
Speaker 1: New Scientists, Nature and most recently The Guardian. In his
Speaker 1: own blog, Plastic Brain, he writes about neuroscience and Buddhist psychology,
Speaker 1: and on this episode discusses his book am I Dreaming
Speaker 1: The Science of Altered States from psychedelics to virtual reality
Speaker 1: and beyond. Hi James, Welcome to the show. Hi, I
Speaker 1: am doing very well. I am excited to talk with you.
Speaker 1: We're going to be discussing your latest book, Am I Dreaming,
Speaker 1: the Science of Altered States, from psychedelics to virtual reality
Speaker 1: and beyond. But before we do that, let's start, like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his granddaughter. He says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do so well. My take on
Speaker 1: it is, sometimes, even though you may want to feed
Speaker 1: the good wolf, the big bad wolf is slowly growing
Speaker 1: stronger and more hungry as the years passed, and about
Speaker 1: a decade ago, I was approaching middle age and dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of deep seated anger, mistrust and judgment
Speaker 1: of other people, and it simply wasn't under my control.
Speaker 1: And I reckon, as you get older, these things can
Speaker 1: become entrenched, that deep, the subconsciously conditioned into our minds.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like an addiction. I guess it's as
Speaker 1: if even though you know drink is destroying your life.
Speaker 1: For example, even though you might want to give it up,
Speaker 1: it's got to hold over you. You might be going
Speaker 1: to a meetings perhaps, and yet the bad wolf has
Speaker 1: got you by the throat. So as an example, UM,
Speaker 1: I used to cycle to work in central London. I'd
Speaker 1: often be late and I had to cycle down Abbey
Speaker 1: Road in West London, where the pedestrian crossing was made
Speaker 1: famous by the Beatles on that album cover, just outside
Speaker 1: Abbey Road Studios, and every morning there'd be tourists holding
Speaker 1: up the traffic posing for selfies on the crossing and
Speaker 1: that used to drive me nuts. And a few times
Speaker 1: I just kept going at speed across the crossing as
Speaker 1: they were posing there, which was dangerous and stupid. And
Speaker 1: then I'd arrive at work in a in a fury,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the things that told me
Speaker 1: something was wrong, that being a supposedly nice guy feeding
Speaker 1: my good wolf just wasn't enough. You know. Intellectually I
Speaker 1: may have been feeding the good wolf, but in reality,
Speaker 1: the bad wolf was too strong and hungry. It was
Speaker 1: getting the better of me. So it was shortly after
Speaker 1: that I started to meditate and practice mindfulness to become
Speaker 1: more non judgmentally aware, and to practice compassion, to be
Speaker 1: a little kinder not only to myself but also to
Speaker 1: other people. And I think that's where other altered states
Speaker 1: come into, like hypnosis and psychedelics. They are a way
Speaker 1: to lessen the power of the bad wolf. Ten years later.
Speaker 1: For me, he's still there, but I know him better
Speaker 1: now and don't feed him when he's hungry. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love that interpretation. I think that's a really great way
Speaker 1: to frame up what we're about to talk about, in
Speaker 1: a great way to think about the parable. So what
Speaker 1: like to start by doing is I think it's important
Speaker 1: for all the conversations we're going to have, whether they
Speaker 1: be about hypnosis, lucid dreaming, meditation, psychedelics, virtual reality, I
Speaker 1: think what we need to start with is framing up
Speaker 1: what the best neuroscience tells us about the way the
Speaker 1: brain works today, how we how we actually think the
Speaker 1: brain works, and then we can talk about the ways
Speaker 1: that it goes wrong, the ways that to use our
Speaker 1: our metaphor that we've been using, the ways the good
Speaker 1: wolf sort of establishes a stronghold, and then we can
Speaker 1: talk about how some of these different altered states might
Speaker 1: help with that. So one of the things your book
Speaker 1: does a really good job of describing is that we
Speaker 1: don't really see the world objectively, right, We're not We're
Speaker 1: not seeing the world directly as it is. We're actually
Speaker 1: creating sort of our own virtual reality in our brains
Speaker 1: to some extent. And so I know this is a
Speaker 1: tricky topic, so I you know, I think we need
Speaker 1: to decide how much time to spend on it. But
Speaker 1: let's start with a little bit about what we think
Speaker 1: has happened in our brain to some degree, how we're
Speaker 1: constructing reality. Well, you're absolutely right, we don't see the
Speaker 1: world directly, and in fact, the processing power required to
Speaker 1: experience the world directly through our senses would just be
Speaker 1: absolutely overwhelming. We don't have the brain power to do that.
Speaker 1: So instead the brain appears to have evolved a quick
Speaker 1: and dirty means of seeing the world, which is a
Speaker 1: combination of what we expect to see, what we expect
Speaker 1: to hear and taste and so on, and feedback from
Speaker 1: our senses. But it's just as you say, the majority
Speaker 1: of what we see here, taste, and touch is our
Speaker 1: expectations based on past experience, and throughout our lives, we've
Speaker 1: we've been building up models in our heads, models of
Speaker 1: reality of the external environment, and it's sees which we
Speaker 1: draw upon to see the world, to experience the world.
Speaker 1: And it's only through things like optical illusions where we
Speaker 1: realize what's really going on that our brains are tricking
Speaker 1: us into thinking that we're seeing the world directly, when
Speaker 1: in fact it's using these quick and dirty methods based
Speaker 1: on expectation and past experience to tell us what's happening.
Speaker 1: And that that theory, it's called prediction error coding, and
Speaker 1: the idea if you imagine the brain is a hierarchy.
Speaker 1: You've got predictions being sent downwards from the prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: You've got them going downwards through the hierarchy, and you've
Speaker 1: got sensory prediction errors coming in the opposite direction from
Speaker 1: the sensors, and those are simply the discrepancy between what
Speaker 1: we expect and the data coming from our senses. And
Speaker 1: if those prediction eras are allowed to pass up through
Speaker 1: the hierarchy, that's how we learn. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if the preconcepency the predictions of sound, then that's what
Speaker 1: we base everything on. And it's not just perception. It's
Speaker 1: also our our thoughts, our feelings, our sensations, and even
Speaker 1: how we manage our physiology. It's all based on predictions
Speaker 1: about how things should be a sort of set point
Speaker 1: of how fast the heart has got to be in
Speaker 1: a particular situation, how deep the breathing has got to be,
Speaker 1: all that sort of thing. So, in a way, it's
Speaker 1: a sort of grand unified theory of the brain that
Speaker 1: ties everything together in a single framework based on prediction.
Speaker 1: And so, in essence, the way most of us think
Speaker 1: what's happening is our senses are taking in data. My
Speaker 1: eyes right now are open, I'm seeing something. I'm hearing
Speaker 1: your voice, and that's just flowing that all the community
Speaker 1: action is coming from my sense organs straight into my
Speaker 1: brain and I'm hearing seeing all that and what you're
Speaker 1: saying is there's a two way stream of information here. Actually,
Speaker 1: my brain is also first passing down predictions of what
Speaker 1: I think I should be seeing, hearing, et cetera, based
Speaker 1: on lots of previous experience, and then what actually gets
Speaker 1: passed back to the brain are times where it doesn't
Speaker 1: match what the prediction is. That's exactly right. Yes, we
Speaker 1: don't passively harvest information from our senses. As you say,
Speaker 1: it's a two way flow, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: traffic is coming from the top of the hierarchy, from
Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex passing downwards, and what we experience is
Speaker 1: a sort of compromise between that, between what we expect
Speaker 1: from past experience and the data coming back from our senses,
Speaker 1: which which is a relatively minus team of information, because
Speaker 1: otherwise we'd be overwhelmed. We don't have the time to
Speaker 1: process what's happening. Things are changing so rapidly, and there's
Speaker 1: so much data that we could be taking in, and
Speaker 1: if we did take in that data, it would overwhelm
Speaker 1: our senses, it would overwhelm our processing power, which is
Speaker 1: really remarkable given that we know that the brain's processing
Speaker 1: power is far beyond anything we've ever been able to
Speaker 1: create as humans. So what you're saying makes total sense
Speaker 1: to me. If I am like looking out my window, right, So,
Speaker 1: I'm just looking out my window, and I have a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea of what's outside my window because I've
Speaker 1: looked outside my window countless times and I've got a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea. And so my brain is like, I
Speaker 1: expect to see these things because I've seen him a
Speaker 1: hundred times, and my senses are pretty much going, yep,
Speaker 1: that all matches were good. Right. You and I are
Speaker 1: having a conversation, right, So I'm listening to you very clearly,
Speaker 1: and I really have I mean, I guess I have
Speaker 1: some idea of what you're going to say because I
Speaker 1: read your book, but to a large extent, Noah, I
Speaker 1: have no real idea of what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: So in in this sort of situation, is there is
Speaker 1: there a slightly different mechanism happening, or is the prediction
Speaker 1: somehow more about what English the language is as a whole.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about how like the conversation you and
Speaker 1: I are having works in this framework? Well, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are many different layers of prediction, and that one
Speaker 1: of the most basic layers in language is the separation
Speaker 1: of words and a different sounds. And in fact, if
Speaker 1: you use the machine to record what we're saying and
Speaker 1: played it back as a series of waves on a graph,
Speaker 1: it would be a mess. You wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: distinguish much order within it. But because we've trained our
Speaker 1: brains to hear words, to distinguish between the beginning of
Speaker 1: one word and the end of the previous word, because
Speaker 1: we've got preconceptions about how it's going to work, about
Speaker 1: how words and sentences are fitted together, that's how we
Speaker 1: impose order on what would otherwise be a chaotic blast
Speaker 1: of sound. So all the time we're imposing order in
Speaker 1: a way, we're creating what we hear. For example, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you spoke another language and you were listening to
Speaker 1: English and you've never heard English before, it would be
Speaker 1: a mess of noise. But because you and I speak
Speaker 1: the same language, we've got the similar background, we've learned
Speaker 1: how to impose order on that chaos. And so in
Speaker 1: this case, the prediction mechanism is about English, and so
Speaker 1: what it's doing is that's happening at a lower level,
Speaker 1: and what's flowing through to me is the meaning of
Speaker 1: it or what you're saying. But if you suddenly started
Speaker 1: speaking gibberish, a different part of me would pick up
Speaker 1: on that and go like, wait, hang on, now we've
Speaker 1: got a serious prediction area because I expected English and
Speaker 1: now I'm getting gibberish. That's right. That would really catch
Speaker 1: your attention. The thing about the brain is if you
Speaker 1: surprise it, that's when it pays attention. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: we just chug along happily and everything happens more or
Speaker 1: less automatically. But as soon as something unexpected happens, as
Speaker 1: soon as there's a large prediction eraor there's a like
Speaker 1: what what the hell was that, and our attention is
Speaker 1: alerted and we actually start to make a contribution. We
Speaker 1: start to search our database for alternative explanations for what's
Speaker 1: going on. Right, And so, to a certain extent, what
Speaker 1: we're describing here is is not a new idea. It
Speaker 1: goes back thousands of years. Really. In some of this
Speaker 1: idea I think sits in the heart of what Buddhist
Speaker 1: teaching is, which is that we're not seeing the world.
Speaker 1: We're seeing a conditioned view of the world. That's exactly
Speaker 1: true and isn't it remarkable that the Buddha intuited that.
Speaker 1: I think it's extraordinary that through meditation, perhaps it became
Speaker 1: clearer to him that all his experience, his thoughts, his perceptions,
Speaker 1: his feelings where a creation of his mind. They weren't
Speaker 1: direct experience. They were conditioned by his by his karma,
Speaker 1: by his past actions and his past experience. Yep, there's
Speaker 1: an old saying. And I'm always hesitant to say that
Speaker 1: the buddhas said anything at this point, because you're like, well,
Speaker 1: did he really? And so I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is in the suture as I've also heard a story
Speaker 1: about it. But there's a phrase of if you could
Speaker 1: see a single flower clearly, your whole life would change.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's being pointed to here, is
Speaker 1: that I'm not seeing a flower clearly. I'm seeing the
Speaker 1: model I've built of a flower over and over. And
Speaker 1: if I was actually to see the flower directly, without
Speaker 1: all that conditioning, I would have a totally different experience. Well,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, And in fact, you'd probably be stunned
Speaker 1: by its beauty, by the color, by the three dimensional features.
Speaker 1: It would be more vivid and meaningful than it had
Speaker 1: ever been before that can happen on psychedelics, But I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll get onto that later. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: types of things that go wrong in the brain, and
Speaker 1: now I'm sort of talking about mental illness, and and
Speaker 1: there's all different types of mental illness. On one end,
Speaker 1: we might say you've got psychosis schizophrenia. On the other end,
Speaker 1: you might say you've got like intractable depression where not
Speaker 1: much of anything is happening. So in what ways are
Speaker 1: things going a little bit wrong in those conditions as
Speaker 1: we look at the world through this prediction tape model,
Speaker 1: this inference model. Okay, Well, one of the problems in
Speaker 1: mental illness is the term there's an imbalance of neurotransmitters,
Speaker 1: to the chemicals that passed messages between nerve cells, in particular,
Speaker 1: things like serotonin and dopamine and nora adrenaline. These neurotransmitters,
Speaker 1: they're like the tuning knobs of this hierarchical system. They
Speaker 1: determine the precision, which is the term used for the
Speaker 1: credence which we give to different streams of information. And
Speaker 1: for example, if we have more faith in particular stream
Speaker 1: of prediction errors in a in a particular sensory experience.
Speaker 1: Then that will be turned up, our attention will be
Speaker 1: focused on it, and it will become more salient. What
Speaker 1: can happen is that the balance can go awry. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in schizophrenia, you might have an excess of dopamine,
Speaker 1: so the signaling is maybe too much credence is given
Speaker 1: to sensory information, even sensory information that is quite noisy
Speaker 1: and ambiguous, so you start to get problems with the
Speaker 1: mind seeing things that aren't really there, seeing shapes in
Speaker 1: the white noise, hearing things in the white noise that
Speaker 1: aren't actually there. And it's all part of the challenge
Speaker 1: that any brain has. All of us have the challenge
Speaker 1: of balancing our expectations against the bottom up prediction errors
Speaker 1: in a noisy, uncertain, confusing, and ambiguous world. The brain
Speaker 1: somehow has to decide how much credence to give to
Speaker 1: that raw sensory data, and things start to go wrong
Speaker 1: when too much credence is given to messy data, well,
Speaker 1: maybe not enough credence is given to what is actually
Speaker 1: reliable data, So then you start getting errors being introduced
Speaker 1: which can sort of propagate through the system, and over
Speaker 1: time you can have a build up of faulty models,
Speaker 1: of of maladaptive conditioning, which which goes on to determine
Speaker 1: how we see the world, how we experience the world,
Speaker 1: and it might actually be out of kilter with reality.
Speaker 1: And so to say that slightly differently, in something like
Speaker 1: psychosis or schizophrenia, my brain is passing up a lot
Speaker 1: of prediction errors. It's letting too much signal through to
Speaker 1: the brain, and it's overwhelming it, and new patterns are
Speaker 1: getting created that may not be there. Swing into the
Speaker 1: other extreme, I'm not passing up really a whole lot
Speaker 1: of information, and the models that my brain has sort
Speaker 1: of built just stay entrenched, and they become more and
Speaker 1: more monolithic. And maybe that's not the right word. It
Speaker 1: it conveys the spirit. I guess that's exactly right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got problems like O c D obsessive
Speaker 1: compulsive disorder, you've got depression, you've got anxiety, and they're
Speaker 1: as you say, the problem is the opposite in a way.
Speaker 1: You're stuck in your head. The flow of information from
Speaker 1: the senses is being ignored, and everything you see and
Speaker 1: think is being conditioned by these these entrenched models, which
Speaker 1: are no longer open to change. You've kind of got
Speaker 1: stuck in in this this uh, whether it's obsessive behavior
Speaker 1: or repetitive self doubting thoughts, you've kind of got yourself
Speaker 1: stuck in a loop and you're not giving enough credence
Speaker 1: to what's really happening out there. Yeah. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense for me in terms of addiction. Also,
Speaker 1: I've I've got a history of addiction, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff I've heard about addiction in the last
Speaker 1: few years, the theory that's emerging is really addiction is
Speaker 1: sort of a learning disorder, right in that you know,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, the substance was really good. It was
Speaker 1: it was a real benefit to you, right, But somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line, as the relationship with it changes and
Speaker 1: gets worse and worse and worse, you're not updating that model,
Speaker 1: that's right, your models. Some part of your brain stills like,
Speaker 1: this is really good, you know, even though if you
Speaker 1: look at it with any sort of reason from the
Speaker 1: outside word, you're like, this is a total disaster. But
Speaker 1: some part of the brain is believing, oh, this is good.
Speaker 1: It's not updating that model, that's right. It's become so
Speaker 1: tight and inflexible. And the tragedy, of course, is you're
Speaker 1: no longer interested in other pleasure giving stimuli like you know,
Speaker 1: your partner, your friends, your family, you know, enjoying food.
Speaker 1: Everything is focused on that one addictive substance, and your
Speaker 1: dopamine system is entirely geared to that and nothing else,
Speaker 1: and you can only get satisfactions through that avenue. So
Speaker 1: you know, you've got a problem. Your model of what
Speaker 1: is worth having a what's not worth having has become
Speaker 1: completely high bound and inflexible. It's so fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: I guess this is the consciousness problem, right, the hard
Speaker 1: problem of consciousness, which is, like, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: so amazing to me that on one level we can
Speaker 1: look at this stuff and we can be like, all right,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a dopamine problem. There, there's a problem
Speaker 1: with this neurotransmitter or that neurotransmitter. And yet there's all
Speaker 1: these chemicals and electrical signals flying around in our brain
Speaker 1: that then somehow creates this entirely vivid world of thoughts
Speaker 1: and feelings and words, and it's just it just blows
Speaker 1: my mind when I think about it. Absolutely, Yeah, unless
Speaker 1: so much we don't understand. But the fact that we
Speaker 1: can enter other world's fantasies through through television, the internet,
Speaker 1: through virtual reality demonstrates how good the brain is at
Speaker 1: virtual reality and creating conscious reality out of these dreams
Speaker 1: of information so don't necessarily reflect absolute reality, but the
Speaker 1: brain nonetheless treats them as if they were real, and
Speaker 1: simulating reality is what it does. That's a job, and
Speaker 1: that is a great transition point here for us. You
Speaker 1: brought in the virtual reality, the altered reality, so we
Speaker 1: sort of described how the brain works. We've talked about
Speaker 1: the couple of different ways it can go wrong. It
Speaker 1: either pays too much attention to all the signals coming
Speaker 1: in or it doesn't pay enough attention to them, and
Speaker 1: then you know, the rest of your book really goes
Speaker 1: on to talk about that there are a variety of
Speaker 1: altered states that can sort of help with this. Is
Speaker 1: it worth describing broadly how altered states help these two
Speaker 1: problems before we go into any of the specific altered states.
Speaker 1: Is there a way you can describe it? It's sort
Speaker 1: of broadly to start, Well, you could say that all
Speaker 1: of them help us too, to relax our prior expectations
Speaker 1: to broaden our models out to look at the world
Speaker 1: instead of looking at through this very narrow focus, to
Speaker 1: broaden its scope, to relax those very rigid expectations, so
Speaker 1: that we're becoming more flexible. We're taking in more information
Speaker 1: from outside, and we're considering alternative hypotheses, alternative explanations for
Speaker 1: the way the world is. And I guess all kinds
Speaker 1: of authors date do that kind of reboot, restart back
Speaker 1: to basics, at least temporarily to give you some alternative
Speaker 1: perspectives and hopefully to to learn from them and to
Speaker 1: adapt and change and move on. Excellent, So let's start
Speaker 1: with the role of sleep and dreaming. Okay, Well, the
Speaker 1: fascinating thing about the brain is that it's so good
Speaker 1: at soaking up information and learning. This happens throughout the day.
Speaker 1: You know, as you go through your day, you're picking
Speaker 1: up information, You're picking up new habits and ways of
Speaker 1: doing things, new new expectations, new associations. But there's a
Speaker 1: problem with this because as the day goes on, your models,
Speaker 1: your expectations, which are encoded it by your synapses, by
Speaker 1: the fresh connections that are constantly being established in your
Speaker 1: nervous system, that gets more and more complicated, and you
Speaker 1: could say it gets more accurate as the day goes on,
Speaker 1: but at the same time it's coming very high bound.
Speaker 1: It's becoming too specific and inefficient. And what seems to
Speaker 1: happen in sleep and dreaming is that there's a kind
Speaker 1: of a clean out. What happens, well, what is thought
Speaker 1: to happen is that all your synapses are downgraded. Their
Speaker 1: strength is downgraded to a certain amount, to a set amount,
Speaker 1: so that the weak synapses disappear completely and the drong
Speaker 1: synapses get a little less strong. So you're reintroducing some
Speaker 1: flexibility into the system. You know, it's a kind of
Speaker 1: a sort of a shakedown to refresh it so that
Speaker 1: you start the next day with with not with a
Speaker 1: blank sheet, but with a little more plasticity, a little
Speaker 1: more flexibility to start learning new things. And this is
Speaker 1: the importance of sleep and dreaming. They're a way to
Speaker 1: re establish flexibility into your your thinking, in your behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me that what the brain is doing
Speaker 1: in that sort of nately reboot, you know, the preventative
Speaker 1: maintenance it's doing on itself. Well, that's right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean for a long time, sleep and dreaming. There've been
Speaker 1: a mystery, you know, why do we need to sleep?
Speaker 1: Why do we need to dream? If we try to
Speaker 1: do without sleep, and if we try to do without dreams,
Speaker 1: you can prevent someone from dreaming in a sleep lab
Speaker 1: by waking them up whenever their brainwaves start to show
Speaker 1: signs of R E. M. Sleep. And when you do
Speaker 1: those things, people start to do a little crazy. They're
Speaker 1: more cranky the next day, they're less flexible in their behavior,
Speaker 1: they're less good at moving on from maladaptive behavior. For example,
Speaker 1: if someone is conditioned to fear a particular stimulus, for example,
Speaker 1: a particular picture, could a scientist could pair that picture
Speaker 1: with a mild electric shock in the lab, for example,
Speaker 1: And if you're allowed to sleep and dream, you can
Speaker 1: unlearned that association. If you're deprived of sleep, that association lasts,
Speaker 1: and so that even if the stimulus is no longer
Speaker 1: paired to the electric shock, that's what you expect and
Speaker 1: you continue to be fearful. This kind of phobia builds
Speaker 1: up as a result of lack of sleep because you're
Speaker 1: not rebooting properly, you're not real learning during the night,
Speaker 1: which is why it's important. I think to think of
Speaker 1: sleep not just for physical health. It's really important and
Speaker 1: mental and emotional health to absolutely. Yeah, you've got the
Speaker 1: physio logical side. If you're deprived of sleep, you become
Speaker 1: more likely to develop cancer and heart disease. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's so important for our mental health
Speaker 1: to have that refresh, to downgrade all your synapses, to
Speaker 1: reintroduce little flexibility into the whole system, into your way
Speaker 1: of thinking. Otherwise, our behavior and our thoughts they've become
Speaker 1: very very high bound and we get stuck. So it's
Speaker 1: so important to get enough sleep. Another of the altered
Speaker 1: states in your book that you talk about is hypnosis,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you could share your experience
Speaker 1: of hypnosis and the fear of flying that you had,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a really interesting story. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: never been a very comfortable flyer. I've always found it
Speaker 1: it's always seemed really deeply wrong to me to be
Speaker 1: stuck up there, you know, thousands of feet in the air.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem right, it's not natural. But generally
Speaker 1: I've managed to cope with this nervousness and a couple
Speaker 1: of drinks at the airport before takeoff help a great deal.
Speaker 1: But a few years back I had some unpleasant experiences,
Speaker 1: or at least they were unpleasant for me. For example,
Speaker 1: the plane in which I was flying was coming into
Speaker 1: land at Lema Airport in Peru. We were very close
Speaker 1: to landing, but then it had to be aborted at
Speaker 1: the last moment, and it it transpired that the pilot
Speaker 1: has seen another plane on the runway, and so at
Speaker 1: the last moment he pulled out. And so you know,
Speaker 1: the engine started roaring, and we were climbing really steeply
Speaker 1: and then banking to come around and uh and back again.
Speaker 1: And I was seriously upset by this. I thought we
Speaker 1: were finished, something terrible was going to happen, and of
Speaker 1: course most of the time it doesn't happen. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I was absolutely terrified. To put it politely, that was
Speaker 1: a bit of sensory information that was violating your prediction
Speaker 1: about it. Oh. Yes, So that was a huge prediction error,
Speaker 1: and I was really shaken up by that. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can imagine the the adrenine and circulating my system,
Speaker 1: the heart pounding, and the breathing getting really fast, so
Speaker 1: you know, that was bad. But and then just a
Speaker 1: few weeks later, I was on another flight and we
Speaker 1: were about to take off. It was a budget flight,
Speaker 1: and one of the crew came over and she said
Speaker 1: to me, would you mind moving to the seat by
Speaker 1: the emergency exit, and okay, no problem, and then she
Speaker 1: leaned in and she started to explain to me how
Speaker 1: to operate the exit, and she said, if we ditch
Speaker 1: in the sea on the way back, you're going to
Speaker 1: have to open the door and follow these instructions. And
Speaker 1: that really freaked me out. I had the responsibility of
Speaker 1: opening the door if we ditched in the sea. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know how terrifying is that. So not only the
Speaker 1: prospect of ditching in the sea, but also being responsible
Speaker 1: for for all these people's lives. So that really freaked
Speaker 1: me out. It was at that point I realized I
Speaker 1: had a problem. You know, I was starting to think
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into an airplane ever again.
Speaker 1: So it seems as if I was going to be grounded.
Speaker 1: So I decided to go for hypnosis. I went to
Speaker 1: see a hypnotherapist, and she didn't do any of the
Speaker 1: things I was expecting. You know, in popular fiction, they
Speaker 1: swing up fob watch before your eyes and they say
Speaker 1: you're feeling very sleepy, very sleepy. There was nothing like that.
Speaker 1: She taught me through my experiences. She going all the
Speaker 1: way back to childhood. My my mother had a fear
Speaker 1: of flying, so that's probably where it all started. And
Speaker 1: she said, Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're
Speaker 1: going to hear your fear with the excitement of going
Speaker 1: on holiday. We're going to fool your brain into thinking,
Speaker 1: if your heart is going fast, it's excitement at the
Speaker 1: prospect of going on holiday. And we're going to take
Speaker 1: you to your safe place, wherever it might be on
Speaker 1: the beach, where you're relaxing, having a fantastic time. And
Speaker 1: so when you're strapping yourselves in before takeoff, you're going
Speaker 1: to interpret that excitement. And then she hypnotized me, She
Speaker 1: relaxed me. She paired this new expectation with the physiological stimulus,
Speaker 1: the fear, the fast hast heart rate, the fast breathing.
Speaker 1: She reconfigured my thinking, my expectations towards good things rare
Speaker 1: rather than bad things, towards happy outcomes rather than a
Speaker 1: total disaster. And it seems to have wolved. You know,
Speaker 1: I was quite I was skeptical, but I haven't had
Speaker 1: any qualms about flying ever since. Yeah, that's fascinating. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me that she didn't try and do anything
Speaker 1: relating to lessening your fear about planes. There was no
Speaker 1: logical discussion of of how safe planes are, which you
Speaker 1: were capable of doing on your own. You you put
Speaker 1: some you put some statistic in the book. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, but we should be far more
Speaker 1: afraid of a car than we should ever be of
Speaker 1: a plane. Logical, you know, it's not even close. Um.
Speaker 1: But what I think is interesting is she reinterpreted your signals,
Speaker 1: which is going back to the model we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So your your brain is getting these signals coming up
Speaker 1: that are of a certain type and it's it's interpreting those.
Speaker 1: We had a guest on recently who said something, um,
Speaker 1: which is what you're saying here. He said it slightly differently.
Speaker 1: He said, your mind will try and match your body.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was really interesting and I put
Speaker 1: it into my own life. What I realized is, I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of times what I'm tired, but
Speaker 1: with a history of depression, what I'll say is I'm
Speaker 1: feeling depressed and the reality is I'm just feeling tired.
Speaker 1: And those are totally different connotations, those mean very different things.
Speaker 1: And and so in your case, you were taking these
Speaker 1: feelings and you were then translating them into excitement. So
Speaker 1: you were changing the model your brain had of what
Speaker 1: those signals meant. That's right, You're changing your top down
Speaker 1: expectation about what's happening. And this is what not just hypnotists,
Speaker 1: but also a really good doctor will make you feel
Speaker 1: really comfortable. They'll they'll be inspiring. And whether it's hypnotism
Speaker 1: or going to see the doctor through because you trust
Speaker 1: that person, you trust their knowledge, their experience, they will
Speaker 1: be able to replace your top down expectation about whether
Speaker 1: it's a drug or flying, they'll be able to tweak
Speaker 1: that in some way. And in medicine it's the place
Speaker 1: ever effect. It's the top down interpretation that this drug
Speaker 1: is going to help you, it's going to make you happier,
Speaker 1: or it's going to cure your stomach, you know, your
Speaker 1: bad stomach, whatever it might be. And simply the expectation
Speaker 1: will actually will not only change your thinking, it can
Speaker 1: even change your physiology. It can can change how your
Speaker 1: body reacts at this drug simply because some doctor has
Speaker 1: inspired you with confidence that it's going to work for you.
Speaker 1: It's a very powerful demonstration of how important expectation is
Speaker 1: to to everything we think and feel and physiologically how
Speaker 1: our bodies behave. And in the past, priests and shamans
Speaker 1: were able to do this to hypnotize us into into
Speaker 1: thinking a certain way, into having certain beliefs. It's an
Speaker 1: age old way of controlling people's behavior through their expectations
Speaker 1: via highly highly charismatic think authoritative figures. Yeah, the placebo
Speaker 1: effect is so fascinating, and we had a previous guest
Speaker 1: on the show who talked a lot about it. But
Speaker 1: the thing about the placebo effect that most blows my
Speaker 1: mind is that it actually changes the brain's physiology. So
Speaker 1: it's like, it's not that you believe that you feel better,
Speaker 1: like in the case of pain, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: take a medicine for pain and the placebo effect is
Speaker 1: what's happening. It's not just that you think that you're
Speaker 1: not feeling pain. Your physiology around your pain receptors changes.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it's remarkable. You know, we're back
Speaker 1: to Buddhism were similarly Buddhism extols the power of the
Speaker 1: mind to to change everything. If you can change the
Speaker 1: way you look at the world, you change the whole world.
Speaker 1: Your your expectations actually change your experience as the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I want to dive a little deeper into
Speaker 1: this this area because it's a it's a particular area
Speaker 1: of interest of mine, and it's a particular core tenant
Speaker 1: of Buddhism. It's really about this sense of us being
Speaker 1: this separate, contained self that we have right that we
Speaker 1: spend so much time worrying about. And you say, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read something you wrote because I think it's
Speaker 1: really fascinating you say on this, neuroscientists and buddhist or agreed.
Speaker 1: The moment by moment experience of selfhood arises when we
Speaker 1: are striving to change our world in some way. Say
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that. To start off from Buddhism.
Speaker 1: If you go on a meditation retreat and you're given instructions,
Speaker 1: often what they'll say is, when you're sitting there and
Speaker 1: you expect to be told to do something. I know
Speaker 1: that's usually in life, the instructor is going to tell
Speaker 1: you to do something, but the meditation instructor, whether it's
Speaker 1: a monk or a mindfulness teacher, will say, we're not
Speaker 1: going to do anything. We don't want you to expect anything.
Speaker 1: You don't need to change anything. If you have unpleased
Speaker 1: and sensation, don't worry about it, just observe it, watch it,
Speaker 1: and let it go. So the key really is to
Speaker 1: not try to do or change anything. Don't push anything away,
Speaker 1: don't pull anything towards you, just let everything be. From
Speaker 1: a neurophysiological point of view, according to the Predictionary theory,
Speaker 1: the way we achieve things, the way we do things,
Speaker 1: whether it's thoughts or or changing our physiology or moving
Speaker 1: our limbs, is by predicting how it's going to be
Speaker 1: by expecting the changes to happen. But this only works
Speaker 1: if you suspend your attention to current sensations. If you
Speaker 1: focus on sensations, For example, if you feel your arm
Speaker 1: hanging by your side, that's where it's going to stay.
Speaker 1: There's something about action that involves a suspension of attention
Speaker 1: so that you can focus instead on the future, on
Speaker 1: where your arm is going to be in the future
Speaker 1: and where your mind, your brain wants it to be.
Speaker 1: And that it's called active inference. And what seems to
Speaker 1: happen in meditation and other kinds of highly absorbed activity
Speaker 1: is that our attention becomes so strong that we start
Speaker 1: to dissolve that that impetus towards action. So we become
Speaker 1: more relaxed physiologically, we calm down. But through this suspension
Speaker 1: of the need to do something, to act upon the world,
Speaker 1: we find a whole way of looking at the world changes.
Speaker 1: And as as I think you started by saying, even
Speaker 1: our sense of selfhood, the way we define ourselves in
Speaker 1: relation to the world, starts to break down, but we
Speaker 1: become less solid is it turns out that even our
Speaker 1: sense of selfhood, out sense of being a person with
Speaker 1: an autobiograph, fee with a history, you know, with a
Speaker 1: set of values, and embodied selfhood, a sense of being
Speaker 1: here in this physical lump of flesh right here is
Speaker 1: is dependent on action, on moving and changing things. That's
Speaker 1: how the self arises through action and and the suspension
Speaker 1: of attention I was talking about. And the odd thing
Speaker 1: that happens in meditation, really deep meditation. If you start
Speaker 1: to lose your your feeling of being separate from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, your your sense of self would
Speaker 1: start to break down. Right. You have a part in
Speaker 1: the book that I thought was particularly brilliant, and it
Speaker 1: was when we say that the Carton said, I think,
Speaker 1: therefore I am. He had only part of the picture,
Speaker 1: and you go on to say, neuroscience can now fill
Speaker 1: in some of the blanks. And I'm just going to
Speaker 1: read the next four or five lines because I think
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. This experience is emotionally salient. Therefore I am.
Speaker 1: My five senses locate me here. Therefore, where I am,
Speaker 1: I make things happen in the inner world of my body.
Speaker 1: Therefore I am, and make things happen in the outside world.
Speaker 1: Therefore I am. I remember the story of my life.
Speaker 1: Therefore I am. I think therefore I am. And I
Speaker 1: find that so fascinating because what you're sort of describing,
Speaker 1: in neuroscientists terms is an ancient Buddhist teaching that what
Speaker 1: we are is a collection of these different things that
Speaker 1: come together to create this sense of self. And you've
Speaker 1: really broke them down in a in a really fascinating way. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: not quite so elegant as I I think therefore I am,
Speaker 1: but not not quite so memorable. But I think there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of truth there, all these different ways
Speaker 1: we act upon the world. It's through acting upon the
Speaker 1: world that we build up all these different facets of
Speaker 1: our of our selfhood, whether it's bodily selfhood, autobiographical selfhood,
Speaker 1: or you know, when we act as feeling of being
Speaker 1: an agent, of having agency in the world. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's all dependent on doing stuff. And when we stop
Speaker 1: doing that starts to fall away and and that's a
Speaker 1: kind of this feeling of peace and relaxation that that
Speaker 1: that floods in. Yeah. I think that's so interesting because
Speaker 1: I think that one of the biggest challenges in meditation
Speaker 1: is to actually taking that advice of do nothing. It's
Speaker 1: one of the hardest parts of meditation is to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do nothing. We're usually in meditation trying to
Speaker 1: make something happen. And my experience has been when I
Speaker 1: finally arrive truly at do nothing, the world has changed
Speaker 1: for me in profound and significant ways when I get
Speaker 1: into that true do nothing neighborhood. But boy, it's hard
Speaker 1: to find your way there. That's right, because you know,
Speaker 1: in life, everything we do is is get getting staff
Speaker 1: to doing things, to changing things, and to to get
Speaker 1: out of that habit mentally is it's a challenge. But
Speaker 1: as you say, you know, when it happens, when you
Speaker 1: let go, you know, it's like wow, you can have
Speaker 1: these tremendous feelings of relation and happiness, calm and contentment.
Speaker 1: And of course as a beginner, sometimes you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't last very long because suddenly suddenly it's you know, wow,
Speaker 1: what's this, what's going on? Look? Look what I've done?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm I'm becoming I'm turning
Speaker 1: into the budder and and and then it all collapses
Speaker 1: and you're back to your to your old self and
Speaker 1: you're suffering. You're suffering, you're irritated your board. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it goes, that's the way it goes. Yeah. Well, James,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I mean, the list of notes
Speaker 1: I have that we could talk about is far longer
Speaker 1: than this conversation. Possibly gives this time for you and
Speaker 1: I are going to go into the post show conversation
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: role of what psychedelics do, how they work in this,
Speaker 1: as well as the role of absorption as a path
Speaker 1: in general, and so you and I will do that
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation. Listeners. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: get access to the post show conversation as well as
Speaker 1: uh special mini episode I do each week called the
Speaker 1: Teaching a Song and a poem, as well as ad
Speaker 1: free episodes, you can go to One you Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash joint and you can learn all about it there. James,
Speaker 1: thank you again so much for coming on. It's been
Speaker 1: a great conversation. You're welcome. You're welcome. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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