In this episode, Kyle and Joe interview Chris Bache, author of LSD and the Mind of the Universe. Chris went through 73 high dose LSD sessions and talks about his experience in the show.

3 Key Points:

1. Chris went through 73 high dose LSD sessions, but he says that pushing the edge of high dose and high frequency use brought on increasingly intense difficulties. He does not recommend high dose sessions like he did.
2. The mind of the universe is where someone goes when one completely dissolves.
3. In the show, they discuss psychedelic therapy and the debate on whether or not therapists should have to have psychedelic experience to do the therapy. Chris believes that the level of experience a therapist has had will impact the type of support they will be able to give.

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Navigating Psychedelics

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Show Notes

Psychedelic Interest

• It was at the time Chris had just finished grad school and was looking where to take his research as a university professor
• He was introduced to the work of Stan Grof, and his book Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research (Condor Books)
• He was the professor of Religious Studies, sticking to his traditional life
• He knew there would come a time for him to share his experiences with a larger audience
• Chris says he's always been locked into his body and his physical experience
  • He had no background in psychedelic states of consciousness

Protocol

• He said you're always working with a sitter and same context/setting
• As the dosage increased, he began creating a more intense music playlist
  • Chris thinks music is very important for psychedelic sessions
• Chris does not recommend working with high doses
• "When you're working with opening consciousness that radically, music has a tremendous effect, it has an amplifying effect by 5 or 10x than doing it without music" - Chris
• Chris said he has experienced all the common layers of the psychedelic unconscious that's talked about

Consciousness Levels

• Chris experienced 4 different death/rebirths
• Chris differentiated 5 levels of the universe
  • The first is at the personal mind, where an ego death happens
  • The second takes places at the collective mind, about species
  • The third level is an archetypal mind, the high subtle mind, moving beyond the species existence
  • The fourth level is causal mind, causal oneness, profound states of non-dual reality
  • The last is Diamond Luminosity, its absolute clarity, pureness

Psychedelic Therapy

• Chris says that there is a certain level of support that one needs to truly let go of themselves and let go to the experience
• He says that he thinks the level of experience will impact the type of support a therapist will be able to give

Subtle Level

• The mind of the universe is where someone goes when one completely dissolves
• Pushing the edge of high dose, high frequency use brought on increasingly intense difficulties
• Chris says he was very secret about his psychedelic use, his students didn't know about it
  • But he said after he had gone deep and touched these different levels of consciousness, his students became alive
  • The deeper he went in his own work, the more it touched the students at a deeper level

Potency

• Chris thinks that LSD is a little cleaner than other psychedelics
  • His basic sense is that psilocybin tends to be less evocative, disruptive
  • Ayahuasca is more disruptive in opening up to deeper levels
  • LSD is the most disruptive in opening people up to really deep levels of consciousness
  • With LSD is was less about his personal experience, and more about the collective unconscious experience

Realizations

• With one of his experiences, he had seen everything in his whole life all at once
• He then entered into archetypal experiences, the platonic domain beyond the time-space reality
• The beings he 'met' were as large as universes, responsible for creating time and space
• He went into 'deep time', different magnitudes of time experiences in a broader frame of reference (where we are in the history of time, what our future looks like)
• He reached that diamond luminosity level only 4 times out of all of his LSD sessions
• "If we keep this up, sooner or later, the totality of this consciousness is going to wake up" - Chris
• "We are moving toward a collective wake up, it's not a personal experience, it's a collective experience. An evolution of our species." -Chris
• If Chris has one tip, is to let go of our fear of death, when we die, we go back home
• After so many sessions, and not taking the time to stop to integrate, after years, his body was screaming for community, and he felt this deep existential sadness and felt as if he was just waiting to die
  • It took 10 years to integrate his deep exploration, and to finally feel okay and comfortable again in his body suit and in this life
• The universe is an infinite ocean of possibilities, we will never reach the end
• "The collective psyche is being cosmically stimulated by the trauma that we are entering into" -Chris

Links

Articles 

LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven

Chrisbache.com - future website

 

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About Chris

Christopher M. Bache is professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University where he taught for 33 years. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. An award-winning teacher, Chris' work explores the philosophical implications of non-ordinary states of consciousness, especially psychedelic states. Chris has written three books translated into six languages: Lifecycles - a study of reincarnation in light of contemporary consciousness research; Dark Night, Early Dawn - a pioneering work in psychedelic philosophy and collective consciousness; and The Living Classroom, an exploration of teaching and collective fields of consciousness. His new book is Diamonds from Heaven ~ LSD and the Mind of the Universe (2019).

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