Jamie Wheal

So we need a dose of awe because it gives us back the miracle of life as a direct experience, what Terence McKenna calls the felt reality of immediate experience.

And as soon as I tasted that, I built my whole life around designing what Jamie Wheal calls a knobs and levers approach-

Mm

... to be able to shape my subjectivity, reset my perception, and be able to encounter those feelings of rapture and awe over and over again.

It's the grace of God, and that's fine.

But if we are made in the image of God, [laughs] right? We should be able to wield, you know, the, wield these same powers.

And so this is where you turn to people like Jamie Wheal and Stephen Kotler and their book, "Stealing Fire." They talk about the advances that have been happening in psychology, in technology, in neurobiology, and in pharmacology, like these four forces of ecstasy, as they call them.

And our increasing understanding of those forces, of those elements, gives us a kind of recipe for resetting perception, right? And so you can start with the basics, right? Like for me, at least, I'm interested in a sustainable practice to reset perception.

I also want to point you towards a great book that I recommend to clients all the time.

It is called Stealing Fire by Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler.

It discusses how top innovators like Google, Navy SEALs, and other scientists use psychedelics as a way to get out of ordinary thinking.

It's hard to imagine that this book is already almost a decade old.

And you seem to think like that, too.

And so I was just thinking about how power I've heard like Jamie Wheal and other people describe how if you look at the biggest buildings in history, that's how you can tell where the power comes from, whether it be the churches or the banks, etc.

And right now it's the tech buildings.

It's it's we're building data centers that are raping the planet for resources.

My guest today is somebody I've been wanting to talk to for a while, whose career I've been following and whose writing I'm a big fan of.

Jamie Wheal is a writer and researcher best known for his work on human performance and various states of consciousness.

He's probably best known as the co-author with Stephen Kotler of Stealing Fire, How Silicon Valley, the Navy Seals, and Maverick Scientists are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work.

Which was a big, big bestseller.

He's also a veteran burner and recently published a somewhat provocative essay on Substack with a familiar title, The Man Will Burn.

Welcome, Jamie Wheal.

Thanks for joining me today.

Ah, great to be here, man.

Yeah.

Jamie Wheal calls it hedonic engineering is his Trojan horse way-

Yeah

... of talking about the, like orgasm as that path.