Passion Struck with John R. Miles - David Yaden on Self-Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Behavior Change EP 152

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. I think we can call these experiences self-transcendent experiences. This is like an umbrella term. And self-transcendent experiences, there's a lot of different ones, but they seem similar in that they're all intensely altered states of consciousness, involving some degree of self-diminishment and feelings of connectedness. And these range in intensity. Welcome to PassionStruct.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Hi, I'm your host, John Armyles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts

Starting point is 00:00:58 to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 152 of PassionStruck, one of the top health and fitness podcasts in the world. And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. In case you missed my podcast from last week, they featured Kathy Heller, the phenomenal podcast host of the Kathy Heller Show, where we discussed the importance

Starting point is 00:01:36 of knowing yourself and living with intention. I also had on former Army Ranger Jesse Gould, and we discuss the Perua Hearts Foundation that he leads and its focus on helping veterans and first responders who are suffering from post-traumatic stress with psychedelics. If you love these episodes or today's, we would so love it if you would forward these to friends or family members.

Starting point is 00:02:01 It makes such a huge difference to getting the word out there as do your ratings. And we are so thankful for your continued support. Those ratings go such a long way in helping the popularity. Now, let's talk about today's guest, Dr. David B. Yaden earned his doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His work in the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research focuses on psychology,

Starting point is 00:02:31 neuroscience, and psychopharmacology of so-called spiritual self-transcendence and other positively transformative experiences. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how these altered states of consciousness can result in long-term changes to well-being, mental health, and pro-social behavior, while also studying their risks. He has a forthcoming book called The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences, 21st century research and perspectives with Oxford University Press. His scientific and scholarly work has been covered by outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and NPR.

Starting point is 00:03:14 In our interview, we discuss what are self-transcendent experiences and how does awe differ from being in a flow state, a peak experience or a mythical experience? Dr. Yaden explains how we transform during a self-transcendence experience and why they can be difficult to define. And we do this through the lens of the overview effect, something that astronauts experience in space as they're looking down on our. We discuss how his mentors Andrew Newberg, Martin Seligman, and Roland Griffiths shaped his path, his upcoming book with Andrew, as well as his interest in psychedelics and the Psychedelic Research Center at Johns Hopkins. I asked Dr. Yaden about his interactions with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and why he considers the Dalai Lama's

Starting point is 00:04:06 teachings to be revolutionary. We end by discussing the phenomenon of being called, and why this transcendence sense of purpose is surprisingly ordinary. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited to welcome Dr. David Yaden to the PassionStruck podcast. Welcome, David. Glad to be here. I have been wanting to interview you for quite a while now, and recently I've learned a lot more about you because I'm holding up the unpublished manuscript for Bittersweet where you're heavily mentioned and for those who aren't aware of Susan's canes new work where David's research plays a significant role. And then the other book I just wanted to throw up because it's a friend of yours is Transcend, where you're also mentioned pretty highly. And I would encourage any of the listeners to check out either one of those because they're both great pieces of work. So learning about you through those means, I really just want to understand how did you get your start and studying this consciousness and self-transcendent states?

Starting point is 00:05:30 Yeah well first of all you're lucky to have Susan Kane's new book. I haven't I haven't seen the full book yet. Of course I'm a big fan of Scott Berry Kaufman's book. So how did I get into this topic? So I study brief experiences that have long lasting, persisting positive effects. I'm particularly interested in experiences that we could call an altered state of consciousness. So these are experiences that happen almost entirely behind the eyes, so to speak.

Starting point is 00:06:03 So in one's mind. And interestingly, sometimes these fairly brief experiences can have effects that last for weeks, months, years, even decades. My interest in this topic was sparked by an experience of my own. There's the phrase research as me search, and that's that's very often the case in one way or another. For me, this was a spontaneous experience. It didn't have any obvious trigger, but I was in my undergrad dorm room and a feeling of heat came into my chest. So I felt this feeling of state. I felt like I could see boundaryless horizons stretching out all around me and this feeling of love just reached the boiling point. So after what felt like a week but was probably only a few minutes, I opened my eyes,

Starting point is 00:07:20 my body was laughing and crying at the same time. Everything looked and felt new. I felt refreshed. And most of all, I was thinking, what the fuck just happened to me? And that question has guided my research for over a decade now. And so what I'm interested in is, what are these experiences?

Starting point is 00:07:45 You know, I quickly became apparent to me that I was not alone in having had one of these kinds of experiences. William James, a century ago, talked about these experiences, psychologists and neuroscientists have studied them over the decades. This just became a point of deep and enduring fascination for me and do these effects persist and how common are these effects, how common are these experiences. There's so many questions to consider and that's my area of research. So I have been fortunate enough to have four astronauts who have appeared on the podcast, one coming up is Nicole Stott. One of my longest term friends,

Starting point is 00:08:26 known for 30 plus years, Chris Cassidy was the chief astronaut up until recently when he retired. Each one I've talked to, regardless of whether it's been Wendy Lawrence, who was back in the space shuttle program or Caleb Aaron, who's on the ISS as we speak, they all have told me of this overview effect when they're up there. And Chris said it's one thing looking down,

Starting point is 00:08:52 but the first time he did a space walk and he entered the void of space, he said, your mind just cannot contemplate where it is. His experience, and it was the same for all of them, is that they have this universal feeling of Oneness. Someone is wondering what a transcendent experience is. Is that a good example of one? I think it's a great example. It's a surprising example, I think. At least it was for me. You know, I mentioned William James, the psychologist and philosopher who gathered together a whole

Starting point is 00:09:25 lot of accounts of experiences like mine, century ago. You've spoken to Dave Vago and others who study meditation, so you read about these kinds of experiences in meditative contexts and monastic contexts. But I've always been interested in gathering as many of these accounts together as I can. And in the process of doing that, I stumbled upon first one astronaut experience and then dozens, and then many dozens of astronauts reporting this phenomenon called the overview effect.

Starting point is 00:09:59 So this intense feeling of awe and wonder from viewing Earth, from orbit. And so I've written a piece on this, trying to ground this extraordinary experience in what we know about psychological processes that might be responsible for this kind of wondrous moment. I think it might benefit the listeners, if they're not familiar with this. There are different

Starting point is 00:10:27 types of self-transcendent experience ranging from awe to what Maslow described as a peak experience to mythical experiences, which I think James was really involved in. What are some of the different experiences and how do they differ and how you as a person might experience them. Yeah, so the way that I think about this is I think we can call these experiences self-transcendent experiences. There's a lot of different ones, but they seem similar in that they're all intensely altered states of consciousness, involving some degree of self-diminishment and feelings of connectedness. And these range in intensity. So you have the kinds of more subtle daily experiences like flow,

Starting point is 00:11:14 when you're really absorbed in a challenging task and time, you know, you look up at the clock and hours have gone by and you didn't even realize it or mindfulness. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have these more transformative and tense once in a lifetime type experiences. We could call those peak or mystical experiences. And then somewhere in the middle, we have things like awe, you know, auras and emotion where we perceive vastness and our jaw drops and we get chills. And I think the overview effect is probably somewhere in this middle ground for a lot of the astronauts who are describing them. This definition of STEs, let's just use that acronym. You did it with what I would think would be the superstars of expertise in this area. I couldn't believe it. You had hood, newberg, vago, hate, and yourself.

Starting point is 00:12:09 How did you compile that group of people and how profound was that paper to someone who might not be in the psychology field to laying out a new framework for what SDEs are? Yeah, that paper took many years to write. You know, writing scientific academic papers, there's a learning curve involved, and it took me a long time to put that together, and I'm extraordinarily grateful for the mentorship of those scientists and thinkers that you just named. The idea there was to try to look at the most intense sort of strange experiences that we're seeing at that time as fringe topics of scientific research, like a peak or mystical type experience,

Starting point is 00:13:03 like a peak or mystical type experience, and say actually, these kinds of experiences are part of this wider spectrum, or continue of experiences that we know something about. And so we can look at all of these kinds of experiences and they're all amenable to scientific research. And so it was this attempt to widen this scope of what we were focusing our scientific research on. Now with psychedelic research,

Starting point is 00:13:33 research and things like peak and this type of experience has seemed pretty mainstream. And it's hard to remember that just a few years ago, when we're writing that paper, they seemed quite fringe. I'll also say in terms of mentorship, the process of writing that paper and the dozens or maybe hundreds of drafts that I went through is important to reflect on, I think,

Starting point is 00:14:05 because there is this training process I went through is important to reflect on, I think, because there is this training process that's involved with becoming a scientist. I can smile and laugh about it now, but there are a number of nights and weekends that I spent sitting in front of my computer working on that. I remember one interesting thing about John Height was a big part of that paper and he made me stop working on it until I could think of a framing metaphor and so I ended up writing up a list of dozens of different

Starting point is 00:14:38 metaphors that he could pick from and say okay this is a good metaphor. Now keep this in the back of your mind as you're writing. So it's interesting that you bring up that paper, all these moments of mentorship are coming to mind for me. You have had some incredible mentors, including your mentor, when you were getting your doctor at Pennsylvania. How did those mentors influence where you are today and the study that you're doing? Uh, tremendously. I owe them a deep debt of gratitude. So, after my experience, after I became really obsessed, I would say, in the study of these experiences. There were certain key books and scientific

Starting point is 00:15:29 articles that I was really drawn to. Andrew Newberg, Marty Seligman and Roland Griffiths were the key scientists that I really hope to work with in the world. They all just happened to be in the world, they all just happened to be in the mid-Atlantic region, which was unbelievably lucky. And they were all patient and tolerant enough to deal with a young person who had a very, very deep interest in a topic and to feel that person's questions and help them, and that person's me, of course. So first, starting with Andy Newberg, he's a neuroscientist. He's done a lot of neuroimaging research on monks and nuns and meditators,

Starting point is 00:16:15 and really trying to look at what's happening in the brain during spiritual or self-transcendent type experiences. And I worked with Andy Newberg in my pre-doctoral time. So this was before I got into a program. And I'm really grateful that he was able to tolerate the wide-ranging questions I was bringing up. He taught me to bring a very balanced approach to this topic

Starting point is 00:16:48 and to bracket or to set aside these deep metaphysical or theological questions. You don't need to decide on whether or not God exists. Someone says they've had a spiritual experience, whether with the ultimate truth value of that may or may not be, you can simply focus on what people say, what people report, and what's happening in their brain as they're reporting those things. So he really impressed upon me that point of maintaining a kind of methodological agnosticism

Starting point is 00:17:22 when engaging in scientific research of this kind and a humility to say, look, we don't know a lot. There's a lot of things we don't know, and a good scientist is able to say that. That's not a sign of weakness. That's a sign of strength in terms of scientific thinking. And so, yeah, deeply grateful for my work with Andy Newberg, and we have a book coming out, the varieties of spiritual experience, 21st century research and perspectives. That will come out in just a couple of months, so maybe we can talk about that later. But I'll move to Marty Seligman. So he's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania worked in his lab and studied under him

Starting point is 00:18:08 as during my doctoral training as his PhD student. And Marty really taught me to think big and to think boldly and to set aside my nervousness of studying this topic. set aside my nervousness of studying this topic. And so I think my time with him convinced me that, okay, if I really want to make a contribution in a scientific understanding of this topic, I have to be all in. And I have to work my hardest. Demanding mentor, got lots of papers and data analysis sent back to me and said, look, you can do better. He convinced me that it's important to be on a given topic and to do what you can to the largest extent that you can.

Starting point is 00:19:01 If you're going to do it, do it right. And then role in Griffiths was my postdoctoral mentor at Johns Hopkins. Role and Griffiths has been studying psychedelics and psilocybin for two decades now. These almost single-handedly contributed to this, what they call the psychedelic renaissance of research, this re-emerging of this very fascinating field of scientific research. Roland is a remarkable person. People say there's the forest and the trees, there's the details,

Starting point is 00:19:40 and there's the big picture. Roland's able to zoom in and out within an agility that is just world-class. He can think about the future of a field going through decades and thinking in terms of large, regulatory processes, but then also find a comma that's out of place and go through a paper with you sentence by sentence. Remarkable mind and a deep kindness as well. So there's been mentorship that I don't feel like I fully deserve because it's been so extraordinary. It's been world-class and I just can't say how grateful I am for those experiences. We'll be right back to my interview with Dr. David Yaden. Finding a doctor, that has to be one of the most inconvenient things that we have to do.

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Starting point is 00:21:27 I remember one of my favorite mentors seemed very much like yours because I thought I would turn in great work and he would always tell me you can write better you can research better what you're doing is great but it could be exceptional for me it was a huge impact in my life because it really taught me that you had to go that extra level if you want to move from being average to being extraordinary and what you do. So it sounds like you had the pick of the letter for what you're doing. I did want to ask you. I'm very interested in Andy Newberg's work I had on the podcast a few months ago, a personal friend of his, Jay Lombard, who's a neurologist. Jay wrote a book in the mind of God, and it was based in many ways on the way that having FMRI images impacted his ability to treat patients. It was almost like seeing into the soul of a person. You could just witness things that before you just couldn't comprehend, how much do you use those types of imaging in the work that you're doing now at Johns Hopkins?

Starting point is 00:22:43 Me, personally, not very much. There was a period in my training where I thought that I would do more neuroimaging. It ends up not answering the kinds of questions I'm most interested in. And so I think neuroimaging is an amazing technological breakthrough and I have a huge amount of respect for my colleagues who are neuroscientists.

Starting point is 00:23:09 But I find that sometimes psychological, behavioral kinds of research get underplayed because they're generally more relevant to our day-to-day lives. And so if you're interested in whether or not meditation, say, increases, well-being and decreases stress, there's not a whole lot that a neuro-image of someone's mind, someone's brain while meditating will show you that actually just keeping track of that person and asking them how it's affecting them in a systematic way using self-report and behavioral measures, that will usually get you

Starting point is 00:23:55 further in terms of your understanding. And so of course neuroimaging is absolutely fascinating. Of course, it's deeply important scientifically. But I have to say, I'm no expert on that particular topic, and I find this psychological and behavioral research actually more compelling. I think that is a good jumping off point to my next question, which is, how does self-transcendence through psychedelics differ from the experience through meditation phenomenologically? It's an interesting question. It's an important one. It's how I know Roland Griffith's got involved with studying psychedelics was through his interest in meditation and meditation research. I think there are undeniable similarities phenomenologically,

Starting point is 00:24:50 or in terms of how people say that they feel. When you look at a meditation retreat, I mean, a serious foray into meditation. I'm not talking about the kind of 10 to 20 minutes of mindfulness that I do on a daily basis just to manage stress. I'm talking about days of 10 hours a could call a self-transcendent experience. And there are seem to be certain qualities of that experience that we've been talking about, this feeling of connectedness,

Starting point is 00:25:36 feeling as if you're not so focused on yourself, feelings of increased positive mood and compassion and concern for other people. But also sometimes negative experience, feeling overwhelmed, feeling as if things seem strange. So that's not all positive. And that's important to recognize, but there do seem to be a suite of changes phenomenologically that occur in the meditation context that we also see reliably in our laboratory context

Starting point is 00:26:18 where we administer psychedelics like psilocybin to study participants. So I think this is an open question, but there are real similarities to explore there. So then it would lead me to then, how do you map the self-transcendent mind? What does a flourishing mind, brain body look like, and how does that differ from a normal psychological

Starting point is 00:26:44 or social level? That's a great question. That's a tough question. It's I'm wondering how peak experiences only happen very rarely in our life. You might even say mystical the same way, but all you could experience a lot more. I'm very interested in the zone of optimal anxiety or the flow state where I think you can achieve peak performance. How does one get more into the STE realm and then how is that different from being in your normal mode? Yeah, so one thing that I'll say is that a lot of psychologists

Starting point is 00:27:33 give out advice that I think is unwarranted on the basis of the evidence that they have. So I wanna make this point that a lot of my work is very descriptive. I'm just interested in understanding these experiences, understanding what's going on. I mean, my experience was extraordinarily beneficial for me in all kinds of ways in my actual life, and I think a lot of the evidence points in that direction. But I want to make sure not to be too glib or even just generally encourage based on a lot of the evidence saying these self-transcent experiences can solve all your problems. And in fact, there's probably a lot of risks, increased risks with an attempt to try to have a quick fix and go out and have one of these very psychologically intense experiences.

Starting point is 00:28:27 So I think that's an important point. I'm largely interested in explaining and understanding the kinds of experiences that people are already reporting. So I want to make that point. And yet, of course, we want to know how this can benefit our lives. We've seen things like mindfulness meditation seems to increase well-being and decrease anxiety and stress a little bit. It seems like when people have experiences of all that they end up having a boost in their mood and then their pro-social behavior. Maybe there are some takeaways here, but it might be more worthwhile for people to focus on the experiences that they're already having. And I think that we do have these fairly regularly, and we do know how to put ourselves into those states through the course of our daily life.

Starting point is 00:29:30 In terms of what's going on in the brain and the body and the mind, so to speak, spring, I'll use a spring metaphor. I think that there's this tendency to have a lot of focus on ourselves. And it's almost like a bud where all the petals are focused inward. And during these experiences, I think the increase in positive mood and the the attentional changes result in something like a blooming flower where the petals are now pointing outward.

Starting point is 00:30:09 And I think when someone has one of these experiences, they go from being very, very focused on themselves, their own feelings, their own enjoyment, their own status, et cetera, these kinds of self-focused ruminations that drive us all crazy. And during these moments, you get a relief from that. And furthermore, you feel this sense of connection to other people and things around you. And I think just like a blooming flower, it's a beautiful mental state to witness in yourself, as well as in other people.

Starting point is 00:30:50 I think that's a great explanation. I wanted to touch back on something that you said a few minutes ago. I also have an upcoming book that'll come out after years. One of my chapters is around the psychology of progress. And one of the things I talk about is that there have been many different times in my life where I have found time was malleable.

Starting point is 00:31:14 Sometimes, time slows down, sometimes it speeds up. How can alter time perception? Yeah, well, congratulations on the book. I'm looking forward to checking that out. I'm curious to hear what those times in your life were. You've picked up on something really important here. There seems to be a correspondence between the sense of time, the sense of self, and one's sense of the space around them. These things track together in these altered states of consciousness. So it seems as if when the self feels as if

Starting point is 00:31:54 it's going away at the same time, we feel this deep and sense of connection around us, and then time is also changing. So there's some interesting issues here, I think neurobiologically, and maybe cognitively, that it's just a lot of very open questions. And so we don't know exactly why, but we do know that it pretty reliably seems to occur in terms of what people report. And so most people, when they experience awe, have a kind of time dilation effect. So if you think back to the last time you experienced intense sweeping scenery, natural beauty, art, or witnessing excellent performance, or highly virtuous performance.

Starting point is 00:32:46 These are all triggers for awe. You often feel this time dilation effect. It's almost like a timeless moment that you get. And that's a very interesting thing. And it seems to relate to the meaning of the experience as well, which can result in persisting positive effects. I'll just give an example of one for me. as well, which can result in persisting positive effects. I'll just give an example of one for me. I happen to be working for low sum improvement at the time and lows has their own fleet of jets that we would

Starting point is 00:33:14 often take around. And I happen to be on a west coast store visit. And as we're leaving Las Vegas, the pilot looks back into the plane says, I have a trick for you. I got clearance to fly super low over the Grand Canyon. So we flew, I think, at an altitude, maybe 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet, but probably only lasted five minutes. But to me, it seemed like it was 45 minutes because I was in just looking down and the unbelievable sights that you're able to see.

Starting point is 00:33:45 That's a simple explanation of someone maybe in a peak performance mode, whether they've been an athlete or at work, giving a presentation or something else. You've probably experienced where maybe you're running a race and it's supposed to take you 25 minutes and it feels like it took you five minutes. Or you give a bad presentation, you feel like you're up there for an hour and a half and it's been five minutes. I really do feel like you can perfect some of this

Starting point is 00:34:15 and make time work to your betterment. That's kind of what I explored in the book. Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm really looking forward to reading your book. It's interesting how all already fits into our lives. Particularly think about when you go on a trip. You generally seek out a few things. One is hedonic enjoyment stuff, right? The good food, the good drink, et cetera. But then most people also seek out awe experiences. They'll go on a hike up a mountain or somewhere breathtakingly beautiful or you'll go to a monument that's massive

Starting point is 00:34:59 or has important implications or you go to a museum where you see art or history that's mind-blowing. We already kind of naturally seek this out, the kinds of things that we watch, our entertainment. We love to see excellence and moral virtue. I think awe is already playing a role in our lives, and it's something that we can probably think about and be mindful of and probably maximize more of. Yeah, I kind of agree more. I wanted to jump in really quick to Johns Hopkins. I recently competed in the four by four by 48 challenge. It's a David Goggins challenge. Wow, yeah, David Goggins.

Starting point is 00:35:41 Wow, I did it on behalf of three. You're still you're smiling in your your alive. Smiling and alive. I did it with about 40 former veterans, almost all of them, special forces. And the reason I was interested in doing it is I get treated by one of the nonprofits that was there. The were angels foundation, which treats traumatic brain injury for people who have post-concussion syndrome. But there were two others there. One was the Heroic Hearts Project,

Starting point is 00:36:11 and the other was called Vets. And they are both solely focused on treating veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder with psychedelics. So whether that's Ayahuasca, Asylocybin, I think it's ketamine or other things. Yeah, I got five. I mean, psilocybin ketamine, yeah, all of these are being explored as PTSD treatments.

Starting point is 00:36:34 There was a doctor who had been with the VA for 30 years who was completely and adamantly against the use of any of these until she saw the results. And most people who go through CPT or cognitive behavioral therapies, there's about a 30% efficacy in helping people with PTSD from what I've researched. But what MDMA, which I think is in phase three trials and cytosyben, which is in phase two, are showing is that they're having upwards of 66 to 70% efficacy, which blew her mind away that they could be that much more substantial.

Starting point is 00:37:18 So my understanding is Johns Hopkins has really been in depth with this for well over 15 years, and can you explain some of the preeminent work that you guys are doing? Yeah, well, first of all, yeah, congratulations on that event. It's an interesting combination of excellence and moral virtue there. And so as you were saying, and I reflected, oh, I'm saying, wow, I'm actually, this is a little bit of awe right here, right? Yeah, so John Hopkins, this in the behavioral pharmacology research unit, and now in the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, this is a lab that I have been a fan of for those entire 15 years. I've included them in hundreds of presentations,

Starting point is 00:38:09 and now I'm very lucky to be joining that group, Rowan Griffiths, Fred Barrett, Matt Johnson, Al Natalie Sendy. There's too many people to name brilliant researchers and scientists that I'm learning from there. The science, the data on psychedelics seems extraordinary, and I want to put a big caveat and qualification there in that the potential does seem extraordinary, but there needs to be so much more rigorous research in order to have really more precise estimates of the efficacy. And so a lot of the work has been fairly exploratory. And we're just now getting to the point where we're able to get the funding and the will

Starting point is 00:39:00 to do these very large, very well-controlled studies. And so in my view, what the actual data show, when we think about the efficacy and the potential of psychedelic substances, and things like MDMA and psilocybin, I think what the data show is that the super enthusiasts are wrong and the super skeptics are wrong. So the super enthusiasts think that it's a cure all, put it in the water, for example, that kind of thinking, I don't think we have evidence for that. There's real risks and these experiences need to be, I think, administered in a safe and supportive way.

Starting point is 00:39:46 There are real risks for some people that message needs to get out there. It really does. And on the other hand, the kind of alarmist thinking, like, oh, this is, you know, these are drugs or these produce a mental state that's like psychosis. That's wrong as well to show that for many people, the experience is challenging yet positive. So people often compare it to like running a marathon or climbing a mountain.

Starting point is 00:40:14 There's difficulty and challenge, but also positive emotions as well. There are risks, but it appears that many people have persisting positive effects that last for weeks or months, sometimes even more, maybe. And that's extraordinary. And so I think I'm still willing to call the potential extraordinary with all of those caveats in place that there's real risk and that this is nothing like a panacea. We still need a lot of really good research done on this topic and we also need to think structurally.

Starting point is 00:40:51 These substances will not solve issues with our healthcare system and our lack of investments in helping people who really need it. I think those are all very good points, but I am so thankful that someone of the prestige of Johns Hopkins is on the forefront of this because if you're going to put validity in anyone's finding, it would be an institution like the one you're now working for. Over the past month, you are the third person who I've interviewed who has actually met

Starting point is 00:41:21 the Dalai Lama, which to me is quite remarkable. Not only did you meet him, but he asked for a private audience with you. And what's interesting is the two other people. Definitely the opposite. Just to make that clear. Why is he so interested in neuroscience research? It's a great question. So I'll tell this story just to make clear. The Dalai Lama didn't go looking for me very much the reverse. It actually started with someone who you might know or be familiar with Adam Grant. He's a professor at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania and he runs something he calls

Starting point is 00:42:02 reciprocity rings. And this is an activity that he uses to try to make the point that your current network probably can provide you with most of the things that you want out of life. If there, we just don't realize it. And so during one of these reciprocity rings where people just say something that they want to see happen in their lives and the other people provide them asked to about meeting someone, some celebrity or something, and that planted the seed and I said, well, if I really thought about who I'd want to meet in the

Starting point is 00:42:54 world, it would be the Dalai Lama. I really admire his, on meditation and his interest in science strikes me as exceptional, particularly for a religious leader. You know, so he says things like, if science discovers something that disproves some aspect of Buddhism, then Buddhism has to change. And so that kind of commitment to science and to truth is extremely impressive to me. So I said, well, I'd like to meet the Dalai Lama. And Adam said, well, I actually maybe have a connection to the former Prime Minister of Tibet, and maybe this could actually happen. And so I was I was backpacking in India and I was able to to meet him the Dalai Lama in the sort of backstage, so to speak, at a

Starting point is 00:43:55 presentation that he was he was giving to monks. Really extraordinary moment, just visceral kindness. I mean, yeah, I usually am kind of nervous meeting someone that I really admire. And I just felt totally and completely at ease immediately, which was amazing. We talked about scientific research. And so he sort of grilled me on what psychology and neuroscience was telling us about meditation and meditation experiences. As I was researching you and researching the Dalai Lama, his holiness has proposed that the only way to combat destructive emotions, things like anger, fear, hatred,

Starting point is 00:44:48 is through the cultivation of positive emotions like love, compassion, and patience. And he argues that we must train ourselves to sustain optimal emotional experience and do it through expanded states of consciousness and self-transcendent experience. Basically, we don't just exit the ego, we exercise the soul. Why is what he's saying regarded as so revolutionary, especially coming from him?

Starting point is 00:45:18 Well, that's interesting. So one point of clarification, which is maybe interesting, is that Buddhists don't believe in a soul or a self. So I'm guessing he was probably using those terms to aid communication. I think what he's emphasizing there is something important. important with the caveat that if we really want to improve people's well-being that structural issues like having a strong social safety net is probably the easiest way to go about that. But if we're talking in terms of what psychological interventions can be done in addition to a number of self-regulation strategies. I think that focusing on positive emotion can be important and that maybe self-transcendent experiences play a role. I think he's emphasizing something to an extent that I wouldn't emphasize

Starting point is 00:46:21 to that much. I would say things like positive emotional experiences, and self-transcendent experiences play a role in a flourishing life. But there can be real risks of overplaying that. So you notice that I put a lot of caveats and qualifications and I can't help it. It's just part of Trying to do science communication and making sure that I'm not Overstepping what the data show so having said that for me Self-transcendent experiences have played a transformative positive effect in my life

Starting point is 00:47:04 And that is certainly the case for some people self-transparent experiences have played a transformative, positive effect in my life. And that is certainly the case for some people. Interestingly enough, I think you'll like this chapter in my book as well as I go into what is the difference between why most people are spontaneously engaged in their life instead of being consciously engaged and my reckoning of why and how to become more consciously engaged.

Starting point is 00:47:27 But enough about my book, your book sounds like it's going to be remarkable. And it's actually being published by Oxford University Press can ask for a better publisher than that. So I was hoping that you could talk about the varieties of spiritual experiences and what you guys are hoping to convey in this book. Yeah, and I hope we can provide a link. We should have a pre-order link very soon. So this book is about something that our society is not very good at,

Starting point is 00:48:03 that our society is not very good at, which is thinking with nuance on an interesting topic. I find so many topics of interest to me and others people end up adopting one extreme view or another. And so what we're trying to do with this book is to focus on what I think is a powerfully important topic, which are these self-transcendent or spiritual experiences that we've been talking about.

Starting point is 00:48:32 In order to scientifically study this topic, we need to set aside certain questions that science can address. And William James, the psychologist and philosopher, 100 years ago, made this exact point. Yet, you see a lot of people who don't respect that. I think that that's an important concept to keep in mind as we do this kind of scientific work. Then, as I said with the psychedelic research, the data on these experiences prove

Starting point is 00:49:03 the super-enthusious,ast wrong and the super skeptics. They're not all positive all the time. Someone doesn't just one and done have one of these experiences and then they're transformed and enlightened forever. That just doesn't happen. It's not how our psychology works, not how life works. On the other hand, though, the super skeptics are wrong. There's a long tradition going back to Freud of assuming that these experiences are pathological or part of a mental disorder. And the data just do not support that.

Starting point is 00:49:37 Most people actually find these experiences deeply meaningful and benefit from them sometimes long after the experience has ended. So we're really trying to interject nuance and data into a topic that has often fallen into extremes. And so we bring forward what William James had to say on this topic, but then we review James had to say on this topic, but then we review what psychology and neuroscience research has shown in the past few decades. And so we find that one out of every four, one out of every three people have had one of these experiences. And so this book will allow you to understand those experiences, to spot them in the wild, to understand them on a deeper level. is the spot them in the wild to understand them on a deeper level.

Starting point is 00:50:25 That leads me to in that 2017 paper that I read, there was a quote in there, and I'm probably gonna get it wrong. Basically said that your research found that on this topic Freud was wrong and James was correct. I might have it wrong, but can you clarify that a little bit? Yeah, so William James, classic psychologist, of course, Sigmund Freud, classic psychologist, Freud basically thought that these

Starting point is 00:50:56 experiences that self-transcendent type experiences were symptomatic of mental illness. He had never had one of these experiences, but he said these just seem strange. So maybe in the context of romantic love, feeling this degree of connection, maybe that makes sense, but these experiences of feeling it one with all things,

Starting point is 00:51:19 there's no way that that can be healthy. Of course, he had no data whatsoever. He was just sort of sitting on his chair, his arm chair, sort of speaking, making these proclamations. And then he even advanced the theory, which is that what these experiences consist of is memories of one being in their mother's womb,

Starting point is 00:51:42 coming to the surface. And contemporary psychologists and scientists think that's just silly. It's just kind of an absurd theory really. And and Sigmund Freud, of course, the household name, whereas William James is not a household name, we hope that he will be more. It's part of the reason why we wrote this book. But William James had a very, very nuanced and qualified take on these experiences. And he said, we have to set aside certain questions that we can't scientifically address, but we can look at what triggers these experiences, what they feel like, how people report them, what's happening in

Starting point is 00:52:21 the brain and the body, and how they impact people's lives. And his assessment actually fits pretty closely with all of the evidence that we've gathered in the past few decades, which is most people benefit from them, some people benefit tremendously, and some people don't, some people actually need to seek therapeutic support because the experience feels too overwhelming. So William James provided this kind of nuance and balance and evidence-based assessment that I think our society is sorely lacking and I think we need more of that mental discipline in our discourse. You're probably not going to believe this, but when I was being treated for PTSD,

Starting point is 00:53:07 some of the diagnosis is according to DSM-5. I was like, how in the world are they coming up with that? So I actually read the entire DSM-5 manual. And the thing that I am surprised about, especially right here, with what we're talking about here, everything that they talk about was self-princendent or these feelings that we've been discussing. They treat almost as a negative disorder

Starting point is 00:53:34 and not ever could I find a reference where it's treated from a positive standpoint. I'm no expert in this, I'm not a psychologist, but I thought that was revealing to me if what I'm saying is accurate. Yeah, I mean not a psychologist, but I thought that was revealing to me if what I'm saying is accurate. Yeah, I mean, it gets really complicated. This is a, my wife is a psychiatrist, I should defer this question to her.

Starting point is 00:53:55 Bring around the podcast. Yeah, well, you know, it's, it's really complicated to differentiate these experiences, you know, to say they're all good or all bad, so to speak, is difficult. And when you get into very complicated kinds of mental states, there can be processing of very challenging, difficult psychological material. It ends up being the kind of thing that you can't make broad generalizations about. And here we get to the point where in any given individual case, ideally you have a clinician who's able to appreciate the data, to show that sometimes positive states can be intertwined in complex ways

Starting point is 00:54:44 with kind of mental disorder that can be intertwined in complex ways with kind of mental disorder that can be treated. And I think part of the point of our book is to show the kinds of experiences that do have positive potential and that those experiences, they can come in for me, for example, in a fairly neutral, spontaneous context, they can come during context where people are doing well and thriving in life. They can also come in very challenging and difficult contexts. It's interesting, and I think we're all learning about these experiences and how they relate to clinical care in real time. And it's an exciting time because I think we are making progress. What sure is, thanks for clarifying that.

Starting point is 00:55:32 And I had one final question for you. In your work, you researched a phenomenon of being called who a particular field or endeavor and the sense of transcendent purpose and surprisingly amongst 30% to 40% of the population has that sense. And I was wondering, did that surprise you and why is it important to do what you're meant to do or be in call to do? Yeah, so it did surprise me that about 30% of people say that they feel a sense of calling to their work, that it fulfills a deep need for meaning and purpose, that they'd even do the work for free if that had to be done.

Starting point is 00:56:19 And it fits very closely with their sense of themselves, their identity. And so when you survey the large numbers of people, about a third will say that their job is just a paycheck. And usually in these cases, they have other things in their life that they feel have deep meaning and purpose and fulfill them, but their job is not really one of them. It's just a paycheck. For some people, their job is a career. It's part of their identity,

Starting point is 00:56:52 but still what they really care about is outside of that domain. And then some people, some of us have a calling, where work, what they're doing with their work life is highly meaningful and purposeful and intertwined with identity in a deep way. And it's interesting because the kinds of people who report having a calling, they're not necessarily the ones that you'd expect. There are some jobs where there's probably a lot more people report this kind of calling, maybe scientists, I'm not sure. But when you look at janitors at a hospital, the people who report feeling a calling in their work say that they're, what

Starting point is 00:57:43 they're doing is a kind of healing because they're creating a safe and sanitary environment, and that's absolutely true. That's absolutely the case. And so this is another interesting case where what I find most interesting is descriptive work on this topic to say, look, some people feel called, some people don't, some people don't feel called. There are different dynamics at play in each of those cases. I'm not saying go find a calling because sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes that's not feasible and sometimes that can sound very naive, given the difficult reality that a lot of people are living in. And so, yeah, having a calling and the process of arriving at a calling, I find very interesting.

Starting point is 00:58:38 But again, I want to put in those qualifications. If a listener was interested in learning more, how can they find out? Yeah, so my book is coming out, the varieties of spiritual experience with Oxford University Press. There's a lot of what we talked about today will be in there. Unfortunately, all of those caveats and qualifications

Starting point is 00:59:02 are in there. That's just part of what I think is important about communicating science, but we cover all kinds of psychological and neuroscientific research on self-transcendent spiritual experiences. And then my Twitter is at ExistWell. And so they can connect with me there. OK, great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today,

Starting point is 00:59:28 and I found it just a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much, John. Me too. Big thanks to Dr. David Yaden, and all things David related will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you buy any of the books from any of the guests on the show. It all goes to supporting the show and keeping it free for all our listeners.

Starting point is 00:59:50 Transcripts are in the show notes and videos are posted on YouTube at JohnRMiles. Advertisers, deals, and discount codes are located at all in one place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. I'm at John Armiles, both on Twitter and Instagram, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. If you wanna know how I manage to book all these amazing guests, it's because of my network. Build those relationships before you need them. Most of the guests on the show actually subscribe

Starting point is 01:00:20 to the podcast and give us ideas for topics and guests. Come, join us, you'll be an amazing company. You're about to hear a preview from the PassionStruck podcast featuring former Army Ranger Jesse Gold, the founder of the Heroic Hearts Project, which is helping veterans recover from the looms of trauma and combat through psychedelic therapies. My goal is we can provide more veterans, help and health care and prevent more suicides, whoever wants to be involved with it as long as it's not limiting other involvement than so be it people want to are able to make money but that shouldn't limit people from doing it in a community access shouldn't be so

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Passion Struck with John R. Miles - David Yaden on Self-Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Behavior Change EP 152

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