The School of Greatness - 281 The Power of the Mind to Create Your Reality with Jason Silva

Episode Date: January 25, 2016

"Everything we design designs us in return." - Jason Silva If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/281

This is episode number 281 with Jason Silva. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to this very special interview and episode with the one and only Jason Silva.

We cover a lot today, but for those that don't know who Jason is, this is a guy you want to make sure you follow online and on TV. Jason is a media artist, futurist, philosopher, keynote speaker, and TV personality. He is the creator of Shots of All, a short film series of trailers for the mind that serve as philosophical espresso shots exploring innovation, technology, creativity, futurism, and metaphysics of the imagination. He is also the Emmy-nominated host of National Geographic's channel hit TV series Brain Games, which airs in over 100 countries. And we cover a lot today, including the power of flow state and how to get there at any moment of your life, about cognitive ecstasy, how our relationship with new technology affects our mind and becomes part of it,

the idea that we are going to be able to live inside our imaginations, the purpose of life and why we're here, and so much more. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed having Jason on. Make sure to share this with your friends right now, lewishouse.com slash 281. And also go back to the show notes as we add our own little shots of awe video over there as well. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the one, the only, Jason Silva. Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast and video if you're watching live on YouTube.

Very excited, Jason Silva in the house. What's up, brother? Hey, thank you for having me, dude. Good to see you, man. I'm honored to be here after we met on that cruise. I know, it's amazing. Yeah. I was like, we met at Summit Series, but I'd heard about you for a couple years before

then with your videos. They really inspired me. And I think- I appreciate that. Your philosophical mind is just so powerful and rich and full of expression. Thanks, bro. And first, I'm a lover of art and music and dance and singing and song and songwriting. It's probably because I'm not that good at them, right?

But I always appreciate the art. My family is all musically talented. My brother is the number one jazz violinist in the world. Wow. So you're almost like related in terms that you are like a jazz speaker. Yeah, I like that. You're like a jazz philosopher. Yeah, yeah.

And he is like a musician. Sure. You remind me a lot of him and your like a jazz philosopher. Yeah, yeah. And he is like a musician. Sure. You remind me a lot of him and your capability to use language. Thanks, man. Uniquely and with improvisation. Oh, I like that. I do describe Shots of Oz as a form of existential jazz. Because the episodes are all completely improvised.

They're all stream of consciousness. Yeah. People often think, do you write them? Do you script them? I remember this was one of those surreal moments. I got to meet Ron Howard, who was tweeting a lot of my videos, and he's a big fan. He was asking me about the creative process behind it. I was like, really? You don't script the videos? I was like, no. I just kind of get in the zone or get in the flow state. We can talk about that later, but I think that any artist or athlete or musician that sort of pushes the envelope of their genre, so to speak, is because they've been able to tap into that flow state. They're in the pocket.

They're in the zone. How does the snowboarder or the jazz musician or the freestyle rapper get to that state of consciousness, that altered state where they can all of a sudden tap into something larger than themselves? So how do you do it then when you're getting ready to shoot? Do you have a film guy or girl or crew that's with you and you're like, okay, let me just get in the pocket right now, start the camera, I'm in it? Or is it more like I'm in the pocket, get the camera, I'm ready, let's go? When I initially started doing these videos is because part of what I do in my free time, part of what's interesting to me is to chase

experiences that put me in the zone, put me in the flow. Because that's when I'm at my most engaged, that's when I'm inspired, that's when I can be actually present and silence that kind of anxious inner critic or neurotic inner Woody Allen that's like worried about the future or melancholic for the past. And so being in the zone means being in the moment. It's a state of consciousness in which you feel your best and you perform your best according to Stephen Kotler and Jamie Wheal's definition of flow.

low. And I think since I was in high school, I used to organize these salons every Friday night with my friends, handpicked people, and do these kind of like inspired by Charles Baudelaire's hashish parties from the 1920s in Paris where all these poets and all these artists would get together and drink wine and smoke hash and just kind of get into that sort of dream space where ideas were flowing and things were being exchanged. It's almost like the term that I really like is heterotopia, which is a sort of designed dwelling where a curated audience experiences a sort of state of being that is sort of a place that is physical as well as interpsychic. So like you get into the zone together and for people hanging out, that's a really fun vibe to create, that sort of salon vibe.

And in high school, we used to do that, and we used to just really get into this altered state together. And the things that would come out, the ideas that were exchanged, felt important, felt special. Even though there's only five or ten of you talking about it. But it's just like we, it was the collective buzz that was achieved. And at the time, what is this?

What are we philosophizing? Is that what we would describe it? Were you guys just like partying? No, we were like philosophizing. It was like a proper salon. And I've always been obsessed with the video camera since I was a little kid. And I think it was because of this anxiety or acute awareness of the passing of the present moment.

That no matter how great the present moment is, no matter how great our ecstasies are, they're sort of tinged by a bit of sadness because they are transient. Everything is transient. And so the camera gave me some kind of control, some kind of authorship over the present moment because I was able to say, well, this moment ain't going quietly into that good night. I'm immortalizing this. I'm capturing this. And so what we would do is we would film the salons, particularly these epiphanies that were happening. Yeah. I still have all of it on videos.

Yeah, yeah. Video 8 millimeter. And so, yeah, we'd get in the zone and whenever some deep insight was exchanged, we'd film it. And that kind of carried through into my, you my – I studied film and philosophy in college. And then when I graduated, I got to work for Al Gore's TV network, Current TV, and I spent many years working on – as a presenter for them. And that was all short form, digital content, do-it-yourself media. And I just kind of got comfortable with these tools that allowed one to kind of capture life as it's lived.

So it empowered people to tell their own stories in their own voice and from their own point of view. And when I was kind of towards the end of current, I still had, during the weekends, I was kind of going back to that vibe of high school where I was just like, you know, I'd go for a hike with a friend. I get into the profound philosophical discussion. And then I'd turn around and like want to film it. And then that evolved into this desire.

Well, I was like, okay, well, what i'm really interested in is this moment of inspiration or this moment of insight this moment in which the dots connect uh is is a is an intense high i mean there's a moment of elation where when things become clear so to speak like carl sagan it's like a philosophical orgasm yeah mind gasm mind yeah so i I found a definition for that. A mind-gasm is an exhilarating neurostorm of intense intellectual pleasure. Wow. Which I love that definition. And I was once told that I was addicted to cognitive ecstasy.

Wow. So cognitive ecstasy literally just means that you enjoy the sort of cognitive high of like connecting the dots and understanding something. Carl Sagan, one of my heroes, used to say, understanding is a kind of ecstasy. So I'm just somebody that is addicted to the feeling that he's discovering a new insight. It just feels good. It's like, oh, I understand. And so because I was filming a lot of these hangouts with my friends and these philosophical things, I then decided I want to film them and then I want to take them and I want to visualize everything that's going on in my head.

So how do I do that? If I have like a stream of consciousness, three-minute rant, and I sort of incorporate that with visual imagery that either is literally or symbolically or metaphorically connected to what I'm saying, then people get to see my thoughts. So then it's like they're hearing me and they're seeing it, and it creates a kind of synesthetic effect. And then you add some music to kind of cue the kind of emotions that I'm interested in conveying in that moment. And the idea was that I could give people kind of like a digital trip, like a digital tour of my head.

And that's ultimately all art is that, right? Like when somebody does a painting, when they sing a song, when they write a poem, you're not going for empirical reality. You're going for subjective reality. You're going for an experience from the inside to share my intersubjective world with you, right? Right, right. And so that's where the inspiration came from. And yeah, I only film them when I'm out of my head, when I'm in the zone, when I'm in a flow. with you right right and uh and so that's where the inspiration came from and and yeah i only

filmed them when i'm out of my head when i'm in the zone when i'm in a flow and then we take them and we edit them and i started doing those and they kind of blew up and then i partnered with uh some a production company and now we do them regularly it's amazing how often they come out now once a week once a week so you got to get in the zone at least once a week or you can know because what happens is we get together we go go to a place like Big Sur. I find that getting, it helps if the analogy of what you're doing physically tends to correspond with what you're doing mentally.

So if I want to get out of my head, I got to physically get out of my world. You're not in a studio. No. You're out in nature. That's what I see in all your videos. Very much so. I think the first one I saw,

you were like sitting on a log in the middle of the woods or something. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, it actually wasn't that well produced film quality wise. You're like, you have like a- The first couple I shot with a handheld camera. Yeah.

And you had a man bag or something. I was like, who is this guy? But it's actually amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I like to go to Big Sur or Sea Ranch, California, up and down the coast of San Francisco.

I like to go to Big Sur or Sea Ranch, California, up and down the coast of San Francisco. You can find these desolate, majestic places that serve the purpose of making you contemplative. I'm seeking introspective contemplation. Sure, sure, sure. Contemplative introspection. And what that does is that it makes me think of things I don't normally think of, and then it makes me want to articulate those things that I've connected the dots yeah yeah and then and then it's just about having the camera and capturing that and yeah it's amazing it's yeah it's really fun what did you think you were gonna be doing growing up like now you're 33 is there what did you imagine as a teenager I wanted to be

a director yeah and I wanted to be a director because the aesthetic and intellectual power of cinema from a very young age to me seemed like the most powerful medium in the world. Like there was nothing that existed that was better at conveying the human experience, particularly the interior human experience from the point of view of a character, from the point of view of a person, the intersubjective life world of the other as cinema. It was just simply the greatest communication technology that had ever been made. You know, you could talk, you could sing, you could paint. Cinema combined all of these and it put you inside of someone else's world. And so as an engine of empathy, as a way of stepping outside yourself, as a way of witnessing someone else's life, I just, I was always moved by cinema. And so I wanted that power.

As a director, you know, because I felt like the movie, yes, it's the characters, the actors, it's the actresses, but it's really the writer-director's vision. Yeah, yeah. And he uses everybody else as a conduit to tell that. And so I identified with the director's role. But then at the same time, there is the sort of face on camera is the one that, as an audience member, you relate to, even though it's the director's vision told through the face of the person on screen. So I think with digital technology, it kind of blurs those things together because particularly if you're a vlogger, you're a podcaster, you're kind of like directing the show, but you're also the guy that's speaking. You're also the voice and the face.

And that's kind of what happened with me in digital video. It was like, well, I want to be like a filmmaker, like a digital filmmaker. But at the same time, I kind of want to be the voice that you – and so that, I think, emerged because these tools allow for it. Yeah. It's a perfect time in the internet right now. Yeah. So I wanted to be a director and I wanted to be a philosopher. So I studied film and philosophy, which is exactly what I was doing in those salons in high school. And I remember in film school, I was like, wow, I just want to like philosophize and like make these like i would see richard

linklater movies like before sunrise before sunset before midnight waking life you probably seen waking life um and i was like wow these are films about philosophy these are like naturalistic you know films where characters are talking about life it seems very unscripted it seems very real and there doesn't have to be a bunch of explosions for this to be considered cinema it's just where characters are talking about life, it seems very unscripted. It seems very real. And there doesn't have to be a bunch of explosions for this to be considered cinema. It's just interesting people talking. And I was like, well, what's the digital equivalent of that?

Like, what's a film like Waking Life? What's a film like Before Sunrise? You know, I showed you that clip of my recent love affair. I was like, I kind of want naturalistic stream of consciousness exchanges between two people. And I want to turn that into an aesthetic work that can be contemplated and hung on a wall.

And that's always kind of what I wanted to do even if I wasn't able to articulate it. But strangely, I've been able to kind of manifest it, and that's like kind of what I do now. It's like, yeah, well, technically, yeah, he's a TV presenter on Brain Games. Yeah, sure, and that's great. But really, I think what I am is like a kind of, I don't know, an explorer of consciousness, a seeker and a digital filmmaker who uses that medium to articulate the meanderings of his inner world. I love it. Who would you say is the most influential person in your life growing up and what was the biggest lesson they taught you that you still think about today? I mean, there, there've been a bunch, but I was, I am, and I've always been extremely close to my mother. Um, my parents divorced and I'm really close with my dad too, but my dad is more like, uh, the things I learned from my dad were a little bit more about

there. There's a kind of, uh, you know uh you know health and and and elegance and sort of sophistication debonair quality that he has that's just kind of about like taking care of yourself and sure sure and and not to say superficial but my dad's like a kind of a latin james bond he flies on cessna plane and race boats and motorcycles and he's so suave and there's that but then my mother is like this brilliant artist poet sculptor teacher she's taught for 35 years internationally she's published like 10 poetry books she directs theater and has directed theater for many years in venezuela and around the world and you know i grew up in the environment where the arts were celebrated where creative expression and expressive discharge was celebrated and she always used to say just do what

you love do what you love do what you love the only cardinal rule is you have to be kind so it was like that was like you know in terms of like the rules like you just have to you can't be unkind you can't mistreat anybody ever but aside from that kind of like you know abiding by that you know everything else is like go for it Express yourself, dance like no one's watching. Just go for it. Sing in the rain. Yeah, yeah. And I also think the pain of the divorce between her and my dad,

she channeled into art that was around me growing up. The sculptures were all about her pain. The poetry books were all about the exquisite, aching darkness that she went through and articulated so brilliantly. And I read as a 13, 14-year-old. And I was like, you know, my mom, I'm connected through like an umbilical cord to this person. So just to read her pain was to feel her pain. That's a lot for a little kid to think about. And I think it caused a lot of existential anxiety.

But I think that that anxiety at the same time has been a fuel for my work and my art. Of course, yeah. What do you think it means to be human today? Well, I did a video recently called Redefine Billionaire, which is inspired by some of the ideas put out there by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis from the XPRIZE Foundation, which is that the new definition of billionaire today on the back of these exponentially emerging technologies is not somebody who has a billion dollars, but somebody who positively affects a billion people. That's the new definition of billionaire.

Like empowered by smartphones, empowered by the fact that a young kid in Africa with a smartphone has better communications technology than the U.S. president had 25 years ago. How does that allow us to change the world? When the supercomputers of yesterday now fit in your pocket, how does that allow us to impact the world in a positive way? A kid in a garage, a kid with passion has the communication, has the power, has the technology that only governments and corporations used to have a few decades ago. So to be human today is to crisscross the skies. To be human today is to communicate instantaneously across the world,

to turn our ideas, electrify them at the speed of thought, get them out there, reach other people. I mean, we are miraculous beings. You know, there's these cognitive philosophers that I love called David Chalmers and Andy Clark, who wrote a thesis called the Extended Mind Thesis, where they basically put on the notion that, you know, iPhone, therefore I am,

that are tools, that these technologies are actually cognitive appendages. Like if you drew the Vitruvian man today, you know, and like you're pointing to all of his physiological features of like the ideal human form, that he'd have an iPhone in his hand and you'd point to it and identify it the same way you point to the neocortex or you point to

like his limbs like that this is even though it's outside of our skin tissue it's very much part of like the mental apparatus of the human being so we are extended minds our intellect our cognition is distributed between biological and non-biological props and scaffolding. So it's like that's, I think, what to be human today is that we are extended. And it almost never leaves our body except for when we sleep. And it's maybe an arm's length away. A thousand percent. Yeah.

And some people get freaked out. They're like, oh, we're so dependent on our phones. But like, dude, we've always been symbiotically codependent on our tools. Like when we started, we discovered fire and started cooking food and using stone tools, our jaws shrank over a couple generations. Like our physiology has always been transformed and affected by the tools we create. Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist in the 70s, the visionary, used to say, we build the tools and the tools build us.

Feedback loops. Remember we were talking before about the feedback loops? Everything we design designs us in return. And Stephen Johnson, our thoughts shape our spaces. Our spaces return the favor. Amazing. That's us. And so that's what it means to be human today.

These cameras are extensions of our mindedness and our agency and our will. Like our thoughts, electrochemical activity within our brain goes way beyond the brain. It's going into other brains. It's changing other people's neurochemistry today. So we're becoming a super organism. Well, we always have been, but now it's sort of blooming. I'm just in the jazz pocket. Awesome.

We are in the pocket. I love this. So what do you think is the master plan and why do you think we're all here? Have you ever heard of Teilhard de Chardin? No. So he was a Jesuit priest that was kind of banned from the church for some of his ideas about the directionality of evolution. So he believed in evolution, which kind of is not necessarily kosher in the church. But his whole thing was that evolution has a directionality, that it moves towards greater complexity in organization.

So single-celled organisms became multicellular organisms, became animals, became primates that got caught in self-awareness. Then those primates started inventing biotechnology and tools and technologies, started modifying themselves. And so there's this move towards more sublime complexity and intelligence and creativity that comes from that, right? And so he says that we're kind of moving towards this omega point, this like moment where we basically are going to engender our own godhood. So it's not so much we're going to be saved by God, but it's like we're going to become gods, which is very poetic and very beautiful. And so today, Ray Kurzweil, who's a prominent futurist, he's now the head of engineering at

Google because Larry Page and Sergey think that he's the man, which he is. Kurzweil has popularized the term singularity. The technological singularity is a metaphor borrowed from physics. Singularity is what happens when you go through a black hole. The laws of physics, as we know them, collapse. And so he's taken that metaphor and used it to describe the plan, the grand plan for humanity, the directionality that we're going in. And basically what he's saying is that emerging transformative technologies in IT, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, like mastering our genetic engineering, synthetic biology, et cetera, and nanotechnology, you know, like mastering our genetic engineering, synthetic biology, et cetera, and nanotechnology, which is patterning the atoms of the physical world

so that we can make anything that self-assembles. Like we can print an information file, software that writes its own hardware. We can like design a building on the computer and have it self-assemble. Like crazy. That we're moving into a world where we're going to basically live inside of our imaginations. Like we're going to be able to like manifest realities at the speed of thought. The matrix. The matrix, yeah.

And so he says that the singularity is the moment humans transcend biology. And so I think, yeah, I think the grand plan is that we as a species, as a sort of self-aware symbolic species, our enemy is mortality. Our enemy is entropy. The second law of thermodynamics that wants to break everything down. But then life is anti-entropic. Buckminster Fuller, another futurist, used to say, life is an anti-entropic phenomenon. Because unlike entropy, which wants to destroy and break everything down to its simpler elements, life wants to incorporate

elements and become more complex, more sublime, more sophisticated. And one of my favorite writers, this guy Alan Harrington said, we must never forget that we are cosmic revolutionaries, not stooges conscripted to advance a natural order that kills everyone. Any philosophy that accepts death must itself be considered dead, its questions meaningless, its consolations worn out. In other words, stop praying and start engineering.

Like, yeah. So I think that's the grand plan for us, basically, to make ourselves supermen. And do you think it's harder? We've already done it, bro. I mean, look at airplanes.

Look at smartphones. It's crazy. Look at video conferencing on FaceTime. It's insane. If you did it, I think, 100 years ago. Totally. 1920, if someone did it, I think, 100 years ago. Totally.

1920, if someone had said, there's going to be big objects flying across the world that can go from one place to another in a few hours, people would have hung you. Let me read you something very nice. So I love the philosopher Alain de Botton on travel. So he says something that's so amazing. He talks about the fact that we take these marvelous miracles for granted. If we were to show a sort of 747 to somebody 200 years ago, they would think we were gods. Right.

And they would be right. They would be bowing literally to us saying, whatever you want. Yes, yes, exactly. And so he talks about sort of the miracle when we're in flight. We're on an airplane, and most people close their freaking windows. And so this is what he writes. There is not much talk about the clouds visible up here. No one thinks it remarkable that somewhere above an ocean we flew past a vast

white candy floss island which would have made a perfect seat for an angel or even God himself in a painting by Piero della Francesca. In the cabin of the airplane, no one stands up to announce with requisite emphasis that out of the window we are flying over a cloud a matter that would have detained leonardo and puss in claude and constable and i was like he's absolutely right we take it for granted we just become second nature can you imagine leonardo da vinci in a 747 looking at a cloud during a sunset at 35,000 feet. We already are moving in that direction of making ourselves something far beyond what we used to be. And I just think that we need to extrapolate from that and not hide from our potential,

but move towards the light, bro. Yeah. It's almost like you know as kids our first time on an airplane is unbelievable like god you can't stop like looking out the window like telling your mom and dad like can you believe what we're doing and i guess the question i'm i'm leaning towards is do you feel like it's harder to experience awe as adults than as it is as a children yeah and how do we allow ourselves to be in that childlike state of awe yeah more often so that we can fully experience gratitude and appreciation totally bro

and put us more in the zone yeah yeah because really if we're not in awe we're probably not in the zone of course yeah i mean uh i think it was henry miller even a blade of grass if given proper attention becomes a magnificent thing in itself. Charles Darwin also talks about the importance of the knobs and levers of mediating our attention. It's really all about attention. It's all about attention. He said, attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise. And this into astonishment.

And this into stupefied amazement. So how do we get there? How do we do that? How do we transcend what Michael Pollan calls the been-there's-and-done-that's of the adult mind with our nodding resignations into nothingness, you know? Which is true. The sort of the banality of the everyday, right? And I think that the way we do that is to overwhelm ourselves. I think that a lot of our communication technologies are all about mediating attention. I mean, an IMAX screen, its sheer size and scope and soundscape is meant to arrest the senses and envelop you completely. I think that the hunger for more and

more intense, immersive technologies, whether they be virtual realities or IMAX cinemas, to push the envelopes of experience is for that very reason, to arrest the body-mind and force us to overcome the been-there's and done-that's of the adult mind and see something brand new. Because when you see something new, you become the child again. But then doesn't the IMAX theater become old and boring and been-there, done-that? Hedonic adaptation. Yeah. Yeah, that's the problem.

I mean, think about it. Why does the honeymoon phase always end with every relationship? And it may sound a little bit controversial in my advocacy for this, but I really love drugs that allow us to basically author a kind of neurochemical nirvana for ourselves. So the idea is to figure out what makes something like MDMA so effective. Why does MDMA get ecstasy given now to people with PTSD or people with OCD or anxiety disorder? And it seems to dissipate it. It seems to have the impact of 10 years of psychotherapy in one afternoon because we are made of neurochemistry. And if we can understand that neurochemistry, if we can understand the

sort of the psychology, the technology, and the psychopharmacology of ecstatic states, then why not design better living through chemistry? Why not become paradise engineers? I mean, there is a reason why there is a renaissance in sort of the psychotherapeutic use of psychedelic substances. In the 1960s, these things practically changed the world. Steve Jobs says that taking LSD was the greatest experience of his life. Granted, taking LSD in anything less than a perfect set and setting could be a recipe for psychological despair as well. These are delicate tools, but these are tools that when used responsibly can give us glimpses of what lies beyond our current limitations, our current Darwinian survival mechanism, amygdala, survive, fight or flight mode, and go to that place of the artist, the place of grace, the place of transformation, the place of the numinous. And so, yeah, I mean, I actually think that it is going to be through intervention.

Whether it's intervention that is mindfulness, meditation, or yoga, or whether it's through reverse engineering MDMA, eliminating any of its adverse effects, and making MDMA 2, 3, 4, 5.0. And that's the future, man. MDMA 2345.0 and that's the future, man. It's actually the famous book Brave New World is a dystopia about this idea, about a future where we have a perfect designer

drugs that make everybody happy but no one's allowed to fall in love. And I totally respect the author's desire to make a sort of dystopian warning tale. But I actually think that a lot of what that book talks about is something that doesn't have to be dystopic at all. I do believe that there are realms of the mind yet to be explored,

that the new space is inner space, that subjectivity, that consciousness is unexplored territory, and that the knobs and levers approach, as Stephen Kotler and jamie wheel talks about is is where the future lies right that we can be ontological djs reality djs consciousness djs and that just like a dj board or a you know in a recording studio has a thousand knobs and levers that adjust exactly the kind of sounds you're looking for why not turn consciousness itself into a project like that i mean we're getting heavy but why not turn consciousness itself into a project like that?

I mean, we're getting heavy, but why not? Yeah, of course. Why not? Like, I think it would be nice if I got to experience the cognitive thrills that Christopher Nolan feels when he writes a film or directs a film like Inception. It would be nice if a filmmaker like Danny Boyle was able to communicate the aesthetic impact of his music neurologically into my brain.

There's so much art out there and there's so many nuances and sensations that art can evoke. But I think they're just glimmers of where we can go and what we can feel. Right. It's crazy. Do you wish you were born in a couple hundred years so you could experience this whole new world? I mean, I'm banking on the hope that we will be able

to quadruple the human lifespan within my lifespan. I mean, there's a lot of excitement. Well, Peter Thiel's working on that and other people around. Peter Thiel, Larry Page,

California Life Extension Company, Calico, the new software to hack life. You know, the Google in the end of death was the time cover story. Look, yeah, man. I mean, yes, we need more time, dude.

We can learn the songs that orchestrate the universe. The universe is big. You know, the universe is infinite. So why can't we be? Yeah, it's amazing. In one of your recent videos, I think it was the Brain Games actually trailer, which was beautiful, by the way. You say that we're always looking for better answers, but what we should be doing is asking better questions. Yeah.

So what are the questions you're asking lately? And what are the better questions we should be asking? That was a question. Why did that girl stop texting me? That's a great question. Oh, dude. Yeah. I think that I fell in love over five days this holiday period.

I don't throw the word love out there too loosely, but I purposefully hypnotized myself. I went on a few dates with somebody. I allowed the infatuation to take hold, and then i anchored it with an aesthetic work by putting her inside one of my videos set to music so that i could author future memories whenever i looked at the video of me and her so yeah i fell in love over the last couple days and then and then when i when i left miami she kind of she kind of pulled back a little bit and said she needed to sober up from me and figure out how she feels.

And I don't know what that means. I texted a couple of girlfriends of mine to ask them, what does that mean? She's like, she may be having an intimacy hangover. You may have just gone in too deep, too fast, too intense, and then you left. And to process that, to either experience such neediness and such vulnerability without you there, she has two choices. Either go with that neediness and be that needy or close up and say, I need to recover my self-sustaining identity. Yeah. And so- She experienced something she'd never experienced before. My gosh, she'll never experience from

again. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. And so a question I've been asking myself is like, oh man, why? How could she just go cold turkey like that? That's one question. Another question I ask myself is why haven't we cured cancer yet you know what i mean like we're like engineering printing organs in the lab and this and that and like come on like fix this already let's create like gene therapies that can like turn off the software in a tumor and kill it i i want the advances in health care the revolutions that are coming with likeotech to get here really, really, really fast. I remember once I kind of bumped my head a little bit and I told you about this.

I got an anxiety attack because I was like, what if I have internal bleeding or something? It wasn't even a bad bump in the head, but I just kept thinking, what if? And I remember I went to the emergency room just in case and I was like, give me a CAT scan. I just want to make sure I'm fine. And the emergency room was so impersonal and so inhuman and so uncompassionate. And I just found the experience to be like revolting and disgusting. And I just can't believe that's what medicine is. It's just like disgusting. So I just feel like we need a sort of change in values and we need to start like having these sort of apps of – the software apps to fix healthcare and we need to have the Airbnbs and the Ubers and the IOSs for biotechnology and take the power back from these institutions that just –

Right, right. What would you say if you could come up with three questions that everyone should ask themselves to have a richer, fuller, more expressive, healthy life. What would those three questions, or maybe a couple questions be there? Yeah. You know that great line that says, ask not what the world needs, ask instead what makes you come alive,

because what the world needs is more people who have come alive. So the question, of course, is what makes you come alive? What do I mean by that? Well, what gives you the goosebumps? What gives of course, is what makes you come alive? And what do I mean by that? Well, what gives you the goosebumps? What gives you the chills? What makes you well up? There's a great line by Alain de Botton, the UK philosopher, where he says, we don't cry because something is sad.

We cry because something is more beautiful than we expected it to be. So those moments, make note of those moments. When do you find yourself witnessing something that's more beautiful than you expected it to be? What induces that? What are the precursors to that? Because I'm all about control. How can we pre-configure more of those experiences?

Pre-configure more of those moments of grace. Reverse engineer. Author more of those moments for ourselves. Instead of allowing those moments to be haphazard coincidental moments that just happen. Oh, it just happens. No. We can make more of that. We can make more inspiration. We can make more flow, more grace, more transformation.

And that's what I want, man. I want to just constantly epiphanize myself. And I think people should ask themselves, how can I epiphanize myself more? Yeah. I like that. Okay. What frustrates you about people in life? I like that.

Okay. What frustrates you about people in life? I think something that frustrates me is when people just settle for an unexamined life, right? So the unexamined life is not worth living. I think a lot of people are afraid of the questions and afraid of the answers, and so they prefer to watch mindless, narcoticotic stupefying television well yeah like just an easy job where we don't have to think too much and an easy kind of a boring tv series that you watch every night so it doesn't make you think too much and just uh i guess killing time i find that to be the most depressing thing ever killing time okay let me just kill some time. Hate it. Okay. Yeah.

What's the most important skill you think we should all be learning? If there's one skill we could all be learning more of. Learn how to say what we feel and feel what we say. You know, I don't know. Learn to be more honest with ourselves and with others. Learn to be more vulnerable. Learn to be much more vulnerable. I mean, one of the things that we had so much fun in when we were at the summit at Sea boat is that they created a kind of heterotopia, intersubjective, interpsychic space that's similar to kind of what Burning Man seems to be able to achieve where everybody is present with everybody else. Everybody addresses everybody else with an openness and a transparency and a vulnerability that creates self-reinforcing positive feedback loops.

You catch the buzz, right? You design the space, you bring the people, and before you know it, everybody infects everybody else in a self-reinforcing loop. And controlling those feedback loops becomes a kind of ontological design, a design of beingness, designing a new way of beingness. And that is all about the feedback loops. It's all about the creative and linguistic choices. I design, therefore I become. You become what you behold.

And if we were able to curate our spaces, to curate the people we hang out with, to curate the activities we expose ourselves to, we can actually author future versions of ourselves

into existence. We can turn ourselves into a dynamic work of art that we're constantly refining. That's such an amazing thing to treat ourselves as an art project. Like you are an art project.

I am an art project. And when we were on that boat, I mean, I just, oh my God, I just remember going to that like crazy tea room and everybody was like lying down and cuddling

with everybody else. And I was like, what is happening here? It's all love. Yeah, yeah. All love. The chanting and all that stuff. Yeah, of course.

That's cool. Yeah. Would you rather be, this is just a question that's kind of. Yeah. All love. The chanting and all that stuff. Yeah, of course. That's cool. Yeah. Would you rather be, this is just a question. It's kind of maybe silly, but I thought it'd be interesting to hear your response. Would you rather be the richest person in the world and have no imagination? Okay. Or all the imagination in the world, but no one to share it with? Ooh, man.

I don't know. I mean, I guess all the imagination in the world but no one to share it with is probably of those two the one I would choose because I would be able to create really realistic imaginary friends if I had all the imagination in the world. That's the only way that I can come up with a happy medium between those two things because to not be able to share with someone is the recipe for insanity. We are social beings. I read this article recently called The Art of Peopling. Peopling. So not people. Peopling.

And he basically says that the way that we come into existence is through the exchanges with others. I come to see myself. I am not who I think I am. I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am. Interesting. Which is really trippy.

But when you think about it, it's like the other is required to come to be. Yeah. So I am not who I think I am. You're who I think you are. Yeah. No, no, no. I am not who you think I am.

I am who I think you think I am. Interesting. Yes, of course. The perception of my perception. Yes, is what I am. Yes, of course. The perception of my perception. Yes, is what I am. Yes. Okay. Interesting.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So you are, in a sense, who you think you are. You are who you think others think you are. Yeah. If you say, well, this is what their perception is of me. Right.

But how do I know that I'm correctly reading the perception? I mean, I think you have a perception of me, but there's two lines of modeling there. There's what I'm putting out. There's what you're taking in and the feedback I'm getting from you based on what you're taking in from me. And then there's me making an assessment of what your impression is of me and me trying to be that impression.

It gets crazy, but it's all about the loops. Yes, yes, yes. But you could trick your mind to saying, well, this is who they think I think I am. You could. You could. You could trick your perception. Yes.

Well, reality is coupled to perception. Exactly. Reality is only perception. It is all perception. It's only perception. That's it. It's only perception. Culture is a reality tunnel.

Culture is an iOS. Exactly. Exactly. What's the most challenging moment of your life you've had and what did you create out of that experience? I had a terrible panic attack. A panic attack is probably the most horrible thing that I've experienced. I mean, lucky enough, I've never really lost a loved one to like death or anything. My grandfather died, but that was horrible.

Well, it was semi-natal. He was a cigarette smoker for many years. It was kind of self-created. That was horrible. Well, it was semi-natal. He was a cigarette smoker for many years. It was kind of self-created. That was tragic. But other than that, yeah, I remember I guess it was like one of those days where I just wasn't feeling well. I was fatigued, traveling a lot. Went to a restaurant, ate too fast, drank a beer, got really bad gas, caused a stomach ache. Stomach ache wasn't going away.

I guess I hyperventilated and I had a brief faint spell. In the restaurant? Well, like standing outside the restaurant by the car with my brother, and he kind of grabbed me. And it was only for like two seconds, but like I never experienced that before. Like the actual like, you know. Losing your consciousness. Yeah, for like a second.

And kind of two seconds later when I was there, did I just fall to the floor? You know, it gave me the worst panic attack of my life because I thought I was dying. Like I thought that the fainting was caused because I was dying. I thought in that moment, heart attack, whatever. It was the scariest thing in my life, and it left a little bit of PTSD. Because even after I went to the hospital, they said, everything's fine. You're fine. Your vitals are perfect.

No, no, no, no, no. The anxiety of it happening again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a horrible experience in my life and it lasted for days i get let i was i was anxious about having another panic attack for days and uh yeah and that was the scariest thing i've ever experienced right right okay so what did you what did i learn yeah ah the power of breath you know sometimes of mind, you can get into these negative loops. And it's amazing how by changing your physiology, you can then change your emotions. If the loop is so self-reinforcing and negative and you can't get out of it intellectually, you can change your physiology, which in turn will change your state of mind.

So it was one of the few times that I learned to take a couple deep breaths and make myself feel better. That was kind of cool. Other than that, just don't eat too fast. Don't make yourself... That's my ritual. Don't hyperventilate. Exactly.

What are some of the rituals you have every single day that you must do? Let's say when you're in the zone, when you're not traveling, but when you're at home. Sleep is huge.

Sleep is huge. A lot of people are like, yeah, whatever. I'll sleep when I'm dead. No, no, no, no, no no sleep when you're alive and your life will be much better yes i think 50 cent said uh sleep is for those who are broke and i think when i was in my early entrepreneurial days i used to be like yeah sleep is for those who are broke if you want to like make money and build your business you gotta hustle and do whatever it takes and then i was just like wow i'm actually getting fat i'm'm exhausted. I'm angry.

I'm past progressive. There's a lot of links between sleep and mental illness, bro. People who don't sleep enough can suffer, can develop anxiety disorder and all these things. So sleep is huge for me. And I like my mornings. I like usually my mornings to be – I like the two or three hours to like drink some coffee. Philosophize. I like to do some exercise in the morning. Just whatever. Like some push-ups, some pull-ups, just kind of some quick get out of the way, have my breakfast, do email. And then usually after that, like around midday by 1, I like to switch from that kind of caffeinated email workout thing.

And then after that, I like to switch it and go into free association, creative mode. And that's like, let's go see a film or let's go for a hike. Something that is about disconnection. So the morning is connect, focus, and then afternoon is divergent thinking. Morning is convergent thinking. Afternoon is divergent thinking. I think that's a good balance for me. How can we tap into our minds, our intellect more, our imagination more? And also, how much of it are we currently using of our minds? How do we tap into our imaginations more? Because it's probably similar to how do you get in the zone?

Yeah. Disconnecting, being in nature. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you need to practice a kind of stillness, right? you need to practice a kind of stillness, right? Like in order to induce contemplative introspection, you need to be, you need to quiet your surroundings. You need to be in places, I think, that are serene. You know, I love a sort of an open, natural landscape,

you know, a snowy landscape, big mountains. You know, I find that the outer reflects the inner. What is without becomes within. It's the power of design spaces. Wherever you put yourself, that's who you become, what you behold. You are where you are. Open spaces,

majestic spaces trigger introspective thoughts, trigger inner vastness. Outer vastness triggers inner vastness. And I think that's huge, huge, huge. And I think people often don't pay attention to the poverty of their surroundings. And I'm not talking about just material poverty, but just the poverty and the choice of what they're surrounding themselves with.

Become your environment, essentially. Yeah, you do. You do. How much of it do you think we're using, our minds? Well, there's that urban myth that we only use 10% of our brains, and that's incorrect. Like our whole brain is active. I think the better question or the better way of saying that is are we using our brain to our full potential? Are we using it effectively?

It's not about like percentage of actual physical use of the machine or the brain, but it's more like when you see a savant on the violin, you're like, okay, well, that's like a brain optimized to do something. What is my version of being a savant on the violin? How can I tap into my genius potentially? And I love witnessing genius. I'm moved by genius. Why? Because genius, I'm not religious but I think genius is God,

so to speak. And so when you witness genius, when you witness the numinous, you're witnessing that which exceeds your intellectual capacity.

So that is what Joseph Campbell describes as God, right? And in those moments, you stop believing in death. That's what's cool. So when you see the world's most exquisite dancer, when you see the world's most exquisite actor, performer, writer, jazz musician, you're like, wow, that genius can never die.

And that's the best feeling in the world. When you believe something won't die, it's the best. You had an interesting conversation with Neil, right? Neil Tyson, yeah. Yeah, about death and about his perspective on it was pretty interesting. Yeah. I mean, his perspective was, look, very beautiful, very romantic. About the urgency.

I've heard it a million times. Yes. Death is what gives meaning to life. Death is what gives urgency and value to things. We appreciate things because they're temporary. I get it. Look. I get it. Look, I get it. And people respond to that because in the face of no other choice, that seems like the healthiest response.

They're like, well, because if you really contemplate mortality, dude, you'll drive yourself into a panic attack. So Neil Tyson's answer in that video seems like the most mature and noble response. Okay? But I don't know know i prefer the temper tantrum i prefer saying fuck like i didn't sign up for this we've committed no crime and we're afflicted with a death sentence according to who who set that standard and interesting there was once an ocean separating us from the other world, and we were like – Screw that.

Yeah. Yeah. Didn't we say, well, you know, the ocean and that limit, the fact that I can't cross it is what makes it beautiful. The fact that I can't cross the ocean. Can you imagine what it could be like? Yeah. We create bridges. Airplanes.

To get the things we want. Yes, bro. And so we just haven't created the bridge yet to have a – Dude, i think mortality we'll look back at a time when we used to bury the dead as a as a kind of uh as a kind of horror a barbaric reality dude poetry and people we love put them in the dirt yeah it sucks so that worms can eat them it sucks i mean i just I think it's inhuman. Yeah. But what can I say?

I'm a romantic who's in love with life. I love your passion. I love your passion. What's the most powerful drug on earth? I believe it's DMT, dimethyltryptamine, which is the active chemical in the ayahuasca vine. South America, it's a psychedelic that they brew from this vine, and it's one of the most potent psychedelics on earth. And apparently it opens your third eye.

It's the same chemical that your brain secretes before you die. And people who have partaken in ayahuasca rituals describe it as really transcendental. If you think of marijuana as like a kind of a kite that allows you to kind of free flow and float in your imagination a little bit, then ayahuasca is kind of like a rocket ship to Venus. So quite a difference in the orbit, in the nature of the orbit. I think MDMA, according to Timothy Leary, is the only psychedelic that he would take with his wife because there's very little risk involved, assuming you have pure MDMA. Sure, sure. But there's very little risk of a bad trip. Right, right.

Because when you amplify feedback loops of mind and world, it could be delicate because an environment that gives you anxiety could give you horrific anxiety. Right. And your own insecurities and anxieties could manifest in heaven and hell. But with MDMA, for some reason, it seems to only trigger positive feelings. And so it's a good entry point to altered states of consciousness. And I'm very excited about the research that MAPS is doing, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, with government permission to use MDMA with people who have suffered from PTSD.

Interesting. For some reason, I thought you'd say love was the who have suffered from PTSD. Interesting. For some reason, I thought you'd say love was the most powerful drug. Oh, okay. So the question wasn't literal. Well, you can take it any way you want. Okay. I thought you'd go there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, look, I think the most powerful feeling in the world is the experience of catharsis. So the neurochemistry of that, like, yeah, that includes love, and it also includes release, and it also includes longing, and it includes a whole range of sensations. But I happen to think that when you actually cry because you're moved by something, there is a transcendental cleansing taking place,

and there is also a sort of willingness to acknowledge and and go with the gushing flood-like experience of these feelings um and sit with them you know how often do you allow yourself to cry not enough yeah i cried this morning that's great i was thinking about girl will do that to you yeah well i was thinking about her and then i decided to watch clips from the movie moulin rouge which i love that movie i think that's a great movie i think that director is a is a marvel marvelous at creating worlds yes world hoods like entire world hoods and uh that film is magnificent because it's a fable it's a fairy tale that uncynically celebrates love in all of its like

gushing intense circus like one yeah and it's just like oh and I love it I love it

I love it I'm a total romantic for those kinds of things I don't have a bone I don't have a cynical bone that comes through I mean that's not true I'm like

I'm like sometimes a cynic that wishes he could be more romantic, and so he'll drug himself with romantic films sometimes as a kind of like intellectual masturbatory, like just like a baptism of, you know, just so I can forget my cynical side. I love it. I love it. What's your favorite romantic comedy? Romantic comedy? Probably Love Actually. I was just going to say that's my favorite movie when you. I love it. I love it. What's your favorite romantic comedy? Romantic comedy?

Probably Love Actually. I was just going to say that's my favorite movie when you were talking about that. Yeah, I love Love Actually. Oh my gosh. My favorite scene is the very end

where they play God Only Knows by the Beach Boys which is considered the greatest pop song of all time and all the characters show up again

in this beautiful montage sequence and then we're at the airport which is an emotional place and then they cut to all the shots of all the people loving each other set to God Only Knows. Beautiful. Only Richard Curtis could have done that. Oh my gosh, yeah, that's my favorite.

I mean, I just watched it like two weeks ago over the holidays. I'm sure you did as well, right? I love it. I also love When Harry Met Sally. I love the ending. New Year's Eve. Very, very melancholic moment. Sure, sure. You think about the past. You realize that you... And the future.

You're prone for emotional revelation. Yeah. And he goes to the party. They're playing Auld Lang Syne, which I love, the New Year's song, Auld Lang Syne. And he tells her

that he realizes that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. He wants to spend the rest of his life to start as soon as possible. And the music's playing and ah, it's so beautiful.

And then she cries, right? She cries, but she cries from happiness. Again, that's the catharsis. So seeing Meg Ryan's eyes well up to Auld Lang Syne before they kiss kills me every time. Gabe J.J. Yeah, it touches me. So it sounds like when you were growing up in high school that you had this vision for yourself to be directing and on film, be able to share your ideas.

I wanted to turn myself into a character in a Richard Linklater film. I wanted to be Ethan Hawking before sunrise. Sure, sure. That character, I felt like, how does somebody write a character that I can relate to so much? This romantic guy on the trains in Europe looking for a beautiful French girl to open up to. That's me. I love going to Amsterdam and riding my bike and looking for a French girl to fall in love with.

So I just like, I guess, yeah, to turn my own experiences into aesthetic works. Yeah, yeah. There is a desire to kind of, yeah, to take your own experiences and make art out of them. Those are inextricably entwined. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've created your vision from earlier days. Yeah. And so I'm curious,

in 10 years, what's your vision for yourself in the next 10 years? Like if you could do anything you want. I want to find a muse and I want her to willingly be part of my aesthetic universe. Like I wonder what would happen talking about love when looking at her.

What's the next shot of awe about love that's not a regurgitation of what I felt with her? You're feeling in the moment. I want to see that. Yeah. You almost created a little mini version of it that I saw. Yeah, yeah. The video you saw. That's pretty close to it.

Yeah. Okay, interesting. I mean, what else in your life? What do you see yourself doing? Like, career-wisewise besides that one? I think it would be really cool to have a seat at the table in discussing how to implement radical new technologies that change humanity. I want to be there talking with the decision makers when we start doing crazy shit. In a salon for changing the world.

Yeah. Like I have this hope that like we're going to move towards a much more integrated planet, maybe something closer to like a world government, maybe something closer to like just a world beyond your violent conflict, you know, a world where the rule, the only rule is kindness,

something like that. And where, when instead of spending 80% of our money on military spending, we start spending 80% of our money on building interstellar starships. And I want to be in the room designing interstellar starships and talking to those scientists, philosophizing with them about what it means to maybe make a warp drive. And can we do that and go to Proxima Centauri and see other stars? I relate to the Jodie Foster character in the movie Contact. stars i want i'm like i relate to the jodie foster character in the movie contact like i'm i'm like i want to be like i want to feel what she feels you know when when they hear that sound from that other world you know like i just want to know that there's something more that there's something

else that there's another chapter that it doesn't end okay love it. A few questions left for you. Before I ask the final questions that I want to ask, I want to talk about Brain Games for a second. This is what, the fifth season? Yeah. Fifth season of Brain Games. When is it? What time?

What channel? Brain Games season five premieres on National Geographic Channel globally in February. I believe it's February 14th, but check your local listings. But it's in 181 countries now. Amazing. Including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, the Netherlands, Chile as well, Mexico, the U.S. I mean, I've been everywhere. So the global success of the show is wonderful.

So Around the World, February Season 5, hour-long episodes. It's going to be great. Awesome. And where can they go online to learn about that? To keep up with everything, my Facebook page is where I'm seeing the most traction now. Yeah, you get a lot of views from your videos there. Yeah. More than YouTube these days. I mean, it's the most

active platform. So I would encourage people to just search for my verified page on Facebook, Jason Silva. If you search Jason Silva, it has a little checkmark, a little blue checkmark, just like yours. And then you click follow. You keep up with everything. The actual URL, I believe, is facebook.com slash Jason L Silva.

But again, you can just search Jason Silva Facebook, the one with the checkmark. Click follow. Keep up with the videos there. I do a lot of Facebook live posts as well. You did a video a couple months ago that blew up with the baby. Oh, yeah, bro. I was like, this is amazing. You had

like 100 million views or something crazy. Yeah, insane. Most viral video I've ever done. What was that experience like with this? Just to recap what happened, walk us through what it was. Sure. I was at my friend's house in new york and we were hanging out we were very much in a flow state yeah and uh and and and what happened is him and i were just like out of our heads and then his wife brought

his little daughter out to the porch and he was like oh jason you should hold her and i was like, oh, Jason, you should hold her. And I was like, oh, God, really? I was holding this baby and I was just like tripping balls looking into her eyes. She was so interesting and her eye contact was piercing. So I guess when I started to hold her, all I was doing was responding to what I was getting from her. The thing is my response was verbal. So what I was feeling, I was narrating. And then my friend with

his iphone just filmed 51 seconds of it and she kept eye contact the entire it was amazing entire time it was magic and the next day i sent it to that to a friend he was like dude post that now i was like really you don't think it's weird it's like post it now posted it on facebook direct video upload and it went viral immediately. I think over 44 million views picked up on Time Magazine, Huffington Post, ABC News, blogs in Europe, like insane. Then I shared a 30-second version of it on Twitter, and it went viral on Twitter, 22,000 retweets. It's like viral gold. It's when you don't plan something. Right? Magic, bro. The craziest surrealistic experience was I was in Israel, Jerusalem, shooting for Brain Games. And it was the last day I went to the Dead Sea with a friend of mine.

We went swimming in the Dead Sea. And then I'm like lying down in the beach chair in this like random hotel in the Dead Sea, like relaxing. And then behind me, two chairs behind me, I hear my own voice. And I'm like, oh, my God, that sounds like the baby video shut up and i turn around and i go up to this dude and the guy was on his facebook browsing buzzfeed playing the video that had just been featured in israel okay you didn't know two rows behind me so that's when i was like oh my god like i broke the internet you know holy moly that's amazing that's crazy um awesome so, oh my god, I broke the internet. Holy moly. That's amazing.

That was crazy. Awesome. So make sure to check out Brain Games, all the information. We'll have it all linked up in the show notes as well. And I'll tell you guys what that link will be here in a second. Also, what's the biggest thing you've learned about the mind over the last five years or five seasons of doing Brain Games? We create the world, bro. Our mind is an apparatus.

Our brain is an apparatus that only can take in limited information about its environment. That's just, I mean, it's incredibly sophisticated, but it actually only processes a limited amount of information.

And the rest is inference. It fills in the blanks. It completes the pattern. It's like a sophisticated algorithm that just fills in the blanks. It has enough information that it needs to make a model

of the environment. So you shouldn't think of what you see in the worlds. It has enough information that it needs to make a model of the environment. So you shouldn't think of what you see in the world as a window into the world. Your eyes are not a window that you see what actually is there. You should imagine what you're seeing as a projection on an image, on a screen in your mind's eye. And what's coming in is like electronic signals that go to like the equivalent of a cable box. The cable box like de-scrambles it and like processes the image and then sends a rendering of that information that your TV screen in your mind turns into an image.

And a lot of that comes from the processing of the information and filling in the blanks to make it legible. So what that means is you bring cognitive biases. You bring stereotypes. to make it legible. So what that means is you bring cognitive biases, you bring stereotypes, you bring your own hopes and dreams, and it colors that signal coming in.

You don't see the world as it is, you see the world as you are. And so what does it tell us? It tells us that our creative and linguistic choices matter, that perception, that reality is coupled to perception, and that perception can be modulated, knobs and levers approach. So that means if we know that we don't get to have an empirical reality, if we know that our brain is creating, actively creating our world and that a lot of that,

so that reality is essentially a co-production between subject and object, then what can I bring to the table with purpose and mindfulness and intention? Instead of letting my brain just create the world haphazardly based on prior experiences that happened to me, I like to have an active role in the process of creating my world. We create our world, so why not have an active role in creating our world? Being the author of it, right? Yes. Yeah. I love that. Okay. A few final questions. All right. First one, what are you most grateful for in your life recently?

Um, first one, what are you most grateful for in your life recently? Um, I'm grateful for health. I'm grateful for cognition and I'm grateful for all the people that I love that are in my life and wonderfully dependable. I love me back and all the creative opportunities that have come my way. Sure. And this interview. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you for giving me a forum to open up so much. Of course, man. This is going to be great. This is a question I started asking people about six months ago at the end of every episode. It's your last day, let's call a few hundred years from now because we've learned how to extend time.

And all of your videos and works of art somehow have been erased from time. Shots of all, no longer. Oh, no. The baby video, gone. Oh, damn. It's erased.

And you're on your last few breaths, and all your family, the most important people are there, and they say, Dad, brother, lover, there's a piece of paper we have, and you got a pen, and you can ink your final three truths. The three things that you know to be true about everything you've learned from your experience in life.

You get three things to write down that we will remember you by and these will be the lessons that we take on for the rest of life. What would you write down as three truths? Choose love, choose compassion, and choose awe. Perfect.

I love it. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Jason, for coming on and being so open and vulnerable and sharing and expressing. Thanks, man. Opening up your mind because it's such a powerful gift. opening up your mind because it's such a powerful gift and I believe that you have this incredible talent and gift

and information and skill to share with the world and so many people out there have their own unique gifts but are too afraid to share it and so I want to acknowledge you

for constantly committing yourself to extending your own boundaries and expressing what those thoughts and feelings are so the rest of us can be inspired to extend our own boundaries. Thank you. So I value you and I value your feelings.

I value you, bro. Thank you, thank you. I felt an immediate kinship and connection with you when we met on the cruise. And our friend Aubrey Marcus, I actually might be seeing him tomorrow, actually. I texted him last night and said, hey, he's in town, make sure you get there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, man, right away, I was like, takes one to know one. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. And make sure everyone go follow Jason on Facebook and your website is thisisjasonsilva.com.

Yes. Instagram, Twitter. Are you on Snapchat? I don't do Snapchat yet because everything is fleetingjasonsilva.com. Yes. Instagram, Twitter. Are you on Snapchat? I don't do Snapchat yet because everything is fleeting. Everything gets erased. It's contrary to my philosophy. I'm going to Snapchat your answer then. Okay, great.

And so people can hear it on Snapchat. Great. But the final question, and we're going to extend this too. We're going to do another video after this. Make sure you guys will have this linked up in the show notes afterwards. We're going to create our own little shots of awe in a little bit. But my final question is, what's your definition of greatness? What's my definition of greatness? Wow. Greatness is when we overcome our own boundaries, when we surprise ourselves, when we are moved to the point of tears, when we extend

our hands towards one another, when we are able to experience intersubjective mutuality. I get to know the insides of your mind. You get to know the insides of my mind and we become one. That's greatness. I love it. I love it. Jason Silva, thanks for coming on, my man. Appreciate you. Thank you, bro. Thank you for having me, bro.. Appreciate you. Thank you, bro. Thank you for having me, bro. What an honor. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Awesome. So awesome. And there you have it, greats. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I enjoyed interviewing Jason. Again, make sure to head back to lewishouse.com slash 281 to check out the entire show notes the full video interview in our studio in la and also our own little shots of all with jason that we shot at my place as well go to lewishouse.com slash organifi and get 20 off your first order and the first 500 people that use that code will also get a free copy of my book as well. Never pay full retail

again for organic and natural products. To get started, make sure to go to thrivemarket.com slash Lewis. And if this is your first time here, make sure to subscribe over on Stitcher and SoundCloud. And of course, over on iTunes at itunes.com slash School of Greatness, or right on your app on the podcast app on your phone. Again, please share this out all over on Twitter, Facebook, social media, everywhere, lewishouse.com slash 281. Get the message out about what Jason is up to. Subscribe to him on YouTube and also check out Brain Games on the National Geographic channel. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Thank you so much for being a part

of this movement of greatness. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. ស្រូវនប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ Outro Music