Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, you can take kind of a wise perspective from actually the Dalai Lama himself. You know, seems like a qualified individual to have a take. And he said basically, you know, the benefits are so profound for this kind of practice. And if there was some sort of electrode that he could implant into his brain to accelerate those benefits, to decrease the struggle that's involved in meditative practice, then he would be the first in line.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Well, folks, I recently read this fascinating book. It's called Spirit Tech the Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering. It's kind of like the merging of biohacking technologies and spirituality and this new term called neurotheology and a whole lot more. It sounds kind of gimmicky at first, I know, especially for people who might be used to just like old school, sit down, meditate, read the Bible, pray, whatever your spiritual practice is, is. But surprisingly, the use of technology can pretty significantly modify or control or modulate in some manner the spiritual experience. And I've talked before on the podcast about how there's things like light sound stimulation machines like the Braintap is one that I've used, or haptic simulators like the Apollo or the magnetic technologies like the HAP B that will shift your body into a brainwave state. Very similar to what you might experience during meditation or breath work, or say, like the use of plant medicines or something like that. But it's really interesting to actually be able to have this book that walks through the merging of spirituality and technology in a really thorough way. I mean, it covers apps that help you to pray or meditate, to cybernauts who are trying to fast track nirvana through magnetic brain stimulation to all of these different things, some of which I think are cool and some I think are a little cheesy, like say, a virtual metaverse based baptism at a church. I was kind of scratching my head at that one. But then there are other things like the God helmet for psychic skills and brain to brain communication between individuals who are thousands of miles apart that I just found absolutely fascinating. So I thought, what the heck, I need to get the gal who wrote this book, or at least co wrote it, onto my show. Her name is Kate Stockley. She's an academic researcher who specializes in the scientific study of religion and women's studies in religion. She wrote a book called High on How Megachurch has Won the Heart of America, which looks at the affective and emotional dynamics animating evangelical megachurches. And then she also wrote this new book, Spirit Tech, which is basically about how brain based technologies are being applied by spiritual seekers to kind of bring in this new, quite interesting wave of technology based spirituality into the US at least. So anyways, Kate, this is all so, so interesting and I'm super stoked that you can join me on the show today.

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. It's always just such a pleasure to have an opportunity to kind of geek out about this stuff and explore. There's always new stuff coming out and stuff. So thanks for having me on.

Yeah. I guess the million dollar question before I let you define why the book's called Spirit Tech and how you'd actually define spirit tech is are you wearing any devices or using any special head tools or you have any implants in your body right now that are helping you to communicate more effectively on the podcast?

That's a fantastic question, but no, I'm all natural right now.

Oh, I'm disappointed. I thought maybe you'd have a TCDS helmet on or something. Well, I am wearing an infrared light wrap around my knee, so there's that. I've got us covered.

Yeah, now that you say. I feel like I should just go get my Muse headset and put it on just for fun.

But yeah, I don't know if it's making my knee more spiritual, but anyways, we'll get to that. So Spirit Tech, it's the name of the book and it was kind of a new term for me. So how would you define spirit tech?

Yeah, so for us, spirit tech is basically an umbrella term. It kind of encompasses a lot of different things and it's not really a natural category of sorts, you know, and this is just kind of what made sense for us to include in the book at this very specific moment in time. But the idea of spirit tech is always changing and morphing and including new things as new technologies come out. So this idea of spirit tech being just brain based technologies, technologies that sort of draw upon the field of contemplative neuroscience and are intended to accelerate the benefits of spiritual practice. So that includes mindfulness, that includes prayer, meditation, mystical experiences, which sort of is along the lines of psychedelic experiences and things like that. So, yeah, the technologies are being employed in new ways. Right. These are usually that have been developed for something else for peak performance or just technological innovation or medical purposes. And now they're being engineered in a Slightly new way to enhance folks spiritual lives.

Yeah, it's interesting too. I don't know if you've gotten this pushback before, but some people. My wife has this opinion, she's like, well, they say that some of this stuff, like some 40 Hz signal that you can deliver to your brain via say, light therapy that shifts you into a gamma wave signal similar to what a monk might get after two hours of meditation and 10 years of practice is some kind of a cheat code. There's no way that it can work as well. And I kind of sort of agree with her as far as kind of like the. It's not about the journey, it's about the destination. Meaning if you practice meditation for 10 years, there's going to be some character development, some endurance, some perseverance, et cetera, that probably is going to give you a little bit more than just like slapping on a headset and meditating. Yet at the same time it seems like if there is, I don't know if you want to call it a cheat, a shortcut, a biohack to shifting your brainwave dramatically, it seems like it's at least important to pay attention to and maybe try out. I don't know what your take is on that.

I think you've got it exactly right. And I think that that is kind of the million dollar question. It's definitely an appropriate response, I think, to the notion of sort of this techno boost that's supposed to boost you into these states that other folks have seen spent 10,000 hours meditating on the top of a mountain to achieve. So there's a couple aspects. First of all, the technology isn't to that point, you know, the benefits that somebody would receive from meditating for, you know, for 10,000 hours.

Yeah, well, I should correct you real quick. The marketing behind the technologies is to that point. But I agree with you. The technologies are not quite to that point for sure.

And we could have a whole other conversation about the marketing. I think it's really important to kind of be wary of, you know, there's always going to be snake oil salesmen no matter where you're looking in the religious and spiritual space and really, you know, in any spaces. But I think that you can take kind of a wise perspective from actually the Dalai Lama himself, you know, seems like a qualified individual to have a take. And he, he said basically, you know, the benefits are so profound for this kind of practice. And if there was some kind of electrodes, some kind of implantation, this is what he said, that some Sort of electrode that he could implant into his brain to accelerate those benefits, to decrease the struggle that's involved in meditative practice, then he would be the first in line. You know, I mean, that's not a direct quote, but that's the essence of what he said. And so I think that we should be careful to kind of still honor and respect and sort of have a reverence for the, the practice. And I think the best kind of spirit tech doesn't claim to do this for you. It claims to be sort of training wheels as opposed to a motor, right? So with training wheels, they help you balance, they help you stay online, stay straight, stay kind of like moving towards your goal so that you don't fall off and aren't too discouraged by the learning process. But you still have to pedal, right? You still have to do the work and do the practice, whereas a motor just sort of zooms you there without any effort on your part.

I'm one of those guys who has this mentality of do the hard work, chop wood, carry water, blood, sweat, tears, go do the hard work. Let's say in the gym, for example, lift heavy weights and make yourself harder to kill, so to speak. But then at the same time, you could stack technologies on top of that. I have this one newer machine I use called an arx and it gives me this really, really intense full body workout in like 15 to 20 minutes. And you'll normally have to be at the gym for an hour and a half to get that, but yet I'm still working super duper hard when I'm using it. It's not as though I'm sitting on the couch with like a as seen on TV electrostim device while I eat Twinkies and get my abs shocked. Or with diet, I think that there are certain things that you could consume before you have carbohydrates, like apple cider vinegar or bitter melon extract or berberine or something like that that would allow you to kind of have your cake and eat it too, to eat carbohydrates and have them have less of a response. Yet I'm also still jumping into a cold bath and going for a walk and making sure I'm not incessantly stuffing my face. So I think with these technologies it's kind of similar. It's like, yeah, you're sitting down, you're doing the breathwork and you're carving out the time for the meditation and you're having the devotions and you're incorporating silence and solitude into your life. But then when you stack technologies on top of the hard work, I feel like you get kind of like the best of both worlds. Right? It's like one foot in the realm of ancestral wisdom and the other in the realm of modern science.

Exactly, exactly. And I've actually seen that quote of yours, the quote of one foot in the realm of ancestral wisdom. One foot in the realm. And I was like, yes, exactly. That's it.

Yeah, yeah. Possibly overused, but I think we should give people some examples here too, because there's just like, so many things in the book I wanted to ask you about, or at least make audience aware of. One of the first things that you talked about was TFUs, which I hadn't heard of before. I was familiar with the transcranial Direct stimulation, the tcds, because there's this headset called the HALO that was pretty big a few years ago, and they still make it. And I have one, and you put it on before you work out. It stimulates your motor neurons for about 20 minutes, and then you get better motor neuron activation and theoretically better learning and better motor neuron recruitment during a workout or, say, practicing guitar or something like that that you might do afterwards. This TFUs, I think it's Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Stimulation, seems kind of sort of similar, but a little bit more oriented towards things like mindfulness meditation. So can you get into that one? Because it was one of the first ones that you highlighted in the book.

It's a similar idea to the transcranial direct current stimulation using electricity, but instead of using electricity, it uses ultrasound waves, which are just sound waves. Right. And the reason that the folks who are doing that research move towards focused ultrasound is because it can get deeper into the brain and it sends a much more precise and focused stimulation. So those two. Those two factors, the depth of stimulation and the focus of the stimulation, were really attractive to the researchers. So they could kind of narrow in on one specific brain region, our brain component, and see how that works. Transcranial Focused Ultrasound stimulation, or tfas, is still in research stage. Right. There's no actual headset out there yet that you could go out and buy, but if folks are interested in that, I would definitely recommend to look into the research that's happening at the SEMA lab. It's the Sonication Enhanced Mindful Awareness Lab with Sanguinetti and Shinzen. Young Jay Sanguinetti is a neuroscientist who's been interested in this stuff for ages. Also an experienced meditator himself, and he teamed together with Shinzen Young, who is an expert meditator, a Shingon monk, and his book actually is called the Science of Enlightenment How Meditation Works. And it's just a really fun, brilliant story of his own kind of navigation of this space that you're talking about, you know, the ancestral wisdom and modern, modern science. He himself, as coming from the perspective of Buddhist monk, was interested in incorporating science. So the two of them, Jay Sanguinetti and Shinzhen Young, have gotten together and are developing this technology. So they're interested not only in kind of researching does. Does TFAs actually enhance mindfulness training in the way that they think it does? How can this be applied to interventions for clinical populations, things like chronic pain, addiction? And then ultimately, the goal is to invent a personal use device. So they have sort of prototypes which are very exciting and have proven very successful.

Yeah, there's a picture of one in the book. It looks a little bit. There's this infrared light cap that I use called a V light that I can use for either alpha or gamma wave stimulation. It was initially developed for dementia or Alzheimer's, but I pop it on every two days just when I'm at work. It runs for about 25 minutes. And I do it just based on the theory that it's increasing the activity of mitochondria in neural tissue. And the evidence of it for dementia and Alzheimer's, and the evidence of it for a shift in brainwave states is convincing enough to me to use it. And it looks like it's about the same size as this TFUS device that Shinzen's wearing in the book. And so it seems like you could probably do a consumer model. But what I thought was interesting was where you talked about how they actually put this on people who had 30 years of meditation experience. And every single person that they tested on all these advanced meditation practitioners reported that they had way less resistance to centering their mind, and they were able to just dive deeper and more quickly into their meditation practice. Which is pretty significant coming from somebody who's an experienced meditator.

Yes, absolutely. And Shenzhen was the first sort of guinea pig that they used on this. And he said, you know, the first day he was kind of like, I'm not really sure it's doing much, you know, but after a couple days of the protocol that they were doing at that time, and especially a couple of weeks into the protocol, he had. I mean, he said the. The most significant intervention that he'd ever experienced after 50 years of meditation training. So that is an experienced meditator and those. That group of experienced meditators that you're referring to who. Who all sort of said the same thing. They said, look like we're having the type of insights and the type of depth of experiences that we would expect, maybe in, like, a silent meditation retreat where they're sitting in meditation for a week at a time or something, they would never expect that kind of insight and that kind of state from just a regular old meditation session. So it's one thing, right, to be. To be using the technology on experienced meditators, which is actually, you know, it's a safety thing. They didn't. To be using this technology on novice folks who are not used to these meditative states, and then just kind of thrust them into meditative states, deep meditative states that they weren't quite ready for. So they wanted to start with the experts. So not only is it sort of a safety measure to first use it on people who know how to handle their own mental landscapes, but also it serves as kind of this proof of concept, right. That they were able to say, look, this is actually approximating the same type of state I get from deep meditation. And they were able to kind of sense that. Yep, that's the feeling. So it was also really, really validating and exciting for the researchers to have.

Yeah. I think what's interesting is that instead of kind of just like subtly shifting brainwave states, like, say, like infrared light or magnetic stimulation might do, or even electrical stimulation or tdcs, this thing goes pretty deep in terms of the depth of penetration, which is interesting, because when you're looking at the area that you would want to target to kind of turn off the busy brain, you're looking at way down in the basal ganglia, deep in the limbic system at the center of the brain. So you got to penetrate a lot of brain tissue, as you highlight in the book, to be able to get to that section I think you even mentioned. Right now, you got to do an MRI first, figure out where that section is, and then use the TFAs to. To target the stimulation to that specific area. But it seems like this is kind of way more powerful than anything out there on a consumer level, right now, at least.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Right now they do. They have to take a picture of the person's brain, load it into a computer, and then they use this whole process called neuronavigation with a camera to see basically into the brain to find the desired target, and then tell the computer, okay, this is it. Stimulate here. And then the computer is Programmed to kind of, with this kind of whole setup of cameras and reflectors to get the technology, the transducer, the TFAS transducer, to focus directly into that area of the brain. So it is sort of quite an apparatus at this point. But that's also because they're doing very specific research. Right. They're trying out different things. They're targeting the interior frontal gyrus, which is associated with mood brain regulation and emotional regulation in the prefrontal cortex. They've targeted the anterior cingulate cortex, which is part of the brain that's sort of involved with like bringing your attention back to the present moment and conflict monitoring and things like that. And then also potentially the default mode network. Aspects of the default mode network, which is all about sort of egoic consciousness and self referential thinking and negative ruminant thinking. So the idea is sort of calm down that default mode network, then we can actually sort of reveal more of this equanimity, meditative state. So. So yeah, while they're doing this research, they definitely need to. Need to know exactly where the beam is heading. Yeah, but yeah, that they could create a headset that you could just take home. You could buy it at store, take it home and do it. It wouldn't have all that, you know, you wouldn't be doing a. Taking an image of your brain each time. So that's part of the challenge, I think, to kind of. To translate this into a home device.

Yeah. But who knows, like 10 years from now, people might have in their kitchen something like a microwave, except it's like an mri. You stick your head in there, you map your brain, then you put your headset on. You never know.

Yeah, who knows? I mean, technology, if there's one thing we know about technology, is that it does move faster than we think it's going to. And what we'll have in 10 years is almost unimaginable.

Yeah, yeah. You know, there's this infatuation right now with things like heart opener medicines for enhancing relationships like MDMA therapy or intranasal oxytocin for kind of boosting your levels of that trust cuddly love hormone. And those would of course be kind of like neurochemical compounds. But when I was reading in the book about the section on what you call RTMs, and I'll give you a chance to explain what that is shortly, I thought it was interesting that a lot of the people were reporting that they experienced almost this increase in social cognition, better relationships. There was one guy with Asperger's which is one thing that that causes is kind of a struggle with being able to interpret social cues and engage in real meaningful social interactions. And it seems like it really, really helped that person in the book with that. But the RTMS, I know it's different than the TFAs, but can you explain what that is and which areas that's targeting or what that might be used for?

Yeah, that's really interesting. So I will just give a disclaimer that the study that. That person with autism that you were talking about, John Elder Robison, what's his name, he wrote a book called Switched On A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening. And I'd recommend it just because it's so fascinating to think about how this happened. Right. How he had this experience from getting his brain stimulated with rtms and it, it transformed his ability, his social cognition ability and actually kind of had very disruptive effects on his life, actually. I mean, he wouldn't go back. It was very valuable to him. But it did negatively affect a lot of relationships because suddenly he was bombarded with all this new social empathic information. Right. So anyways, RTMS is magnetic stimulation. So first you mentioned direct current electrical stimulation with the TGCs, and then we talked about the transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation, which is ultrasound. And now we're looking at magnetism. So there's all these different kinds of ways that you can stimulate the brain. Oh, and you've also mentioned photo stimulation with light, which is also fascinating.

Yeah.

So RTMS is repetitive. That's the R. Transcranial magnetic stimulation. And repetitive just means that it's when you receive the stimulation, it's not a constant current of magnetic stimulation. Usually transcranial direct current electrical stimulation is just kind of a direct constant current. But magnetism is slightly different. So it's just, it's repetitive bursts. And the different protocols might call for different patterns of bursting of this. So sometimes when you're. If you were to watch a video of somebody receiving RTMs, you would hear the machine going like, you know, giving the simulation. So, yeah, so it is a form of stimulation that's actually been on the market for a really long time. It is very, very commonly used in chronic treatment resistant depression and other types of issues that might benefit, like I think Parkinson's. I don't actually have that in my notes directly, but I think, or at least deep brain stimulation has been used to treat Parkinson's disease.

Yeah, I know it has for sure.

Yeah. And deep brain stimulation, that deep brain means surgical. Right. So rts and these other ones that we're talking about are not surgical, which means they're significantly less invasive.

Now, are there any devices right now that are on the consumer level that use RTMs? Like something one could slap on before a date night or a social function or something like that?

I believe there are and there are tons of devices out there. I try to keep track of them, but it's so hard. And every time I think I've got like a spreadsheet with everything, there's more. But I will say that we profiled in one of the appendices of the book you mentioned too, this famous quote unquote God helmet, which is not rtms, but it is a form of magnetic stimulation and sort of repetitive pattern magnetic stimulation. And you can buy those headsets. They're not really on like the major consumer market.

No, they aren't, because I looked like their website was kind of hokey. Like looked like it was designed by a bunch of, no offense, like computer programmers with, with programming skills, but not necessarily an eye for design. And I fill out a form to ask him about it and didn't hear back. I question what it would feel like compared to just the transcranial direct current stimulation because it is a magnetic pulse. I guess the only thing I've used that has a magnetic pulse is that device I mentioned in the introduction called the HAP B which simulates the magnetic signal of cannabis or THC or MDMA or nicotine or caffeine and kind of stimulates a similar response. But it seems like this so called God helmet. I cringe when I say because I'm a Christian and almost feels like a little bit blasphemous to call it the God helmet, maybe the superhuman helmet. But anyways, this giant motorcycle helmet with magnetic coils to put magnetic fields across the brain. I'm sure it's probably more powerful, but I've never used it. Have you ever put one on?

No, I haven't. And it's interesting that you sort of caught onto the blasphemy of that term because in some ways, you know, the original creator of it, Michael Persinger, he was not interested in encouraging sort of like a spiritual perspective. And part of it was to sort of almost disprove the validity of spiritual experiences, of God experiences. So yeah, the idea that this helmet could induce the sense of a quote unquote sensed presence which then a lot of people might, might interpret as a ghost or an angel or God or whatever, you know, very, very, very, very, very few people who put on that helmet actually said that they sensed God's presence. Most people sense sort of like an eerie presence actually. So it's a little misnomer anyways.

But yeah, I think like we get super into the weeds on this. But so, so like my take on this is when it comes to plants, like certain plants used in plant medicines, I do think there's a little bit of a sacred or spiritual intelligence built into the universe and that one of the ways that spirits, angels, gods, demons, what have you interact with people is when they're consuming things like say ayahuasca or psilocybin or fungus or ergo derivatives like lsd, things like that. I actually do believe that you are kind of entering into a spiritual realm in activities like that. I also think that there's other activities that, that might simulate a little bit of that same thing from a neurochemical response, but that aren't necessarily just because they're 100% synthetic. Shift you into that same type of plant in nature based sacred realm. And it seems like the helmet might be that. I mean another example might be some synthetic ketamine or even a really hard round of breathwork where your pineal gland is going to dump a bunch of dmt. I don't necessarily think you're sitting in a room with a demon or an angel when that happens. And so I think there's kind of like two different flavors of a spiritual experience. I think one can actually be an entity based spiritual experience and then the other can simulate the type of chemicals that might be flooding your brain when you have that type of experience. I think it's very, very difficult to differentiate between the two.

Yeah, yeah. I quite like how you explain that though. I do tend to agree that there's something special about the connection with the earth and with nature that comes about with spirit plants. And that's, that's a specific, very ancient wisdom and way of connecting with like the deeper depth structures of nature and of spirituality and stuff. I'm pretty reverent about that kind of thing too. And then this idea that there can be, there can be ways to kind of manipulate the body and the mind into a spiritual state. I actually think, you know, I'm a scholar of religion, that's what I do. And I see throughout history, throughout these, these ancient wisdom practices, people have been doing this forever, right? We have all sorts of types of practices, bodily practices, different types of, you know, sensory stimulations with smells and sights and touch and bodily disciplinary practices. You know, spinning or breathwork is Incredibly powerful. And these have been used. These are sort of technologies of the body, you could say, that have been used since humans have been doing religious rituals, Right. To kind of almost prepare the mind and body to receive the wisdom of the spirits or gods that they're interested in communicating with. And so it's like, you know, the idea that changing something about your physical or environmental stimuli is somehow inducing a fake spiritual experience, I think is not necessary. Right. These can be just as meaningful and transformative and beautiful and real, you know, and true in a sense as any other experience. And we've been doing this for ages.

Yeah. And arguably safer. Also, if you look at some of the psychosis or schizophrenia or violent activity that's often centered around the use of drugs, they can be more difficult to dose precisely. They can, back to my theory about plant intelligence, I think, open you up to a different kind of entity based universe. And I think that some of these technologies simply shift you in a little bit more of a neurochemical or electrical sense into a state of receptiveness or openness or a deeper meditative state that I think think could be safer and also result in less issues with, say, the potential for serotonin syndrome or neurotransmitter deficits or imbalances that you might get with hefty use of something like plant medicines. And I should also clarify, by the way, that again, as a Christian, I have to voice my opinion on this. And I think that human beings for all time, I agree with you. Not only are we dopaminergic creatures from starting with, with human breast milk being like ice cream, and us having this hardwired response to hyper palatable foods, and we go through our whole lives kind of hardwired to enjoy hyper palatable foods based on that dopaminergic response. Not only that, but sex in some people, skydiving or free diving or any other element of kind of an exciting type of activity, but we're also hardwired as beings who enjoy altered states of consciousness. Whether we achieve those through sex or through wine, or through food, or through plant medicine, or through prayer or through meditation or through breath work. I think that we're hardwired, especially consciously to be able to seek out those type of altered states of consciousness. For me personally, and I'd say this also because I know I have a lot of Christians who also listen in, where I draw the line is what I would say is defined in the Bible at least, is so called pharmacia. And the definition of that would just Be basically like using drugs to commune with the divine, to get downloads from God, or to communicate with demons or to call on spirits. Basically, what the Bible define is witchcraft or sorcery. That's kind of where I draw the line with all this stuff. But again, I have absolutely no problem putting on some headset that allows you to get into a deeper state of meditation or. And I know there might be some folks out there might draw in a sharp breath of air when I say something like this. Wearing a headset during prayer or some type of wearable at church that might enhance your experience. I have nothing against that. And so it is interesting. There's a lot little kind of religious rabbit holes you could get into when it comes to what someone of faith might or might not practice.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's been sort of a fascination of mine to wonder about if there could ever be a situation where you would have, for instance, a set of headsets, right. That you would see in the pews right next to the hymnal or right next to the. No, the kneeling. The place where you kneel. I can't remember the name of it. You know, that would be put on in a moment of prayer or in a moment of sort of contemplative silence where folks are just sort of encouraged to prepare their heart and mind for, say, the Eucharist or something, you know, and if this technology could be seen as a helpful. Honestly, a gift, you know, a gift to be used wisely and judiciously to help enhance that experience.

And for people who might be shocked by that, for people, let's say you're a Christian or someone who worships at a church listening, and you think, oh, gosh, that sounds horrifically blasphemous. Again, well, you're in a church with sound systems and PowerPoint projectors and sometimes electrical instruments, and you drove there in a car. And it's not as though we have to disconnect ourselves from technology to be religious or to be spiritual. I don't necessarily think that you got to be a hippie with a toga and leather sandals on all the time in order to connect to God in the right way. You know what I'm saying?

Right, right. Absolutely. And even with the toga and leather sandals. Think about incense that have been in church cathedrals and in religious spaces for a long time, too. What's the point of those? Is to kind of create this sensory experience of this ritual space, you know, to kind of set the tone of the space, which is also just, you know, I mean, it's different. And I know it feels quite a bit different than having a bunch of wires and electricity and things like that, but conceptually you could put them into the same category.

Yeah, yeah, it's super interesting. And again, like a deep, deep rabbit hole. So I want to ask you another question about. Well, related to some of these things that I guess would be. Should probably be categorized as more meditation enhancers. One I've been messing around with. I found it in your book. I got my hands on one. It's called a Zendo. I'd love for you to explain a little bit about how it works, because when I do meditate, when I do sit and do breath work, and I put this thing on again in way, way less extensive and involved in that TFAs that we talked about, or a God helmet, but it seems to work remarkably well. I put one patch over my left eyebrow and one over my right temple, and I feel like within about 20 seconds I can turn my brain off and shift into meditation really quickly. Can you explain what's going on with this zendo thing?

Right. I'm so fascinated to hear your review of yet your report. That's so great to hear. Yeah. So it sends. It's a direct current of electricity between those two patches, one over the left eyebrow, one over the right temple. And the actual mechanism that makes these. These stimulation processes work is not quite exactly known. There are a series of hypothesis on what they're pretty sure is happening. But the brain is like the last frontier. Right. We understand how neurons work, we understand what's happening. But in terms of how exactly this electrical current is affecting and targeting the brain is still a little bit of a hypothesis. Right. So it's believed to cause either a depolarization or a hyperpolarization of the neurons, which basically is just a fancy way to say that it affects neuronal excitability. So it's either inhibiting how often neurons fire or how easily they fire, or it's increasing how often or easily the neurons fire.

Now, is that different than the way that you mentioned the museum, which I used a long time ago? I think I actually have one around my house somewhere, but I haven't put it on in a while. It seemed different than the muse, but are they using different technologies?

Yes, totally different technologies. So the muse uses neurofeedback rather than neuro stimulation. So we've only been talking about neurostimulation so far. So just sort of categorically we're switching gears to talk about neurofeedback now, and neurofeedback does not stimulate the brain at all. What that headset is doing, the Muse headset is actually. It's some electrodes that are reading the electrical activity that's happening inside your brain. It's not sending any electricity into your brain. It's just reading what's happening. So it's reading the brain waves that your brain is producing. And your brainwave produces all sorts of different wavelengths of electricity all throughout the day, depending on what you're doing. Right. So if you're sleeping, your brain is going to be producing very slow delta waves. Delta waves are associated with actually dreamless sleep. So they're the slowest types of waves. And then there's theta waves, which are also associated with sleep, but they tend to appear while you're dreaming or when you're awake, but you're really, really relaxed or in deep meditation, you might have theta waves. And then there's alpha waves, which are sort of like arresting but alert state when you're in really deep thought or focusing. So alpha wave training is actually very popular. People want more alpha waves, especially since, for example, beta waves, these are the most common type of waves that you have when you're sort of in normal.

Life walking around, stressed out on a podcast.

Yeah. Very focused. Yeah. High beta waves are associated with stress and anxiety. So people like, you know, which are actually obviously very, very useful. When you need to be stressed and anxious, you need to have your brain click into that fast state. Right. You want to think fast. You want to have that fast wave activity. But of course, in our contemporary society, a lot of folks have too much beta wave activity and are hyper alert and anxious when they don't need to be. Right. So they might do that alpha wave training to kind of bring them back to that alert but calm state. And then there's also gamma waves, which are the fastest, and they're often associated with, like, peak performance and peak concentration and mental activity. So. So, yeah, okay, so the Muse reads your brain waves and then has, you know, in its. In its programming, say it wants you to calm beta waves, increase alpha waves, maybe put a little bit of theta in there because you're trying to meditate. Presumably, it's if you Muse headset on, it's meant for meditation aid. And then Muse also markets, has a sleep headset also. So the sleep headset is probably going to reward more theta waves, but it's.

Detecting, it's not stimulating. And then you would use an app that you would look at very similar to what you might do in a neurofeedback laboratory on a computer screen that will, for example, reward you when your brain shifts into the desired brainwave states and perhaps somehow punish you not achieving your desired goal on the app. Or in the case of a neurofeedback laboratory, like I've spent time at the Peak Brain One in la, you're flying a spaceship, and the spaceship slows down and the music gets quiet when you shift into beta, and then the spaceship starts flying again when you shift into alpha, if you're trying to downtrain Beta, for example. But there's no actual stimulation that's occurring.

Exactly. The stimulation that is occurring is like this sensory stimulation through sound and visuals. Right. So it's not actually. I mean, it's, I guess, stimulating a sense.

But so theoretically, you could combine, like, you could. I don't know if they both fit in your head, but you could combine like, the Zendo patches and the Muse headband and do stimulation combined with neurofeedback.

Yeah, yeah. And people have actually talked about that. And actually I've recently heard Jay Sanguinetti saying that on either a podcast or some talk that I heard him give where he said that that was sort of a dream of his, was to incorporate that into his. Into the TFUS headset is sort of to just combine both. Right. To have both aids, you know, one is sort of a conscious. You're looking. You're looking at the feedback on the screen and hearing the feedback. When I did neurofeedback, it was. I went in there into the office, and I heard these, like, dings and beeps and blings. And I thought, honestly, these are kind of annoying sounds. I didn't really like them. I didn't find them to be, like, consciously rewarding, you know, but what I learned is that my brain was rewarded by it, you know, so that's really all that matters. You're not actually doing anything except for trying to meditate, and your brain is receiving this feedback that it finds rewarding in order to produce more of the desired waves, just as you were describing. So I think that that's kind of an interesting aspect of it, too. But, yeah, so if you were doing the neurofeedback and having some little brain stimulation in there at the same time, which would be fascinating, right? To be able to have the brain stimulation registering on the EEG headset that's reading your brain, you might be actually able to see that stimulation affecting your brain, too, which would be cool.

Yeah, yeah. Gosh, it's super interesting. And there's a chapter in the book called Virtual Sacred Reality. And you talk about this thing called Microdose VR, which is a great title considering the current infatuation with both microdosing and VR. I had a friend who was telling me about, I think it was on his Oculus headset, he had a program called Trip, I think it was called, that simulated something very similar to something like a psychedelic plant medicine journey. When he put on the VR headset, I'm not quite sure what the. What the outcome or the purpose of using that would be, but this Microdose VR, I couldn't tell if that was something different or what exactly it is, because, again, it was one of those deals where I went to their website to check it out. I couldn't quite figure out how it worked or how it would be used. But have you looked into that much at all, or could you explain what it is?

Yeah, yeah. So Microdose VR and Tripp and actually another one that I'm probably the biggest fan of, Sound Self. Trip and Sound Self are actually created by the same company, but these all belong under the umbrella of Technodelics. So a play on the word, obviously, psychedelics. You know, they're technodelics. So the idea is that they're very much inspired by the psychedelic experience, which hence the term, the word microdose. Right. So the idea is that.

They'Re simulating the type of visuals and putting you in this mindset state with no drugs. Like you're. You know, no drugs involved, no actual psychedelic involved. But it is. The intention is to kind of approximate that experience without drug. So microvr is still in the alpha phase, meaning you can only access it if you're sort of one of their kind of testers. Right. And I think you can sign up to be a tester, if I understand correctly. I'm not entirely sure how that whole world works, but. So they're still developing it.

Do you need extra hardware when you get it, or are you literally just, like, accessing the software and using your computer screen or something to use it?

I think you need a VR headset for sure. I need a particular.

Version of the VR headset with controllers and everything, because it basically it combines music and dancing and visuals and sound, special music.

That you can kind of remix in the experience. And what you're doing is the visuals are created based on your dancing and based on kind of this particle emitter that you can shoot using the controllers. So they basically use the same type of technology that is used in guns and cannon launchers for games, for VR games. And instead of shooting bullets and cannons, you're shooting beautiful lotus petals and fractal spirals and imagery that sort of go along with the music and create this whole encompassing, unfolding, meditative space for yourself. So it's very stimulating. Meaning you're standing up, you're dancing around, you're having an experience. Right.

Wow. It's really interesting because again, I think that some of these plant based chemicals might have as many downsides as upsides. And yet this seems to. To possibly simulate an experience like that without the potential for some of the neurochemical or spiritual blowback. It's kind of odd they call it microdose VR because usually microdosing is you're using sub perceptible doses of either a psychedelic or a hallucinogen, but usually kind of off label, not for the intended experience of journeying, but just to enhance creativity or focus or productivity or something like that. It seems like they should just call it, I don't know, Journey VR or Heroic Dose VR based on your description of it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's kind of what the videos look like to me. I've never had the opportunity to use it, but it looks like a. Yeah, it looks like a real perceptible megaduce.

I question the utility of it. I could see a bunch of people kind of engaged in escapism in their basement, wearing their VR headsets and kind of tripping out and then getting back to their day. But I suppose some people go again, skydive or swim with sharks and, and maybe some people want to get their rush doing microdose VR. So it's interesting. Now back to the thing about church and the intersection of technology and religion. I kind of thought it was interesting and this might be a sneak peek into the future of spirit tech that you talk about. Spiritual directors, like the emergence of people who would actually, I guess, just walk people through the use of stuff like this. Where would you envision spiritual directors fitting in? Why do you talk about them in the book?

Yeah, that's so interesting. So spiritual direction is already a whole field of profession. You know, you can, you can contact a spiritual director who, who comes from any sort of tradition. And they basically are sort of a pastoral figure, but they're meant to sort of almost like a combination between a pastor and a coach, you know, who's going to kind of help you, help coach you along on your spiritual journey. Right. And yeah, so if you came from a Christian tradition, you would, you would probably be most attracted, I would assume, to a spiritual director that comes from the tradition that you are. That you're in. Right. So you could have a Catholic spiritual director, you could have a Lutheran spiritual director or Methodist spiritual director, you know, all sorts of things. You could also have a Buddhist spiritual director. But the idea that we were sort of playing with in the book is this idea of a spiritual director that would really, really understand the realm of spirit tech. So if you had somebody who is interested in exploring but also interested in maintaining a reverent perspective, you know, they're interested but cautious. Which is kind of like what you were describing. Right. With folks who are wondering, where are the boundaries? You know, I'm interested in sort of exploring this biohacking stuff, but I also don't want to go into this realm where I'm inviting in something unholy. Right, right. And so a spiritual director would help navigate that space. So you could imagine this whole space that we're talking about. You know, at the very beginning I said this is an umbrella term, spirit tech. There's a lot going on here. So the idea that a spiritual director would have sort of an umbrella type knowledge to help either recommend like, okay, well, I think that maybe, you know, sound self VR is a better choice than microdose VR for you. Or maybe they might say, well, let's start out with neurofeedback, and you, if, if you really like that, then we can incorporate a little bit of the brain stimulation because that's a little bit more invasive and a little scarier for people sometimes. So, yeah, the spiritual director might help answer some of those questions too.

It's kind of interesting to think about the fact that, because I'll get texts sometimes from friends who I've encouraged to have a prayer and Bible reading and devotional practice in the morning, and they just keep experiencing cognitive resistance or they fall out of the practice. But. But you could see a future in which maybe there's some type of institute or at home technology or director who could run a QEEG on that person or SPECT scan or some other type of brain map, figure out what type of brain waves are firing, which ones aren't firing, maybe they're in high beta and low alpha, maybe there's neurochemical imbalances related to distractibility, et cetera. And then in conjunction with that person's commitment to spiritual development, they could actually incorporate technologies like a zendo or a muse, or even the use of certain neurotransmitter replenishment protocols. Like L DOPA or something like that, to actually allow that person to, from a biological, physical standpoint, more easily develop themselves spiritually. And again, I realize that there are sections in the Bible that say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens, strengthens me, and that the only way to salvation is through Jesus. Yet I also think that God made us pretty intelligent creators and wouldn't frown upon us using our brains to allow us to basically grow spiritually, possibly in kind of a little bit of a biohacked, faster way. Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I definitely think that we were gifted with this incredible ability to build technologies. And that is not to say that all of the technologies that we build are always used in good ways, because they're obviously definitely not right. So there's this quote from Shinzen, I believe, who basically said, a technology powerful enough to liberate is also powerful enough to enslave. And I think that that's a really good reminder to say that, like, these technologies are tools, right? You can use a tool to build a house and to build shelter and to cook food and do all these things, and then you can also use the same tool to kill somebody. So it's not the tool itself that's either good or bad. It's really how we manage it and how we incorporate it into our lives. So it's so smart. What you were saying about the VR, you know, like, you can imagine somebody sitting down in their basement, just. Just zoning out and, you know, kind of overdoing it. Right. With these different techno delics because they are so powerful. They are powerful and they. And that could be harmful. But you can also imagine somebody, you know, waking up and putting on the VR headset for a little meditative experience for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and having it just kind of boost their spirit, connect them to themselves, help them feel more grounded and alive and awake and ready for the day. And that can be such a gift, right?

Yeah. And obviously I think it's going to take some pretty intelligent people who have kind of like you, a little bit of a history in both religion and spirituality and also technology to be able to build out something like that. But it's very interesting to think about where we might be in the next decade or so. There's similar to your idea of this emergence of spiritual directors who might specialize in technology. There are also centers that are specializing in some of this stuff. One that really caught my attention in the book is called Folks Field. What's field and what happens there.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Field is. Field sort of represents to me this, the fact that we're learning so much and things change quite quickly. So when we wrote the book Field and I had an interview with Devin White, who is the co founder of Field, it was one thing and now it's sort of a different thing. So they have sort of pivoted since the book was written. But in the book they talked about having this vision of this space, right, where you would come in and it would be a calm, almost a spa like space, you know, where people are encouraged to kind of be in touch with themselves and to.

Feel at peace. Right. And then you would go through different testing in this peaceful, calm space and they would be able to give you maybe a brain map that would show the parts of your brain that needed work or that were struggling or suffering. You can actually see. You can see evidence of suffering in the brain. And then they would have a team of folks, a whole team, coach, therapists, neurofeedback, neurostimulation, all these different things to help meet your goals and your needs at this point. I just recently looked at their website and it looks like they've sort of shifted gears. They're now focusing a little bit more on neurofeedback. And instead of.

Yeah, that was my experience too, because I looked them up after I read the book and it looks like maybe they aren't doing as much of the spiritual direction, spiritual enhancement. They've kind of backpedaled back to neurofeedback and stuff like that.

Yeah, exactly. And it looks like their neurofeedback system is sort of a proprietary system that uses AI training, artificial intelligence. So. Yeah, so I haven't really looked into that too much yet. It seems like, yeah, instead of having kind of a brick and mortar place where people would go, now they're interested in creating these spas that you might find in other buildings. Right, so you have. Yeah, so. So again, it's sort of an interesting thing. I'm not entirely sure what the whole story is behind that, of course. I think that these are really smart, interesting people who are just kind of rolling with it and seeing what works and what the market needs. And I mean, I would imagine, quite frankly, that Covid played a role in whether or not an actual physical place was going to take off during that time.

Yeah, probably. But speaking of COVID I mean, it is interesting that even though I chuckle at some of the stuff in the book, like a virtual reality baptism and fake digital water and stuff that it just kind of seems weird. There are other things. I mean, just imagine during COVID even though I don't think that places of worship should have been shut down, I don't think the government should have been allowed to do something like that. I realized that's just more of a political statement by me personally. But yet, let's say that people weren't able to go to church in the face of some kind of a serious pandemic. They could go to a greater level than just watching Church on YouTube. They could put on a virtual headset. They could be there with other people in the congregation. It could feel as though they're standing in the pew. They could have a haptic sensation of the sound or the organ or the piano playing. There's a lot that you could do. And you get into this in the last, last chapter about kind of the future of spirituality and the idea of things like merging virtual reality and church. Again, I don't think the best replacement for church, but as something that someone could use should they be unable to attend or sick or at home with their newborn baby or something like that. And then, very similarly, as we talked about before, the idea of sitting down in the morning for your prayer and your devotion and your meditation or whatever else you're doing, and putting on a little headset first, or maybe doing breathwork paired with light sound stimulation to shift you into a better brainwave state first. And again, not that that stuff is necessary, but these are certainly cool enhancements. And what I think is interesting is that a lot of this stuff. I got your book, but I think I've been just naturally experimenting with some of this stuff even before reading your book. When I settled down for my afternoon meditation, I put on a brain tap along with this wearable that I mentioned earlier called the Apollo. That's a haptic sensor that goes on my right ankle. And I put that magnetic band called the Hap B on. And then I'm typically laying on some type of a sound therapy mat or an infrared table. And the difference between that and just going out in my backyard and sitting cross legged. I realize it sounds unnatural and synthetic and contrived, but there's a night and day difference. I mean, I can shift myself so dramatically, I can feel like I've slept for eight hours when I do something like that. And there's just something to a lot of this stuff. And frankly, like we talked about the Zendo, we talked about the Muse, I just talked about some of these other devices. It's pretty surprising what people can already do with the stuff that's already available and not that expensive.

Oh, absolutely. And even just the, you know, just remembering how kind of challenging it is to actually cultivate the virtues of this sort of mindful awareness, this present centered non judgmental space that meditation and contemplation and prayer is often gearing us toward is actually quite challenging. Right. Especially in our contemporary everyday society. You know, we're moving so fast, we're stressed out, these things, yada yada. It's nice, it's wonderful. It's a beautiful gift to be honest, that we have these kinds of technologies and that, that people have been, you know, this is actually quite recent to be honest, that folks have finally begun listening to the wisdom of the ages and incorporating that into technological development. So things like sensory clarity, equanimity, concentration, compassion, these kinds of virtues are often not part of our daily lives. And so the idea that a little techno boost, a little bit of technology could help cultivate them is beautiful I think. You know, and so many people try meditating and just give up because it's, because they don't feel like they're having any benefit. They feel like it's wasting their time, you know, these kinds of things. So yeah, if you could buy a set of training wheels to help you out, I think that's great.

Yeah, yeah, I do too. I think it's wonderful and I think the book is super thought stimulating and I enjoyed it immensely and I'm glad that you and I were able to kind of delve into some of the nitty gritties of the book and our own opinions on some of this stuff too. So what I'm going to do is I'll link to the book and I'll link to a lot of the other resources and stuff that we talked about. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com spirittech there's kind of two T's in the middle there. Spirittech so go to BenGreenfieldLife.Com spirittech and a link to Kate's book and some other websites and some of the things that we discuss. So if you want to jump in there if you want to look, leave your questions, your comments, your feedback. If you want to tell me it's ridiculous to wear a headset to pray or anything like that, feel free to jump in because I read them all and I love to hear your guys thoughts and comments too. So Kate, thank you so much for coming on the show, for writing this book and for being so open to talk about this stuff with me.

Yeah. Thank you so much. It's always such a pleasure to talk to somebody who's so into it like you are and has a bit of experience with these kinds of technologies.

Very little. Very little. But growing in my experience and learning every day. All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Kate Stockley signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today.

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