Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

by Steven Kotler

Put bluntly, we watch porn to get high, not to get laid.

Added all together, the Altered States Economy totals out to roughly $4 trillion a year.

He calls it “the subject-object shift” and argues that it’s the single most important move we can make to accelerate personal growth. For Kegan, our subjective selves are, quite simply, who we think we are. On the other hand, the “objects” are things we can look at, name, and talk about with some degree of objective distance. And when we can move from being subject to our identity to having some objective distance from it, we gain flexibility in how we respond to life and its challenges.

Conscious processing can only handle about 12033 bits of information at once. This isn’t much. Listening to another person speak can take almost 60 bits. If two people are talking, that’s it.

So, if you ask the question—where has this Promethean revolution been hiding— beyond the pale is a big part of the answer. That’s because the experiences at the center of this book stand outside the perimeter fence of polite society. Instead of hearing stories about the possibilities of altered states, we’re treated to cautionary tales. Stories of hubris and excess. Icarus redux.

In very simple terms, the states of consciousness we prefer are those that reinforce established cultural values. We enshrine these states socially, economically, and legally. That is, we have state-sanctioned states of consciousness. Altered states that subvert these values are persecuted, while the people who enjoy them are marginalized.

Ninety-four percent of his subjects said taking psilocybin was one of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives. Four out of ten said it was the most meaningful.

A recent study done by the military found that 84 percent of PTSD subjects who meditated for a month could reduce or even stop taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). In contrast, the control group—who didn’t meditate and stayed on antidepressants—experienced a 20 percent worsening in PTSD symptoms during that same period.

Taken together, all this work—from the NDE studies to the cancer and trauma research to the flow and meditation programs—demonstrates that even brief moments spent outside ourselves produce positive impact, regardless of the mechanisms used to get there.