Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost its Mind

by Jamie Wheal

In our survey of the Big Five techniques—respiration, embodiment, sexuality, substances, and music—there’s a deceptively simple recipe that comes up time and again. Maximize endocannabinoids, endorphins, dopamine, nitric oxide, oxytocin, and serotonin. Increase vagal nerve tone and heart rate variability. Shift your brain into baseline alpha and theta activity, with dips into gamma or delta waves. Trigger a global reset of your brain stem with compounds such as nitrous oxide or ketamine or cranial-nerve stimulation (all these correlate with delta wave EEG induction). Load your nervous system with pulses of energy in the form of electrical current, magnetism, light, sound, pain, or orgasm. Align your spine, and engage your pelvis, limbs, and fascia for flexible movement and integration. Alter the ratios of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen in your bloodstream through deliberate organic or gas-assisted breathwork. Play high-fidelity polyrhythmic music that entrains you out of your default mode network and serves as a carrier wave of your subjective experience. Experience anamnesis—remember what it is that you forgot. Stay awake. Build stuff. Help out.