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

Then parts of the prefrontal cortex begin shutting down.29 We experience the selflessness, timelessness, and effortlessness of transient hypofrontality. This quiets the “already know that, move along” voice of our inner critic and dampens the distractions of the past and future. All these changes knock out filters we normally apply to incoming data

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In his first video, “You Are a Receiver,”23 Silva

DARPA ran an experiment demonstrating just how simple this really was. In their study, a trained storyteller told an audience43 wired to EEG sensors and heart rate monitors a heart-wrenching tale of childhood bullying. Then she asked for donations to an organization working to end this behavior. Simply by reviewing the biometrics, DARPA scientists

Value = Time × Reward/Risk

developing Martin’s “opposable mind” isn’t easy. You have to give up exclusively identifying with your own, singular point of view. If you want to train this kind of creativity and problem solving, what the research shows is that the either/or logic of normal consciousness is simply the wrong tool for the job.

doesn’t seem to matter which technique we deploy: mindfulness training, technological stimulation or pharmacological priming, the end results are substantial.

In 2007, working with Iraq War veterans at Camp Pendleton, occupational therapist Carly Rogers of the University of California, Los Angeles blended surfing (a reliable flow trigger) and talk therapy into a treatment for PTSD. It was essentially the same protocol Mithoefer used, only with the flow generated by action sports substituting for MDMA. Mu

Often, an ecstatic experience25 begins when the brain releases norepinephrine and dopamine into our system.