This is part two of Stealing Fire, another great book on the subject of neuroscience and improving the human condition. If you read this, get ready for some unusual topics that you'll probably be uncomfortable with. The left wants to tear down the Western canon because they see it as the origin of contemporary oppression. They want to censor biology in case contemporary findings on race or gender become weaponized. And to be fair – popular narratives of the past four hundred years are rife with “scientific” arguments propping up despicable things like the institution of slavery, chemical castration of homosexuals, and wage gaps between men and women. In Recapture the Rapture, we’re taking radical research out of the extremes and applying it to the mainstream--to the broader social problem of healing, believing, and belonging. It’s providing answers to the questions we face: how to replace blind faith with direct experience, how to move from broken to whole, and how to cure isolation with connection. Said even more plainly, it shows us how to revitalize our bodies, boost our creativity, rekindle our relationships, and answer once and for all the questions of why we are here and what do we do now? I was looking forward to this book when I heard Jamie Wheal and Jason Silva talking about it on a Clubhouse interview. Now that I've finished the book, I see it's about so much more than they covered on that long form interview, which was excellent and interesting. He has advised the executives at Deloitte, Red Bull, Google, Lululemon, Facebook, TD Ameritrade, Nike, and Goldman Sachs.

Jamie Wheal maps out a revolutionary new practice—Hedonic Engineering—that combines the best of neuroscience and optimal psychology. It’s an intensive program of breathing, movement, and sexuality that mends trauma, heightens inspiration and tightens connections—helping us wake up, grow up, and show up for a world that needs us all.Meduna test" by Stanislav Graf: 30% O2 / 70% CO2 mixture - used to screen for psychosis risk to LSD It contains some of the most interesting findings in the fields of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality from the past century. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives.” The middle section, The Alchemist Cookbook, applies the creative firm IDEO’s design thinking to the meaning crisis. This is where the book gets hands on - taking a look at the strongest evolutionary drivers that can bring about inspiration, healing, and connection. From breathing, to movement, sexuality, music, and substances - these are the everyday tools to help us wake up, grow up, and show up. AKA - how to blow yourself sky high with household materials. And the best part? They’re accessible, by anyone anywhere, no middleman required. Transcendence democratized.

Meaning 1.0: When we found faith and comfort in organized religion. Religions offered (and still offer) salvation to the believers. Music – Music can amplify any of the other experiences. From ancient chants to cathedrals to chain gangs to concerts, music has accompanied us on the journey of human civilization. Oxytocin is indeed the love drug, but few realize that this isn’t the whole story. Studies show that boosting oxytocin increases envy. It increases gloating. Oxytocin can bias people to favor their own group at the expense of outsiders. Harvard immunologist Katherine Wu says, “Oxytocin [also plays] a role in ethnocentrism, increasing our love for people in our already-established groups and making those unlike us seem more foreign.” The Purist tends to prefer the “earned wisdom” of meditation, yoga, and prayer to the more volatile approaches. Wheatgrass and elixirs are their substances of choice. Their catchphrase is “my body is my temple.” Pride is their Achilles’ heel. Gas (to accelerate their growth) is their missing link.This book is not about society beyond religion but about society powered by a new psychedelic-based faith. Also, subtly underlying the value of Christianity and its core message, “none of us can escape from, even if we wanted” :)) In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul defends the future resurrection of believers. And in vers es 50-55 he describes what that will be like. It will happen in a moment, at the last trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, the dead will be raised, and the living believers will be changed.

If the author had striped the scientism out, he could have called this book “Ways to explore the colors of life”. But it’s important to note that when the West started replacing religious guidance with science and liberalism – we lost a lot, too. In a world that needs the best of us from the rest of us, this is a book that shows us how to get it done. Critical Praise Now, hold up right there though. Let's remember. We are human. We get carried away. We may not know the difference between a blessing being a blessing and a blessing becoming a curse. Or the other way around, really. Organized religion (Meaning 1.0) used to provide us with faith and comfort, but was largely founded on the elitist idea that only those who believed were saved. Modern liberalism (Meaning 2.0) is the antithesis to the thesis, the belief that everyone, everywhere through democracy, free markets and civil rights can experience the salvation of the thesis. Hierarchy and equality. But both alone cannot usher us through to the coming world and because both Meaning 1.0 and 2.0 have failed (when taken alone, meaning 1.0 results in fundamentalism and meaning 2.0 results in global inequality and nihilism) we’re being swarmed with Rapture Ideologies, ideologies that share four key beliefs: the world is broken, there will be an inflection point in the near future, everyone we value will be saved, and we need to get there as fast as possible.

A neuroanthropologist maps out a revolutionary new practice—Hedonic Engineering—that combines the best of neuroscience and optimal psychology. It’s an intensive program of breathing, movement, and sexuality that mends trauma, heightens inspiration and tightens connections—helping us wake up, grow up, and show up for a world that needs us all. In Recapture the Rapture, we’re taking radical research out of the extremes and applying it to the mainstream--to the broader social problem of healing, believing, and belonging. It’s providing answers to the questions we face: how to replace blind faith with direct experience, how to move from broken to whole, and how to cure isolation with connection. Said even more plainly, it shows us how to revitalize our bodies, boost our creativity, rekindle our relationships, and answer once and for all the questions of why we are here and what do we do now? The problem is, if you are a serious scholar, you know that all other serious scholars disagree about absolutely everything. This is why I always worry a little bit when I read big history books written by people who didn’t start off themselves in old-fashioned, traditional academic disciplines. If you haven't done that, you just don’t know the kind of knife fights that go on in the long grass over these tiny little details. If you don’t at least understand how the arguments have been waged, you’re not in a position to say, “OK, here I’ve got three world-famous experts disagreeing about X... Which am I going to believe? Whose story is more plausible?” You’re just not in a position to judge that, unless you at least know how the arguments get waged.” Healing – the second nutrient we all need. “The world breaks everyone,” said Hemingway, “and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.” We all suffer micro-PTSD nearly all the time. Having a way to digest our grief, rather than choke on it, is essential. As Bessel Van Der Kolk writes in his brilliant book, the body really does keep the score. First of all, that was a survey that didn’t prove any adaptive advantage. One can find data to support this idea or to contradict it.

Story of navy seals testing tongue electrical stimulation to detect changes in elevation while diving. Also helped prevent the bends History is littered with the stories of joyful ecstatic experiments violently suppressed by the powers that be. Someone discovers a direct route to liberation that threatens to cut out the established middlemen, and they’re rarely welcomed with open arms. Try to storm heaven and there’s almost certainly hell to pay.

These three passages do not share all the same details. But they do have enough in common to point to a common event. They affirm that Christ will return visibly for all to see and the last trumpet points to this event being at the end. It will involve the resurrection of believers who have died and the transformation of those who are still living at his return. When Does the Bible Say the Rapture Will Happen? Meaning 1.0 was all about salvation for the faithful. Religion has always promised inspiration, healing and connection – but it did so while raising up a select group of followers who deserved such benefits, while punishing the nonbelievers.