---
title: What 73 High-Dose LSD Sessions Teach You About the Mind of the Universe (Ep11)
slug: 2020-12-03-what-73-high-dose-lsd-sessions-teach-you-about-the-mind-of-the-universe-w-christopher-m-bache-ep11
date: 2020-12-03
type: interview
channel: "Christian Yordanov | Longevity Author"
language: en
license: CC0-1.0
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people:
-
  name: Christopher M. Bache
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  openalex: A5045900737
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Audience: ** 
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons. So come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov. Hello.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
And welcome to the Connecting Minds podcast. My name is Christian Yordanov, and thank you so much for joining me today on this 11th episode of the podcast. Today I have Chris Bache on. We had a two-hour conversation, almost. It was a wonderful conversation; I relished every single minute of re-listening to it while I was typing up the show notes. So much depth to it, you're in for a treat. Basically, the focal point of the conversation will be Chris's latest book, *LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven*, where he gives an account of his 20-year journey of high-dose LSD sessions between 1979 and 1999. He undertook a deep exploration of his consciousness and into the mind of the universe, as the title suggests. We also briefly discuss his first book, *Lifecycles*, which is about reincarnation. 

So you're about to hear some amazing stuff from Chris. Really awesome guy. So glad he agreed to get on the podcast. He was actually the first guest that I approached, way back in September. So he was the first interview I conducted. I was extra nervous. I did a ton of preparation. I really immersed myself in his work, you know, his books, his videos, etc. It was a very enlightening and illuminating experience. He really opened my eyes to so many concepts, authors, thought leaders, and pioneers in various fields. I have a reading list from here till the end of... I don't know what. It's that long, you know, but I really think you'll enjoy this episode. I don't want to offer too many spoilers. I think the best thing to do is to just let Chris speak from his experiences—hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were. Even though we'll only be scratching the surface in this interview, he has a rather large body of work that I highly recommend you check out. Of course, links to the books, his website, some YouTube videos, etc., will all be in the show notes and on the website. So yeah, please get in touch with me. Let me know how you like the episode, and thank you once again for joining me today. I really appreciate you investing your time in this podcast. So without further ado, I present you Christopher M. Bache.

All right, today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Christopher M. Bache, PhD. Chris Bache is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, where he taught for 33 years. He is a fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and on the advisory board for Grof Transpersonal Training and the Grof Foundation. He's an award-winning teacher and an international speaker. He's the author of four books, and he lives in North Carolina now. He has written several books; today, one of the topics of our discussion will be his latest book, *LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven*. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time out to join us today.

**Chris Bache: ** 
It's a pleasure to be with you, Christian.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
All right, so we have a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short space of time. What I'd like to do is start with what you were up to between the years of 1979 and 1999, and maybe introduce us to your journey into exploration of your consciousness, but also in parallel, if you could tell us how your career progressed during this time. If you could kind of tell this parallel story—it seems like you lived almost two lives.

**Chris Bache: ** 
Yeah, I'd be glad to. I came out of graduate school in 1978. I was trained as a philosopher of religion. I was raised in the Deep South and got my PhD from Brown University. I had finished my dissertation, published part of it, and was looking for where to take my research next. As a young academic, I had no experience in psychedelics whatsoever. At that time, I was 30 years old, and I encountered the work of Stanislav Grof. I read his book *Realms of the Human Unconscious*, which was published in '76, and as soon as I saw his work on psychedelic research, I recognized that this was an important development, not only for psychology but for philosophers as well. He had a method for giving us experiential access to dimensions of mind and the universe that many people have talked about and theorized about, but not many have had direct access to. So I made a choice at that point. I wasn't comfortable with the choice because LSD was illegal, and his work was primarily centered on LSD at the time. Because it was illegal, I divided my life into two parts. In my daytime job, I was a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. I taught courses on world religion, psychology of religion, Buddhism, comparative mysticism, and Transpersonal studies. In my personal life, I began a 20-year journey exploring and working with LSD in a systematic, rigorous manner using Stan Grof's protocols.

Over the next 20 years, as I progressed through the academic world, I did 73 high-dose LSD sessions—completely internalized, completely protected, with a sitter using traditional formats, privately, safely protected from the world with the assistance of a sitter who kept me safe and secure. I found that it engaged me systematically into an ever-deepening exploration of my own consciousness, and eventually into a consciousness that was so vast it could be described as the consciousness of the Divine. But I often refer to it as the mind of the universe. While I continued to teach, and I loved being with the students teaching these areas, I basically developed this second life. It wasn't until after I retired from the university and was past the statute of limitations for working with what our culture deems illegal substances that I could begin to share the full scope of the experiences I had on this substance and extract some of the philosophical implications of these experiences.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
Right, and so that was a 20-year journey that ended in 1999. How did your career progress over those 20 years?

**Chris Bache: ** 
Oh, in a very traditional manner. I progressed, I mean, was promoted up the academic ladder as one does. I published throughout the process. I won two awards at the university for my teaching. I loved teaching and being with the students. I did the things that an ordinary professor does. I worked on committees. I did all the things you do at a university. My department was complex, filled with philosophers and Religious Studies professors who became my dear and close friends over time. It was just kind of a traditional academic career.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
And you had three kids along the way, yeah. So we could say you led a productive life, contributing to society, which I think is important. There's still this stigma; people recoil when they hear someone, even a learned person, an academic, did stuff with psychedelics. They recoil and think this person will never be a productive member of society. It's quite the contrary. So along the way, around 1990, you published your first book, *Lifecycles*. Could you please tell us what *Lifecycles* is about?

**Chris Bache: ** 
*Lifecycles* is about reincarnation. When I was on my first sabbatical, I had been researching reincarnation. When I met Stan Grof's work, I also encountered the work of Ian Stevenson, a professor at the University of Virginia. His work convinced me that he had collected empirical evidence that reincarnation was a simple fact of life. It's simply something nature is doing. This was jarring because reincarnation hadn't been a serious part of my academic training. It wasn't part of my education in Western religions, philosophy of religion, or the scientific study of religion. But here it was, this massive body of evidence collected from children all over the world, from different cultures, who have spontaneous recall of their previous lifetimes. Ninety percent of the cases he never publishes because they don’t meet the highest scientific standards, but about 10% are substantive, indicating these children have an accurate and documented recall of their previous lives. I wrote *Lifecycles* after teaching about this material for years. The book begins with a review of the evidence for reincarnation from Ian Stevenson and past-life therapists. Then I explored the implications of this evidence—what difference it makes if we're in a universe where reincarnation is a fact. It was my first project. It ruffled some feathers because they weren't expecting a book like this, but it’s been published in six languages and became a staple in my courses—a very accessible and academically sound investigation of reincarnation.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
Yeah, it was sold out. I've been trying to get it from Amazon for a while. In your book published in 2001, *Dark Night, Early Dawn*, in chapter two, you summarize what you discuss in *Lifecycles*, which I really appreciate. From the books behind you, you seem like someone who reads and presents this information digestibly, which is something I really appreciate. What's interesting is that in cases of children who remember their past lives, the average period between lives is around two and a half years. But with past life regression therapies, it was around 40 to 50 years. That’s fascinating because it suggests that your soul or being in between bodies for such a long time in these dimensions could imply unfathomable learning and development. I was aware of Ian Stevenson’s work, so you don't need to convince me, but for those hearing this for the first time, Chris has a great YouTube video summarizing Ian Stevenson's work and past life therapists, which I'll link in the description.

**Chris Bache: ** 
Thank you. Philosophically, the important aspect of reincarnation research is that it invalidates our dominant paradigm about consciousness. Our dominant thought in university culture is that our minds are produced by our brains. The brain is considered the core reality, giving rise to the mind. But if there is any period between the death of one personality and the birth of another, with an organized transfer of memories, then there must be a dimension of reality where consciousness exists independently of a physical substrate. This reveals a much more complex universe than traditionally thought.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
Exactly, that's beautifully said. This is where things like LSD, Psilocybin, and certain other entheogenic compounds allow us to tap into these dimensions. With that said, Chris, can you give us an overview of Stan Grof's work and what happens when an individual takes a normal dose of LSD versus high doses consistently? Can you discuss the phenomenology, talking about psychodynamic, Transpersonal, and perinatal, as Grof laid it out? Also, what did you contribute on top of Grof's paradigm generally, and what you experienced in your journey?

**Chris Bache: ** 
Stan differentiated between low-dose and high-dose psychedelic therapy. First, understand in psychedelic therapy, you're not taking a psychedelic to engage the world—there's no taking psychedelics and going to concerts. It's a highly protected, introspective environment, focusing completely internally with eye shades and carefully selected music, confronting whatever is emerging and letting it guide you. Psychedelics are considered amplifiers of consciousness, not directing it in any particular way, but amplifying it, making far-removed dimensions of the mind more accessible. 

When you amplify consciousness and focus contemplatively, your mind may use this to cleanse itself, confronting shadow elements—worry, fear, terror—from childhood to infancy and even back to the womb. If you persist, as with low-dose therapy (50 to 150 or 200 micrograms), you reach the perinatal level of consciousness, confronting universal fears: death, meaninglessness, life's purpose despite inevitable destruction. Entering the Death-Rebirth process often involves reliving one's birth, transcending physical consciousness barriers. The birth and death experiences are complexly intertwined, pushing beyond physical memory, entering a deeper existence.

A significant part is experiencing ego death, where your physical personality dissolves, leading to awakening inside a spiritual reality. Continuing this process takes you deeper through Transpersonal consciousness levels as Stan identified: psychic, subtle, and causal. For terminally ill cancer patients, a high-dose strategy was developed (300 to 500 micrograms) aiming not for therapy but Transcendence. It offered a glimpse of where they were heading upon physical death, effectively reducing death anxiety. 

I wasn't a psychologist; my primary interest wasn't clinical. As a philosopher, I explored deeper consciousness dimensions. The early high-dose treatments were capped at three sessions. I deduced, if three were safe, more should be too. After three sessions on lower doses, I chose a high-dose regimen, thinking it was a personal transformational process—a faster path to enlightenment, clearing personal karma faster.

This model exploded as my work deepened. After about three years, I entered into vast consciousness dimensions, tapping into the collective unconscious far beyond personal experiences. I did 73 high-dose sessions over 20 years: four years initially, a six-year pause, then another ten years, averaging five sessions a year—about every two and a half months.

I discovered repeating death and rebirth cycles, about four or five. Each deeper level of spiritual or Transpersonal reality required another surrender, letting go of identity at progressively deeper levels—a series of death and rebirth experiences. Each consciousness level operates at higher intensity or frequency, a more energetic level. It's akin to mountain climbing, adjusting to higher altitudes—you acclimate systematically to more energy instead of less oxygen. A self-purification process occurs where you empty levels of being operating at lower frequencies. Without it, experiences at these deep levels fragment; with conscientious engagement, clarity and coherence emerge, stabilizing awareness at each consciousness level until, pushing the boundary, another purification process throws you into another layer of reality with different principles.

As a philosopher, this exploration was the adventure of a lifetime, exploring the universe through my consciousness. Contrary to contemporary thought, our consciousness isn't individualized; it's not an atom of just personal body experiences. Deepening exploration shows no bottom to our mind—our individual consciousness is like a wave in an infinite ocean; penetrating the wave drops you into the ocean, continuing the exploration. 

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
That's awesome. Now, going back to the earlier journey stages and something Grof talks about is the initial stage of working with LSD. People generally explore or go into the perinatal level, where various traumas surface, all the way back to birth trauma. In *Dark Night, Early Dawn* and *LSD and the Mind of the Universe*, you have a great analogy explaining COEX systems as the dialogue or emotions of a protagonist in a novel. Could you give a deeper overview of what the perinatal level actually is?

**Chris Bache: ** 
A COEX system is a system of condensed experience. The psyche organizes memories in many ways, one being grouping life experiences by emotional content or themes. Imagine underlining a novel’s protagonist’s fear experiences in yellow and greed experiences in green, then cutting up the book, clustering green in one pile, yellow in another—a psyche might organize its emotions similarly. Encountering your shadow emerges in these condensed experience clusters, like a tornado of layers—the outer layers, most recent versions and, deeper, the fundamental core, the original trauma. Peeling COEX systems over time, confronting the core trauma dissolves the entire system, emptying its life influence.

Stan found COEX systems rooted in pre-born experiences: birth itself, a traumatic event. Floating peacefully in the womb, the fetus is suddenly pushed as the environment becomes hostile—water breaks, contractions ensue, building pressure until climax and release to a new environment with its parents. Stan identified four stages or perinatal matrices, COEX systems rooted in this perinatal consciousness level. They often appear non-sequentially. 

The first often correlates with labor onset—contractions without cervix dilation. Then intensified contractions with cervix opened—the Death-Rebirth struggle begins, culminating in the final expulsion from the mother, and beatific bliss ensues. Observing many who've experienced this reveals digestion of life as a physical being. Digesting what brought them from another reality into time and space shatters physical identity and dissolves stress, trauma, and anxiety from birth to open beyond physical limits, entering a spiritual world with endless possibilities.

**Christian Yordanov: ** 
Yeah, that's desribed really well. It's a complex experience. In psychedelic experiences we have the perinatal level, but also the psychodynamic level. Lower doses like in psycholytic therapy elicit more psychodynamic experiences, involving interpersonal relationships and emotions. Once we overcome the perinatal, dissolving these COEX systems or birth trauma, what then happens?

**Interviewer: ** Then you open up into a process of remembering who you really are, underneath your physical incarnation and experiences. It's a process of engaging what you might think of as the deep structure of the universe. Now, of course, one way to understand what really happens in these sessions is to understand what's happening in life normally and naturally. For me, reincarnation is a simple fact of life. When we die, we expand into another universe, and when we're born, we contract into our egoic identity. This process happens over and over again, century after century, millennia after millennia. What seems to happen when you work with a substance like LSD is that you accelerate and deepen that process. So when you go through ego death in this process, you experience a death that feels terrifying. It feels like you're physically dying, having lost control, but there is a fundamental way in which you do die psychologically. Yet, when you die, you don't cease to exist. You're reborn into the deeper landscape and tapestry of consciousness, exploring the world you enter when you die physically. There's a strong correlation between experiences of deep psychedelic work and those who have near-death episodes. People who suddenly have a heart attack, or whose body almost dies, find their consciousness explodes into a deeper dimension for a time, and then they come back talking about another world. Something similar happens with LSD work, where you slowly shake off your physical identity and open into this deeper, spiritual universe. 

If you return to that repeatedly, working with high doses of LSD—I worked with 500 to 600 micrograms every session—though I don't recommend that protocol for reasons I give in the book. Those experiences kind of replicate the entry experiences of people with near-death episodes, and you enter a deeper dimension. You see your life on Earth from the spiritual dimension and begin to contact the way the world is organized in spiritual reality. There's a structure and an organization to it, akin to a relationship like physics. The spiritual world gives birth to the physical world, like the Big Bang. Physics stops at that point, saying it can't go any further, but in deep states of consciousness, you can enter the reality that gave birth to the physical universe. You begin this, which I think of as a communion. You don't take your ego—cleaned and buffed up. You lose your small reality and dissolve into this larger reality for the session's duration. As the drug wears off, your consciousness shrinks back to its ordinary state. If you've worked well, with optimal conditions, you return with accurate memories. It's essential to write down your notes within 24 hours, as the window closes. Waiting too long means you won't remember as exactly. Doing this repeatedly, you gain a coherent travelogue of your experiences. When you approach the universe's mind systematically, with a desire to understand, the massive infinite consciousness takes you in and begins a process of teaching you what's going on in this deeper reality.

**Christian Yordanov: ** There were a couple of questions that came to mind, but it's clear that drugs like LSD can accelerate one's spiritual practice. However, as you write, it's easy to think you've accomplished more than you have in a single session. What are some of the most important practices, besides keeping meticulous notes, that helped you contain these experiences and embody them daily?

**Chris Bache: ** That's an important question because stabilizing these states of consciousness and integrating them into your earthly life is challenging. It's not hard to break through to these dimensions, but holding on to and integrating them, remembering, and incorporating the teachings into your life is crucial. Half of the work is getting out, and half is integrating and holding on. As expressed in sessions, "there's the dying of seeing and the dying of keeping," with keeping being the integration of these experiences.

I engaged in spiritual practice, meditation, and different spiritual traditions during these years. Eventually, my practice centered on the Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition, beginning with Transcendental Meditation, Vipassana, and being deeply influenced by Christianity. I was studying to be a priest for four years, absorbing Christian values of compassion and self-sacrifice, alongside elements from Eastern traditions.

Having a strong spiritual practice is crucial for integrating the vast awareness and energy these sessions open you to. Tidal fluctuations of energy and knowing need a context to digest, holding them in your heart and mind. Grounding is essential. Although I didn't appreciate it much then, looking back, the stability of my career, marriage, and responsibilities as a father were foundational. Every week in the classroom, every day with my children and wife, provided stable grounding activities. Being a homeowner and maintaining a consistent lifestyle allowed me to open into transcendence without fragmentation or inflation. 

Psychedelics' great danger is psychic inflation—you might think a deep experience makes you a deep or holy person, but that's an illusion. What's important isn't the profound wisdom experienced on the session day but how much of that can be embodied in everyday life. Raising children and marriage keep you grounded and prevent an inflated sense of self-worth. In the end, you're just a human among humans, doing your best.

**Christian Yordanov: ** That's what I really like about you. You seem to have zero ego inflation despite touching dimensions that may take lifetimes for others to reach. I'm curious, if you didn't have so many responsibilities and weren't so busy, how often would you have gone into sessions if you could have?

**Chris Bache: ** That's an interesting question. I've never thought about that. I probably would have been tempted to go more often, but I'm glad I didn't. Completely blowing your mind apart and deeply drinking from the universe's power is not only psychologically demanding but physically demanding as well. The process demands a lot from your body and subtle energy system, your qi or prana. It's very demanding to open and close your system repeatedly.

I don't recommend this protocol—I would start differently, with lower doses and only occasionally using high doses. LSD tends to push the cosmological ceiling, so I would balance it with other psychedelics like psilocybin or ayahuasca, which are more body-grounded. They keep you much more connected to your emotional and physical body. Balancing cosmic and body-grounded psychedelics produces a more solid journey. While doing this work, I wasn't aware of these ideas. It was pedal to the metal—go as far and drink as much as possible. I'm glad I didn't go more frequently because it takes time to assimilate this material. I think I bit off more than is wise, even with precautions. I'd take years to fully internalize them, and I believe I'll continue to absorb them for the rest of my life. They've impacted not only this incarnation but potentially future lives.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Talking about the toll, just reading about a session day for you—no breakfast because of potential vomiting, working all day, and then up all night documenting everything—sounds more demanding than a weekend of partying. You took good care of yourself.

**Chris Bache: ** Yes, it's very demanding. Once you reach past initial levels and enter deep ones, each session starts where the last one ended. The energy levels are extremely high, and I had to take precautions. I took care of my body, watched my diet, and ensured it was aligned and pliant, using massage and chiropractic care. An out-of-alignment body feels additional pressure and pain. Besides spiritual practice, I intensified my efforts for days before and after sessions. The opening is vast, tapping deep into the universe, and requires deep care.

It took time for the window to close completely, not flashing back, but your system opens and closes naturally over a month. Engaging in this deep work sets off ripples in the ocean of consciousness affecting others. I noticed some students activated by my work, not because I shared it, but because consciousness is interconnected. Deep engagement affects those with karmic ties. Taking care of myself wasn't enough; I had to attend to others impacted by my work, highlighting the social dimension of working with psychedelics.

**Christian Yordanov: ** I like that you took it in this direction, quoting Marie Louise von Frantz on Carl Jung's conclusion about individual work's collective impact. Your description of consciousness as a lake or an ocean aligns with this—sending ripples that reach far. Could you tell us about the mid and later stages of your journey? What experiences did you start having?

**Chris Bache: ** It took about two and a half years and 10 sessions to move through psychodynamic and perinatal levels and experience a deep ego death. Surprised at what happened next, every session consists of a cleansing phase, followed by an ecstatic phase. Initial purification encounters deep disturbances. Surrendering to this process eventually culminates in another level of death, leading to a transcendent, spacious place with positive teachings.

After ego death, expecting to have finished shadow work, I entered what I call the Ocean of Suffering, experiencing vast collective suffering systematically for two years. It felt like I was encountering aspects of the collective human psyche, draining pain from an unconscious repository of our species. Not just personal transformation, but working on behalf of humanity, collective healing occurs at this level.

I also experienced my life as a completed whole and was taken back to the universe's beginnings, receiving teachings about humanity's evolutionary trajectory. Eventually, the suffering ended, and I encountered archetypal reality—more real than time and space. I spent a year and a half exploring this realm, learning the collective psyche's workings and how individual minds are part of the species' larger mind.

Another death-rebirth process led to causal oneness, experiencing the universe as a singularity, breathing as one, living within it, like experiencing a forest's collective life. After a year, another death and rebirth took me to a clearer, hyper-clear domain of light, the diamond luminosity, an absolute ecstatic reality I reached only four times in five years across 26 sessions, marked by intense purification processes.

This journey had five levels: the personal, collective, archetypal, causal oneness, and diamond luminosity. It's been a long journey.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Fascinating. I encourage people to explore your book and videos for more depth. Near-death experiences and Tibetan Buddhism describe seeing a light tied to essential nature. Could the Buddha's Bodhi tree enlightenment relate to this light? Can these states be reached without LSD?

Audience: ** It sounds arrogant, I know, to even suggest touching into that which the Buddha touched into. But I think the cosmology of the understanding of the universe that emerges in psychedelic states is essentially the same cosmology that emerges in the great mystical traditions of the world: the understanding of the bardo, the understanding of the post-death domain, the understanding of the fundamental union and oneness that underlies all existence. We're tapping into the same reality. And it's really important to understand first that when you're working with psychedelics, you're tapping into this reality in a temporary manner. When you're working with meditation and the sort of slower contemplative methodologies, which take longer to mature, you gain access in a more abiding fashion to these realities. So I don't want to suggest in any way that my experiences of these realities were comparable in terms of their significance to the experiences of the great spiritual masters of our different spiritual lineages, not at all. But even to have temporary access to these realities changes you forever. They completely banish your fear of death; they allow you to revise your complete understanding of the world that you live in, of how the world works. And also these experiences are very useful to use in your daily meditation practice. Even to have temporary access to some of these dimensions of reality can be used to deepen and accelerate your daily contemplative meditation practice. So I think there is a correlation there. I would place the Diamond Luminosity experience in what the Buddhists call extra-samsaric reality. Samsara is the world of individual existence, the world of cyclic existence. And so that includes everything in the physical universe, where everything arises and falls, but also in spiritual reality. When you die, you enter the bardo, multiple levels of reality where everything is temporary. Everything is much longer than physical reality, but still, everything is temporary. That's part of the world of reincarnation. But then it's possible to go outside that entire system, outside the system of death and rebirth, outside the reality of samsara. And I think that's what I was tapping into in the Diamond Luminosity work, and that's what is held as a possibility in all the deepest spiritual traditions. Dharmakaya is the highest level of reality that one taps into in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. Again, I am not a mystic, I'm not an enlightened being. Temporary access is different than permanent access. All honor to the great masters who have abiding, permanent access to these realities, but even just to touch them temporarily is a profound, life-changing experience.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Agreed, agreed. And I like, again, that you exercise humility. But I think it’s what they do say, we all have the Buddha nature, like the core of mind is our essential nature. Yeah, I think the Tibetans also call it Rigpa. But if we are all part of this universe, which is, like you say, all the divine, we must have the spark of the divine within us. So to be able to access it, whether it's for a second or a lifetime, is certainly significant, especially with our current egoic minds that have so many layers of complexity that obscure this essential nature. So I think it’s good that you're humble, but these are very important experiences. And we know there is some research being done that psilocybin can induce a mystical experience in people. And these are very important things, especially in our world today. And maybe let’s go a little bit back from the Diamond Luminosity in terms of—

Audience: ** Quite there, let me add something to what you just said. In my own sequence of experiences, after getting in contact with the Diamond Luminosity domain and that extra-samsaric reality, my experiences actually pivoted and began to lead to a deeper internalization of that reality. Eventually, it brought me back into the right here, right now, my present life, my present mind. And it uncovered this Buddha nature, this essential nature, which is right at the very center of my mind and at the center of all of our minds. It is a hyper-clear, transparent reality, out of which all emotions arise, out of which all sensation arises, out of which all thought arises. It neither begins nor ends. It’s not private; it’s universal. It is our essential nature. When we tap it, we know that we're tapping into the essential nature of all beings. It doesn’t change. It neither begins nor ends. It has no boundaries, and yet it is the most fundamental level of our own being, and to tap into it is like finding diamonds in your pocket. I mean, it's just the most precious thing in the world, and here it is, right in the center of our own mind. And it's impossible to be without it. We don't pay attention to it. Usually, we don't rely on it, but there it is. It's always waiting for us. It's always there, always nurturing us, and patiently waiting for us to turn our attention away from the world outside of us, back into the world within us. And when we go deeply enough, we find this extraordinary truth waiting for us. And I want to differentiate: you don't have to go through all the experiences that I went through in order to find this. I differentiate the use of psychedelics for spiritual awakening, which is what we're talking about here, and using psychedelics for cosmological exploration, you don't have to go through archetypal reality. You don't have to go back to the birth of the universe. You don't have to explore the deep structure of bardo reality to clear your life in a way that allows you to have immediate, daily access to this fundamental nature that's living inside of you, that is what you are at the deepest level. And so I just want to make clear—

**Christian Yordanov: ** I'm getting goosebumps.

Audience: ** Yeah, you know, what I did is best described in terms of the project of cosmological exploration. I wanted to understand the deep structure of the universe. I wanted to understand how things work. But you don't have to go through that to rest in your own essential nature. That is a much more targeted project in one’s spiritual practice.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Well, you are, you know, a scholar, an academic philosopher, so I think most humans cannot undertake what you did, even if they wanted to. I'm sure there are a few out there that will attempt to follow in your footsteps, and you know, God bless them, and best of luck to them, you know. But I don't think most people will have the resolve to go through, because a byproduct of your experiences, as beneficial as they are to your soul's evolutionary trajectory, you've also contributed a significant amount of thought to the Transpersonal field, critical appraisal of, you know, the near-death literature, the reincarnation work. So there's a lot, you've made a great contribution as part of your work, right? But there's a couple of, there's actually quite a few directions I want to take it, but I'd like to actually go back, because we will definitely come back to the light and the Diamond Luminosity. I feel like this is a topic that needs a little more discussion before we finish up. But let's just go back to a little earlier in the journey. So in the book, I believe the chapter was called "The Birth of the Future Human." You did mention a little bit about that. But can you tell us what visions you had about the trajectory of our human evolution?

Audience: ** Well, what I'm going to describe now, I know sounds fantastic. I know it sounds seemingly arrogant to even suggest that a human being can have these kinds of experiences, but I have no recourse except to simply describe what happened. I think that chapter, "The Birth of the Future Human," is probably the most important chapter in the book, and it's the most surprising to me and unexpected. Because when I began this work, I thought this was about my personal transformation, my personal whatever. But what I found was as the work deepened, once I reached a certain point, about 23 sessions into the process, when I would move into the ecstatic portion of the session, I began to be shown things. And what I was being shown was consistent session after session, starting from the 23rd session, going all the way to the 70th session. Periodically, from time to time, I would be drawn deep into what I would call Deep Time. Deep Time is a level of reality where time behaves differently than it does inside time and space. I was taken outside linear time into Deep Time, not into eternity, not where there is timelessness, but into a deeper dimension of time itself. And I was shown things about where humanity had come from and where it's going. First, I was shown that the entire evolutionary project is rooted in profound cosmic love and that everything that's happening to us inside time and space is part of this process of creation. And creation emerges out of love and is always suffused with love. I was shown over and over again that humanity is coming to a significant shift in its future, a profound catharsis point, a bifurcation point in its history, and that we are on the verge of a profound spiritual awakening, a profound transition in our history as a species. I began to realize that nature simply isn't trying to awaken individual human beings. Nature is in the process of awakening the entire human species, that there is something taking place at the very core of our collective psyche. Once again, we're looking at a species which is reincarnating over and over again every 100 years or so, pulsating with life. And that we were evolving, not only individually, but we were evolving collectively. I kept being shown we're coming to a turning point, a major turning point, a profound awakening of the spirituality within the human heart, a profound tapping into the oneness that underlies all existence. Because the ego is a magnificent thing. The ego is beautiful. The ego is individual awareness, but the ego lives in a divided reality. So there's your reality, my reality. Everybody's in separate realities, but oneness is the reality that we all emerge out of. Oneness is our common core reality. And I was shown an explosion of oneness within the human heart and a society which is rooted in oneness creates different social structures and different social forms than a society which is rooted in the division of ego. So I kept being shown that there is this turning point coming, this spiritual awakening, but it never explained to me how it was ever going to happen, how this was going to take place. Then in 1995, in my 55th session, I went through what was, to me, a seminal experience. I went into Deep Time, into the deep future, and went through the death and rebirth of our species. Instead of ego death or collective death, I experienced a major global crisis driven by ecological crisis, driven by global climate change and all its derivatives, which triggered a crisis in all of our governing structures, all of our economic structures, all of our political structures. This was a crisis putting enormous pressure on the human species and causing enormous suffering. I was experiencing this not as Chris Bache, but as the species itself. I had dissolved into the species mind. I experienced a period of increasing loss of control, inability to control the outcome of circumstances, inability to control the circumstances of one's life. Families being torn apart, just a crushingly painful experience. And what I saw, what I experienced, or what I was shown, was these experiences were so widespread, it wasn't like any other period of history before. If there's a hurricane that impacts one country or one part of the world, it doesn't touch the other parts. But this was an experience touching all the people on this planet, wherever they live. And that means it was registering not only in their individual lives but was registering in the collective psyche itself and hyper-energizing the suffering we were going through, was hyper energizing the field of the collective psyche, driving it into what physicists would call non-linear conditions. So physicists differentiate between systems operating in a linear mode and then systems which become so highly energized that they enter a non-linear mode. When systems are in non-linear modes, things can happen that can't happen in linear conditions. Small changes produce large outcomes. Things can happen very, very fast, and nature pulls out from within it higher forms of integration, higher forms that were always potentially present but weren't there before. I mention this because what happened in the session is that as this pain got worse and worse, we came to a point where it looked as if we were going to die. This was a massive extinction event for the species. But just when we had gotten to that breaking point, the storm, as it were, passed, and we survived. And when we began to pick ourselves up off the ground, so to speak, and rebuild our lives, we were different. We had been changed. There was something about this profound catharsis, this profound inheriting and shedding of the karma of our past as a species, something about the way this trauma had broken us down and forced us into a new openness of heart, into a new depth of mind, into a new depth of sharing with other human beings, the way that happens in a crisis. You know, when there is a huge social crisis, suddenly people are helping each other, they're working together. This was happening, and it opened up a future. I saw a future emerging. I experienced a future emerging where human nature had been changed. Changed. It wasn't just that our political system had been changed, our industrial system had been changed, but the fundamental core of human nature had gone through a pivot, and we were now operating out of a different collective psyche. We were operating out of a collective psyche that knew things that previously only advanced spiritual beings knew we had access to. The universe, which paralleled the access that the great saints and saviors of history had had, but now it had been sufficiently internalized to become part of our DNA, so to speak. We were literally spiritually awakening. We had awakened into oneness. And when we began to move forward, we built a different society. This is what I came to call the birth of the Future Human. That's, I think, what's happening in history now. We have entered the labor of birthing the next iteration, the next formation of the Future Human. This Future Human has been gestating inside us for thousands and thousands of years as we live and die and live and die and reincarnate again and again. We have been growing and developing, but the ego still tends to dominate our lives and choices. But it was as if in this crisis, something shattered, something opened, and our deep consciousness, our soul consciousness, exploded forward in the human psyche, and we began to live out of a different psychological basis, and we began to create a different world. Later, after this 55th session, in the 70th session, again, I was taken deep into the future and was given the experience of the Future Human. I dissolved into this archetype of the Future Human. If I try to describe this being, I'll probably end up crying because this being is so magnificent. We are giving birth to a new child in the universe. This being was extraordinary, magnificent—a heart that had been healed of all the traumas of all the wars and all the terrible things we've been doing to each other at our lower level of development, a heart that was profoundly encompassing the whole breadth of the human family. And a mind that was profoundly clear, able to download information from the mind of the universe, capable of knowing things, sustaining levels of awareness that previously only great geniuses and great spiritual beings had been able to sustain. This was an awakening that is changing the very foundation of life on this planet. I think we have entered, I mean, I think Covid-19, perhaps, is simply the overture of a crisis that is going to deepen as global climate change impacts us on deeper and deeper levels. We know we're going into a hard time. We're going into a time of deep, deep disruption. What's important to understand, I think, from a spiritual perspective, is what's actually taking place. What's actually happening is that we're in the process of burning off a huge amount of personal and collective karma. We are burning off the consequences of the choices that we have been making as a species. We have been operating out of a private consciousness, an individual consciousness where I can make my life better if I push off the same pain and suffering onto other persons. But now we are beginning to create a profound sense of oneness consciousness, where we are beginning to build a world that truly works for all. This is a spiritual transformational process. It's an evolutionary process driven not so much at the individual level. Individuals are cooperating with it, but it's being driven by the intelligence of the universe itself. Just as it has driven all the other quantum jumps that have taken place in the evolutionary process, it's likewise now taking humanity into this deep jump in its archetypal structure. We are living in hard times, but we are living in extraordinarily important times that will lead to a magnificently beautiful outcome if we do our jobs well if we really dig deep and do our jobs well.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Like you. I think you like to say that we chose to be here.

Audience: ** Yes, when we do more, we chose. Yes. I think every human being on this planet, before they incarnated in spiritual reality, they could see what we were getting into. They chose to be part of it. So there are no victims here. There are just people, actors in a play, so to speak, who made conscious choices to be on this planet during this convulsive period. And when we die, we don't die. I mean, we die clearly, and there is mourning to be done. But at a deeper level, the soul doesn't die. At a deeper level, we come back, we keep coming back, and we continue to participate. And this is how life works. I mean, we are going through a process, and humanity will be here for millions of years, for billions of years yet. I mean, this, we are evolving in the life of the universe. We are being taken somewhere extraordinary. And even though my personal Chris Bache won't live to see it, my soul will participate in later reincarnations, as we all will. It's a deep and because we all chose to be here, I think we can get we should get past quickly the anxiety of being here. We can simply roll up our sleeves and get to work doing the work that we chose to do before we incarnated.

**Christian Yordanov: ** This is, you know, perfect again, you set me up perfectly for what I wanted to discuss next. I've been thinking about death a lot lately, which for many of my peers would be like, what's wrong with you? Are you depressed? But I think this is such an important thing to think about and even more importantly, get over so you can get on with your mission, your intent that you came with here. So I know you've said this in other places, but I would like to share this with my audience. What I and you already kind of mentioned some stuff, but how do you when you think about your own personal death as Chris Bache? How do you think about that?

Audience: ** Well, one of the consequences of doing this work is that I have no fear of death whatsoever. In fact, death is something I'm looking forward to. I'm not eager to push it; I'm not going to run off and kill myself, but I have no fear of it because I have already tasted the world that I'm going into when I die. To be afraid of death is to be trapped inside the physical world and to be trapped in the illusion that the physical world is the only world that's real when so many areas of research are showing us that this is simply not true. Physicists have shown us that 96% of the universe is invisible, dark matter and dark energy. So only 4% of the universe is physical matter manifesting as physical matter. Near-death research is showing us again and again that when we die, we enter an extraordinary, beautiful dimension, we return home, so to speak, to the reality we were in before we incarnated. Reincarnation research is showing us that we go back and forth over and over again between the spiritual reality and the physical reality, not because we're being punished, but because we are choosing to participate in the conscious creation of this species, in this conscious universe, I'm not afraid of dying. I look forward to it in the sense that, of course, I look forward to graduating. I look forward to returning to the domain of bliss. It's kind of like when we're born: the hard work begins. When we die, we graduate into returning to a deeper level of knowing, to a deeper spiritual reality. Now, of course, if you go through a deep enough spiritual death and rebirth in your physical life, then you don't have to die physically in order to die psychologically. There are beings, great beings, who are in their physical body, but they are complete. They are already living the bliss of spiritual reality inside their physical existence. And I think this is where we're going. We are literally creating heaven on Earth, in that by going through our own developmental process, we are physically alive on Earth, but inwardly, spiritually, psychologically, and even physically. In some ways, we become so transparent to the infusion of the spiritual world that we are literally mingling Heaven and Earth inside the vessel of our physical body. So that when we speak about someone who is spiritually awakened or spiritually liberated, another way of thinking about that is they have simply become transparent to the energies of the spiritual universe. They don't have to die in order to die spiritually. They are already living in the spiritual world inside their physical body. And when you have enough of these experiences, when you go through death and rebirth often enough, one of the things you learn is that you can't die. The essence of what you are can't die. Chris Bache will die. The shell, the shell of Chris Bache will die. The physical form will die, but the essence of the individual does not die. The essence of the individual continues to live in an even greater and more luminous and more love-soaked reality. So if there were any one thing that I wish I could bring from my work and give it to people, it would be the loss of the fear of death.

**Christian Yordanov: ** That's so important. I think, yeah, now when you enter the bardo and you see the light, what do you, maybe this is a question you cannot answer at the level of Chris Bache, but what do you think you will do when you see the light, when you merge with the light, when you become the light? Do you think you will ever come back in human form?

Audience: ** Well, I've decided to put that decision in the hands of the being that I will be after I die. I have spent so many days exploring the beauty of that spiritual universe at so many levels that naturally, there is, in me, a profound desire, even a need to explore that universe more. And there is a longing to enter more deeply into this magnificent universe. So naturally, I would rather be there than be here, but I basically trust that when I'm there, I'll know better than I could know here, what would be the best thing for me to do, and how to support our collective developmental process than I can know here. So I just have rolled that decision into my soul, into the consciousness that will hold Chris's life and merge it with all the other lives that this soul stream has had, and I'll let that decision be made then.

**Christian Yordanov: ** So just as we wrap up, maybe let the listeners know why you decided to stop your sessions in 1999, please.

**Chris Bache: ** Well, as I explained in the book, I stopped for two reasons: one was pain, and one was heartache. These states of consciousness are so intense; they involve such a significant increase of our energy. I found that my physical system was running very hot, and my subtle energy system was running very hot. I was having more and more difficulty integrating the sheer energy it takes to enter these states in my physical incarnation. I did lots of spiritual practice that helped, but in the end, I began to understand that I was really running too hot. I needed to stop and let my body calm down, to let my subtle energy system calm down.

There was no pathology. I wasn't having any flashbacks or anything like that, but I needed to sort of cool down, so to speak. But that's not the main reason I stopped. The main reason was heartache. Once you've known the joy of dissolving into light, becoming light, and dissolving deeply into the crystalline body of the Divine, coming back into time-space, into the limitations of my present incarnation, it's just painful. It's so difficult to go from such exquisite intimacy with Infinite Being back into private, finite existence. The going out and coming back was becoming too hard. Eventually, I asked the universe, which I call my Beloved, never to take me back this deeply until I could stay with her forever. That's when I stopped the sessions.

I was surprised by what happened next. I thought I had been given so many gifts, so many blessings, that I could stop my sessions and have a wealth to digest for the rest of my life. While that's partly true, I found in me a deep and profound longing to return to these states of Diamond Luminosity. I knew I couldn't return to them. It wasn't good for me to return to them anymore in this incarnation. I knew I would not go back there again until I died. Even if I took a massive dose of LSD today, I would not return to these dimensions. It takes years of sustained work to develop the energy and momentum to enter these states of being. So, I knew I was waiting until my physical life ended before I could return. There was a tremendous unfulfilled longing for more communion.

As long as I was returning to these states periodically, once a year or so, this imbalance had not manifested. But once I stopped, I realized I had created an imbalance between too much transcendence and not enough immanence. Now, the entire physical universe is the body of the Divine. It's not like I was leaving the Divine and coming out of the Divine, but I was going into the transcendent Divine and coming back into the physical Divine, into the immanent Divine. It took me about 10 years to really make my peace with this and become comfortable living inside the physical universe again in my physical condition.

I also discovered that part of the sadness I experienced in ending my sessions was that my culture didn't allow me to talk about these things. Because psychedelics are illegal, I couldn't talk about it at the university. I'm a philosopher, and I love to teach, but I wasn't allowed to use these very important experiences in my philosophy. If you're not allowed to talk about these deep and profoundly important things, it tends to make you sick inside. Finally giving myself permission to tell the story of this journey, to share it with others—not because I'm special, but because these experiences might be useful to others in their own spiritual journeys—actually represented a process of putting together the two halves of my life that I had separated. I had separated my academic life from my spiritual life, and now I was beginning to put them together and bring myself into wholeness again. So, the heartache I experienced when I stopped my sessions has begun to be soothed.

As this integration process has deepened, in writing the book and beginning conversations like the one we're having, something interesting has been set in motion. It's as if the Divine is not waiting for me to come back to it when I die, but it is as if the Divine is beginning to come for me here. There's a deepening sense of peace, a deepening sense of permeability to the ever-present divine dimension of life, even inside the nuts and bolts of our physical existence.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Beautifully said, Chris. I want to thank you for your work. 

Just reading "LSD and the Mind of the Universe" over the weekend, I found almost every third page in this book is dog-eared. I have a list of a couple of dozen authors whose work I need to investigate that came out of you. I want to thank you for bringing them to our attention, for synthesizing their work, for undertaking this exploration of yours and bringing it to the world. I really appreciate your time. Just before we finish, can you tell us where to find you and your work? What are your plans for the future? Are there more books, or are you planning workshops?

**Chris Bache: ** When I wrote "LSD and the Mind of the Universe," or as I prefer, "Diamonds from Heaven," I had a deep sense of closure. I felt like I had finished my life's work by sharing this information, but I love to teach. I love to be with people. COVID-19, of course, has interrupted all of those things. I love to explore these topics and conversations, so I hope opportunities will occur. I look forward to retreats, to open up the thought of psychedelic conversations in circles—so I can talk about my experiences and others can talk about theirs. All our experiences together are more important than any one person's experiences. I hope to be doing retreats, shorter and longer ones. I'm not sure how this will materialize, but I hope after the pandemic eases, opportunities will arise.

I'm not very good at self-promotion. I'm adverse to it, so I don't have a website yet, but if people want to contact me, they can use the email address on the back of my book—cmbache@ysu.edu, my university email address. Within a couple of months, my website should be up, and it will be chrisbache.com. So if someone wants to reach me, they can do so there and keep track of my teachings and talks.

**Christian Yordanov: ** Awesome. Can you briefly summarize your books? 

**Chris Bache: ** There are four books. The first is "Lifecycles," on reincarnation. The second is "Dark Night, Early Dawn," published by SUNY Press, an academic press. It's a challenging book, integrating psychedelic research, near-death episode research, and out-of-body research. Then I wrote "The Living Classroom," about fields of consciousness that grow around groups and influence the learning of new students. Finally, "LSD and the Mind of the Universe," where I lay out the driving source of inspiration behind all my work. All these books are available on Amazon.

For my academic work, academia.edu is where all my articles can be found. If you go to academia.edu and search "Chris Bache," you'll have access to all my research.

**Christian Yordanov: ** We will have all the links in the episode show notes. It's a great body of work. 

Thank you so much for spending the time with us, Chris, and God bless. Thank you.

**Chris Bache: ** Thank you, Christian. It's a pleasure and an honor to be with you and your listeners today.

**Host: ** Thank you for listening to "Connecting Minds." We hope you enjoyed this conversation. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianyordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.