Chris Bache — LSD and the Mind of the Universe

Host: Our program tonight was brought to us by Heather Tischbein. She is a personal friend of Chris's, and so I'm going to ask her to introduce him. Heather.

Heather Tischbein: Thank you. I'm just overflowing with joy to be able to share my, not really friendship, but my acquaintanceship with Chris, with my IONS family. I met Chris 20 years ago through the Holotropic Breathwork network and Stan Grof, and I read his book back then, Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of the Mind, and got to participate with him in person in a workshop. So that was 20 years ago, and when his new book, LSD and the Mind of the Universe, was advertised on the Shift Network with the seven-week seminar, I immediately signed up for that and read the book and participated in that program.

In the intervening 20 years, I had a health crisis and spent a couple of days in a coma, which I actually remember that experience. What Chris describes as kind of the overarching energy of the mind of the universe is exactly where I was and what I experienced when I was on life support. Chris's work has had an impact on my life, helping me understand who I am as a human being on planet Earth, as both a part and the whole simultaneously. It's been instrumental in resolving and appreciating—even understanding the gift of early childhood trauma. More importantly, my felt experience of genuine comfort in Chris's presence and his worldview in this latest book fills me with love and comfort. So it's with immense gratitude that I welcome Chris to my IONS family here in southwest Washington and beyond.

Chris Bache: Well, thank you very much, Heather, and thank you, everybody, for inviting me here and letting me spend this time with you. Let's get into it. We have this topic we're looking at today, the birth of the future human—it’s a huge topic, so we'll have to trim it a little and shape it, but we're going to dig into it. I’d like to jump in to see how far we can go into this issue. First, I'm going to share my screen and throw this PowerPoint up here. Okay, all right, and this is coming through for everyone. All right. It will come as no surprise to anyone in this group, but we are a planet in crisis. Everybody knows the list of challenges we are currently facing: escalating climate crisis, growing droughts, and forest fires, more flooding, and stronger hurricanes. Our reservoirs are drying up, and water tables are collapsing.

Rising sea levels—research now shows that by 2050, we'll already have baked in a 12-foot rise in the oceans, which means changing coastlines and eco-refugees. We're facing the worst species extinction since the extinction of the dinosaurs. We're dealing with fished-out oceans, extreme economic inequality, unstable interlocked national economies, and weapons so powerful we dare not use them. We are, in essence, a world on fire. We're entering a time of planetary emergency, and it's happening much faster than we thought it would even 10 years ago.

Chris Bache: Umar Haque, a British economist, wrote an essay recently, "We're Not Going to Make It to 2050," in which he says, quote, "skyrocketing inflation, growing shortages, runaway temperatures, killing heat, failing harvest, shattered systems, continents on fire, and masses turning to lunacy, theocracy, and fascism as a result." This is the condition we find ourselves in today. What I'd like to do is offer a perspective on these events that come from my psychedelic experiences reported in my book, LSD and the Mind of the Universe. First, I’d like to give a short overview to provide context for the visionary experiences I'll be sharing today. I'm going to touch on my psychedelic work and the book, but I won't go into it in great detail, except for part of the book concerning the birth of the future human. You’ll get a sense from my initial comments, and if you'd like to invite me back another time, we can delve deeper into the overview of the book. Let's begin.

Chris Bache: Here we go. My work derives from Stan Grof's work, and these two books changed the course of my life. I finished graduate school in 1978 and read Realms of the Human Unconscious at that time, and my life pivoted. I did my work as a philosopher, not a psychologist or therapist. I was trained primarily in the philosophy of religion and was interested in the philosophical potential of psychedelics to explore the deep structure of consciousness, and through that, the deep structure of the universe itself. Stan differentiates between two types of psychedelic therapy: low-dose psycholytic therapy and high-dose psychedelic therapy.

At Spring Grove Hospital in Baltimore, psychedelic therapy was practiced with terminally ill cancer patients using high doses in only three sessions. The focus was to trigger something approximating a near-death episode to help with death anxiety, not to heal them. I thought, well, if you can do high-dose work three times, you can do it more. I ended up doing 73 high-dose LSD sessions from 1979 to 1999. This is a very aggressive protocol, not one I'd recommend today, knowing what I know now. I would do it differently if I were starting over. But that's what I did.

I followed the same protocol rigorously: lying down with eye shades, with a sitter, using the same substance, the same dose, the same set and setting, the same sitter, the same recording process, even the same location. All these variables can influence one's experiences in non-ordinary states, so it was a stable position to engage in dialogue and communion with the universe. I saw myself simply doing an extended course of psychedelic therapy, but when I looked back on it, I realized something different was happening than what was described in early psychedelic therapy literature. The protocol may be the same, but extending the number of sessions as I did unfolds into different challenges and opportunities. I called my work psychedelic exploration.

The protocol is psychedelic therapy—all internalized sessions with supportive music. The vast difference is in the number of sessions, in my case, 73 sessions. Let me differentiate further since there are many uses of psychedelics. I'll mention three of them: therapeutic use for healing, our current focus in the psychedelic Renaissance; spiritual awakening, not quite the same as healing; and cosmic exploration. I initially got into this work to accelerate my spiritual enlightenment, but the powerful protocol took me beyond healing and spiritual awakening into cosmic exploration. I did this as a philosopher. I don't advise others to do what I did, but I survived it reasonably intact. I'd like to share some results from this work. I kept detailed records of my sessions, always within 24 hours. I'd like to provide context for the visions I'll be sharing.

In psychedelic work, you go through a death-rebirth process. The horizontal line represents the line between physical matter and spiritual reality, or ordinary consciousness and Transpersonal consciousness. The open line represents the vast expanse of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and the drop at the bottom represents our individual egoic awareness. The first circle, the red circle, represents ego death in spiritual practice, where one's consciousness opens beyond the individual ego into the vast expanse beyond individual awareness. Ego death gets a lot of literature attention today, but in my work, I found that consistently working with a powerful method means going through many deaths as one goes deeper into the universe.

There are thresholds and gateways where one must go through another death to enter a deeper level of existence. It’s not a repetition of ego death but a different kind of death reflecting different levels of reality. Stan differentiates psychic levels, subtle levels, and causal levels of Transpersonal experience. I use that language in my book, but I have no vested interest in any particular cosmology. The principle is important: the universe has many levels and, by entering systematically, there’s a gradual unfolding as one goes deeper.

When I crunched all my experiences, I distinguished five fundamental levels or categories of consciousness: the personal mind, the species mind, the archetypal mind, causal oneness, and diamond luminosity. Let me quickly place the book chapters in context. There's a chapter on crossing the boundaries of death, telling the story of crossing what Stan Grof calls the perinatal level of consciousness. Ten sessions and two and a half years of work on the species mind. There's a chapter called Ocean of Suffering and another called Deep Time and the Soul. This took me about four years, and I stopped for six years for reasons given in the book. When I resumed, the purification continued where it left off. The Ocean of Suffering was opening vast territories of collective pain and anguish, which I initially thought was a deepening of ego death but later understood as tapping into collective suffering memories.

The patient had expanded to my entire species in some way. When I resumed, the ecstatic sessions entered initiatory experiences: cosmology 101, teaching how the universe is structured. This culminated in archetypal mind or greater real in the chapter, the greater real, describing archetypal reality. These were vast, living, dynamic processes, aligning with Plato’s idea of reality but as living processes, not eternal ideas. On the quasi-Jungian level, I dissolved into the species mind, receiving instructions on how the collective unconscious functions as an integrated whole. Our psychological issues and diseases are part of our species' psychological strains. Our individual healing contributes to our species' healing physically and psychologically.

This culminated in another death-rebirth process leading into causal oneness, described in Benediction of Blessings, giving a year of oneness, non-dual consciousness, dissolving into the metacosmic void, cosmic love. Truly satisfying existentially. Then, the last five years entered diamond luminosity in the chapter the diamond luminosity—well beyond collective psyche and even oneness, into a celestial domain of exquisite light. I experienced light many times before, but this was higher order. I'll stop there before discussing the final piece of work, the final vision, and last chapter, coming off the mountain. Now, I want to focus on the birth of the future human, a series of experiences over many years compiled into one story.

There are three components, two of which we'll focus on today: visions of awakening, a series of visions from 1991 to 1994—a long time ago, over 30 years—depicting humanity's evolutionary development. Followed by the Great Awakening session in 1995, leading to the final vision near the end of my journey. Today, it's about visions of awakening and the Great Awakening. First, the visions paper. Scattered throughout my sessions was a theme of human evolution—our entering a turning point. I organized these into six visions: divine love, all humanity, guiding intelligence, our species as a single being, collective purification, and the future human.

I’d like to read excerpts from these visions. Please enter a receptive state to hear from a deeper place in your consciousness. I’m reminding you of something you already know. It’s not about my having these visions but what they tell us about humanity and the work we’re doing as we incarnate in this generation.

First, divine love in 1991. I was taken back to creation’s beginning, experiencing evolution in a larger cosmic context. Overwhelmed by extraordinary cosmic love beyond anything known—a primordial decision I participated in. Understanding humanity's suffering as noble, part of a cosmic plan entered into voluntarily. All suffering throughout history, endured for divine love, noble suffering shouldered in creation's name. No victims here.

Next, all humanity. It described humanity's evolutionary process, not focusing on individuals but the entire species awakening. Confronting history’s desires, new awareness driving forward in human consciousness—like the birth of a new continent, unprecedented awareness emerging, integrating human family in unified awareness, tuned to Source consciousness, a scale that took my breath away.

The third, humanity climbing out of a valley, a brilliant future sunlit world. Time became porous—personal, species, planetary, cosmic time. After millions of struggles, a sunrise changes life’s condition on this planet. Existing structures become irrelevant, new epoch dawning, everyone living helping global shift. Isolated from the future, present makes no sense, species not blind, intelligence guiding, systematically preparing as one prepares for seasonal changes.

Our species as a single being experienced awakening movements orchestrated by single intelligence. Cooperative diversity, single unified field—all made transparent sense. Unified field moving to self-awareness from unconsciousness. Visually, energy contracted in bright awareness flashes. Previously swallowed by collective psyche, now enduring, connecting with others planet-wide.

Then, collective purification—understand history's events in this century. Called from within to conscious state, purging past psychological byproducts for a refined level. Wholesale determination, crystallizing generations embodying toxic legacy—our system evolving collectively. Historical karmic streams converging prelude to unimaginable future. Our species is transitional, a stage in evolutionary journey.

Lastly, the future human glimpse, deep future experience—magnificence filled with rapture, calm, delight, clear warm oneness. Beyond feeling interconnected, feeling truly one. Spiritually embodied realization, tantric awakening, balance of spirit and matter. Its beauty pierced my heart. Challenge understanding, focus on how entire species makes quantum jump in awareness—the project of history now. It never showed the accomplishment method.

Diamond luminosity work entry, mystical absorption into Divine crystalline body—deep experiences, preparatory for Great Awakening session in 1995. Instead of diamond luminosity, experienced as entire species, deep dissolution in collective unconscious over years for this one session preparation. Challenging assimilation over years.

I dissolved.

Chris Bache: Into the collective psyche, and I experienced what humanity as a whole would experience in the decades ahead. Let me share with you the core scenario pulled out of this visionary experience. In a field of relative calm, a small anxiety began to grow. Slowly, people were looking up and becoming alarmed. Humanity was gradually waking up in alarm to events that had overtaken it. Conditions got worse and worse. People became more frightened as the danger increased, forcing them to let go of their assumptions. At deeper levels, there was less for people to hold on to, fewer givens they could assume—how they would live, where they would live, what they would do for a living. The world as they knew it was falling away. Decades were compressed into minutes, and I felt the people's fear deepen as they lost more of what they considered the normal and necessary structures of their world. Step by step, events were forcing a rapid reassessment of everything in their lives. The events that had overtaken Earth were of such scope that no one could insulate themselves from them. The level of alarm grew in the species field, until eventually, everyone was forced into the melting pot of mere survival. We were all in this together. Families were torn apart, parents from children, and children from each other. Life as we had known it was shattered at the core. We were reduced to simply trying to survive. For a time, it looked as though we would all be killed. But just when the storm was at its peak, the worst of it passed, and the danger slowly subsided. Though many had died, many were still alive. As the survivors began to find each other, new social units began to form. Parents and children from different families joined to form new types of families. Everywhere, new social institutions sprang into being that reflected our new reality, new ways of thinking, new values that we had discovered within ourselves during the crisis. Every aspect of our lives was marked by new priorities, new perceptions of the good, new truths. These new social forms reflected new states of awareness that seemed to spread through the survivors like a positive contagion. These new social forms then fed back into the system to elicit still newer states of awareness in people, and the cycle of creativity between the individual and the group spiraled. The entire system was becoming alive at new levels, and this aliveness was expressing itself in previously impossible ways. It was as if the eco-crisis had triggered the myelination of nerve cells in our species' brain, allowing new and deeper levels of self-awareness to spring into being repeatedly. There was the message that these things will happen faster than anyone can anticipate because of the hyper-arousal of the species' mind. Thousands of fractal images drove this lesson home again and again. Faster than anyone can anticipate. The pace of the past was irrelevant to the pace of the future.

Chris Bache: My visions did not give me any details about how or when this would take place, except that we were entering a profound global systems crisis that was being triggered by a series of ecological crises around the planet, and this was of a scale and magnitude that was historically unprecedented. I was also shown many teachings that I won't go into now, but are in Dark Night, Early Dawn, and in LSD and the Mind of the Universe. Those points gave me insights into the dynamics of the collective psyche. The suffering we are entering into is so widespread and so profound that it will impact not just individuals, but it will actually reach through the lives of individuals to impact the collective unconscious itself. It will drive the collective psyche into what a scientist might call non-linear conditions. Just as physical systems, when driven into non-linear conditions, can do remarkable things, seemingly impossible things, likewise, the human psyche, the collective psyche, when driven into non-linear conditions, hyper-aroused by the suffering of its people, in that condition it is capable of doing previously impossible things. In this respect, the suffering we are entering into is not punishment, and it is not a sign of failure, but it's actually instrumental in helping us let go of the past and let go of our narrow, petty, egoic history, and enter into a deeper communion with the creative process of the universe. Now this brings me to the next question of what form the future human will take. I think we are going through a transformation so deep that it's not simply a civilizational turning point, and it's not simply a destruction and rebirth of our economy and our industrial culture to a greener planet, a greener culture, and a greener body politic. It is a transformation reaching deep into the fundamental substructure of the human psyche. The crisis we are entering is a crisis of consciousness. In that respect, it's an evolutionary consciousness because we can no longer afford the luxury of a planet that is being run by egos with this sense of separate, private, our separate private existences—even well-intentioned egos. We need to grow into a deeper, more mature sense of self for this planet. In my understanding, my context for understanding the future human is reincarnation. My first book, Lifecycles, was about reincarnation. I consider it an absolutely fundamental concept, and I think it's a concept for which we have ample empirical evidence to document. I think that the issue of reincarnation has, over the last 50 years, moved from a speculative theological table to an empirical psychological table. I think Ian Stevenson and other researchers have given us a vast quantity of evidence that should convince any critical, clear-thinking person that reincarnation is a fact of life. But in the course of my sessions, I was given an understanding of reincarnation that seemed to go beyond the way that idea is presented in the Eastern and even Western mystical traditions. Classically, reincarnation is presented as a form of individual evolution where we make choices, we inherit the consequences of those choices, and we grow incrementally, step by step, becoming more compassionate, more respectful, more intelligent over long, long periods and thousands of lifetimes, eventually maturing into a spiritual awakening. We come into a spiritual awakening where we make contact with—we resume a deep experience of our inner divine nature, and at that point, we can leave time and space. The Hindu term for this experience was moksha, escape, escape not only from ego, but escape from time and space itself. In Buddhism, Nirvana is followed at death by the deeper state of Parinirvana, final Nirvana, which is carried on beyond a type of enlightenment that goes beyond physical existence. All of the cosmologies of the last 5000 years, in both Western and Eastern traditions, have been basically what I would call "up and out" cosmologies. The goal is to achieve some type of fundamental transition, either salvation or enlightenment, so that when you die, you can leave time and space behind. But that leaves unanswered the question, what is the purpose of space and time to begin with? What does creative intelligence, before the creative intelligence manifested space and time—what was it thinking? Why did it do so? What is the purpose of space-time itself? The understanding of reincarnation and the experience of reincarnation that developed in my sessions basically outlined a different trajectory. There was one particular session where I had done past-life therapy, and I was familiar with a number of my previous lives. I had worked on healing them, and I had written Lifecycles 20 years before. But I came into a session where suddenly all my former lives began to come into me and begin to wrap themselves around me. It was like wrapping a filament of white light around a kite spool until eventually all of those lives fused into one. When they fused into one, a brilliant diamond light exploded from my chest, and I was catapulted into a state of consciousness far beyond anything I had ever experienced before. Up to that time, I was both an individual, but I was also an individual within a context and a frame of consciousness beyond anything I had ever known previously. I came to call this the birth of the Diamond Soul.

Chris Bache: I think this is the fundamental trajectory of human evolution: that we have been incarnating for thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of years. In this evolutionary process, we have been growing and growing, and we are coming to a point where the next step in our evolutionary development is not simply taking one more evolutionary step in this long evolutionary progression, but actually is a fusion, a coming into an integrating, first healing and then integrating all of our former lives into a single consciousness—a consciousness that we can call the soul consciousness. I think we return to soul consciousness after we die, after incarnation. We expand into the soul. We contract into egoic awareness. We expand into the soul. We contract. If we keep this up over and over again, thousands of years, eventually, sooner or later, the soul—the larger consciousness that holds all of our experiences—awakens inside time and space. When the soul awakens inside time and space, heaven is born on Earth, and there is no felt need to go elsewhere. I think all the "up and out" cosmologies are basically incomplete. Cosmologies that made sense in the context in which they were born, but I think they are an incomplete vision of what the project of existence is.

Chris Bache: Young souls become old souls. Old souls eventually become complete souls, and that's what I think of as the birth of the Diamond Soul. Now, many people have had these visions, have had this understanding. They use different words to describe it. Some people talk about Homo noeticus, Homo luminous, Homo spiritualis. There are so many people who have this deep intuition that we are on the cusp of a major transition in the human story. I think this transition is literally the birth of the Diamond Soul inside history. This is taking place not just for individuals, but it’s taking place for the entire species. We are in the process of giving birth to a new species on this planet, and the nature of this species is implicit in the history that we have, that we bring to this event. In order to solve the crisis that we are entering into in history—we desperately need to grow up as a species. In this context, from a reincarnational perspective, growing up means owning and integrating the larger consciousness that has been gestating within us for thousands of years, owning it, seeing the world through its eyes, and letting its accumulated wisdom shape our choices. The soul lives in history differently than the ego. The soul knows that its relationship with this planet extends beyond the limits of its present life. It knows that the Earth we leave behind is the Earth we will inherit in our next incarnation. It knows this and it acts accordingly. So to summarize, the core vision that came through my sessions is that humanity is coming into a time of profound transformation—a time of planetary compression and accelerated development, a deep shift in the collective unconsciousness of our species is taking place, a shift in the archetypal blueprint of humanity, a shift that's taking place literally, kind of in a plate tectonic shift in the collective psyche. One way of describing this is a profound awakening into the truth of oneness, but not an awakening that dissolves the individual, but awakening that liberates the individual into a deeper and higher sense of participation not only in the human community, but also into the celestial community. For there to be a great awakening like this, there must first take place a great death, and this death is all about purification. It's all about letting go, healing, and letting go of all the terrible things that we've done to each other, for all the attitudes that have divided oneness, and all the hatreds and animosities and racism and genderism and speciesism that have clouded the earlier stages of human evolution. We must surrender our smallness, the ego's constant self-cherishing with all its divisions between people, races, religions, classes, nations, and even species. I believe we are entering a dark night of our collective soul, a time of emptying, a time of intense anguish, of progressive loss of control, and systematic breakdown—a time of global purification unto death that will last generations. But through this hard labor, we will give birth to something extraordinary, more than just a new civilization. What is emerging is nothing less than a new order of human being. Through the global systems crisis, our planet is giving birth to the future human. A higher form of humanity, the Diamond Soul, is being born in history, and we are all part of this transformation. Thank you very much.

Chris Bache: Yeah, okay, I'll stop this year now. Wow.

Host: That was amazing, Chris, thank you so much. I personally know the truth of what you're saying from my own intuitions and my own brief experiences. Thank you so much. So let's open it up. Let's take a minute to breathe, I guess, and then let's open it to questions and conversation.

Audience: And if you'd like to start, just unmute and speak.

Chris Bache: Yeah, I really do see myself just reminding you of things you already know, things you knew before you incarnated. My sense is that everyone has chosen to incarnate voluntarily, that we chose the incarnation we are now in knowing beforehand what we were getting into. We may have forgotten once we incarnate, but we knew before we were born, and we will remember when we die. We are all carefully placed to participate in this collective transformation.

Audience: Beautiful, Chris. This is Janae, and this is absolutely beautiful. I kept thinking all the way through, what do I do with what I just learned in terms of science and the new DNA testing that's been done, epigenetics, the fact that we have the same genome as the anatomically modern humans back in the 200,000 period. What I'm coming to is that this is all—when it actually comes out—I mean, most people don't even know about it yet—but when it actually comes out, it's preparing us. It's preparing, it's giving us what we have right now, and it's giving us the opportunity to move on from there. That's kind of the way I look at it. The one thing I kept thinking all the way through is, how long is this going to take? And you answered it in the end, it's going to go through several generations, or maybe many generations. But this is where we jump off and fly and move.

Chris Bache: I don't have any visionary experience of how long or the details; I wasn't given that kind of detail. So for that, I have to go to the experts like everybody else. I have to go to the scientists who are really plotting the escalating climate crisis that we are entering, and the social scientists who are looking at the broader social and political ramifications of these crises. But my sense is that the 21st century is pivotal. By 2050, first, let me recommend—and you notice that I haven't talked about what can we do? How do we respond to this crisis? How do we participate in it? And we can talk about that. One of the people who has thought extensively about this and written about it beautifully is Duane Elgin, and his latest book, his most recent book is his book Choosing Earth. He's a social activist, an evolutionary thinker, and a futurist, and his wife has created a film based on the book called Facing Adversity, Choosing Earth. Duane is giving away the book, and his wife is giving away the film. You can find a PDF from Amazon of the book, and you can find the film online. In the book, Duane outlines what science is telling us about the next five decades, and each of those decades the crisis deepens precipitously. We are now in the decade of the great unraveling, followed by the falling apart, followed by the deep crash. By the time we get to 2050, we're going to be looking at a profoundly different world than we are now. So my sense is that this crisis of near extinction—when you really look at the people who are looking at the numbers and how many billions of human beings are likely to be dying as we run into shortfalls of harvests and so on—we are looking at a near extinction event, and extinction is a tremendous accelerator of evolution. So my sense is, if we don't make it this transition in this century or close to this century, we very well might not make it at all. I do expect it to take several generations, but I do expect the 21st century to be focal in this transition.

Chris Bache: Thank you.

Chris Bache: Thank you. Jean, I see you have your hand up.

Jean Fox: You're on mute, Jean.

Jean Fox: Sorry about that. I mentioned in the chat that in 2007 I met a channeler who wrote about this in a lot of detail, and he gives all, gives it for free. It's nature cleansing itself, preparing us for the next step. We are always stuck in our minds, but what we need to do is be present with each other. Whoever is left through all these processes, we just have to show up for each other and solve problems moment by moment, because all we have is each moment. If we're stuck in our minds and isolating from each other, in our houses, in our jobs, we're not going to be there to support each other. Look what's happened in Kentucky or any disaster. In a disaster, it's not time for planning; it's time for doing. So we have to really just, when somebody needs something, do it for them. Help whatever we can to help each other, because it's hard, yeah.

Chris Bache: We have to become the human being that the world needs right now, both on an internal level—we have to face our shadow, heal our shadow, become more whole within our souls—but also on a political level, on a social level. I think there's a synergy. The world is trying to become one, to grow past the nation-state idea; it's trying to become one. There's a synergy because our soul is trying to become one. We carry the history of humanity inside us, as well as our society carrying it outside of us. As the world is trying to become one, we are trying to become one. There's a synergistic dance between inner and outer here, and stepping into this means stepping into it. Each of us has a different way of stepping into it, because we all carry a different karmic agenda. We all undertook different responsibilities as we incarnated. There is both an internal and an external, a psychological and a social dimension to this transformational process.

Jean Fox: And we are the Earth. Yeah, we are of the Earth, so we're tending our gardens. This other channel that I was talking about, his name is John Tettmer, says we're going back to an agrarian society. Whatever humanity is left will be one with the Earth, to work in harmony with the Earth, and evolve again from there in a symbiotic way.

Chris Bache: In that context, let me just mention that some people have asked me why I focus on human beings so much and don't talk about experiences of other species. Of course, many people who work with psychedelics in a shamanic context have many experiences with other species, and I've had a few of those experiences, but the main track for me has been working with the collective human psyche. I think this is because humanity is the greatest threat to life on this planet right now, and if we can heal the human species, then all the other species on the planet will be safe. It's not that I don't respect... I don't think they're inferior to human beings; they are absolutely as precious as human beings are. But in order to ensure their well-being, we have to heal humanity.

Jonai: We're the ones that are destroying them, yes.

Chris Bache: They were here first, yeah.

Audience: Regina, you have your hand up.

Regina: Yes, thank you so much. I wanted to know how you would do it differently, if you would do it differently. I'm just curious.

Chris Bache: I would vary the dose level. I would work with high doses sometimes, but low doses at other times. I would also balance LSD with other psychedelics like Psilocybin or Ayahuasca. All of them have in common the effect of amplifying the sensitivity of consciousness, but they do so in slightly different ways. They bring out different aspects of the spectrum of consciousness. LSD tends to drive toward the high cosmological ceiling. Psilocybin tends to work closer to the emotional body, closer to the physical body. Ayahuasca tends to do that as well and bridge a little bit farther and deeper out. So I would balance high doses versus low doses, synthetic psychedelics, and organic psychedelics. I don't think there is a fundamental core difference between synthetic and organic psychedelics, but I would differentiate those two here. One of the other reasons I would do it differently is because I thought, when I began this work, that it was all about my personal transformation. Well, that went out the window. It's not about personal transformation; it's about our collective transformation. But I also thought the goal was to reach some end state. People talked about becoming one with God or entering into the primal void or reaching some end condition, and so I drove hard to reach that end condition. But the way it worked is that every time I would get into what appeared to be a homecoming state or an absolutely soul-satisfying existential bliss, by keeping driving, I would be taken into yet another level of consciousness and yet another level of consciousness. Until eventually, I had one pivotal experience in my 50th session, where I was shown that it's an infinite progression. You'll never reach the end of it. The Divine fabric is an infinite fabric. So one of the reasons I would do it differently is because I think the goal is not to reach a destination or some end state; the goal is to become transparent and to let as much of the Divine into our lives as possible, and to live in that abiding and to deepen that abiding communion. I was a young man when I did this work. I'm a little more patient with the slower methods of transformation than I was when I did it.

Regina: Thank you for that, because I've been coming to that realization myself. It's like there is no end. It's forever. It is forever. That, in itself, is very difficult to put your mind around.

Chris Bache: So that was, I guess, the ultimate surrender—to be able to do that.

Regina: Yeah, and whatever transition we're going through in this next 100 years or whenever, whatever we're going through, it's not the endpoint for the human story, right? We're going to be on this planet for millions and millions more years if we survive this potential extinction event. So we're going to keep growing. We're going to go beyond the Diamond Soul. We're going to keep growing and growing. The creative intelligence of the universe does not seem to think in small scale. It thinks its landscape is vast. It thinks in galactic proportions. It thinks in magnitudes of time far beyond what we've even begun to try and conceptualize in our religious traditions of the world. I think science has basically erased the blackboard and given us a completely larger landscape, which, as our experience of this landscape deepens, we'll have a deeper understanding of the intelligence that saturates this landscape in a way that even science has a hard time admitting today, but it's getting there.

Regina: Just the thing of impatience alone, just that one thing alone. How different it would be if we were truly able to just be, yeah.

Host: Yeah, Victoria, you have your hand up.

Victoria: Well, you keep moving around on my screen. Boy, I just had such a deep experience. It felt like every cell in my body was saying yes. I wonder if—two questions that are personal, so if you'd be willing to talk about it—just your ability to really trust what your experience has been and what has been shown to you, and then how you incorporate that, I guess, in the moments of your life. You know, it's like, okay, what do we do this moment, next moment, next moment?

Chris Bache: One of the great gifts I received from Stan Grof was the understanding that when you enter these deep, cathartic, amplified states of consciousness, you're going to encounter stormy weather and challenging circumstances. Things will unravel on you, and the instinct is to pull back, thinking it's a bad trip and you don't want to be there. But if you are willing to embrace it, to give yourself over to it, it will take you into a crisis that eventually peaks, and some part of you will fall away. You'll go through a type of death and then awaken into a different reality as a different being with a deeper connection to the universe. This cycle of opening, engaging, surrendering, and rebirth develops a kind of trust which you learn by doing it.

Now, as I've moved away from this intense work—I stopped in '99—I've had time to live with those experiences. And as I've watched the shadows of history deepen, I fall back on this deep trust, although I don't know how the universe will resolve things. I choose to trust that the creative intelligence knows what it's doing, that it believes we are ready to make this transition, and that's why it supports its emergence.

Integrating these experiences has not always been easy. I've used a strict therapeutic protocol for clean contact and integration. You have to record, remember, ponder, and give artistic representation to them to hold onto those experiences. However, I went so deep on my journey that managing the ecstasy became more challenging than the pain. It took me deeply into the divine bliss and ecstatic nature of transcendent reality, and when I stopped my sessions, the physical world lost its luster.

The great spiritual beings I've admired can live in this divine bliss and the physical world simultaneously. But for me, living with those experiences 24/7 was difficult. I spent decades after my sessions actively working to integrate them into my daily life. Writing "LSD and the Mind of the Universe" and going public as a psychedelic professor was part of my integration process. It allowed me to stabilize and integrate those experiences.

I won't complete integrating this work in this lifetime. The meaning of integration changes as the experiences go deeper. We haven't fully caught up with ourselves yet in understanding what these states of consciousness are doing to us. Integration is crucial, and I would recommend the book "Psychedelics and Psychotherapy," edited by Maria Papa Spyras and Tim Read, which specifically addresses this question.

Chris Bache: What was the name of that book?

Chris Bache: "Psychotherapy, Psychedelics and Psychotherapy."

Interviewer: Thank you for that. Do you find yourself being more aware of your state in each moment and choosing, or is it beyond that?

Chris Bache: Again, I want to refer to the early slide I showed on the difference between therapeutic healing, spiritual awakening, and cosmological exploration. Your question is asking how these experiences affect my psycho-spiritual condition. If I were seeking spiritual awakening, I would have done a completely different protocol. Working with low doses would be the approach for seeking a classic state of enlightenment.

Cosmological exploration is a different agenda. Whatever I can integrate from those cosmological experiences doesn't impact the truth that emerged in the Cosmic, logical adventure. As a philosopher, I wanted to understand how the universe worked, and those experiences cannot be stabilized and integrated 24/7. Spiritual practice and meditation continue to be a part of my life.

By cultivating conscious recall of my memories, I can enter into a state of transparency and approximate the experience again. It's not a 24/7 thing for me but a daily practice.

Chris Bache: Thank you.

Audience: Jonah, you have your hand up again.

Jonai: Yes, you can hear me okay. That kind of leads into my question or comment about cultivating the conscious recall of your experiences. Does this include past life experiences?

Chris Bache: In my psychedelic work, I did encounter some former lives, and also in my therapy work. But here I'm specifically focusing on my psychedelic work. I don't focus extensively on integrating former lives as I've done enough house cleaning that they're comfortably tucked away. It's more the cosmological memory that I cultivate.

You know, it’s kind of strange because when you look at people with deep spiritual experiences, they often have them in meditation traditions, and they can hold onto those experiences. This approach is different, which is why I emphasize a methodology chapter in my book. It is a path of temporary immersion, not abiding presence. A temporary experience doesn't necessarily mean one has become a transformed being. We've learned we need to remember these are temporary experiences and focus on the day after the session.

Jonai: Right, everything is an opportunity to learn. I wanted to bring up reincarnation and a new trajectory you mentioned—where all past lives fuse into one. Expanding past life wisdom and doing past life work has been significant for me. It’s about forgiveness and changing the karmic energy. In changing that, it shifts how we’re affected by the past. And yes, I somehow relate to your experiences, learning through others rather than repeating them all myself. I’m counting backwards with time, avoiding the typical aging mindset, thanks to insights like yours.

Interviewer: Thank you, Jonai. Jean, did you have another question?

Jean Fox: Just one quick question. Do you recommend guided or self-guided journeying?

Chris Bache: I recommend working with someone who knows the landscape when using psychedelics. The role of a sitter is to keep you safe and focused while the universe guides you. Psychedelics aren't the primary issue; they're secondary in these states of awareness. Entering them is a foundational initiation of sorts, and psychedelics are just one technology among others.

Please, don’t do what I did. Be careful and conscientious. Opening these doors without appropriate guidance can lead to unresolved trauma. There are people who explore these paths and become scarred. So, I urge you to proceed with caution.

Jean Fox: There are so many groups, and it’s hard to discern what’s best. Any trusted recommendations?

Chris Bache: Things are changing rapidly with mushrooms becoming legal and many certified as psychedelic therapists. The future is promising with new possibilities, though it remains a gray zone.

Interviewer: Thank you. We’re running low on time but have two more questions.

Audience: Chris, I appreciate your cautionary approach. My social experiences always felt emotionally overwhelming. It’s only now, through your work and others, I realize it’s been a lifelong integration. This isn't to be done lightly. Thanks for your guidance.

Interviewer: Thank you. Georgina, you have the last question.

Georgena Eggleston: Is LSD contraindicated for traumatic brain injury?

Chris Bache: That’s a question for clinical professionals. It likely depends on the injury’s nature, so it should be addressed by experts.

Georgena Eggleston: Earlier quotes touched on lack, limitation, and fear. Facing these realities feels vital as we move into this crisis. Any insights?

Chris Bache: Some say focusing too much on the negative brings it into existence. However, I believe not facing these realities is more dangerous. We must understand our overextension with the planet to mobilize positive change. Engaging with grief for what we’ve done is necessary before moving forward. Joanna Macy and others facilitate this work. Addressing the damage paves the path for necessary transformation.

Interviewer: Thank you. I'm switching to the gallery view. Thank you so much, Chris, for your inspiring work. Which of your books should I start with?

Chris Bache: "LSD and the Mind of the Universe" is more accessible, but if you’re unfamiliar with reincarnation literature, "Lifecycles" might be a better starting point.

Interviewer: Thank you, Chris, and everyone for joining. We’ll hope to have you back.

Chris Bache: Thank you.

Interviewer: Bye, everyone.