Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Kevin Johnson

Episode Date: November 17, 2015

WE RETURN FROM HIATUS with Kevin Johnson, founder of zero gravity institute in Austin Texas, joins the DTFH to talk about the spiritual practice of floating.     This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by CASPER.COM go to CASPER.COM and use offer code family hour to get $50 towards your first mattress. We are also brought to you by the Zen Float company!  Go to the zenfloatco.com if you're interested in buying a float tank or finding a place to float near you,

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. I'm dirty little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by casper.com. Go to casper.com and use offer code familyhour to receive $50 off your brand new sweet mattress.

Oh, hell yes. Dear God, my apologies, friends. I did a 46 minute intro to this podcast. I'm sorry. So what I'm gonna do is just dive right into this podcast after some quick business and my opening rant. I'm gonna upload as a separate podcast because the interview with Kevin is so fun

and he's such an interesting, amazing guy. And it's already like two hours long. So I'm not gonna release a four hour podcast. That would be insanity. Man, we've got a great show for you today with Kevin Johnson from the Zero Gravity Institute in Austin, Texas, which is my number one favorite commercial float institute lab.

I don't know what you call them. Float Center, I guess you call them a float center. He's got some incredible float tanks out there. And I was recently in Austin and I sat down with him at his house and we recorded this awesome conversation about floating and spirituality. We're gonna dive right into it. But first, some quick business.

This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by casper.com. I'm just gonna read some of the main talking points that they want me to say. And then I'll tell you what I always say about Casper. It's an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price, just the right sink, just the right bounce, two technologies. Latex foam and memory foam come together

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that's an outstanding price point. All right, there, those are the required talking points. But here's the thing, I sleep on a Casper mattress. And if you've ever gone shopping for a mattress, you know that it's a really weird experience and that quite often you'll get sucked into a hypnotic vortex by a mattress salesman and end up buying a mattress

that after a few months fucks up and gets hollowed down or sunk in. Especially if you like so many of my listeners have incredibly high libidos and do a high rate of making love, then you're gonna fuck your mattress up, man. And it's because I don't know how a mattress works. I wouldn't know what memory foam was

if it exploded out of my chest. I don't know what, I honestly don't know what latex foam and memory foam are. I don't know. All I know is I sleep on a Casper mattress and I like it better than the super expensive mattress. They got, I got hoodwinked into buying because I was super stoned and grieving

and went into a mattress store and ended up buying an embarrassing vibrating bed that I no longer use because every time I turn it on, my girlfriend makes fun of me for it. So if you're interested in, if you need a new mattress, go to casper.com, use offer code familyhour and they're gonna give you $50 towards your mattress.

Get a king-size mattress. Don't make the mistake I made. Get the biggest one. Don't get a queen and definitely don't get a twin-size mattress, a John Wayne, gacy level weirdo, unless of course it's for your kid. But get a king-size mattress.

You need that. You can fit it into your house. The bigger the mattress, the better. That's where I fucked up. I have a queen-size mattress, but that is my only complaint about my Casper mattress. It's way better than the super expensive mattress that I bought and I've had it now,

I don't know, for how long, maybe almost a year and it continues to be an excellent mattress. Mattress salesman, they'll hypnotize you. Now look, someone pointed out recently that I am now officially a mattress salesman. Fine, I'll take it. I'm a mattress salesman. But I'm not marching you through a maze of fuckpads,

trying to trick you into buying the most expensive one. I'm pointing you in the direction of a company that I use, Casper.com, and inviting you to try out one of these mattresses. If you don't like it, then you can send it back and you get all your money back. So I don't think you can do that with other mattresses at mattress stores.

You really have nothing to lose. If you're wanting to, and then if it doesn't work, if you order one of these things and you realize that it sucks, if you somehow doesn't fit into whatever the thing is, you wanted for your mattress, oh great prince of sleep, oh sand man, lord of dreams, who needs some fantasy mattress

that it was fabricated from the soft hair, shorn from the pubis of Zeus, and woven together by interdimensional elves on the dark side of the moon, then fine. Go to a mattress store and pick up a $16 billion mattress that has a pulsating heart inside of it and a circulatory system filled with the nectar of the gods

and little tubes that come out that connect to your ears and mouth and anus and fill you with dream fluids as you sleep. I'm sure it's out there. Before you do that, go to casper.com and try out one of their mattresses. You'll get $50 towards your mattress if you use OfferCode Family Hour

and why not give it a shot? It's a way to support one of our long-term advertisers and also a way for you to support your sweet body as you go drifting off into dreamland or make love to your friends or family or whatever you're into. Casper.com, OfferCode Family Hour. Here's a big announcement

and these are gonna start coming in more and more. We are, I've got a big tour coming up and it's starting in, it's gonna be in March and April. It's the biggest tour that I've ever done and I'm gonna go ahead and announce one of the dates though there's gonna be many more. This is in Boston. It's Friday, April 8th at the Wilbur Theater.

This link is gonna be up at dunkintrustle.com and if you wanna come see some standup on this massive bus tour that I'm doing, I invite you to get tickets now. I'm just letting you know it's happening. I'm gonna start making more announcements about this whole incredible super tour that we are putting together for the spring

but this is the first date that has been announced of this tour Friday, April 8th at the Wilbur. Come see me do standup. I'll be bringing somebody along. I'm not sure yet who the feature's gonna be but they will be awesome. And finally, if you listen to this episode

and you find yourself wanting to try out floating, go to zenfloatco.com. That's zenfloatco.com. This is a company that produces an affordable isolation tank. I own one, I love it. Going to a float center is fantastic but there's something super incredible

about having your own float tank in your house and the zenfloat tent is amazing. Not only do I find it to be as effective as the massive float tanks that you find at these float centers but other people who've floated in float centers and have tried out the zenfloat tent also say that it's similar.

You know, it's you're lying in darkness and water heated to body temperature that's been salinated, is that how you say it, with like 750 pounds of salt. And Shane Stott who did a podcast earlier with me figured out a way to create these things at a fraction of the price of the high end commercial float tanks that have a lot of bells

and whistles on them that are based on hundreds of people floating in them each week. So if you're interested, go to zenfloatco.com. They actually have a list of float centers all over the United States so that you can check out floating before you actually invest in a float tank. But if you're interested, go to dunkintrustle.com

to the comments section below this episode and I will have a link for you that you can use that will hopefully get you some kind of discount from Zen Float Company. That link will be at dunkintrustle.com and that will be in the comments section of this episode. All right guys, thanks for hanging in there. I guess I had a lot to get out of me.

It's been too long since I've said hello to you guys and the next time I go on tour, I'm gonna actually figure out a way to get these things out regularly so that there's not a two week chunk of no podcasts. That is unacceptable. Now everyone, please welcome with open arms and oozing pineal glands

to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast, Kevin Johnson. He runs the Zero Gravity Institute in Austin, Texas. He's an awesome human being, an amazing musician, and man, if anybody knows about floating, it's this guy. If you live in Austin, definitely go to his Float Center. You gotta try it out. It's the Zero Gravity Institute and maybe Kevin will be there

and you can have a conversation with him. All right everybody, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast, Kevin Johnson. Finally. Welcome, welcome on new as you are with us shaking, don't need to be refused Welcome to you

It's the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast. Kevin, welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast. Thank you so much for letting me into your home studio. A beautiful place, by the way. Thank you. And thanks for letting me have you as a guest. Super cool to have you here, man. I'm really excited about today.

Yeah, me too. You know, for those of you, I think you guys have heard me mention Kevin briefly before, but Kevin runs the greatest float center that I'm aware of on planet Earth. It's called the Zero Gravity Institute in Austin, Texas.

And I've had the opportunity to float there a few times. It's actually my first real encounter with prolonged floating. I've floated at Rogans years and years and years ago, but I don't know, man, when I like those tanks that you have

and just the general vibe of the place, really created an experience for me that was incredible and actually compelled me to get my own tank. It was something that created a lot of enthusiasm, and then I ended up with my own Zen tent. So, yeah, but I dipped my toe into the float waters in Austin and got my mind blown.

Cool, yeah, that's what we're trying to do there. You know, create just exactly the right environment to produce really great float experiences. So glad that you liked it. Thanks. Well, yeah, I mean, you got to like it because it's like you guys have these future, it's like my, like the, you know,

for me, a podcaster right now at this point in my life, I don't have the dough to afford a 50,000, $60,000 float tank, however much they cost. But so I've got a, I've got a Zen tent, which is perfect for home. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect for home.

And, but your tanks, man, when you get into these things, for those of you who've never tried a, have never been to a float instant, a float center before, you've set the lights on these tanks so that as you're laying there in this very slow, indiscernible way, the lights slowly, slowly, slowly start fading out.

Right. And then the way it wakes you out of this incredible state that you've gotten into is they slowly, slowly, slowly come up and they do it in such a subtle way that the first time I floated at your place, I actually thought, this is holy shit. No, I'm really, I'm really getting somewhere now.

All right. Seeing the light. Kevin did it to me. Yeah. But you build those yourself, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They're really automated systems. You know, there's a computer that runs the whole thing. So we, we, we program the lights and the music and basically your whole experience, we can custom program it just how you want it. So we've got it pretty dialed in right now in terms of relaxing you and getting you into the float in the right way

and then getting you out of it without too much like sudden start changing. Your reality. So how did, how did you get into the floating world? I've actually been in the floating world for a really long time. Back in the mid 80s, 86, I, when I got out of school in New York,

I went to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music and theater. And right after I got there, I stumbled across this article in the LA Weekly that was advertising, for a float center that had opened in Hollywood. And it was only the second commercial float center ever in the world.

And I had seen the, the tanks in the movie altered states. Do you remember that movie that Ken Russell filmed from 1980? Cheesy as hell now though, man. If you revisited it, Cheesy as hell. I watched it again not long ago. What's the name of that?

Not to, not to stop the story of where it started. We do need to talk about all their states for 10 seconds. Wait, what's the actor? What's his name? The guy who plays the lead in that? There's William Hurt. William Hurt. Yeah.

So when I was a kid watching altered states, William Hurt seemed like the most amazing human ever. Like I just thought, man, I'm going to, I want to be like that guy. Now when you watch altered states, William Hurt seems like the most annoying human anyone is. Like you never want to be around that guy. Like he's this,

goes on and on and on and on. And he's like, you know, remember the bar scene where he's like, we're going to get to the core of the universe. Existential poser. Yeah. Existential poser. It's like, shut up. He seems like, he seems like the worst element of a message board

who just like goes on and on in these like weird ranting ways. But anyway, still in all, anyone who's seen altered states wants to go into a flow tank. If you were at all psychedelic and interested in, in those, you know, different states of consciousness and you see that movie. I mean, that just hit so many people with, with what it was doing and saying, you know,

the book is better. You know, the Chayevsky book, altered states is better. I didn't know that there was a book. I didn't know it's based on a book. It's based on the book. And the book's based on John Lilly, correct? Yeah. The whole story is loosely based on John Lilly.

And more, more kind of loosely based on what was happening around float tanks and float tank research early in the days. Obviously very sensationalized, very Hollywood. Yes. You know. Incredibly sensationalized. But still, it still did demonstrate like the early versions of the float technology.

That's right. The, the, the, the tanks where you actually weren't laying down, but you were. The upper vertical tanks. The ones where you're wearing like a big iron diving helmet. I can't imagine anything more stress inducing and less relaxing than being in this tiny little tube with a big iron helmet on. I know.

I was thinking like, how the hell do you relax in that situation? That's why it went away so fast and the new iteration of the, you know, horizontal tank that we know now kind of came immediately on the tail of that. So Lilly is the father of the float tank. That's safe to say. And so he was the one who was innovating all of this and he was experimenting because he had somehow caught wind that of,

of, of this concept that, that allowing yourself to be completely weightless in the dark creates a very specific state of consciousness that is unavailable in any other, in most places on planet Earth. I mean, maybe there's a few like. Pretty much that's it. Right. No gravity, no temperature, no sound, no light. I don't know where else you can get that really.

Right. It's, it's pretty unique. I think that's an overlooked aspect of floating is that people, when you hear about it, it sounds somehow normal. You know, it's not normal, but just like, yeah, you know, that kind of makes sense. Floating in darkness, whatever. But I don't think people realize that how special it is to allow

yourself to go into a place where you are not being, or your optic nerve isn't getting assailed by photons and where your body isn't getting pushed or pulled down against the, the planet that we're currently trapped on. It's, where is that in the universe? Outside of like, I guess the International Space Station, if you can find a place in there where you can turn off the lights, but even the problem with there is you're still like drifting,

I guess you're going to. Yeah, and you're still going to have sound and light and temperature like all the things that the, the flotation tank takes away. I mean, it was pretty amazing that he stumbled across it the way that he did. I mean, he did it in 1954. Right. Think about what else was going on in, in our culture and society in 1954.

Pretty conservative, right? Very conservative. Eisenhower's president were like first testing nuclear energy and nuclear weapons and, you know, it was a pretty weird time. And he, he came up with it because the prevailing thought at the time among science was that if you stripped sensory input away from the brain, that we'd basically go into a coma, that the brain would just cease to be conscious.

And then so that, so he devised this environment where he could study these ideas and he found out, wow, completely the opposite. The opposite. Yeah. It's not that you, it's yeah, it's not as though that you become, you would, you go into a coma. It's as though suddenly you become what you really are. Right.

He was really, he was really tapping into like what is consciousness because the prevailing idea was that you would become unconscious without sensory input. And that's just not the case at all. Well, you're stripping the blindfold of the universe off of you temporarily. It feels like as though someone has just wrapped a universe around you and tied it in the back and forced you to deal with the fact

that this thing that you consider to be reality, you just end up believing it's real. Just like if someone had a blindfold wrapped around their, their eyes, I guess over time, they would just live in the universe of darkness. Like we live in a universe of somethingness and we don't, and I think this is why you hear in like so many different religious, so many different scriptures have something to do with the concept

of sight versus being blind. And then you hear these very mysterious passages like what is day what is day for the normal person. I'm butchering it. What is day for the normal person is night for the sage. And what is night for the sage is day for the normal person. Or you hear varying stories of Jesus curing blindness or like references to blindness.

Paul on the road to Damascus is blind. And something about that seems to point or another version of it is like Christ saying, you must die to this world to come to know me. Like all these really things like that, which is like this thing that you think is everything is in fact the obstruction between you and what you're really inside of. Such a good point. Such a good point.

And this feels like when you go into the tank in some ways, a great deal of that, the whatever this thing is that we're in, that the condensation that we call the universe gets wiped off of the windshield of the self. And for a second you can see this is what you really are. Yeah, that's the whole practice really of floating. Like what you're saying right there, right? When we've talked a lot about this whole idea that consciousness as a,

like the brain's a receiver for consciousness, right? And a receiver for sensory input. And as we are in our normal lives, that filter mechanism is turned way up. Just filtering out all the stuff that's not important to our survival, right? Yes. And I mean modern science is, they estimate now that there's 400 million bits of information available to us at any second. And that seems overwhelming until you take a snapshot of just what's going

around right now. Light, shadows, movement, color, temperature, sound, gravity. When you really start itemizing it, there's a lot of sensory input coming in, right? Yes. As when we're in the tank, the filtering part of our receiver starts to be turned down because the brain wants information to come in, right? Yeah. So the filtering gets turned down, the sensitivity gets turned up,

the input sensitivity gets turned up, right? And so like after we develop our practice in the tank, that input sensitivity starts to become the tool that we're using to explore our own consciousness and our own state of being and what we really are when we're not out in the world involved in all that stimulation and sensory input. So let's get back to Kevin who watches altered states. You see the movie and then you went to a float center and just found a float center. Yeah, just by accident, I was flipping through the LA weekly.

I'd only been in LA for a couple of weeks, right? And I see this article about this float center and I see the picture of the tank and I immediately recognize it like, oh shit, that's a thing in altered states, you know? And so I was like, I have to try this. I went in and did it. It was amazing. My first float was really profound. Was this a Samadhi tank?

It was a Samadhi, yeah. So tell me about your first float. So what's the difference between a float center back then as opposed to a float center these days? The same model? I think the concept is basically the same. I mean, the technology has changed in the way that we take care of water and things like that has changed. But the basic idea remains the same. You know, we had six Samadhi tanks there that were open to the public.

People come in and rent them out by the hour. How many hours did you do for your first float? I just did one. One hour? Yeah. And you had an experience just from one hour from your first float? I did. It wasn't particularly profound in the tank.

I thought it was very interesting, very novel. It took me a little while to get used to it and everything. But it's when I got out of the tank. When I was now experiencing light and sound and the taste of food and the sound of music and things like that was just different. It was just better. And to be honest, I really had a hard time believing that what I was experiencing was because of something as deceptively simple as laying in a dark box full of salt water. I just couldn't make it make sense to me that I was feeling this way because of that. So I made an appointment to go back a couple days later and try it again.

And on that visit, I was lucky enough to meet one of the owners. And when he found out I was new to town, he asked me if I needed a job, which of course I did. And so I was lucky. I just stumbled into it and started working there. And so I had this amazing introduction to this whole world when it was still in its infancy as far as the public was concerned. It hadn't been around publicly for just about a couple of years. So now suddenly you move into town, that's not luck. But you move into town, I don't call that luck.

That's something else. And you know with these tanks, man, and especially with John Lilly, he's definitively out there. If he went out there, John Lilly is way, way, way out there. He was a trip, man. He's a trip. He was a trip. And I don't think people understand that the father of the flow tank in many times said that he was in contact with, I don't know if you want to call them extraterrestrials or interdimensional beings,

or he was being compelled to do much of what he did from some other sector of the universe that was having a communication with him that apparently wanted him to make sure that this technology got all over this planet so that people could have more access to have communication with these beings, whatever you want to call them. He had a lot of interesting ideas. He thought that he was sort of predicting the singularity, you know. Yeah, in a way. Yeah, he was really. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Do you remember what he said? Well, so I think you're referring back to a book that he wrote called Center of the Cyclones? Yes. Yeah, that's what an amazing book. Like, you have to read that book three times. He also mentions it in Tanks for the Memories, too. Yeah, right, right. But yeah, the concept being that, what is it?

Okay, so the concept is that, man, computers run better when it's cold because they generate heat. So computers, like, a machine intelligence is going to want things to be colder. So if we were being invaded by a machine intelligence, it would be in their interest to create another ice age or something like that. Oh, really? I think it was something like that. But it was very sinister. He went in deep. He went in deep.

But he was definitely prior to Musk, prior to Kurzweil, prior to any of the super smart people on planet Earth predicting the impending emergence of artificial intelligence and the ambiguity as to what that artificial intelligence is going to do. Lily was predicting that we were going to have a real problem with machine intelligence coming to planet Earth, and his prognostications were pretty dire, actually. It wasn't a comforting version of the singularity that John Lily had. I just don't think people are aware of that fact. Yeah, and I think as he kind of went down the tunnel into, like, some of the substances like ketamine and things like that, that he was working with in the tank, that really started to distort his whole perception. And just the way that he talked about things in general. Do you think that he was becoming psychotic? Yeah, I think it was pretty bad for him, actually.

The ketamine specifically? Yeah, specifically. Because he was really into that. And I understand. I haven't done ketamine, but since I've had my Zenten, I've been able to experiment with varying substances inside the tent from mushrooms to weed to... I took some... God, I took a narcotic and went in there. I took a...

Jesus, what was it? Someone had given me a... God, I don't know. I don't remember. It was, you know, some kind of... Oh, what do you call it? An opiate? An opioid?

Uh-huh. So, uh... Of all the substances that I took, the one that most agreed with the experience was the opioid, because it was shutting down the marijuana mushrooms. They're sort of, like, counter to what the tank is trying to do. I agree with that. I was hoping we would talk about this a little bit, yeah. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work.

When I was on mushrooms in the tank, another thing John Lilly talks about and other people who float talk about is that tank will talk to you. It has a conversation with you, and it has the same kind of conversation. DMT has, or any of these, it doesn't, like, literally talk. It's not like suddenly it's saying, hello, Duncan, welcome to the tank, but it does transmit information to you somehow. Absolutely, yeah. So, when I was on mushrooms in the tank, the communication I got was, why are you in here right now? Go outside. Just go outside.

This is not a place for that. Go outside. Go into nature if you're going to take mushrooms. Yeah. And I did, too. I'm like, all right, you're right. And then I went to the park with my dogs, and it was awesome. But, uh...

That's not when you threw your dog in the water. No, that's many months later. Just so you know, guys, I've got to say this, since you just let everyone know I threw my dog in the water. I recently put my dog in a pool because I don't know why I thought this, but I've... It's so dumb. Like, after I pulled my dog out of the pool, I just realized what a complete idiot I was. It's not all dogs can swim. I thought all dogs can swim.

They can! Especially my Chihuahua. Chihuahua, yeah. The look on my dog's face when I put him in the water, and he's like... His legs are coming over the top of the pool. I was right there, guys. Don't worry. He was in no danger.

But the look in his face of, like... This is, like, Julius Caesar level, a tube brutée. Like, what's the whole thing? The charade that ends with you drowning in the pool. Anyway, I pulled the dog out. I'll never do that again. I learned a huge lesson. Not all dogs can swim.

Not all dogs can swim. I grew up with water dogs, and they can all swim. So I didn't know that. But, anyway, the point is... The point is, there are certain states of consciousness that I don't feel go very well with the floating experience, certain chemically induced states. Right. But I can see why you thought catamine was good.

Because, basically, when you're in the tank, the frustrating aspect of it is that part of the mind that the moment you start going into, I guess, what did you call it? A theta state? Is that what it is? The moment you start going into a theta state, there's a part of the mind that seems to suddenly realize you're going into the theta state, and, like, it'll wake you back up. It's, like, what? Right.

No. Yeah. And so anything that keeps that part of the mind at bay accelerates and seems to amplify the experience of merging or whatever that experience. However you want to term that experience. Yeah. I think the downside to... And we've done a lot of experiments with things like psilocybin and LSD and mescaline and things

like that in the tank. And the kind of experiences that you get from those compounds, they're almost dictated by the sensory input that's coming in. Right. It's where you are, what you're listening to, what's in your field of vision, all of that. So when you take those substances in the tank, my personal experience was just you felt the kind of euphoria that comes from them. Right.

But that's kind of where it ended. Right. Until you took, like, gigantic heroic doses of things, and then obviously the whole thing changes again. Changes how? Because I have yet to do any kind of heroic doses in the tank. Well, it's the same thing like McKenna talked about of doing large doses of psilocybin laying down in a dark room with a blindfold on and just turning your awareness inward to have

that experience. That's more of the experience in the tank. Right. And so on what we would consider like normal doses or whatever, it just wasn't that significant to the experience for me. Have you tried MDMA in there yet? No. I haven't tried that.

Anybody out there try that? I wonder what that's like. That seems like it could be useful to some degree because MDMA is, well, you know, there's obviously there's an infinite number of ways to use MDMA. But when turned inward, it definitely has an incredibly therapeutic effect. And it seems like the tank is a great place to turn. Anyway, the point is, I understand why Lily was shooting up ketamine before he went into the tank, because I think that he had, I think some, one of the things he said has really

stuck with me and I, and I, it's just the craziest thought experiment ever. But he said, when you go into the tank, you enter into the tank in one universe and when you get out of the tank, you get out of the tank in another universe. Feels like that, doesn't it? Yes, it does. Yeah. And so it's almost as though somehow the act of going into this, what you called a very deceptively simple place.

Deceptively, because it ain't on earth. It's not there. Right. There's no anti-gravity water closets, they're not, it's a completely brand new experience. Most people have never had the experience before. Even though for some reason your mind's like, yeah, I kind of know what that is. No, you don't. Right.

No, you don't. Because you've been accosted by phenomena in the external field, pummeling your senses for your entire life. Right. And it's like to get a break, a little vacation, so you don't know what it's like. So it kind of, if you follow his possibly ketamine warped logic far enough, it kind of makes a weird sense, which is when you go into that tank, you are entering into a brand new universe.

And when you come out of the tank, it's almost as though whatever is outside of that tank, like his spun around, like some kind of, like, I don't know, like one of those hell-raiser boxes, like whatever the universe you were in, like a planet orbiting Earth is like moved on. And the thing that you come out of, even though it looks just like the universe you know, it's not the same place. Right. I kind of get it.

Because everything's brighter. Everything's new. Like, it's like the dew of Eden is on top of everything, you know? It's like this glistening, beautiful thing. To me, that was my, by the way, one of the, in the same way with DMT too, what I realized from floating is whatever the fireworks show is that happens inside the tank, it's only the very seed of the thing that grows out of you after you have had the experience. The experience continues long after you've been in there, long after.

So I get the ketamine thing. So you were working at a float, you were working at this float place, and you had access to these tanks. Yeah. So you probably started floating all the time. Yeah. Like my first 325, 350 floats were done at that float center. 325.

Yeah. Hour floats, minimum? Minimum. Yeah. Yeah. For me, floats, I do a lot of hour floats, I do a lot of two and three hour floats as well. That's kind of my normal thing.

And then three or four times a year, I like to do a long like eight or nine hour, like do an overnight float. And how do you deal with peeing? You just get out and go down the hall to the restroom. Yeah, because that's the thing I learned from the tank too, is that it's really easy to get right back into the experience if you come out and go back in. It's not like you have to build back up to that state, you just get back in and it's great.

Right. So eight hours, man. Yeah. What is that? Those are cool. Those are really cool. How do you, how would you describe hour three of an eight hour float? Well, you don't even know when hour three comes and goes in an eight hour float, right?

Like you lose total track of time. I want to back up though. Sure. Because we skipped over a couple of things that I think are important, something that you were saying earlier. I think with the substances that we're talking about and the experimentation that's been done in the tanks, like over time, I have really become an advocate for more of a pure experience from floating.

Like I think floating is its own thing and I don't think it requires ingestion of other compounds or things to go along with it. Like I used to experiment with it a lot and thought it was some kind of necessary part of it. The more I do it, the more my practice has evolved, the more I realize it's its own unique and special kind of experience. And so, you know, before we get too far along, I want to make sure that everybody hears me say that because it does have a tendency to get automatically paired up with drug experiences.

Yes. And I just don't think that that's not really what it is. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. Just remind the few times that I've, you just don't want to. Like you don't want to, this experience is so precious and it's such a precious experience that you don't want to, at least my incursions into the tank. I just don't want to, I don't want anything to get in the way of that teaching that's

happening inside of there. I just don't want to mess it up and because again, I don't mean to keep going back to this, but you have to really, really, really understand how rare it is to get a chance to not have anything going into your sensory apparatus. You know, I'd mentioned this to you after I came out of the tank rambling at your place, but it's like, it's like a recorder, a VCR, like an old VCR recorder. And all of a sudden it's got these, once you've been in the tank just once, you now have a black streak on your consciousness.

You now have a place where nothing was being recorded. Everything that you're doing is this constant recording of stuff. Now it's just like somebody put the lens cap on for a second. The void is there suddenly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's beautiful. So I concur with you.

I think that experience is so unique and it's really cool to know that it's happening organically, but this is something that you're doing with your brain and your consciousness as opposed to being influenced by some compound or substance that you've introduced. And so as time goes on, I've learned to really appreciate the pure sensory deprivation experience. And that's really where most of my work and my practice has now gone in that direction. And then what you're saying here doesn't run counter to any of the advice given when someone is taking a psychedelic. In general, whether it's ayahuasca or mushrooms, there's usually that if you're going to use

it therapeutically or in a shamanic setting, the shaman or the therapist will advise some period of abstinence from all intoxicants and included in that as often fasting and also abstaining from even sex, caffeine, all of it. And it seems like the reason... Anything that alters consciousness. Anything that was going to shift your consciousness. So that you can understand what the pure experience of that medicine is. That's it.

Not clouded by what you're doing around it, right? Right. You just don't want to invite other teachers to the seminar. And I think with TM, it's the same thing, which here ends with dental meditation. They say for the period that they're teaching you, my friend has told me, they say, don't do any drugs. We want you completely sober so that you can understand that these states of consciousness are accessible minus the substance.

Possible for you to reach those states of consciousness without. Which is... I mean, you know, in my younger days, whenever I heard people say that bullshit, I would be like, shut the fuck up. There is no way on earth that the experience of three hits of a hundred microgram freshly created LSD can be reproduced through meditation or whatever the fuck it is that you're talking about. So just stop.

Right. But now that I've had a chance to experience float tanks and meditating and be around people and meditate. And well, I guess in some ways that's true. You're not going to reproduce that state of consciousness. But what you are going to experience is something that makes that state of consciousness seem like a road bump. It seems like just a weird dream, like a feverish carnival ride or something.

A carnival ride. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, yeah, exactly. That's it. That's a great way to put it. It's a carnival ride. And it's a great carnival ride.

Yeah, it's a great ride. And I love going on it from time to time. Fantastic ride. But once you recognize there's a lot of other rides in this amusement park that we happen to be in. And some of them, it's almost like psychedelics or training wheels or something. It's like a thing to get you there so you know it's there. But then, yeah.

Anyway. I think most teachers in shamans will tell you that those things like plant medicines and things like that are tools to teach you how to get to those places and have those experiences. But it's not a tool that you want to rely on forever. So Aubrey, you know, I just interviewed Aubrey and he was saying that the multiple, the shamanic use of these plant medicines creates a bridge between you and that state of consciousness. So that once you've done it enough times in the right way, you can access that state

of consciousness anytime that you want minus the substance because you've created a connection to that universe. And it must be true with the tank, too. Multiple uses of that tank. Are you able to go into those states of consciousness minus the tank? Can you put yourself into a theta state minus the... Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Definitely, yeah. I mean, you know, the tank is my primary practice in life now. I mean, I don't do regular meditation. You'll learn about me that I'm like pretty anti-dogmatic. I don't like rules and ways of doing things. I don't like being told how to think or how to feel or how to accomplish things. And to me, the tank is the perfect tool for that because it's dogma free. There's no rules about how you use the tank.

Right. You know, anything that we're talking about, you can do in there any, you know, any practice that you want to do in there, however, there's everybody has their own style of doing it, you know. But definitely, I've learned that the importance of a flotation practice is not about any particular moment inside the flotation tank. It's about how it's affecting your life, you know, on a day-to-day basis. So can you talk a little bit about the changes that started happening to your life when you

began to float regularly? Yeah. So it was very interesting for me because I did a lot of floating early on when I worked at the float center in Los Angeles in the late 80s. And then I got away from it for a long time because the industry died out pretty significantly after about 1990, 1991. It was almost non-existent. Why?

Well, primarily I believe it was because of the AIDS crisis. Right. I think people got very paranoid about using public water. And so that had a devastating effect on the industry. And also in the 80s, there was, you know, there was kind of a new age movement going on and people were getting more spiritual and into meditation and journeying and shamanic journeys and things like that. So I think it was just, you know, a flotation tank was in the right place at the right time

for us culturally. It was there as another tool to do what we were interested in. The 90s, that was kind of changing. Culturally things were changing. People's ideas were changing. So I think all of those things had a lot to do with it. So during that time, none of us floated a lot. There was only a few commercial centers left in the U.S., you know.

So I got a break from it for a while. And that's when I first sort of came to the realization that floating was having a profound effect on my life is when I didn't have access to it anymore. And I sort of witnessed myself going back to some of my more baseline characteristics of my life, like of my personality, my interactions with other people, how I expressed myself artistically and creatively. All of these things started to have kind of diminishing sort of effect on those parts of my life.

Then it suddenly became this new struggle with me about how to keep those levels up and elevated like they were when I had access to floatation tanks. So I actually experienced it as like coming off of floating was where I first really noticed how it was affecting my life. Then a few years ago, I always floated whenever I could and wherever I could, but there were few and far between. And a few years ago when I started, when I opened the float center here in Austin and started building the tanks and then got back in where I was floating almost every day and

long stretches of consistent floating, then I really started to see it having an effect on me. And in terms of just being mentally sharper, more creative, more intuitive, more empathetic also, feeling how I was dealing with other people and the feedback that I would get from other people. Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, I can remember being in a situation with my girlfriend where I think I normally

like, I'm not like you, man. I'm a high strung dude. I'm like an erotic high strung guy. But when I was floating, I've moved, I've got to set my tent up again, but when I was floating regularly, all of a sudden, I was getting so chilled out and things that normally would drive me up the wall were just like, I didn't even notice them anymore. This weird tranquil calm was... This fluidity, right?

Yeah. Just being able to be flexible and fluid with the people and the situations around you, right? Yes. It's a great and profound part of the whole floating practice, you know? Yeah. There's something really cool. It makes better people.

Yes. It does. And people who float regularly, they are different. There's a tangible difference in them that is obvious and super cool. And I think it's interesting that you said earlier, I don't meditate. And it's interesting to me that there are people who create a distinction between sitting practices and laying down practices. I always really, I go back and forth on it because when you sit straight back and you're

experiencing gravity and you're experiencing the external world and you're still training your attention on the breath and allowing yourself to enter into whatever the state is that meditation produces, it does seem a little different than the floating experience to some degree. I think it's very different. Yeah. And I don't mean to diminish meditation practice at all because I know people that have extraordinary lives because of their floatation practice, I mean because of their meditation practice.

My wife still actively meditates and I see it in her. For me personally, it seemed like a lot of huffing and puffing, a lot of hard work to enter these states, you know? And because I'm busy and impatient and lazy and all these things that human beings can be, the floatation tank just seemed like such an easy way to enter these deep meditative states, these profoundly interesting states of consciousness without all that huffing and puffing. Right.

Just take your clothes off and lay down and relax. Yeah, it's a lot cooler, man. I mean, meditating is cool. And I get it. Meditation, I get it. It's like getting into a float tank, getting out of a float tank, there's a shower involved and there's like stuff involved where it's meditating, find a wall, sit down and start breathing.

Right. And so I think they're both good. I think they go hand in hand, but it's different shades of the same color. If you ask me, ultimately, it seems to me to be very similar. I have noticed two similarities specifically. When I am regularly meditating, memories that seem to have been lodged deep inside of my mind start becoming dislodged. And so these very vivid memories start emerging into my consciousness.

Some of them seem to have some Freudian or psychoanalysts would have a lot of fun with them. Things like, oh, okay, here, this has shaped you in some way or look at these things you did to impact people around you when you were much younger. And some of them are just, here's what your elementary school looked like. Here's remember the cafeteria of your elementary school here. Look, welcome back to Edwine Elementary School. Isn't that great?

Yeah, it's just interesting. It shows you that everything you've ever experienced is in there somewhere, you know? And I talked about floating a lot as like defragmenting your hard drive on your computer. You have all this loose memories and loose experiences and stuff just kind of in there. It's temporarily placed somewhere until you have a chance to deal with it. And for many of us, we don't ever get the chance to deal with it. Ever. Yeah, we've done some cool memory recall experiments in the flotation tanks that really proved

to me that every memory you've ever had is still in there somewhere. Terrifying. It's just a matter of... Well, so I was doing a set of experiments on memory recall once where I was just pushing further and further back in my life. I would go into the tank with the intention of retrieving an earlier memory than the one I had retrieved during my last float. And I actually managed...

My goal was to see if we collected memory even before birth, like do we have memory of being in the womb, which some people claim to experience in the tanks. I personally didn't go back that far, but I was going back earlier and earlier and earlier into my childhood. And man, I was just blowing my mom's mind with this stuff. I would call her up after my floats and I'd be like, hey, do you remember when this thing happened and she'd be like, Kevin, you weren't even three years old when we lived in that house.

And then I'd go, well, I'll do you better. Here's what color of the carpet was, here's what kind of car we had, and here's the dress that you were wearing. And it was kind of freaking my mom out that I can remember it. And I actually got... The earliest memory that I retrieved was this beautiful memory of laying on my mom's stomach and feeling my body rising and falling with her breath. So I must have just been an infant and I remember her just feeling like just omnipotent, like

she was the only thing that I understood in my universe. It was just like her and then this exact moment that I was in. Holy shit. Yeah. And so it's, you know, it's just an amazing tool to retrieve memories like that. And a sweet thing to have again, man. And you know, that's, I mean, yeah, like the experience of being a child laying on your mother's stomach, you never get that.

What is that? You never get that again. The closest... I remember like, I ran a ropes course once and you would tie yourself into the... There was like a log suspended far up in the trees. And you know, it was a summer camp, so you teach kids to walk across the log and overcome their fear. But yeah, when I wasn't working, I would lay on that log strapped into the cables above

the log. And then when the wind blew, the log would rise and fall. And I just... It was one of my favorite feelings. And now I know why. It reminded me of my mom probably. Probably, right? I just didn't know it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's that kind of like, God, that's such a weird universal experience that we all forget. And it's wonderful, would it be, to be laying on a giant, warm, stomach of an omnipotent being. Right? That's the thing. Well, I mean, that isn't that the great theory of all hippies is that actually we are on

the great belly of an omnipotent being, Kali, the mother. Right. She's like, we're laying there right now. So yeah, that is fascinating. And I think the implications of this memory storage or this... I think it's really funny that we allow ourselves to believe that our past actions are somehow just not are gone. Yeah, over and done, Wisch.

They're over and done. It's in the past, man. Forget about it. It's in the past. It's in the past. Yeah. Yeah. We like to think that.

And it's a convenient thing to think. And in a lot of ways, I wish it were the case. Right. Yeah. I can think of a few experiences that I wish would stay in my past too. Yes, yes, yes. But when you realize that it's like your body is just storing this stuff up, and I like to believe that when you, when the thing becomes dislodged again and emerges into your consciousness,

I like to believe that that's it. I like to believe that if you, when it comes into your consciousness, you can forgive yourself for it or forgive the person for whatever it was they did, then when it returns back to wherever it was nesting inside of you, that it's a brand new thing. You've blessed it, baptized it, cleansed it, and then you feel a little lighter for the rest of your life because you've sort of scrubbed off a dirty dish that you thought you could hide. I agree with that, man.

It's like, it's like that, that thing was stuck in your RAM. It was in the random access memory part, right? Right. Temporarily stored there until you had an opportunity to process it and compartmentalize it and file it away. And then once you do that, whether it's in the tank or in a meditation practice or however, therapy, therapy, right? Once it's done, now it's properly filed in the right place, right?

It's no longer just stuck in RAM. Pebbles in your shoe. It's like you have all these pebbles in your shoe, and you've forgotten that it hurts to walk. You just think the pain. You've been dealing with it. You've just been dealing with it. Yeah, the uncomfortable aspect of when you have sand in your shoe or pebble.

And this is like any time any of these things get out, then for the rest of your life, you're going to walk with a little bit more comfort through the world. Memory retrieval is incredible, but I wanted to ask you, what are some of the most intense, perhaps supernatural experiences that you've had in the tanks? Okay, I'm so glad that we're going to go here, man, because I heard the last interview that you did with, I forget the guy's name right now. I'm drawing a blank. Sorry, buddy.

They invented the Zen tent. I heard you. You wanted to go here, you know? Yes. And so this can get really deep, you know? The tank is an amazing place. I maybe want to start this by saying that you've heard me talk about, I always refer to floating as a practice, right?

And that's something that I want everybody to understand. The experiences that you have around floating can get more and more rich and more profound as we do our practice over time, right? So a lot of what we're about to talk about, we need to also keep in mind that, you know, I've had like 550 floats in my life right now at this point, you know? So I don't want to give people an expectation. Some of which were eight hour floats. Right.

People shouldn't have an expectation of in their first three or four floats having these super transformative, psychedelic, profound, amazing, otherworldly kind of experiences. I think John Lilly said something on the lines of, you need about a year to learn how to do it. That's what I think too. Yeah. Of consistency. Yeah.

Consistently floating over a year. So I have, I don't even know exactly how to jump into this. I'm just going to start like talking. I have many times now in the flotation tank, I'm experiencing myself being in the presence of an intelligence that is trying to convey information to me about the fabric of reality and of our universe. And it's a hard thing for me to bring back when I'm there, when I'm in the tank in the middle of the float, I'm in the presence of this intelligence, I feel like I understand

everything in that moment. But when I come back from that moment, it's just now fragments. It's just pieces of understanding. And I feel like I've been to school for brain surgery and I felt like I had it. But then as soon as I left school, then suddenly I don't know quite as much about what's going on. But I do now have an understanding that our reality and our lives on the earth are just part of one energetic system.

And that system is one of many that make up the whole universe of consciousness and physical structure and things like that. So this energy system that we're living in on the planet is more one of like, it's like a predatory one or a consumptive one, like we have to eat to survive, we have to take in calories, we have, there's a food chain that's in play. Sure. So there's always this taking from our environment in order to survive, which is our mandate. Snakes eating its own tail.

Yeah. Right? And so a lot of times when I'm in the tank, I'm sort of gaining information about what it is that we're doing here in this energy system. Right. I don't know if that made any sense. Makes a lot of sense. Okay.

Now, here's a question I have for you. Is this a personal teaching that you're getting? Or do you feel like you're listening to a lecture or something like that? Is the tank, these intelligence that you've encountered, does it have a personal relationship with you? When you come back into the tank, does it recognize you? Is it glad you're there? Okay.

How would you describe the intelligence's relationship with you? It is a teacher-student kind of relationship in a way. There's the idea being conveyed to me that doing the human being thing is an important part of a larger process. It's a decision that we make voluntarily, and it's considered to be big and important that we do it. Right. And I think it has to do with gathering and containing our consciousness in a way that

is not diluted by all of the mandatory aspects of survival in this energy system. Right. Right. Yes. Was that okay? Yeah. No, it's great. You can't go wrong here, man.

I'm having a hard time languaging some of this stuff. Linguaging is the right word, and it's very hard to do, and I think that that's kind of the joy of getting to pop back into this place is like David Lynch compares it to fishing. Sometimes you go over, you're going on a fishing trip when you go into these places, and if you can pull off bringing one of these fish back into this dimension, it really helps the dimension a lot. You can feed a lot of people, the multiplication of the fishes, perhaps that's a pointing in the direction of if you can pull these things from the depths of this from the unseen

things below the surface into the scene, then you can multiply them and feed a great many people and lots of people are hungry for it. So yeah, don't feel I think I think that the audience understands just how incredibly difficult it is to articulate these things and how whatever these things are, they lay outside the perimeter of language. And so whatever you, it seems like no matter what, in some way you're always reducing the experience by having to place it into these ridiculous linguistic cubby holes. That's what I was saying.

Like in the moment you experience it, there's a fuller understanding of what it is. It's when you come back out of those states of consciousness and back into channel normal reality, it starts to break down because it's not as easy to understand when you have to apply words to it in order to define that experience that you're having. Imagine the first, you know, they say that certain beings like figured out how to climb out of the ocean and go back in like, you know, but imagine like the first beings who like wanted to describe what there's this whole other continent right above the ocean. Right.

It should break the surface here. It turns into, what do we call that? Yeah. We don't have words for that. I'm sure like the first dolphin that leapt out of the ocean, you know, and looked around and was like, holy fuck, what a sky. The water gets so thin that you can't swim anymore, man, and there's stuff out there. So it's difficult, but amazing.

But I want to get back to this intelligence. What are the qualities of this intelligence? How could you describe this being that is communicating this information to you? I find this intelligent presence by using awareness. I'm sort of aware of where she's at. Is she feminine? Yeah. Yeah.

And I'll tell you how I was introduced to her in a second, but I hold, there's a place for her that is identified by awareness. When I'm aware of that meeting place that we have, then it's as simple for me as being in the tank, getting relaxed, getting down into my float, and then putting my awareness on that place and that presence, and then consciously releasing from awareness of my physical surroundings and my presence in this reality. Got it. Right?

It's like a decision that I make. I hold that location in my mind, and then I purposely release from being here, and I go there instantly. Got it. Got it. That makes sense. That makes total sense. Yeah.

So you let go of this dimension. You travel to this other place, and you come into the presence of some kind of feminine teacher force. Right. Does she have a name? I don't know. I've tried to assign names in the past, thinking that at some point I'm going to stumble across one that works for her.

So I'm going to say no right now, but next time I talk to you, I may change my answer to that. Do you see her? I do. So this intelligence was introduced to me a couple of years ago. So I was in the middle of 100 days of consecutive floats. So I was floating for usually about two to three hours a day, and I was working on some ideas about consciousness and the source of consciousness and how it works for us.

And so my purpose of going into the tank every day was to work on this problem. And on Float 50, I was contacted by a friend of mine who had brought this, for lack of a better term, a shaman to town to administer DMT, which I had never experienced. And I wanted to, but I was kind of waiting until I could drink ayahuasca. I wanted that to sort of be my introduction to it. But he convinced me that this guy was somebody that I should meet and do some work with. So after my 50th float, I literally floated, I got out of the tank, I showered, I put my clothes on, and I drove over to this guy's house to meet this shaman.

And the guy did a beautiful, beautiful ceremony in preparation for taking the DMT. And at the end of my experience lasted about 10 minutes. It was really like nine minutes or something, right? And it was right at the very end. It would take me about three hours to describe how I got to this point, but I went through a lot of the typical experiences that everybody reports about DMT. Eventually, I found myself in front of this, what I call a veil. It was just like this shimmery, silver veil.

And when I got close to it, I could see her on the other side of it. And she has a human face, but she has very enlarged eyes, very dark, black. Alien. Very much like the alien experience, you know? And I don't know if this came from, you know, I read The Spirit Molecule, Straussman's research in New Mexico with DMT, and friends with Mitch Schultz who made the documentary, The Spirit Molecule. So I'm going to go ahead and say that this is a construct of my brain to apply this visual

image to this entity. But it's one that I could understand and relate to, and that's the one that I've kind of carried over. Did you say that this being that you're encountering somehow has access to all the symbols inside of your mind, in the same way that if I go to another country, I have access to all the words that they use to describe their reality. And I pick the words I want to use to talk to them, and in the same way as the beings scanning you and saying, okay, okay, this is the closest thing in your mind to what I am.

So that's what I'm going to wear so that you understand me. Cool. That's a great way to look at it, you know? So I came away from that experience with the idea that, you know, try this one on for size and see if you can fit into this. This is kind of interesting. I think that what I came away from that experience was that DMT is like a key that allows us to navigate along this boundary that's created where two universes are touching each other.

So think about the multiverse theory, if you're familiar with that, I know you talked about it, I've heard you talk about it. So I think about this multiverse as like bubbles, right? And think about where two bubbles are touching each other the way they become deformed, they lose their perfect roundness and they get flat where these two bubbles would meet. So if you were a larger kind of intelligence, and you wanted to leave behind a key to allow us as humans to navigate along those boundaries where those two universes touch each other, wouldn't you hide it in plain sight, the key?

Sure. And like food and plants and in our own brains and produced in our own bodies and wouldn't it be easy to metabolize and easy to use and all of this stuff, right? I came back with that kind of understanding that like, oh, this is just a key, it's just a key on a map. It just tells us how to navigate in this boundary territory. I got you. It kind of felt like she might be another kind of consciousness also navigating that

same boundary and we were just there. We just met each other at the border, you know, and she was probably looking at me and I was probably looking at her and I said to her like, you know, who are you? I want to meet you, I want to know more about you and she told me it's not going to happen here. Right. But specifically, it's not going to happen here, right? The importance of that became apparent to me later in the flotation tank because she's

the intelligence and the entity that I meet up with now. Okay. Got it. And it started, it then occurred to me like, oh, it's not going to be here, but it could be in the tank, right? And I started wondering like, are these long floats in this consistent practice of floating? Is this increasing the amount of DMT that I'm producing endogenously? I mean, is that what's allowing me to get back to this border line, this border area

where I can be in the presence of this other entity? Yeah, we always want to know that, right? That's the funny part of the thing that the mind does is like, these incredible experiences that happen, inevitably the mind will be like, try to come up with like, wow, it must be the release of a chemical inside of me that brought me back. For some reason, the mind wants to have some kind of chemical explanation for everything, which I get. It's still, again, DMT, the release of some kind of endogenous psychoactive chemical from

your synaptic vesicles into your brain, well, that would be in your brain, but the release of some kind of psychedelic that's inside of you that comes from floating. Okay, great. To me, I don't care, though. You know, as a DMT, whatever it is, I don't know. All I know is that the tank, DMT, certain experiences, certain methodologies will bring you into the presence of these teachers, and they do want to teach us for some reason. You know, I'm very curious about them.

I'm very curious about them because I wonder like, what exactly, I know the New Age concept that we have chosen, this human incarnation, as some form of teaching, something we decided to do, probably a mistake. Another bad decision, Duncan. It would definitely be something I procrastinate, man, and again, you hear folks like, folks who've had experience with dying people, or folks that have died, again and again and again and again and again, the description for what's over there is like, I am not going back to being a fucking human being again.

You know, you very rarely hear stories of people who have died and gone into that place being like, let me get back. Oh, yeah, I gotta get back to earth. It's always like, you know what, I'm cool over here. And quite often beings will say, no, you're not done yet. You gotta go back. School's not over. This is just a little break, but you gotta go back and work, you know.

So it's funny how those things keep coming up again and again and again. It's weird across all different belief systems, too, you hear that same kind of general thing. There's gotta be something to it. And maybe when we attribute it to just like a chemical release in the brain or something, it's just easier for us to acknowledge it and believe that then I'm rubbing up against something sacred. Well, I'm encountering an angel. You know, if you look at human history and you look at the way humans talk about the

transcendent, you'll find that they're always using whatever the most high tech language in their culture is to describe it. So right now we've got dimethyltryptamine in the pineal gland being secreted into the bloodstream. We didn't have that 500 years ago, so we would use different symbols to describe what was happening to us. And those were more flowery, beautiful symbols a lot of the time. People still use those.

So I think certain symbols are more useful when it comes to trying to bring these fish back from the vast ocean that these experiences allow us access to than other symbols. So I think that the newest one sound more credible somehow like you're not just some flaky hippie talking about. Yeah, they sound more credible, but also I think they're they're a little reductive. And I think that there's something to be said for giving up on using those symbols to describe these experiences. You can, if you want, you're allowed to use any symbol that you want to describe these

experiences. You can't expect whatever is best for whoever you happen to be talking to, I suppose, and whatever your intention is in having that conversation. But if you're having the conversation with yourself and you're using the language of neuroscience to describe these transcendent experiences, you might be reducing it in ways that you don't necessarily need to do. I'm fully okay with saying it's an angel. You came into contact with an angel.

Or another way to say it is you came into contact with an interdimensional disembodied teaching force that for some reason has an interest in communicating information to you that you're supposed to bring out of the tank into this dimension more than likely because they think it's going to help this place. There seems to be a program. See that's another thing that I've noticed is there seems to be an actual there seems to be a program that's happening. I don't think it's on this planet and I don't think that it's the way that it's happening

is the first time it's been done. It seems to be some kind of systematic program where, okay, we'll give them this information and this information and this information and this information and the dissemination of this information seems to be happening at a very specific rate. We get the beginning messengers come and those are the prophets and they come with this like first to calm them down, you know, you've got to calm them down. That's the first step. Try to get some harmony going, get something they can all agree on, get them get them stabilized

a little bit. And then once that has happened and that's going to create the place where the sciences are going to grow out of, you know, and then even though weirdly religion sometimes is antithetical to science, it seems to like create the kind of cultural stability that you need for that kind of stuff to happen. And maybe not though. Forgive me for saying that, you guys. I don't know.

That's what I could. That's me free balling a little too much. I don't know for sure about that one, guys, but I, but still, though, to me, my encounter with these beings has been they're, they're teaching, definitely teaching. They're calming, they're calming and they're teaching at the same time. They don't want us to suffer. They don't like it that we're suffering and they're trying to cheer us up. There's another aspect to it where they're like, you don't need to be afraid.

This is a playground. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it.

Enjoy it. They're always saying some version of that. Like you don't need to be freaking out. This is for you to have fun. Drop the guilt. You don't need to feel guilty. You don't need to feel like you've made all kinds of terrible wrong choices. You don't need to feel, how can you expect yourself to be doing anything more than what

you're doing right now? Always some version of that, very empathetic, very lovely. And then going along with that is some kind of very serious thing, which is like, but now listen, let me listen. Just listen. You know what I mean? So it's a simultaneous thing, compassion mixed in with this relatively stern, like, okay, but let me give you this info.

Here's what's going on. I don't know why that is or what it is, but it's probably as frustrating for them as it is for us that whenever we come out of those states, we're like, I saw that. We've lost 99.9% of the information that they took the time to give us. Yeah. I feel bad sometimes that I don't remember how complete it was. Right. And you end up a stammering wreck.

And then we, you know, we get people like Terrence McKenna, or, you know, who were really able to convey or just open it up and yeah, but he took from McKenna, you know, he had he took, he had guts. Yeah. McKenna had to make up words, right? You know, and he wasn't afraid to make up words. Self transforming machine out. Yeah.

Yeah. You gotta have some guts to just go ahead and say, yeah, I saw self transforming machine out saying that publicly knowing you're being recorded. Yeah. Yeah. That takes some guts, man. So this, this being, does she always wear the veil when you encounter her? No, no.

The veil was only an element in the, in the DMT experience. When it, when it's in the tank, it's more like she's just kind of around me. I don't really see the face as much as I'm just aware of the presence. Right. So I felt like it was really a gift that I was introduced through DMT and then something that I could use as a tool in the tank to get these, get this kind of, this new kind of information. And the presence is with you now, right?

This never really goes away. Or is it? I agree. I would agree with that. Yeah. It's always there. Yeah. I think so.

Always there. Guardian angel. Yeah. Fuck it. You say synaptic vessel. I say guardian angel. I like guardian angel today too. It just works.

I think that's working really good for me. What's, I've been curious and I know that your listeners are going to be curious about how your floating practice has now evolved since you have your own tank and you're meeting more and more people who are in the floating world and stuff like that. You have this amazing background that we all know about from listening to you where you read all these spiritual texts and you have this deeply, I mean, you're one of the most spiritual people that I know in a beautiful round way. Thanks.

Two. I mean, I have to tell you that. Like you're not so caught up in one thing that that's all it is for you. We agree on this one place where the whole rule thing or the dogmatic approach to this stuff. I don't like it. And I understand why some people need it, but it's just not my thing. I love that you're just as willing to talk about Christ as you are to talk about Buddha

or Shiva or any of the concepts of Hinduism or how are you, Krishna? I've always really respected this about you. And I'm wondering how for you, how is floating integrating into that and how is that integrating into floating and what's your experience in the float tank like these days? I'll tell you, it's not like anything because I moved. So I've got a garage filled with boxes and a sad, deflated float tank that needs to be salted. Yeah.

It's so sad. My baby. Oh, let me tell you, putting the sump pump in your Zen tent and watching all that salt go down the toilet and you're like, man, this stinks, man, I've got to like get 650 pounds of salt up to my new place and fill her up again. But before I can do that, I've got to clean out a garage of like and deodorize a garage in the house because that's where we want to put it. That's where my girlfriend.

My girlfriend's going to let me put the tank. So I've got to do that. So anyway, so I haven't been floating, unfortunately, because it's not in my house anymore. But when I had the tent set up and was floating, I was having increasingly psychedelic experiences like what you're talking about came into just suddenly like was completely in contact with some kind of entity or something was there right away. Like just suddenly it was like, oh, shit. It was like that.

Like where I had to tell my like, I was like, I won't, it was just what you're talking about. I knew by the way you were reacting to what I was saying that this was a familiar place for you. That's why I wanted to. Yeah. It was there. Understand more about your experience.

Being the teacher force now at now that this I would actually have to go back and listen to me talking about it to remember because the fucking fight's like what the Sam Nisha sinks in, man. But I know that's so weird. But I know I had contact with something masculine feminine masculine, but not like, you know, just like it's a teacher. Now I've had contact with this. This is the.

So I've heard this described as the astral plane. This stuff. It's in. And. I've had. I describe it to you. Yeah. That's what it is.

And so I've had contact in dreams before and even now I can I'll have it. So basically it's like the liminal state between sleeping and waking from time to time. As I'm falling asleep, I will realize that I am listening to, to me, what seems like a lecture and it seemed not boring lecture either, but it just reminds me of college. It feels like this data stream is constantly bombarding the planet. It feels like we're already being con like we've been contacted and we're not getting contacted in the way that we want to be contacted. So most people are completely oblivious to the fact that we've been contacted.

But we've been contacted and the contact is some kind of data stream that is accessible probably when more in the theta state than when you're not in the theta state, you can tune in to this thing and it feels like this constant like a message happening and the problem is I can never remember it, but it's like it happened recently where I'm coming. It's like a it's a it's a lecture in the sense that it feels like I'm with a group of other people listening to it, but it's personal. It's like to me where this being was just saying like, well, and here's what you're doing and here's why you're doing it.

And the reason that this it's just that the rhythm of the thing is very much like a lecture done and done and done and done and when you do this, it does this and so it comes to you in the linear delivery very much just like being dumped on you all at once as like a big grok of like, no, no, no, it's just a linear lecture. I've had it, you know, I've had these dreams when I was much when I was younger, I would have these dreams, crazy dreams where like something was showing me how to construct a time machine and it was like in all these crazy blueprints with like circuit boards and like, like shit, I could never possibly understand like about this super cool aspects

of it and like real science, real materialist scientific stuff where it's like, well, this is being wasted on me because I have no idea what the shit is, man. And but like that with like diagrams and layouts and so now I just think, well, I think that there is a constant never ending data stream and the same way that we, you know, have sent probes out into the universe and we have radio waves that have gotten a certain distance from planet Earth. I think there's another form of wave, if you want to call it that, that has reached the planet and maybe hasn't reached the planet for that very long, but it's definitely getting

us to us now. And the way you tune into it currently is by using the most sophisticated technology accessible on the planet, which happens to be the thing floating inside of your skull. That's what we've got right now. And so that's the most advanced computer existing on the planet right now. So wouldn't it make sense that that's the thing that you would use to tune into a quote alien transmission. So for you, it's like more like hooking into the data stream and sort of like getting in

that current. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And then you pick it up and then there it is. And then it's giving all kinds of information and and I think that within the information itself is some compressed, it's compressed data bits that you then unfold based on your own predilections and your own interests. So, you know, you can take any and this is why, you know, this is if the question was

Jesus, why do you speak in parables? You know, and I think the explanation was, can we pause it and look that up actually just so that it makes sense? Hold on one second, let me look this up right now. See I love to think of Jesus in terms of like extraterrestrial contact. Here it is. I just picked the new international version, Matthew 1310. See, to me, I'm just going to read this.

This is the parable of the sower. And to me, the parable of the sower when I was growing up, I always thought it was some kind of admonishment of people who didn't take up Christianity. And that's what I used to think it was. Now I think that the parable of the sower, you could say this is the story of the hyper superintelligence that has been sending out a signal to all planets in the universe that could harbor sentient life. That's what I think this is about.

So, let me just read it to you to be great. If you think about it through that lens, it turns into something totally different. That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him, they got into a boat and sat in it. Now, stop there. I can't remember who wrote this, but there's someone who wrote this book where you could break down the different symbols in the Bible. And water, the symbol of water, represents the astral plane or spiritual information.

So, Jesus sitting on a boat and a lake is actually an indicator of someone who is in the other dimension or in this other universe speaking from that universe into this universe. Lake and earth, you know, like the water and earth. So, here he is on one element while everyone is on another element and he's communicating to them from the element of water, much like the water you float in. Jesus was, when he was giving this information, literally floating. Then he told them, okay, so such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it while all the people stood on the shore.

Then he told them many things in parables saying, a farmer went out to sow a seed as he was scattering the seed. Some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root. Mars. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants.

Still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a crop, 160 or 30 times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear. The disciples came to him and asked, why do you speak to the people in parables? He replied, because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables.

Those seeing, they do not see. Though hearing, they do not hear or understand. So it's like, to me, this is like, if I've ever seen, to me, if you're like, this is the, he's explaining an alien transmission. Seeds, of course, are data packets, right? Literally, a seed, an oak tree seed, whatever it is, within that oak tree seed is the compressed oak tree. It's the data that when you, the nature decompresses it. DNA.

Yes, it creates an oak tree. We went in the right environment and we're given the right amount of time. The earth and the wind and water are like wind zip. They're uncompressing the data, which is stored in there. So that's why he uses the idea of seeds, right? So I've thrown data packets into the universe. Some of these data packets are going to land on planets or in subjective universes that just, they can't grow.

They're not going to take root. Some of these data packets have landed in places where they take root, they grow for a second, but then the world, you know, the world takes it away from you so quickly. You know, like how many times do you get the information? You get back into the world before you know it. It's just gone, scorched. But sometimes if your mind is right, if the planet is right, the data packet will grow. And then, wow, that's when you awaken.

That's when the great, you know, awakening happens not just to you, but for the people around you too. So to me, that is one of them. That's a very psychedelic passage in the Bible and yeah, man. And so these beings, this, this information, this data field that's out there. And by the way, guys, let me just say this before the skeptics attack, I'll use varying lenses to look at the universe. I could just as easily use the synoptic vesicle scientific materialist lens

to look at all of this stuff too. I could say that if I put myself into a place where the external universe is being separated from me through floating or if I take a psychedelic or, you know, alter my brain chemistry in a certain way, I just have access to deeper levels of information that are inside of me. And the way that I understand those deeper levels of information that are inside of me is through the use of simple structures such as angels, aliens, whatever, you know, it's not coming from anything outside at all.

It's just me having access to a deeper level of myself. And through that access to a deeper level of myself, it allows me to function in the world in a way where there's hope and it allows me to function in the world in a way where I'm going to be kinder to other people, which creates a real societal advantage because everything's based on the tribe and community. And so there's a real advantage to having this kind of information evolutionarily because I'm going to be able to communicate with people in a way that's not completely based on exploitation and that's a really great way to live.

No angels, no God, nothing at all, just something inside the human DNA that wants to reproduce and in the process of reproducing wants to create a stable community around that being as possible so that the DNA can continue to be spread into time. Fine, whatever, I'll use that too. I don't give a fuck. But for me right now, my preference is parables, Jesus, angels, it's just more interesting and it works better for my goal, which is to wake up in such a way that I can have an inner harmony that is not disturbed by the things of the world.

So there you go, skeptics out there. I get to look through a bunch of fucking lenses, you shitheads. You only look through one and then you attack other people for daring to look at things through other lenses like it's wrong. That's what bugs me anyway. I don't mean to start any time I do the any time I shake my fist at like the radical activist skeptics, my mess like farting in my message board because like three cunts from the internet will descend and start telling me that I'm doing at hominin attacks.

So anyway, the point being, I think the tank is giving people access to this data stream, which is entering into the planet. And I think that that's why people who go into the tank quite often report contact with extraterrestrials. John Lilly being the first, you being someone who reports this experience, but so many other people report this experience. I have had that experience in the tank with the grays, wearing robes. I've seen them wearing robes and staring like on some other planet staring out into space,

unaware of me. It's hard to explain what the vision was really. It's like wasn't solid. It was just a kind of wavering dream like painting picture. Do you think that that because you are open to these states of consciousness and have been obviously for most of your life now, do you think it's easier for you to get into those altered states of consciousness in the tank than it is for somebody else who doesn't normally put their I don't put their brain there.

Got to do the work, man. That's the other unfortunate. You've done the work. That's kind of what I'm saying. I've done the work. Not like you did the work. Because you've been in one practice or another through all of your life. Right.

I just don't think I've done the work like you have, man. I would love. I think I'm more of a reporter. You're relating some very interesting experiences in the flotation tank that most people are not getting to those levels of experience until their practice has evolved over, you know, maybe many, many years, dozens and dozens and dozens of floats. And here, you know, you're probably still in what, less than 20 maybe? Yeah, for sure, less than 20.

I don't know exactly how long you had your tank set up at home, but. 2030. So these are pretty profound experiences that you're bringing back from the void. And that's not, I wouldn't say that's typical. Okay. Right. Well, okay. I guess so.

Yeah. I think, well, I guess so. I see what you're saying. I just mean, well, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe who knows. I don't know. Well, because I think that non-judgmental approach that you have to experiencing these things is what it lets you tap into the data stream more effectively with less, less judgment

about what it is that you're doing or gosh, does this make me weird or flaky or, you know, does this make me sound like I'm crazy, whatever. You know, you seem to not have that filter. You just go. Right. That is true. And I think that's super cool. Thanks, man.

Thanks for pointing that out. I learned, so I was lucky enough to get introduced to this form of magic called chaos magic. And just a little bit that I do know about it was enough to sort of free me from being trapped in only one paradigm or what Robert Anton Wilson called a reality tunnel. You know, it's because the moment you give yourself permission to not just look through the world from the one reality tunnel that you've been gazing at the world through and to look into other reality tunnels, even if the reality tunnel, I mean, listen, fuck like, well, is it real?

Is there an astral plane? Is there life after death? You know, things where it's like, it's still a mystery, you know, for a lot of people. It's still an unanswerable question for most of us. And if you think you've answered it, then I don't know how you could have because it's a really difficult question to answer. So, but forget all that.

Let's talk about realities that are actually not real at all. So chaos magic says, you know, let's say, let's look at the world through the lens of, um, let's look at the world through the lens of the Hobbit, for example. Let's, or let's look at the world through the lens of Star Wars. There's no Jedi. There's no Darth Vader. There's no Luke Skywalker outside of the Luke Skywalker that exists in those movies and in the fiction written about Star Wars.

But I sure as hell can use those symbols and the symbols of the Force and the symbols of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. I can definitely use those symbols to break down certain problems that I'm having, or I can look at myself and think to myself like, the Force is not strong in me right now. I feel diminished. I can use that language system to identify ephemeral aspects of my psyche. And then from identifying them, I can restructure them. And it gives me a handle to move things around that are very slippery and tricky to move around.

And that's what chaos magic is all about. It's about fearlessly allowing yourself the luxury of using whatever symbol structure you want to use for the job. The job of, and what is the job? Well, the job is what do you want to be? How do you want to feel? Where do you want to, it could be anything for anybody. It could be, you know, finding someone to fall in love with.

It could be waking up to your true identity. Whatever the job is, it's, you need handles and tools to move around the subjective symbols that exist inside of you that are currently causing you to behave in repetitive ways. Because that behavior is what's creating your reality. So if you can come up with handles that move the gears of the great clockwork bio-organism that you happen to be in such a way that you start behaving differently, repetitively, and consistently, then your life is going to inevitably change. And I think that's a beautiful thing.

So yeah, I guess maybe there is something I learned and that's why I'm able to access those states or those things happen. Because when they come, I'm not going to be like, oh, I'm going crazy. It's just like, oh, an angel. Oh, well, this is probably what an angel might be. I don't know. So you are on the hero's journey. You are Luke Skywalker on the hero's journey.

And these are your tools for navigating this complex puzzle that's in front of you. Yeah, but I do it in a very chaotic way. Because I wish that I had some specific coordinates that I was trying to sail my ship to in the multiverse. But I just enjoy this stuff. But I don't know that that even exists, right? The coordinates? Right.

Right. And do you really want a specific set of guidelines on how to get there? Hell no. This is the direction that you go. No, life's so much more interesting when it's dogma-free and you just cruise it along. And that's how I feel most of the time. But then sometimes when I see somebody who has put in the rilt, it's really, really, really done it.

And I think you're one of those people who has dedicated themselves to a spiritual practice, consistently pulled it off. Then I feel like, come on, man, just fucking do it, like consistently do something. Consistently do something. And I guess you could say, well, I consistently do the podcast. And if I wanted to be really lazy, I could say these conversations are my meditative practice. But that's not what it is. But you read a lot and you do a lot of study and research and you go to meditation retreats

and you do the, you know, for the Ram Dass retreat that happens. You're right. I mean, you do more work than most people I know. I think you should give yourself credit for that. Thanks for pointing that out, man. I don't know why I'm like trying to denigrate my practice. It's weird. Why?

I guess you're right. I don't know. I guess I'm trying to create some imaginary standard just to make myself suffer. Yeah, I don't think you should, man. I think you're an incredibly beautiful, deeply spiritual person. Thanks, man. And you have this very broad spectrum of understanding. I mean, that's, that's one of the things that first attracted me to your podcast was

you just never knew where you were going to go next. You knew it was going to be relatable, but you draw from a deep well of resources more, more so than most people I know, almost anybody. I just think I've gotten lucky because I get to have these conversations with people like you. And then the conversations create shifts in my consciousness that don't, that don't go away. And so then I get to evolve. It's really not fair if you think about it, because I get to meet people like you who like, you are like really what I would, I mean, I know we're just sitting here hugging each other,

but like you're super advanced folks. You know, I get to meet you. I get to meet Ramdas. I get to meet Jack Cornfield. I get to meet folks like Aubrey. And I get to listen to you in this very formal environment of these kinds of conversations. And that's way, way, way better than reading. Because I totally agree way bigger conversation between two human beings can be so poignant.

And then picking up the vibe to, you know, it's like, it's not just like, you know, hearing, you know, Ramdas speak in a lecture is great, no doubt, but being around him and realizing that the words that are coming out of him are secondary or tertiary aspects of what he's putting out there, the direct experience of it. They emanate from him as opposed to being generated by him. Exactly. So when you realize the words are just like the very, the flowers on this like, this like part of nature, which is growing a lot of other energetic forms besides words.

And when you get around, it's like, whoa, whatever on you, you know, you the vibe that you're putting out, it's like, I'm, I get to be lifted out of whatever weird place that I've gotten into. And so that to me is what, if there is a practice or if there is something that's like, let me get a little ahead or whatever, I mean, those words suck because no one's ahead of anybody else. But it's probably just getting to have these conversations over the course of, I've had like a hundred and this will be the 178th, 179th episode of the podcast.

So I think that that's like what I get, what I get to have. I think that makes you a great teacher. And I think you influence people maybe more profoundly than you understand. Because I think when people, I've had this experience just listening to some rant that you'll be on, on the podcast is really enlightening for me. Like I listened to it and I'm like, wow, that's an incredible and beautiful and amazing way to think about that. And so I think, I think it's cool that you're so

I can't, I can't pull the word out right now. I'll come up with it. But I think it's, I think it's neat that, that you have the ability to do that. And yet you're, you're, you're not overinflated about it. You don't really, you don't really see yourself as the teacher that you are. I don't, that's the mark of a real teacher. Wow. No, I think it's, listen, you can make a lot of great information to a lot of people.

This is a very powerful thing that you do. You know, I used to teach canoeing and I wasn't ashamed of that. But I'll, to me, the, the So you were like Jesus in the boat, doing parables for other people that would gather to listen to you. This is one of my favorite things teaching kids to canoe is so fun, man. It was so fun. And but, but I, but I, I think that in my best moments, if anything's coming out of me,

that has any kind of impact on another person, it ain't me. I've just gotten lucky enough to tune into a very specific data stream that is accessible to anyone. And I've gotten out of my mind enough for that information uses my mouth to come into the universe. But I certainly would not say that that's me. And I think that whenever people start saying that it's them, I think that they risk putting their foot on the hose, so to speak.

Because it's, I don't, I don't know that it's, it's like, when I'm, if I'm listening to a great song on the radio, I know the radio isn't, doesn't, isn't, didn't write the lyrics. The radio is, it's the radio is, you know, the song's coming out of the, out of the radio. It's the delivery system. Yeah. And so, and so I think that that's a, hopefully these days, a great thing for everyone to realize is that, yes, they're teachers. They come to us in all kinds of forms.

But the, what they're conveying is you can access that minus the teacher. Yeah. You know what I mean? Right. The teacher's not the important part of it. No. It's the message that's coming across. Damn right.

And then when people in that, I think is like, so it's such a cool thing to realize, because it like, when, you know, they're really annoying. What, what such a turnoff is like, when like, you realize that, that people have decided, I'm the one who came up with this stuff, or I'm, you know, no, you didn't. And, and, and, and also God forbid, someone starts telling people that they're the teacher and though you're the student. And so, and I don't go to any of these other teachers because if you do, they're, no, they're fucked and there's people who do that.

Oh yeah. Absolutely. There are people who do that and it's fucked. It's fucked. Where I think the message should be as quickly as possible. You know, like to me, one of my first spiritual teachers was this guy named Percy, who taught me how to swim. And this was when I was 38.

I'm just kidding. When I was a kid, when I was like a little kid at the beach club in St. Simon's Island, Georgia, I was taught to swim. And if you think back to before you knew how to swim, it was scary to be in the deep end of swimming pool. And I can remember actually I had water wings. One of my earliest memories is like floating in the pool with water wings on and you're safe with the water wings on.

You're not going to drown. So I'm floating there with the water wings on. I guess my mom's not paying attention. I don't know. Second, this can happen so fast. We're floating there with the water wings on. Some little shit kid who's definitely done this before has figured that you pull the plug on the kid's water wings and they start sinking.

So he comes up to me and just pulls the plug on my water wings. When I think back, that's the funniest kid on earth, you know, because he knows you're probably, I don't know. He's either a sociopath or a funny kid. But anyway, I start basically like drowning. I'm like flopping around freaking out. My mom pulls me out and she's like, we got to get you swim lessons. So she gets me swim lessons with this guy Percy.

And he take you out into the deep water. He knew kids were afraid of the deep water. And he had all these jokes that he'd do when he's out there in the deep water. You know, he had these gags when you're out there to make you forget that you're floating in deep water and he'd calm you down. And when he was doing that, he'd teach you to swim. And a swim teacher does not want you to keep coming back for lessons. If he's a good swim teacher, you don't keep going back to Percy to learn how to do the back stroke.

If you're a good, you know what I mean? And I think that's what a, if there are spiritual teachers out there, they want to get you swimming as fast as possible. So because if you can swim, you can dive and you can start having fun. They don't want you to keep coming back. They don't want you to keep coming back to learn how to do something that any human being on planet earth was destined to do. They just want you to jump in the water and swim.

That's the whole point, you know, and that's how I see it. It's like this whole thing of like again and again and again, returning to the teacher. No, learn to swim and then, and then teach other people. And that's just like what Aubrey was talking about with, you know, ending his plant medicine journeys. Yes. Right.

He knows how to swim now. Yeah. He got it. Right. Exactly. And I think that's it, man. And I think that anybody can teach people how to swim in this way that we're talking about.

I don't think it requires anything more than just knowing how to do it yourself, even if you're not a great swimmer. I'm envisioning you right now as a little Chihuahua. Chihuahua with deflated water wings on. I tried to drown my Chihuahua. It's so funny how the podcast kept going back to water. I'm sorry. How wonderful, man.

How great chatting with you. I'm so grateful. Thank you for being on this show. And I'm so glad that we're friends, man. You're a really cool guy, Kevin. I feel the same way about you, Duncan. I get a lot from you and I really appreciate you. Thank you.

Now, if you could just tell everyone listening how they can find you, where you're located in Austin, if you're lucky enough to be in Austin, I'm telling you, man, now you know about Kevin and you can actually hang out with him and go to his float center. Where can they find you? So, zerogravityinstitute.com is the easiest way to find us. If you're in Austin, of course, we're at Lamar and Manchak. We're easy to find.

Go float. Go meet Kevin. Thank you very much for being on the show. I'm going to actually close out the podcast with some of Kevin's music. Because in all this time, we didn't get to talk about the fact that Kevin's a professional musician and he and his wife create some incredibly badass music that I just found out about. So, I'm not sure which band we're going to play from.

He's been in two bands, Wild Blooms and also Chaos. Big Circle TX is the one you're holding on to. Big Circle TX. But what was the one you played before? The Chaos, or not Chaos, the Panic Choir, which many of you have probably heard of. So, I'm going to play some music to close the podcast out from one of Kevin's bands.

And thank you again, Kevin. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thank you, Casper.com and Zinn Floco for sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, why not subscribe? Give us a nice rating on iTunes and love yourself more. Jihad! My suit is safe and I need one to grease.

I'm not warm, I'm not cold, I'm perfect. Perfectly alone when the sun pierces through my eyes. I should try to dream all the world is like. To touch you with my first kiss. But I don't know you, now isn't that the problem? My house is just someone on this sea. There are ways on the days of dreams I've prepared. Perfectly away when the sun pierces through my eyes.

I should try to dream all the world is like. To touch you with my first kiss. But I don't know you, now isn't that the problem? I need a time that I'm taking chances. Through the breath, out of the devil, no fear at all. Stay on this coast, stay in my heart. Over here, with the familiar faces. Facing me on my way.

So moving too fast, so what if I stop? To choose what I like. To touch you with my first kiss. Because I want to know you, I want to know you again. To touch me with my first kiss. I've got your love on my mind. Living a salvation. My skin is thin.

And I need a long decrease. I'm not warm, I'm not cold, I'm loving. This far into rush hour traffic, most people would have rage accelerated, at least want. But not you, Lacey, no hard accelerations ever, Johnson. Because you are a safe driver. And like most drivers who sign up for Snapshot from Progressive, which customizes your rate for how and how much you drive, you could end a discount for your good driving. So if your hula dancing dashboard doll thinks you're going to hard accelerate because you're running late, then your hula dancing dashboard doll doesn't know. Lacey, no hard accelerations ever, Johnson.

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