YouSaid · the spoken record

Roland Griffiths

lines on the record: 196
first: 2022-12-09
most recent: 2022-12-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“To humanity and what we all want in terms of human flourishing for humankind and for planet and for other sentient species. And so whoever's moved to support that, that would be accepted with deep gratitude from me. I guess the final comment would be to be continued because I don't know what lies ahead for me. I don't know whether I can maintain the level of equipoise that I have. I certainly hope to be able to do so, but I'm taking it in real time as it comes up. And so I don't want to give any kind of sense that I've got this handled all the way to the end. I'm looking forward to seeing. how I encounter those potential challenges.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First thing I would say is just deep gratitude to everyone who has helped support me. And then, you know, in terms of what I'm going through personally, it's this celebration of the preciousness of human life, of preciousness of awareness. And we're all in this together. At the deepest level, people understand that. So my invitation to anyone who ends up hearing this in the future is to join me in that celebration, even if I'm not around in bodily form. I mean, there's something so precious about that. And then, of course, in line with what we've been talking about, this endowment feels truly important to me. It feels like it's a gift.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Straws Oh yeah all I have to do is get through chemotherapy or there's a new experimental treatment and you know there's some people who live out the course of their thermal diagnosis chasing down the next possibility to prolong life but in so doing they've given up the opportunity to participate in life fully And so that's a balancing act.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I kind of teased him about that subsequently. But yeah, clearly had he one case, he would have jumped on it. Well, yeah, just two months ago, I met with someone who, but nonetheless, I guess the possibility of complete cure remains. But my thought is that it's a theoretical possibility. And I also, you know, it's interesting in terms of just how I'm dealing with it psychologically. I've read some books on people going through turmoil, cancer. And I think one of the toxic things that comes about is this grasping for the next therapy that, oh, yeah, this is going to work and I'm going to be cured. And I don't want to paint myself as hopeless, but that feels toxic to kind of grasp for.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Raw straight answers of survival possibilities. I mean, but they're healthcare providers and they're just not, they're not trained to do that and they want to protect people from unnecessary fear. None of them will say, oh yeah, there's no chance that you're going to survive. They all say, well, yeah, there's a possibility here. And I may have told you at one point I asked one of the surgeons I said, okay, well, so given what you know about my cancer and, you know, in the risk factors and the distribution of it, I said, how many patients have you have that are still around 10 or 15 years later? And he said, oh, well, that's just not a fair question to ask.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Colon cancer, but the immune markers aren't favorable to that intervention. And then it really depends on the extensiveness of the liver metastases. And unfortunately, I have metastases in multiple lobes of the liver. And so when you ask the medical providers, it's very difficult to get them to give you kind of the raw.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tim, I'm totally open to talking about anything. One of the funny things that's happened to, well, maybe it's not funny, but one of the things that's happened since the diagnosis is that I just feel this transparency that there's no reason, well, there's every reason not to be totally authentic and honest with myself and with others. So there's nothing you need fear to ask. Let's see, so the prognosis. So it's metastatic stage four, but there are variations. There are metastatic stage four colon to liver cancer for which a complete cure might be achievable. This appears not to be one of those for several different reasons. There are actually some very good immunotherapies for some forms.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if those institutions are no longer doing research with respect to the purpose and intent of the endowment, then Hopkins has the right to choose another institution. But yeah, those are the tricky kinds of decisions to be made. Certainly, Bill Lyndon, from you, Sona is setting up USONA to survive in perpetuity, but there are all kinds of unknowns that we can't account for. But I think we have enough redundancy built in between the institutions and then the individuals that we have pretty good check on Johns Hopkins doing, following what was intended.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“School. They have a deep interest in psychedelics and the USONA Institute out of Madison, Wisconsin. So the Hopkins has to confer with those two institutes and those two institutions. And then as well as two or more professional researchers in the area that are doing research in alignment with the intent and purpose. So what we're really doing is requiring a group of people to opine on decisions having to do with whether this endowment is on track and whether the person appointed to the endowment is the right person. So I feel very good about that in terms of kind of securing its future direction to be consistent with what we laid out as the Purpose and intent of the endowment.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In purpose of the professorship is and then in addition to that within the agreement we hold Johns Hopkins accountable to evaluating the person with respect to the purpose and intent and the points that they need to replace that person they have to replace it with deep consideration of the purpose and intent so much so that although we can't we can't and wouldn't make any sense to try to take the final decision away from Hopkins we require that they involve in that decision making process at least two other major institutions you know that have focuses germane to the purpose and intent and right now we've chosen Harvard Divinity”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the interesting contemplations we went through is well, yeah, how protected can we actually make this? How do we know that somehow this dream that goes on in perpetuity isn't diverted for some other reasons and it gets, the mission becomes distorted in a way that we didn't intend. And so I had the great good fortune with working with remarkable lawyer who did this on a pro bono basis, but it really helped us work through the formal agreement with Johns Hopkins that creates boundary conditions under which decisions about the professorship need to be made. Very strong language about what the intent”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but yeah, it also kind of shows that he has his own practices and he's a regular meditator. And so he has a good sense of the basic phenomenology of this and bringing that back with his kind of scientific expertise and also his just very positive personality and ability to connect and collaborate with people make him a really good choice. So he already has good connections with Harvard Divinity Schools and international reputation and collaborations with other centers doing psychedelic research. So I think he's just uniquely well placed to take on the professorship.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Boot camp and come out the other side and take that as a learning option and then I think within weeks he went off on a month long meditation retreat so I can't imagine two more different kind of initiatory experiences than Marine Boot Camp.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, David reached out to me. When he was still an undergraduate because he immediately identified what we were doing as really interesting. And I forget what question he asked me, but the other day we were talking and he actually pulled up the email and he was asking something about transformative experiences. I mean, he has a very interesting life story in and of itself because he's had these opening experiences. He was very interested in initiatory experiences. And part of his thesis research was he did back-to-back marine boot camp and he was interested in that as an initiatory experience. But that's one hell of dedication to go through.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oversized role in making that happen. We still have to go through signing agreements and stuff like that. So we're still short in that respect. But ultimately, audacious dream, as I keep calling this, because it seems so improbable from the outside that from the onset that it could even be established. My ultimate dream would be an endowment of 20 million dollars that would really provide significant research funding to continue this work in perpetuity.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. So, in some ways, those endowed professorships are illusory, at least within some academic centers, including my own. The first goal was to create an endowment that would cover someone's full salary so they would not have to be concerned as long as they were productive. They wouldn't have to be concerned about losing their job for lack of funding. And then the next level was to create enough additional funding so that they would have income for a research program and, you know, the kinds of studies that I've already outlined are expensive. And I think the initial goal of the endowment to create the professorship was that a $10 million mark, which Appears that we have reached, and I want to just express my gratitude to you, Tim, for”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I should say something just about what we're aspiring toward. So in general, endowed professorships can be established at universities at rates of a couple of million dollars, two or three million dollars. But it's a little bit deceiving because recipients of those professorships are receiving income from the endowment against their salary, but it only supports about a third at best of their salary. So they're not free to study any given thing.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“David has been very interested in transformative experiences, and he certainly recognized when he was doing this stuff that there was something super interesting about psychedelics. And so we had recruited him in several years ago. And my appreciation for what he has to contribute has done nothing but grow enormously. He's a rigorous, empirical scientist, his own personal story is one in which he's had transformative experiences that got him enthralled with answering these kinds of questions. He's an incredible collaborator. He collaborates kind of naturally with people. He's very productive. And so I can't think of a better person to initially take on the endowed fellowship.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was delighted when I kind of thought of this idea and endowed professorship that I had recruited into our unit, David Yayden, comes out of Pennsylvania, has devoted his career to date to the investigation of transformative experiences, but without psychedelics. So he worked very closely with Marty Seglan.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Study. And what I'm seeing this as a multi-generational process. I mean, like I said, it goes on enduringly to investigate the very nature of this sense of wonder and pro-social attitudes that evolve out of those kinds of experiences.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Psychedelic effects as rites of passage. You know, so there are inflection points within lives like the transition into adulthood, thinking immediately post-college before someone is undertaking a career. That's an inflection point in one's life. Other inflection points could be at marriage or the birth of the first child or retirement from vocation and of course death. Those are each potential inflection points that would be really interesting to investigate with respect to how psychedelic experiences could alter those. So there are many, many other kinds of studies. What I hesitate to do is outline a single study because that's all it's going to be is a single”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and can we prime these different kinds of effects with different instructions? I think I could go on and on with the kinds of studies that could be done. And there's no single study that's going to answer it. One question is kind of a total concept intervention. What if you really throw the kitchen sink at the possibility for these kinds of changes, giving well-curated psychedelic experiences in supportive conditions that allow for maximizing the potential of these experiences to alter worldview in this kind of fundamental way? Related to that are a really interesting possibility is to look at”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Describe it, but I'm guessing they would fall back on the magnificence of what it is to be human. You know, there are other groups that could be studied, you know, including philosophers, different non-Western cultures should be studied. A very interesting group to be studied would be monastics, deep, deep monastics, like from the Dalai Lama's tradition we studied long-term meditators, but those were generally US citizens. But if we could study monastics out of, you know, who have been studying, who have been practicing decades in isolation, that would be really interesting. We need to understand to what extent expectancies play a role in these effects.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One very important question is to what extent are these experiences with psychedelics universal experiences? We still have to parse apart, you know, culture set and setting. We've been doing this in different populations, an obvious additional population would be to study people who are holding atheistic worldviews, hard atheist worldviews, and see how they interpret these experiences in light of that. And if I were to guess, I would guess that the benevolent pro-social attitudes are going to shine through whatever they claim their belief system to be. They won't use the God language to describe it or they won't use spiritual to even.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And long-term meditators and religious clergy, we're looking at different populations with different histories and different belief systems, if you will. And what we've shown in each of those cases is that psilocybin is producing the same kinds of effects. Sometimes they're interpreted a little bit differently, but they're these deeply moving experiences and as you move into long-term meditators and religious professionals, these experiences are resonating with some of the very things that brought them into that area of interest. So where could this research go?”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's see, so what kind of research would be done? Well, I see this as actually a through line of the research that initially got me involved in this. And this was the inquiry. Would psychedelics have anything to tell us about the mystery, the benevolent mystery of what it is to exist? And so, you know, that brought me into the field through meditation. We've done a series of studies in healthy volunteers to show that these effects, these kind of pro-social dispositional effects are reliable. They're dose dependent. We can show them across different populations. We then did studies in beginning meditators, in long-term meditators. Most recently, we've done a study in religious professionals that is clergy. In each case there, in beginning meditators,”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can we achieve this in five years? And ultimately, the ultimate answer to what are we doing here may never be known, but striving toward that is critical. And this endowment will last in perpetuity and will grow in perpetuity. It's managed by Hopkins in such a way that endowments grow over time. I'm hugely excited about the prospect of setting this in motion.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I don't believe it to be. So in kind of coming to that, that maybe I could play some role in establishing a fund that would do that in perpetuity. I mean, this is an endowment. So what that means is it continues enduringly over time as long as Johns Hopkins as an institution continues to exist. And in terms of stable structures that we can expect to last for generations, I think major academic centers are among those that would be the most trustworthy in that regard. I see the question being addressed here, this idea of unpacking the mystery of what this is all about. In a longer timeframe, and maybe a gift of the diagnosis, I'm not, it's”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Psychedelic area through the federal governments. But what's marooned in that process is this whole aspect of the well-being of the populations that aren't otherwise identified as patients and the ethical and moral implications of those investigations. And so I think I've sometimes said it and I think some people take it as hyperbole, but in fact I mean it. This area of research toward understanding these benevolent magnificent qualities or sensibilities that arise from these experiences and their attendant changes in pro-social behavior are very likely to be critical to the survival of our species. It sounds like over”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, funds are flowing into the area of psychedelic research, but they're doing so solely in support of therapeutic ends. And don't get me wrong, a major focus of our research has been on therapeutic populations like depressed patients, anorexic patients, end-of-life cancer patients. really an important target and it's an understandable cultural target that it should be prioritized. However, those funds are coming in from private capital to gain economic leverage, patent opportunities that are going to be used for therapeutic indications. I'm also optimistic that NIH is increasingly coming online and we'll see money flowing into this.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like we're in an existential race against the development of technologies that could end this whole experiment. I mean, their extinction-producing events like bioweaponry or nuclear war or climate change or AI, to name a few. And so our technology is advancing at a rate much more rapidly than kind of these evolved sense of moral ethical standards. And so there's every reason to give this area of research a high priority. Ironically enough, that we got deeply involved in this research and sometimes credited with, you know, setting off the Renaissance psychedelic renaissance. But ironically enough,”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's fundamentally important. And my thought actually is that it's one of the most powerful ways that we could potentially alter culture. And I don't mean by that to suggest that everyone should go out and take psychedelics. I think they're much too powerful a tool for that, and they're potentially culturally disruptive. to let the wheels of science grind on those questions, I think, seems to me to be a critically important to kind of solving the problem of what these transformative experiences are and then how they can benefit humankind and human flourishing. And in some sense,”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you only had a year to live, a month to live, or a week to live or a day to live. And so we had been through that, but just brought that”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what science has to offer. I mean, we do have this methodology, you know, for discovering replicable relationships. And science has been a huge blessing to human culture. And so that's where I'm kind of strongly inclined to say, let the wheels of science grind and begin to answer some of these questions. Ultimately, they're going to be answerable, I think, other than the ultimate question. And that's what the hell's going on here. But, you know, the more mundane questions about whether there's remote reading ultimately there's going to be proof of that or not proof of that. But so far, well, I won't go into that because I don't know the data well enough.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we've kind of avoided looking closely at that. And we have enough to do with what we have without getting involved. But it's certainly... Enticing and anything that's paradigm shifting like that is hugely important”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sets of belief changes that occur after psychedelic experiences of the type I was describing. People are more inclined toward dualistic thinking. They're also more inclined toward endorsing paranormal beliefs. And so why would that be in what's going on there? I don't know, but these are questions that should be studied. Very early on we were interested in merging the work on paranormal phenomena with psychedelics because of those associations. And we ultimately concluded that we had our hands full in terms. In terms of conducting our psychedelic research, which has changed markedly since 2000. But when we first got involved here. Know it was a very iffy business, and we felt like we could be. You didn't want to throw.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People who have been involved with paranormal research like Presti at UC Berkeley, who believe that there are real fundamental, interesting things going on there. I just haven't pursued those areas enough to kind of quell my skepticism. Of course, some of those, if you believe those accounts, then it breaks down our whole paradigm for understanding reality, at least to date. And so that makes it discomforting to scientists and reductionists scientists altogether. But frankly, that's also one of the great benefits in having psychedelics to study because one of the phenomena that one of the bleak”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've read those accounts. I've read some of the literature on paranormal phenomena more generally. In neither case have I gone deeply enough into it. To overcome my potential skepticism that there could be biases in the data as collected. I mean, look, we have almost half of our nation believing the election was totally fraudulent. So the ability of cultures to birth stories that are Consistent with whatever worldview they want. So you'd have to look really closely into who said what to whom and what kind of information would have been otherwise transmitted or distorted. I just don't know. I mean, I do know there are.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“worldview that would say that your mind is nothing other than neural functioning, but there's a shift toward dualistic thinking and then there are a number of other kinds of changes that occur.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, there are changes and it's in the direction that you might anticipate people are more open to the possibility of something. occurring after death. And we've seen that repeatedly. We've seen that in our cancer patients, and we've given a number of surveys of belief changes that occur before and after psychedelic experiences. And we've also looked at belief changes that occur before and after near-death experiences and psychedelic experiences. And under all those cases, people are more likely to endorse something that continues after death. So I think that's actually a very common feature of psychedelic experiences more broadly in a study that we've just submitted to publication about belief changes. There's a shift toward more dualistic thinking that mind is somehow different than body. So that would be different than a purely reduction.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, putting myself in, my friend's shoes, they may not know what my current state is. They don't know what my current state is. And so it feels like that they should offer some kind of empathetic sympathy. So what do I think about that? I think the question is been thinking of you, how are you doing rather than I hope you're feeling better or I'm so sorry. And those are ones that, you know, we've been talking about identifying kind of the rabbit holes that you don't want to go into. I mean, I almost have this kind of visceral response to people saying, oh, I'm so sorry, or I hope you're feeling better. And there's some people, every time I communicate with them, I have to make that correction. That's not my experience. And not the way I want to hold myself in this adventure that I'm undergoing.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where I see it right now, I want them to join me in the celebration of what my experience is, and that is this deep gratitude for the preciousness of life. And that's what I'm trying to communicate to people. Let's all wake up. You know, you needn't have this stage four cancer diagnosis, but there's a degree of awakening that's obtainable. And join me in this celebration.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thanks for asking. That's an interesting question. People very often are calling and say, oh, I hope you're feeling better. Well, that priest disposes that I was feeling bad at some point. And I'm not. And I'm just not embracing that or endorsing that at all. And so when people say, I'm so sorry, my immediate reaction is there's nothing to be sorry about. I consider this a blessing. I've never been doing better with my life. You know, however, as I now am encountering more Physical problems I can tell, all secondary to the medical treatment, which is a little exasperating, but I think it was the best course of action. Yeah, there'd be no question that it would be nicer not to be encumbered by that. So what would I want? To say.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Curtain comes back and you see what's going on. I mean, you know, but that's a fanciful idea in and of itself. But yeah, I think I revel in the idea of curiosity at the time of death. Now, whether that's going to change as I proceed through the medical course and my diagnosis, I don't know. And I don't know whether I'm going to be able to maintain the degree of equipoise I currently have. And I don't know that I'm not going to succumb to the rabbit holes. But I'd also say that I'm Looking forward to the challenge, I mean, it's like everything that comes up that could be viewed as, oh, that's terrible. Oh, I'm so sad to hear your test results came back like that. And I'm experiencing it as, no, this is great. This is an opportunity to explore what that is. And it's partly for me just”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Occurred that's interesting at the time of death, then that, at least to me, psychologically changes the whole game. So I'm strongly biased toward kind of a reductionistic powers off scenario. But I'm open to the possibility, although the probability I put on that changes from time to time, but it's really narrow in any case. But I'm open to the possibility that something other might occur. And so that gives me this kind of deep curiosity about death. And I think that's, at least for me, that's all you need. I mean, that's like, this is the story could be revealed. I mean, you know, you might pass through that gate and go, oh, this is what that was about. You know,”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, a million or less. So I thought, well, that's interesting. And I think all you need is a fraction of a percent. It can be as tiny as you want, but if you haven't foreclosed on the possibility that something might...”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“being one of those patients. I would often ask, always ask, participants at the beginning of the study, well, yeah, what do you think happens when we die? And some would say, oh, yeah, I'm going to go on and meet my parents and it'll be a joyful reunion. And then others would say, well, I don't believe anything. It's computer off, system down, nothing. And then what I would ask is, what's the probability to think that's true? Are you absolutely certain about that or something? They say, oh, I believe that to be true. So 95% that say, and I would think 95%. So 5% likelihood that would be true. That would be, I mean, if you had lottery tickets that were going to pay off at 5% of the, you know. buy them immediately. I mean, it's like people invest in lottery tickets at odds of what, one and...”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To embrace the most fanciful thoughts about what death and dying are go to heaven and sit on the right-hand side of Jesus and be with all my loved ones or, you know, whatever story some people can embrace. I have to think that if you actually believe that it could be joyful to die, but that seems outlandishly improbable to me. So I just can dismiss those out of hand. So then it's really kind of what the probability is that there's, you know, something beyond death. And this was, you know, we ran the cancer study that was published in 2016. And there's some irony, of course, in my now.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, it's an ongoing contemplation for me. Brett is a reductionistic neuroscientist, but open to all possibilities. And so one scenario is, yeah, nervous system goes down. It's like unplugging the computer. You know, that's the end of existence. And then there are other scenarios that would have different accounts for survival of something, consciousness, some type of awareness post-death. I guess what's clear is I cannot bring myself”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But as you know, there are people who have profound and serious use of psychedelics who think that that's just an abomination, that you need to take these compounds out in nature or within community. And those are all legitimate set and setting conditions. And my own thought would be that it's kind of the marriage of what you learn from each of those kinds of experiences that helps you bring that into your moment to moment and daily lived experience.”
2022-12-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #641: Roland Griffiths, PhD — Life’s Ultimate Glide Path, An Unexpected Stage IV Diagnosis, Facing Death, How Meditation and Psychedelics Can Help, and The Art of Living a Life of Gratitude · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT