Christopher Bache is a professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, where he taught for 33 years. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Trained at Notre Dame, Cambridge, and Brown, Bache spent seven years earning a PhD — a process that turned him into a hardcore agnostic. He then began a 20-year self-experiment taking high-dose LSD using protocols developed by psychedelic pioneer Stanislav Grof.
For two decades, Chris lived a double life — a professor in public, and in private, a man conducting 73 high-dose LSD sessions in search of insight into consciousness and reality. He kept the work hidden from his university for most of that time, even while teaching courses on Eastern religion, mysticism, and consciousness. He is the author of several books including "Dark Night, Early Dawn," "The Living Classroom," and "LSD and the Mind of the Universe" — the book in which he finally told the full story of his psychedelic explorations.
In this conversation, we explore whether psychedelics hold genuine spiritual and philosophical insights not otherwise accessible through meditation or contemplative practice, the three ways of consciously using psychedelics — personal healing, spiritual awakening, and cosmological exploration — and how Vajrayana practice shaped Chris's psychedelic work.
We get into whether psychedelic experiences build systematically over recurring sessions, the trouble with integrating short-acting psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT, psychedelic work in groups vs individually, Chris's method for capturing insights from his sessions, and his leading thoughts on reincarnation and the living classroom of collective intelligence.
We also explore the varieties of psychedelic experiences from falling asleep to meeting cosmic beings, how to better integrate peak states and psychedelic experiences into everyday life, and what it means to lose meaning, find meaning, and remember God.
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🕰️ TIMESTAMPS 🕰️
0:00 - Introduction
5:06 - Do psychedelics hold spiritual and philosophical insights not accessible through meditation or contemplative practice?
6:52 - Three ways of consciously using psychedelics — personal healing, spiritual awakening and cosmological exploration
10:42 - Can we truly separate awakening from metaphysics?
13:08 - How Vajrayana practice impacted Chris's psychedelic explorations
17:48 - How Chris's Diamond Luminosity experience differs from Rigpa
21:20 - Frequency of use, diminishing returns, and do psychedelic experiences systematically build on each other?
27:40 - Are psychedelic experiences just distortions of consciousness that take us away from wisdom?
43:45 - 5-MeO-DMT and the trouble with integrating short-acting psychedelics
50:05 - Psychedelic work in groups vs individually
52:01 - Chris's method for capturing insights from his psychedelic sessions
53:48 - Can you journey without a sitter?
57:31 - Chris's leading thoughts on reincarnation
1:01:40 - The Living Classroom and collective intelligence
1:04:55 - Varieties of psychedelic experiences — from falling asleep to meeting cosmic beings
1:16:49 - How to better integrate peak states and psychedelic experiences
1:21:40 - Losing meaning, finding meaning and remembering God
1:28:09 - Being misunderstood and a final message
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