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Sound researcher, musician and world-traveling gnostic-adventurer, Alexandre Tannous returns for another mind meld!LISTEN|ITUNES YOUTUBE ARCHIVE STITCHERThese mind melds are brought to you by YOU! Find out how to support us and receive rewards in the process at our Patreon page.
This episode features one of those time-traveling flow-state dialogues where nearly 90 minutes flies by seemingly instantaneously (at least from my perspective). It was like some tiny quantum brain fairy caressed my pineal gland causing it to secret just the right amount of tryptamine to elicit an extended state of wonder and awe. It was truly that pleasurable. On that note, it would be fascinating to see what’s going on neurologically during an awesome, life-affirming, metaphysically stimulating chat like this one.
Musings in this mind meld include -
- Why we lose the feeling of awe and mystery as we age and what we can do to nurture it
- The cultural forces that compel you to think the way you do and value what you do
- Why we romanticize ancient cultures
- Why religion and science alone aren’t existentially satisfactory
- Fine-tuning your awareness and curiosity and creating a practice
- Were the works of Plato hiding universal truths about math and melody?
- The trial of Socrates and his forced suicide
- What were the ancient “mystery schools" that so many famous philosophers speak of?
- Hermeticism and the Kybalion
- The shamanic model, ayahuasca and the culture clash that occurs when they enter modern life and the modern mind
- The power of sound in shamanistic systems
- You can only listen to the experiences of others for so long, eventually you have to do your own work
- Why the language we use for "spiritual" experiences is lacking
- Exploring inner-spaces takes practice, just like anything else
- John Lamb Lash and his book Not in His Image
- The importance of the multidisciplinary approach and why we need a well-rounded tool set to explain reality
- Alexandre’s personal spiritual experiences and
- The difference between romantic love and cosmic love
- The power of sound to enhance meditative or psychonautic exploration
- Unlearning and creating a new relationship with sound
Every time I talk to my friend Cory Allen it’s a tastier Swiss Cake Roll™ of absurdity and profundity. Ever since he came on the show a few months back, we’ve been keeping in touch and something has blossomed. Some sort of playful ping pong of creative scheming, insight and wild degenerate goof sessions that would probably get us banned from everything for life if they ever leaked out.
Of course, none of them fully cut it. How could they? They predate the mass of data and stimulation that has become the stuff of everyday life.So we're really left with two choices- isolate ourselves in an echo chamber of like-minded thinkers and information where our philosophies won't be challenged (a tactic that seems to be more popular than ever), or we can sacrifice some sacred cows. We can actively create a more nuanced, adaptable philosophical scaffolding that's suited to the ever-intensifying blasts of information that have become the norm.This actually feeds right into the central theme of our conversation and guest, Daniele Bolelli's book, Create Your Own Religion, a task that we should all be embracing. 
If you dig deeply enough into the fabric of reality, you'll eventually bounce your pickaxe of inquiry off of quantum bedrock. The uniformed layer of potential and spooky circumstances that gives birth to all matter. 
I don’t even know how or why I came upon this fact, but if you google "philosophy is,” the two first suggestions are “dead” and “bullshit.” Unfortunately I couldn’t resist the carrot, so I followed through with the "philosophy is dead" search. 
In addition to being debonair and a brain-melting conversationalist who can talk about basically anything, Michael Garfield is an Austin-based writer, speaker, musician and visionary artist. For more on him, hop through 
As unconventional as it is, that was everyday life for our guest on this show, Claire Hoffman, who spent a good portion of her childhood living on the grounds of the Transcendental Meditation movement’s compound in Fairfield Iowa. 
The forces that coerce the persistence of the bleak paradigm referred to in the quote above are numerous and complicated. So much so, that it’s worth discussing whether or not it’s even possible to shake off the shackles of culture's dominant power structures. Perhaps we should just recognize the game for what it is and play it to the best of our ability.