Featured art by Simon Haiduk 
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.
One of the fantastic perks of doing this show is getting to ask my shower thoughts to the wonder-slinging, friends I have made. This question particular is one I’ve given a lot of thought to. It's not that I expected to discover one defining moment, or one piece of transcendent information that could light the path to a better future, but when you ask someone about what that hypothetical insight might be, it’s a fascinating catalyst for a riff session.
I posed this question to the oracle: "Are we anything more than fancy apes? Is there a higher consciousness or purpose that we are connected to?"
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. 
Sometimes it’s hard sticking to that mindset. Existing in a multidisciplinary, subjective, reality-tunnel-acknowledging mind-scape isn't all agnostic bubblebaths. When shit hits the fan, or somebody passes away, it’s hard not having solid beliefs to hang your hat on. That and if someone comes up to you and says, “hey did you know Earth's molten core is actually hell and the devil really does live there?", you’ve gotta be comfortable with only being 99% sure that that person is a nut.
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. 
By virtue of the time we were gooily extruded into this dimension, we've been charged with an odd task. We've got to grapple with cultural expectations, the informational techno-torrent we're immersed in and we've got to work on ourselves. Making those disparate duties harmonize in a way in a way that makes some sort of existential sense can require some serious ontological gymnastics.