Stealing Fire

The first is do the exact opposite of what the guy in front of you is doing—so if he looks left, then you look right. The second is trickier: the person who knows what to do next is the leader. We’re entirely nonhierarchical in that way. But in a combat environment, when split seconds make all the difference, there’s no time for second-guessing. When someone steps up to become the new leader, everyone, immediately, automatically, moves with him. It’s the only way we win.”

So when his rivals got wind of that scandalous evening, they ratted him out to the highest Athenian court for stealing “kykeon,” the sacred elixir he’d shared with his guests.

What he meant was, when it comes to problem-solving, we tend to get locked into using familiar tools in expected ways. The technical term for this is the Law of the Instrument. Give someone a hammer and, indeed, they’ll look for nails to pound. But present them with a problem where they need to repurpose that same hammer as a doorstop, or a pendulum weight, or a tomahawk, and you’ll typically get blank stares.

parlance, DEVGRU, were stationed there, gathering intelligence and staging missions. Some six months prior

Overhyped Sensor Tech

Surrendering any of that hard-fought ground to pursue nonordinary states can seem, at first glance, irresponsible, or, at a minimum, deeply counterintuitive.

The Indian philosopher Nisargadatta summed up the dilemma well: “Love tells me I am everything. Wisdom tells me I am nothing.28 And between these two banks, flows the river of my life.” If we map this idea onto what we know about nonordinary states, then Nisargadatta’s “everything/nothing” dialectic isn’t just flowery wisdom, it’s the by-product of the neurobiology of ecstasis itself

If you spend all of your time blissed out, zenned out, drunk, stoned, sexed up, or anything else, then you’ve lost all the contrast that initially made those experiences so rich—what made them “altered” in the first place. By balancing inebriated abandon with monklike sobriety, ribald sexuality with introspective celibacy, and extreme risk-taking with cozy domesticity, you’ll create more contrast and spot patterns sooner

A one-day session with MDMA produces a marked decrease or abatement in symptoms, but you have to be willing to ingest an amphetamine to experience it. Five weeks of surfing—potentially less risky than a drug intervention—achieves a similar result, but entails learning a new sport in an unfamiliar and sometimes dangerous environment. Meanwhile, meditation—both simpler and safer than surfing—requires twelve weeks and offers a slightly lessened benefit

Value = Time × Reward/Risk