 I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you guys today. So what I want to talk about today might make some of us a little uncomfortable. I should tell you that during my preparations for this talk, there was moments when I got really uncomfortable about the direction this whole talk was going. I started to wonder to myself, you know, if the speaker's lineup for this weekend was going to be full of scholars, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Was I going to be able to get up here and talk to you about altered states of consciousness, creating sacred spaces, and facilitating your clients as they use your float business to engage in deep transformative work? Would I be able to have this conversation that I really want to have with you without sounding crazy? Because depending on your temperament, some of you are going to plunge straight into the deep end with me, and others of you are going to decide that Hippie's finally gone completely off his rocker, and you're going to assume that nothing I'm about to say to you is remotely possible. However, I should remind you that truth cannot be perceived through reason alone, and so we don't become the unwitting prisoners of our own assumptions. I'd like to share with you a quote, and I hope you'll keep it in mind during the course of what I'm about to say. This comes from philosopher and consciousness pioneer William James, as he wrote in his seminal work called Varieties of Religious Experience. James says, that what is called normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it, separated by the slightest of barriers, there lies potential forms of consciousness, completely different. While many individuals may go through life never suspecting the existence of these states of consciousness, apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch, they are there in all their completeness. He says, no account of the universe in its totality can be final, which leaves these forms of consciousness disregarded. That's the takeaway here. We really can't know what's going on in our universe if we don't accept the possibilities that these other states of consciousness are legitimate and real. So I want now to invite you to experience something with me. It's a simple exercise, but it will give you a feel for just how open-ended the field of our realities actually are. So if you would, just pick a point somewhere on this stage and visually focus on it. This we're going to call 12 o'clock and we'll think of this as our normal waking reality. So without changing your focus or letting your vision blur, just move your attention out to like 1 o'clock and 11 o'clock. And we're going to think of this as altered states of consciousness. Now take a minute to notice what you see and how you see it. And then again, move your awareness out to 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock. And again, notice what you see and how you see it. And also notice how much less clearly we see it. Now move your awareness all the way out to the edge of your peripheral vision. There's a moment here when things become utterly unclear. Here we're already seeing the limits of our perceived reality. You see things happening out here but you don't perceive the detail, right? We can accept with some certainty that the blurry objects in our peripheral vision are quite real. Even if they're hard to define, we don't automatically deny their existence. In fact, we still believe that reality is happening behind us even though we can't see it. This is our mindset when we're exploring consciousness. This is where we're operating in the periphery, out here on the edges of normal waking consciousness. The borderlands between these potential states of consciousness. The space where we experience non-ordinary reality. And it's interesting because when we try to interact with these peripheral experiences, we find it's a language we already know. It's a thing that we already know how to do. And with practice and some effort, we can actually teach ourselves to navigate this periphery territory with skill. Of course, the obvious question now is why? Why would we want to explore these spaces? It's a good question. It's also one of those questions that no one answer is going to work for everybody. So I thought maybe we'd try to tease this thing apart a little bit so that we could better understand. So I want to start by pointing out that human beings have been altering our consciousness since the beginning of mankind. And if you're interested, as I am, in altered states of consciousness and the history of humans exploring and utilizing those altered states, then you'll spend a lot of time studying cultures other than the modern West, be it ancient traditions, mysticism, shamanism, or systems that are currently practiced by modern Aboriginal and indigenous groups. Broadly speaking, when I study these things, I'm often left with the feeling that something has been lost. Despite our great scientific insights from understanding the structure of the universe to mapping the complexities of the human genome, there persist this feeling that we've lost something that we used to have. Seeing that all the science, technology, art, and culture, it just doesn't satisfy. So many wonderful advancements, and yet we're left with this feeling that there was something there that we no longer have. Why is this? Well, prior to the dawn of Western civilization and written language, science and spirituality were not two separate things. In the teachings of the great ancient traditions, the outer search for knowledge and certainty was balanced by an inner sense of impermanence and an intuitive understanding of the spiral of change. But as scientific thinking became more dominant and multiplied, a fragmentation began to occur within our knowledge systems. Increased specialization meant that fewer people were capable of seeing the big picture of feeling and intuiting the system as a whole. In fact, many people now research this exact subject precisely because they feel there might be something there to recover, something that would benefit them, or maybe even benefit society as a whole. But even if we do recover something, the question becomes, how do we identify and import that understanding into and onto our Western condition? One temptation here is to apply this romantic idealism that supposes that we are lost souls, that we've lost our connection to the earth and to the divine, that we're spiritually empty, and that other people, other cultures have it and have had it in spades. This is an understandable reaction, but when you look at it more deeply, you find that many, many cultures across all of time have had in story, myth, and lore a version of what I call the fall from Eden. The idea being that the universe used to be this super amazing place that afforded perfect integration of nature and spirit. And it's the story of how we fell from the garden and the loss that the fall brings. Interestingly, we see this theme repeated over and over again. We in the West feel it, other contemporary, less modern cultures feel it. Their ancestors felt it, our ancestors felt it, and back we can go. It seems that this feeling of the fall, this missing component, it's truly more than cultural. Rather it's a fundamental part of being a human being. This constant feeling that things can and should be better has simultaneously driven us up the evolutionary ladder, and it's also driven us into this kind of madness where we put profit above people, where we rape and pillage and exploit in an effort to satisfy the senses and fill this sense of emptiness and want. But it's also driven us to seek the divine, to kneel at the feet of our gods, and to develop tools and methods that promote our connection to the sacred and expand our consciousness. It appears that a big part of being human is claiming the edges of consciousness as a place where something really profound can happen. Now I want to introduce you to someone that you may or may not have already met. So let's go back to our exercise, find your spot on the stage, focus in on it, move your awareness out into your peripheral vision all the way out to the edge. Now turn your awareness inside and ask yourself, who is the person doing this exercise? Who is inside looking out at this scene? Am I this body, this brain, this mind? Or am I inside some kind of amazing spacesuit having one incredible tactile experience? Well that's the one we're trying to help. Because we're not the content of our consciousness or a collection of our thoughts and ideas, because behind the thoughts is the one who's witnessing the thoughts. That thing in there doesn't understand why it feels separate, and it's not going to get any rest or experience any peace until it gets some answers. Well this is it. Welcome to earth, you're human. You're one in a long line of great tool users. And you're going to invent, innovate and use technology to make your lives better and to understand the nature of the world around you. At times of quiet reflection, our hearts may tell us that there's more to life than our present reality. That we live in a world of hungry ghosts, endlessly craving and never satisfied. And for those who identify only with the illusion of just one kind of reality, true understanding and a deep sense of ourselves will always remain a metaphor, an idea rather than a direct experience of our energy and our consciousness. Now I want to put this whole idea into the flotation tank. Because as most of you already know and as many of you are about to find out, the flotation tank is one of the best tools we humans have ever devised for facilitating the exploration of our consciousness. It can be one of those requisite stimuli that William James was referring to in our quote. In the darkness of the tank, we find a gateway experience and a way of experiencing our own subtle energy directly. We're also carrying out a great human tradition. Darkness meditation has been used for thousands of years as a way to achieve altered states of consciousness. Whether it's the proverbial yogi or shaman retreating deep into a cave, the Taoist, the Mayan initiate or the Tibetan monk, all traditions incorporate a period of time during which one goes into the darkness. Now, I want to tell you about one float in a series of recent floats that most certainly catalyzed my curiosity about the bigger possibilities that may come with a mature and consistent floating practice. So the first and most significant of these floats took place on a Monday afternoon in November of 2015. For all intents and purposes, it would have been just like hundreds of other floats that I've done before it. Were it not for one significant difference? On this particular day, my wife Carol and I were returning home to Austin after being away at an intensive multi-day retreat where we were privileged to participate in three consecutive nights of traditional ceremony with three mestizo shamans who had graciously agreed to serve us the powerful, visionary shamanic brew known as ayahuasca, the vine of souls. Ayahuasca has been used in the Amazon for thousands of years. It has a rich and intricate tradition. It's used as medicine, and miraculous results have been attributed to its profound effects on the body, the psyche, and the soul. For those intrepid explorers lucky enough to work with these gifted coranderos, it also leaves one with the feeling that they've been in a sacred place and in close personal contact with the divine. So I left these ceremonies longing to hold on to this ineffable feeling. My greatest desire was to have a space in my life that I could access at will and connect to the sacred and experience this same deep sense of inner awakeness. This new state of being where I could see light in everything around me and breathe in without the crushing weight of anxiety and self-doubt. So I paused for a moment outside the tank. And it was in this state of mind my brain still soaked with the powerful messenger compounds from these jungle plants that I entered the flotation tank, anxious to return to the familiarity and comfort of the tank where so much of my deep personal work gets done, curious about how I was going to integrate the visions and teachings that I was bringing in from ceremony, and nervous because I'm pretty good at going into really, really deep states of consciousness when I float. And I was a little worried that there could be some unforeseen and unexpected conflict between these two very powerful medicines. So I laid down and as the lights and the music started to fade out, I began my familiar ritual of relax, let go, relax more, move my awareness up, out, relax more, breathe. Several minutes later I began to experience a familiar and powerful sensation. It doesn't happen every time I float, but just every once in a while when a float is about to get really good. It starts with this very subtle low frequency vibration deep down in my body. As this vibration begins to get faster and more intense, the frequency rises until it becomes all-encompassing. Usually at this moment I'll suddenly lose awareness of my physical body. It's often accompanied by this slight drop in my stomach as my consciousness becomes something separate from my physical form. But this time it was different. This time I began to have this sensation that I was being tipped over backwards, feet up, head down. This time I felt like my consciousness was being poured out of the top of my head. And then as if it was being grabbed and sucked out with sudden and startling acceleration, faster downward, head first, faster as if I'm being shot down a tube of light at incredible speed, my heart begins to beat faster and louder, boom, boom, boom, as hurling itself against the inside of my chest. Explosions of endorphins wash over my brain. Neurons crackle as impulses are passed along these new neural pathways that were created during the ecstatic, ancient ceremonies of the previous nights. And then suddenly after one final push, the acceleration stops. Everything's now calm and quiet and peaceful. It takes me a moment to get my bearings and write my perspective. It's not easy, but as I get comfortable with this new state of awareness, this non-ordinary reality, I feel as if I'm in the presence of another consciousness quite separate from my own. I sense intelligence, individuality, if not personality. I feel as if I'm in the presence of the divine, as if I've entered the realm of spirits. In this place, I can no longer identify myself as the physical person that had entered the float tank just a few minutes before. Here in this reality, I'm pure energy, consciousness, one granular component integrating seamlessly into a much larger system, a universal consciousness. I begin to see visions and receive teachings that held deeply personal and profound meaning for me, teachings that would begin to change the direction of my research and the direction of my daily life. As the great philosopher Nietzsche reminds us, if you stare into the abyss long enough, eventually you find the abyss stares back at you. In normal reality, the brain and the ego act as a reducing valve, directing us to focus on the empirical reality that lies directly in our view. In order to survive, fight or flight becomes the mandate. But in this new reality, such a mechanism was superfluous and clear of this human form of distortion, a realization begins to take a hold of me. The realization that here, now, in modern times, in this relatively new technology of the floatation tank, I had tapped into something very ancient, shamanic even. In the most basic sense of the word, the shaman is someone who has the tools and the knowledge to facilitate as one explores altered states of consciousness. An idea began to coalesce. We may not be shamans, but the work we do in our float centers and in our communities can play a shamanic role. There can be a spiritual component to our work. We can use our tools and our knowledge to assist and facilitate our clients as they learn that floating can become a deeply spiritual practice, providing succinct personal insights and profound inner awakening. We can provide our clients with a sacred space to undertake this deeply transformative work. The float tank can be used to provide the modern West with a new kind of shamanic experience, neo-shamanism, I like to call it. A way to make space for the numinous, deeply personal, trans-rational experience that cannot be quantified scientifically and yet are an intense and real part of the human experience. It's one half of the human reality that we embody. I'm reminded here that when Isaac Newton was not establishing the groundworks of modern physics, he was a practicing magician. And neither role compromised the other. Rather, they were two different parts that completed the whole. Yet now there's this modern tendency to default to the most Newtonian cerebral way of interpreting reality. It's gotten to the point that any experience that can't be quantified and rationalized is written off as deviant, crazy, unfounded, not real. But it's important to the health of the human species to recognize that the spiritual and the profound are an important and necessary part of our human reality. We should not lose sight of this anymore than we should lose sight of the empirical reality that allows us to cure diseases and go into space. Neo-shamanism is the recognition that as the technology of our intellect has advanced, it's still wedded to the divine and the sacred. We can use technology, like the flotation tank, to enhance the totality of the human experience, the shamanic aspect of the human experience. The infinite aspect of the human experience can be fine-tuned with technology if we use it with inspiration. I'm really lucky because at our float center, Zero Gravity, we're full of psychonauts. Most, if not all, of our employees are really into consciousness exploration. Therefore, we all enjoy a built-in network of people to talk with about our experiences around floating. And I'm sure it's the same for many of you out there who are operating float centers. What we need to do is open this conversation up to our clients. Quite often now, people are turning to float center operators and employees to help in interpreting their experiences and integrating those experiences into their daily lives. So I ask you now, are we prepared? Our fear of being labeled to new age or woo-woo makes many commercial float center operators shy away from conversations about such things. But by doing so, we underserve our clients and we limit growth. If we want to focus solely on the scientifically quantifiable aspects of floating, we'll miss a major opportunity to assist our clients. We're also missing a big part of why Dr. Lilly invented the tank, to explore consciousness. I'm not saying that we should alienate our other clients, but if we serve only those who come to us with aching backs and high blood pressure and other ailments, we're developing short-term customers who will disappear as soon as the aching back feels better or the blood pressure normalizes. Because that's what we do in the West. We stop taking the medicine once the pain is gone. But the spiritual path is just that. It's a path. There's no end. It's an ongoing practice. We don't stop working when we start to awaken. We keep working because we've started to awaken. People who use the float tank as a way to reconnect with spirit can and will become our long-term return customers. If we're conscientious about how we handle our clientele, being careful not to program or impose dogma, if we stay mindful of the fact that people are coming to our business to engage in this deep transformative work, if we treat the physical building as a sacred space prepared and held for this work, then we create a welcome environment for our customers to return month after month, year after year, to develop their personal floating practice and their personal spiritual practice. We have the opportunity to create a win-win situation. So I want to encourage you to assist your clients in this work. Be open to the conversations of consciousness. Be mindful of how you run your float centers. Carefully control your environment. Create safe, sacred spaces free of dogma and free of judgment where your clients can confidently explore their consciousness. By doing so, we are reclaiming our birthright of sovereign consciousness. And we're putting something back into our society that modernity and technology are squeezing out. The time and the space and the tools to reconnect with spirit, to make room for the sacred and to open up to the possibility of something really profound happening. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate your time. Thank you.