Ezra Klein

We're competing with your dream time.

It was one of the more dystopic things I've heard a CEO say.

I know, it really is.

And you know, they are competing with our...

the part of our consciousness that wants to think its own thoughts, because there's more money to be made if we think their thoughts.

Yeah.

I mean, it was kind of an experiential koan, right?

Like, I'm not going to... I should have known, she's a Zen teacher, that she would be allergic to concepts and interpretation and everything I wanted to do.

It was like, duh, you know, so...

I had met her once or twice before.

I had a lot of admiration for her.

We'd been on a panel together because she had a lot of experience with psychedelics.

She was married to Stan Groff and administered huge doses of LSD to the dying back in the 70s.

And I thought I would go... It's such a wild project.

I know, it really is.

Although many people have been helped by this.

I mean, it's one of the better applications of psychedelics, I think, is helping people with terminal cancer.

But anyway, I was working on the self chapter at the time.

And, you know, there's this Buddhist idea that the self is an illusion, which I've struggled with in various ways.

I understand sort of how it's true, but yet...