Ezra Klein

which he got from Henri Bergson, who really was the person who first put that forward, was that in normal times, our brains admit only the trickle of consciousness we need to get through the day, to be productive, to do what we need to do, but there's so much more.

And what he said psychedelics did is open what he called the reducing valve so that more consciousness got in.

What was that consciousness?

To him, it was the mind at large.

But I find it's also sensory information, bodily information.

I mean, sometimes trips are incredibly somatic and they're all about the body.

And other times they're about, you know, visual material information.

But it's ours.

It's mine, right?

Although some people go to a divine place about it.

And so I think it's... You know, I'm just out there starting to talk about consciousness, and I'm like, I'm curious that people are so interested in consciousness.

Like, I didn't expect this when I started on this book.

Really?

Yeah, no, I didn't.

And it seemed like a very academic topic.

And I think two things have changed that.

One is the fact that

I think we feel our consciousnesses are just full of bullshit right now.

There's so much stuff we don't want to be thinking about that we're thinking about.

And you take phones away from kids and they're actually grateful, even once they get over the shock of living without a phone for a day or while they're in school.