The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance

Design Your Own 'Mindapps' to Expand Your Smarts & Creativity – Thomas Roberts, Ph.D., with Dave Asprey : 702

May 21, 2020

Thomas Roberts, Ph.D., a professor emeritus with a rich background in psychedelics, introduces the fascinating concept of 'mindapps'—tools we can install in our minds to boost creativity and intellectual capacity. He explores various techniques, from psychedelics to meditation, enhancing artistic performance and problem-solving. The conversation dives into the evolution of psychedelics and their therapeutic potential, particularly in fostering neurogenesis and brain connectivity. Roberts emphasizes intentional mind redesign as a pathway to unlocking our cognitive potential.

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ANECDOTE

Early Psychedelic Interest

Thomas Roberts's interest in psychedelics began in the 1960s, sparked by Timothy Leary's work at Harvard.
His curiosity grew at Stanford, where classmates in a Human Potential course openly discussed their psychedelic experiences.

ANECDOTE

Alan Watts and First Psychedelic Experience

Roberts attended a lecture by Alan Watts on religion and psychedelics, realizing their academic discussion was possible.
His first psychedelic experience in Lake Tahoe solidified his intellectual interest, sensing something important had happened.

INSIGHT

Bicycle Day Recognition

While Roberts is pleased with the progress in psychedelic psychotherapy research, he feels his work on mind apps and intellectual uses is less recognized.
He's known for 'Bicycle Day', a holiday he created, but wishes his broader work received more attention.

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In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, my guest is Thomas Roberts, Ph.D., who’s devoted a nearly 50-year career to the study of psychedelics. Tom has developed “mind design” technologies and practices he calls mindapps.

Just like writing and installing apps in our electronic devices, we can construct “mindapps” and install them in our brain-mind complex, he says. And just like digital apps add capabilities to our devices, mindapps can expand our intellectual capacity and creative abilities.

Tom’s mindapps also offer benefits for artistic performance, mystical and spiritual experience, and scientific research by improving creativity, open-mindedness, problem solving, and inner-brain connections—the ultimate performance hacking!

“There are things we can install in our brain/mind complex that allow it to do new things and to do things more strongly,” Tom says. “I'm not saying that a mindapp is like artificial intelligence in electronical sense. I'm just taking that idea and transferring it over to things. Now, my favorite, of course, is psychedelics, but it includes brain stimulation, hypnosis, breathing techniques, biofeedback, chanting, yoga, hypnosis, on and on. All of these are mindapps that we can install and use our brain/mind complex in different ways.”

We’re intentionally redesigning our own minds, he explains, and lays it all out in his most recent book: Mindapps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design. We talk about mindapps and how they connect to consciousness and psychedelic science.

Tom is a professor emeritus of educational psychology at Northern Illinois University and a former visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins, He’s presented around the world on consciousness and psychedelic science. For 32 years, he taught Foundations of Psychedelic Studies, which was the world’s first university-cataloged psychedelic course.

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