Experience as medicine
Una Meistere
A conversation with neuroscientist and Wavepaths founder Mendel Kaelen
Mental health is one of today’s most pressing problems, and the global Covid-19 crisis has only exacerbated it. Only time will tell whether Covid-19 or the mental health crisis will have been more destructive in terms of human health. At the same time, the pandemic has also highlighted the fact that, in addition to tried-and-true methods, a radically new approach and new tools are needed to address mental health issues. Especially considering that in the past seventy years there has been relatively little innovation in the field of mental health treatment and that the efficacy of psychiatric treatment for depression has not improved.
The Wavepaths project, which merges science and psychotherapy as well as technology and art to harness the transformative power of experience, is rooted in science and technological know-how and is an approach that has the potential to become one such tool of the future. The founder and CEO of Wavepaths is neuroscientist Mendel Kaelen. During his PhD and post-doctoral work in the use of psychedelic drugs as a treatment for depression, addiction and trauma, Kaelen discovered the importance of music in predicting positive therapeutic outcomes. He was inspired to found Wavepaths while he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London.
Currently, Wavepaths focuses on two different directions. One of these directions is to provide music experiences for and as psychedelic therapy, which is in large part influenced by the so-called “renaissance” of clinical research on psychedelics such as MDMA, psilocybin and ketamine as safe and effective treatments for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), tobacco addiction, alcohol addiction and end-of-life anxiety* as well as the start of decriminalisation processes around the world regarding a number of psychedelic substances. The other direction is “music as medicine” without the presence of psychoactive substances. Kaelen is convinced that transformative experiences are also possible only with the help of sound, with music becoming a kind of equivalent to a “psychedelic journey”.
A key component of Wavepaths’ offering is its adaptive AI music-generation technology. The technology is developed to dynamically generate music according to empirically distinct therapeutic categories and individual music preferences and needs. Wavepaths works with experience designers, musicians (including Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins, Robert Rich and Greg Haines) and experts in the fields of psychotherapy and neuroscience to create therapeutic music experiences for users that are aimed at improving their wellbeing.
Although the Wavepaths platform is already available for therapeutic and individual use, it is in fact still in the testing stage. As Kaelen says in our conversation: “This year, we’ll see a lot of change. We’ve developed a very elaborate tool for care providers that’s currently being beta tested extensively by hundreds of patients per week, and our website will offer various ways to access this technology over the coming months. Although it’s more simple, the musical experience available on the website (which is different from our elaborate therapeutic tool), is constantly evolving in terms of musical diversity and adaptation as well. Music-wise there are updates on a weekly basis and this is available for everyone right now to experience.”
The idea of using music as medicine is not new. Professional therapists already use music in scientifically tested formats to treat conditions like anxiety, depression and even autism spectrum disorders. Nor is the concept of psychedelic therapy new. Before it all was made illegal, drugs such as LSD were used in psychiatry in legitimate settings. On the one hand, Wavepaths is reviving those traditions, but on the another hand, it’s bringing them to a completely new level. What makes the Wavepaths approach unique? And what are the tools you plan on providing or already provide?
I sometimes tell people – and also our team – that our work is to some degree anthropological and archaeological. Your’re right, music has played a very central role in many cultures, and it still does in various ways. The medicinal or spiritual use of music is probably one of the most ancient inventions, next to hunting tools. When you look at the anthropological ideas regarding the role of music in ancient societies, very often the musician and the shaman or priest were one person, one and the same profession. In our modern lives, music has come to serve a lot of different functions. It can be a source of relaxation, it can be source of entertainment, it can be a source of social experiences, it can be a source of energy. And it can be a source of religious experiences. Many, if not all, religious traditions have some element of music or sound in them.
The medicinal or spiritual use of music is probably one of the most ancient inventions, next to hunting tools.
First of all, Wavepaths recognises the centrality, the importance, the essential role that music plays in psychedelic therapy. As I studied the role of music in psychedelic therapy, I very quickly realised that there’s something that has much broader implications for mental health and how we support people who seek to improve their mental health and well-being. And this has primarily to do with the fact that, if you look at psychedelic therapy, it’s not necessarily about the drug. It’s not even necessarily about the music. In fact, these are agents, tools and catalysts to give an individual a particular experience that can change him or her for the better. So, we’re really convinced that mental healthcare will become more experiential; it will include psychedelic therapy, but it will also include other methods to help give people experiences that make them more fulfilled, more healthy, and all those other things. When it comes to the reviving of the old, there’s definitely that component of recognising that music has tremendous potential in facilitating profoundly personally meaningful experiences. And that potential is currently not really leveraged; it’s currently not really available or exploited to its fullest potential. So that’s what we’re working to revive.
Regarding your question about what makes Wavepaths unique, I think there are a few things there. One is that we really aspire to build a set of tools allowing music to be created that’s really reflective of our modern time, of our modern culture. We don’t necessarily copy and paste medicinal music from other traditions, but we really focus on finding a new, fresh voice for our modern evolving generations.
The second thing is that we’re not only looking at music, but we’re also looking at the context in which these experiences happen – the ritual around music listening, the design of the environments in which these experiences take place. And we also look through the lens of what’s available these days when it comes to artists and architects and basically any profession that’s concerned with the design of experiences.
We’re really convinced that mental healthcare will become more experiential; it will include psychedelic therapy, but it will also include other methods to help give people experiences that make them more fulfilled, more healthy, and all those other things.
Thirdly, we’re utilising the most modern, cutting-edge technologies. Meaning, we’re really interested in building responsive, adaptive environments that can be used in clinics and therapeutic environments but also in people’s homes. The same way that many of our homes have a thermostat that you set to change the temperature and the climate that you live in, there’s an opportunity here to think about a kind of thermostat for sound and give a bit more thought to the sonic environment that we live in and have experiences in. We recognise here an opportunity for artists and, again, any professional who’s concerned with understanding how we can best provide experiences to people, to unify that expertise into one model that’s primarily concerned with how we can improve the lives of people.
As a neuroscientist, can you explain what happens in our brains when we listen to music or use drugs, be it psilocybin or LSD? And how about when we’re exposed to the combination of the two? Why is this combination so intense? As far as I know, you were involved in the world’s first brain-scan study that revealed what happens in the brain under the influence of LSD.
Needless to say, that’s a very interesting topic. Let’s start with music. So, there’s more and more research that looks at how music is processed in the brain. When you look at what music is, in essence, it’s structured sound in time. And that sound has various components, various variables to it. For example, it can have a particular pitch and particular changes in pitch or tonalities. It can have different tone colour characteristics that change over time. And many of these components can make sound become music when it’s structured in a particular way. We can have a conversation about what’s the difference between sound and noise and music, but that’s maybe a rabbit hole that we want to avoid for the time being.
In any case, focusing on music as structured sound that’s created with the intention to evoke a particular experience – and it can be a single instrument, or a number of instruments, or only the voice – the brain is primarily concerned with assigning meaning to stimuli, whether it’s a sound or a visual stimulus or whatever. So when it comes to sound, we’ve developed all these different specialised regions in the brain that collaborate to attribute meaning to that structured sound. There’s a part of the brain that analyses the temporal components, the way tone changes; the different pitches are mapped out in our brain as a tonal topic map, as neuroscientists refer to it. There’s a memory region that tracks how all of these changes occur dynamically over time. And then there are memory systems involved and all sorts of other brain regions that together, in a very associative way, provide an experience.
But the interesting thing with music is that it’s not necessarily concrete. If we’re talking about instrumental music, it’s not necessarily a conveying phenomenon, like language may convey a story about a tree or a story about a person or a story about an event. But music does convey the process of a particular subjective experience. It could be the process of feeling joy, or the process of feeling safe, or the process of grief.
Another interesting element when you look at how music is processed and how that leads to the experience of music is that, in these events of processing musical components and assigning meaning, we’re projecting our personal associations, our personal memories, our personal sensations onto this musical process, onto this musical event. So maybe music is not about the grief of one particular person, but you experience music to be conveying the process of sadness and grief. And in this process of association and giving meaning, you may, for example, think and enter an experience of remembering someone you are mourning or grieving. In other words, music really activates and engages lots of different brain regions, and that’s a fascinating field in and of itself.
The reason why that’s likely the case is because music has a very ancient evolutionary history. We’ve developed ways of attributing meaning to sound, because sound is a very important stimulus that we’re constantly exposed to. Our inner genotype is already innately hardwired to process and engage with sounds in various ways. Even before we’re born into this world, we have a very highly attuned hearing system that’s able to differentiate the voices of different caregivers, for example, and it’s most likely very important for infants to recognise significant caregivers.
So we may think about the brain as this very complex structure that has a particular hierarchy, but the hierarchy is very nonlinear and deeply interconnected. And it’s essentially concerned with maintaining a certain inner balance and homeostasis, as we neurologists would call it. It’s constantly sampling information from the world – sonic, auditory, oral, visual, verbal – and storing it implicitly or explicitly in memory systems to motivate our behaviours, to motivate our actions. That’s really one of the main functions of our brain – to help us navigate this complex and highly changing world by constantly learning, by constantly building these internal models of giving meaning.
When we talk about the classic psychedelics – such as psilocybin, LSD and DMT – by activating and binding to serotonin and G-receptors, they change the way information is usually processed. There are certain networks in the brain that have a higher density of serotonergic receptors. It turns out that these brain networks play a very important function in maintaining that homeostasis we just talked about, and also in maintaining a degree of control over the emotions, thoughts and thoughts about ourselves and others. With psychedelics, those networks become a little bit freer in their activity, and less organised, if you wish, less constrained. As a consequence, the usual hierarchy of the information process collapses, and the brain is able to process information in a unique way. It becomes easier for the brain to process information in such a way that new meaning can arise as well as new interpretations or new experiences – all the way from the high level, as well as all the way through kind of the lower level in a sensory sense.
That’s really one of the main functions of our brain – to help us navigate this complex and highly changing world by constantly learning, by constantly building these internal models of giving meaning.
So, in the same way as when we’re under the influence of a classic psychedelic, we look at the clouds, for example, but we don’t see clouds in such a stable way anymore. Within the lines, however, we suddenly see colours and all sorts of other things emerging. Because the brain is less constrained in interpreting what it’s actually seeing there. So you see all these different, freer ways of experiencing that collection of colours and lines, and you end up with these very alive, psychedelic, beautiful, often very visual experiences. But they occur at different levels of the hierarchy as well. They also occur in the way we experience sonic information, and melodies, and thoughts about ourselves and the world.
And in doing so, from the perspective of therapy, psychedelics also provide an opportunity to experience oneself in a new light. Not only to think about oneself in a new light, but really experience oneself in a new light. For example, a person who may have been depressed for many years or decades, within a psychedelic experience he or she may suddenly be able to tap into a resource within themselves that’s able to imagine a positive future, or to feel creative, or to feel joyful in this moment. Those are examples of implicit learning experiences that can drive sustained changes in the long term.
Now, when it comes to music and psychedelics together, you’re basically talking about a brain that has become way more receptive to experience information in a freer, more flexible way. So when a person under the influence of a psychedelic is exposed to a melodic structure or a particular musical experience, from an experience perspective he or she experiences more depth, a more detailed and richer imagination. People often describe this as a lucid-dream-like experience, as if you were watching a film or soundtrack of a film with images of your own life. And these experiences are very profound; they’re very strong and can be very intense in various different ways.
From the perspective of therapy, psychedelics also provide an opportunity to experience oneself in a new light. Not only to think about oneself in a new light, but really experience oneself in a new light.
When we look at the interaction of music and psychedelics through neuroscience, we see a few things. We see that the brain allocates more resources, more energy resources, to process tone colour in sound and in music. We also see a really interesting interaction effect between music and psychedelic substances that drives information flow to be increased from memory regions towards the visual cortex. And the degree to which that happens correlates to the vividness of the images that people will see. These are some of the earlier hints that we’ve published on how music and psychedelics work together in the brain. But it also illuminates some of the mechanisms that explain why this experience of music that we just talked about is so enhanced, so intensified. The finding that tone colour is processed by the brain more significantly when under the influence of psychedelics than in a sober state, a placebo state, may explain why people feel they experience the richness of music more than in a sober state. It’s the sea of harmonics that are there that gives sound and music its richness and its detail.
Tone colour is a fascinating topic in itself, because tone colour most likely has an evolutionary function. As I mentioned earlier, tone colour is significant in recognising different voices or different instruments. We also analyse tone colour in order to infer the emotional state of the person who is communicating with us. So, if someone is communicating with a lot of dissonance in their voice, we may perceive that person as being angry or tense. And when his or her rhythm is less stable and more interrupted, we may experience this person as being more anxious. Tone colour is really considered the interface between sound and emotion. Tone colour is also a way to convey emotion through music, most likely because music utilises our various inborn mechanisms to process sound in different ways. It kind of hijacks this sensitivity to sound and builds this completely new experience out of it.
Tone colour is a way to convey emotion through music, most likely because music utilises our various inborn mechanisms to process sound in different ways.
If we look back in history, to the 1950s and Robert Monroe’s research into out-of-body experience, he found that specific sound patterns have identifiable effects on human capabilities, which include alertness, sleepiness and expanded states of consciousness. Monroe also spoke about the powers of Hemi-Sync, the state of consciousness in which the electrical patterns of both brain hemispheres are equal in amplitude and frequency. Have his books and work in some way influenced and inspired Wavepaths?
Well, it’s funny that you should mention Monroe. Maybe you picked up one of my earlier interviews where I mentioned that I read Monroe’s books in my late teens. That really motivated me to enter neuroscience, not necessarily psychedelics, but to understand out-of-body experiences, or these astral experiences he describes in his books. Monroe developed an audio programme through which he believed we could actually use sounds to facilitate out-of-body experiences.
Unfortunately, the science underlying binaural beats, for example, or hemispheric synchronisation is not solid. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no scientific proof that they actually work. The studies you find online all hint that it’s a placebo effect. But I think the question of how we can utilise sounds to facilitate certain states of consciousness has a lot of validity. However, it’s very poorly studied, and so this is exactly why Wavepaths was founded – to allow us to focus more deeply on understanding sound and understanding music, and how this can be used to guide and support altered states of consciousness with psychedelics, but also to use music and sound in itself as an agent for altered states of consciousness.
So, if I understand correctly, the aim of Wavepaths is to provide a highly flexible and adaptive musical environment – a tool for psychotherapists and ordinary people alike. While the software is created by artificial intelligence, the music itself is not computer-generated. You use human-created musical building blocks. What are they? How are they built?
We work with AI to generate music, but we primarily work with musicians to provide building blocks for our system. And then we have various ways that these building blocks are mixed and modulated in order to provide a unique musical experience for the listener. One of the reasons why we do that is because we really believe in the art of making music, in the uniqueness that each musician has developed for him- or herself to create music. We want to preserve that artistic, aesthetic depth in the music that’s very easily lost if you make purely AI, or computer-generated, music without human input. I think the important footnote here is that, even if we’re talking about AI, it’s still trained on human musical creations. Even if you go outside of the musical realm, these AI systems are basically looking at large databases of outputs of human creativity, which is then consolidated into a capacity that outperforms what humans may be able to do. Computational capacities, in this case.
We want to preserve that artistic, aesthetic depth in the music that’s very easily lost if you make purely AI, or computer-generated, music without human input.
When it comes to music, we’re really committed to continue working with musicians in this way. It’s a new way of making music for them. It’s also a new way for us to think really carefully about how we can create an environment that’s fully flexible and adaptive, but doesn’t lose the aesthetic qualities of these amazing musicians we’re working with. In our case, the AI is primarily looking at ways that these musical building blocks are remixed and modulated and blended together in unique ways. It’s also involved in the predictive algorithms that we’re building, which are mostly for understanding who the listeners are – who a patient is – and have a personalisation component that is to some degree AI-driven but to another degree is also completely manual for a therapist and patient to adapt.
That dynamic is very important for us. We don’t want to build machines that decide things for the individual without that sense of agency. Instead, we want to build a collaborative environment where we can collaborate with an intelligence system that puts us in various sonic musical environments that we may need and want in that moment.
You talk about the importance of an individual approach. How are you going to provide an individual approach for each Wavepaths user, be it a client of a psychotherapist or an individual user? How is it possible to adapt music exactly for one specific person’s needs?
There are various ways we do that. One is by increasing our understanding of the variables within the individual – recognising that each of us has built our own personally unique ways of relating to music, and finding ways that we can understand that and then feed that information into our music-generation system to tailor the music for this particular individual. Another way is in conjunction with therapy, which is a very dynamic process in which different therapeutic experiences and different therapeutic needs arise. The system then creates music that’s designed to support distinct therapeutic processes that, together with the profile of a listener, allow us to provide highly personalised musical experiences in the present moment.
A light artwork by Brian Eno, which was part of Wavepaths venue in London in 2019. Photo: Matthias deLattre
Can you elaborate a bit about your collaboration with Brian Eno and other musicians? How does this process take place? How do you decide which musicians to collaborate with?
At this moment, it’s primarily curation. We get submissions and sometimes we respond to those, but it’s heavily curated. We have a growing collective of musicians, and we choose them based on the quality of their music and the style that they’ve developed for themselves as artists. Our intention is to eventually have a very broad repertoire. You’ll find musicians who are more oriented towards ambient music, but also musicians who are oriented towards electronic music or jazz or classical. Really, to provide that full landscape of possibilities. The aspiration here is to build something that transcends cultural boundaries. And one way to do that is to really rethink how music happens.
For example, we might have a client who has listened to classical music his or her entire life. Instead of thinking that therefore this person needs to listen to classical music, we ask what it is in classical music that’s probably integrated in this person. What are the compositional qualities that are unique to classical music? What are the timbral qualities unique to classical music? And can we work with classical musicians to capture that? But maybe the result doesn’t sound exactly like a classical composition or what we’re used to hearing, because we’re really thinking through new ways that music can have this adaptive, flexible-component structure to it but still have this element that makes you as a classical music listener responsive to this music as well.
It’s very interesting. Even with the classical musicians we work with, who include some great solo musicians (for example, violinists and cellists), the result isn’t necessarily classical music. It’s something else. And we really enjoy that this is emerging organically in our work as a reflection of our aspiration to build something that’s not necessarily bound to one time and place. It’s reflective of our times, of our global and international trends. And we’ll be moving into even more depth over the coming years.
Is it better to use headphones when listening to Wavepaths? They’re sometimes recommended to fully experience sound meditations, because the body enters a virtual sleep-like state, a state of very deep relaxation.
Headphones are not necessarily recommended. The most important thing is the fidelity of the sound, the quality of the sound system, whether it’s a speaker system or headphones. And the degree to which you as a listener can be immersed in the music. Most people don’t have high-fidelity sound systems. In fact, very low-quality Bluetooth speakers are increasingly the norm nowadays. For that reason, the very least we recommend is that people have some stereo inputs. But it’s not necessarily the case that headphones are preferable; it really depends on the setup, what’s available.
Yes, the advantage of headphones is that they can help enhance introspection; they can definitely help to potentially guide the attention more inwards. But the advantage of speakers over headphones is that the music is felt through the body rather than just the ears and the brain. And also you’re maybe able to move around more freely and lie on your side without the interference of the headphones, for example, if you’re undergoing psychedelic therapy. So there are various reasons why speakers may be preferable in some cases and some situations.
The advantage of speakers over headphones is that the music is felt through the body rather than just the ears and the brain.
Returning to the topic of psychedelics. In one of your previous interviews you said that in the beginning it wasn’t that easy to enter psychedelic society, because it was quite closed. Amanda Feilding, co-director of the Beckley/Imperial Psychedelic Research Programme, has helped you a lot. In the meantime, how open are current psychotherapy circles to the integration of psychedelic therapy in their practice? I know you’ve done many trails already. But I also know that, aside from legalisation issues, not everyone in traditional psychotherapy circles is open to it. There’s still quite a bit of resistance. Do you think Wavepaths may have a strong impact on the current paradigm of psychotherapy?
First of all, it’s true that over the past few years we’ve witnessed a huge change in the interest and acceptance of psychedelic therapy as a legit field of research. And we’re seeing various ways that psychedelic therapy is being made more accessible. One way is by patient access to MDMA-assisted psychotherapy through FDA-granted clinical trials. But another way is, there’s this booming interest in ketamine clinics around the world, ketamine being not as heavily regulated as more classic psychedelics.
I would, however, argue that it’s still not yet part of mainstream society. And it’s still a community of researchers and users. And that’s a good thing in the sense that we don’t necessarily want to develop this field too quickly. It’s been quite a novel way of performing psychotherapy; there’s still ongoing conversation about qualifications for therapists. There are still many things we don’t know or understand about psychedelic therapy. So, there’s a shadow side to the interest as well, including, for example, the lack of regulation in certain countries.
We’re seeing various ways that psychedelic therapy is being made more accessible. One way is by patient access to MDMA-assisted psychotherapy through FDA-granted clinical trials.
And yes, there’s definitely resistance in traditional psychotherapy communities towards the use of psychedelic drugs in psychotherapy. That resistance has had a long tradition. Even people like Carl Jung openly wrote about their reservations regarding the use of psychedelic drugs in therapy. He was convinced it was primarily dangerous, that we would create environments for patients in which they would be potentially overwhelmed by the amount of content that emerges from the subconscious mind into the conscious mind. That, in principle, is a very good critique; there’s definitely that component to it. But what also needs to be recognised is that, within the right environments and under the supervision of therapists with the right qualifications, that’s not necessarily the case – there’s actually way more control and influence that therapists or facilitators can have over these experiences than people may traditionally think. And that primarily has to do with the fact that we as therapists work in a different way than more sober talk therapy works. We also work differently with the environments in which these experiences take place, that is, the way we work with music within these environments.
I think where Wavepaths is positioned within all of this is in two different ways. One is recognising the importance of person-centred work with and within psychedelic therapy, and then in relationship with music – the importance of having the know-how and the tools to provide person-centred music to therapy clients. Music itself, and the person-centred use of music, is a very vast and complex topic, and what we’re committed to doing is to minimise the complexity of working with music therapeutically and make it more easy, more intuitive and more accessible for care providers. So that’s one way we’re supporting the growth of psychedelic therapy worldwide.
Photo: Matthias deLattre
The other element is constantly working on the insights that have implications beyond psychedelic therapy. So, in our case, we really heavily focus on the concept that experiences can be medicinal, and, in our case, we focus very deeply on utilising music in those experiences. In the context of psychotherapists, we offer these tools to any care provider who wants to add experiential and more experience-based components to their work, with or without psychedelics. And we’re seeing that there are psychotherapists who are interested in using our technologies to support various therapeutic interventions or exercises, such as guided imagery or introspective free association.
We’ve also developed a deep listening approach through which we believe (and we have evidence for this) that we can facilitate psychedelic-like experiences just with music. Of course, it’s not exactly the same as a psychedelic drug experience, but it can have the same qualities of reconnecting with parts within yourself that you usually wouldn’t have such easy access to. The real meaning of the word psychedelic is “mind-revealing” – or, more specifically, “soul-revealing” – that is, being able to reveal and make visible those different experiences and parts of ourselves. And music is a very powerful way to do that.
Therefore, we really treat and view and work with music as a psychedelic. We sometimes refer to this other component that we’re developing not as music for psychedelic therapy, but music as psychedelic therapy. And we see this being picked up by various psychotherapists, even by teachers at schools and by others who plan to work with music in their practices, such as yoga practitioners, breath-work facilitators, etc.
We really treat and view and work with music as a psychedelic.
You mention “music as medicine”, and in some way that touches upon a quite sensitive issue. Depression and other mental issues are a huge problem today, and this pandemic has only made it worse. At the same time, the use of antidepressants, especially among young people, is also a huge problem. Could “experience as medicine” and “music as medicine” – presented alone or with drugs, in the right set and setting – serve as an alternative to pills?
In terms of the way we provide mental healthcare to people who seek help, I think a good future will include not only antidepressants, not only psychotherapy and not only Wavepaths; instead, it will be a broader repertoire of tools that are available to care providers and care seekers. Antidepressants are of help for some people; they guide people through some situations. The same goes for psychedelic therapy and other modalities, including but not limited to Wavepaths. So this is what I hope the future will look like, and this is how I really believe the future will be. I believe we will eventually also recognise the importance of connecting with a person as a care provider rather than connecting with just a diagnosis and the protocol in place for that diagnosis. Really connecting with the person and finding ways that we can support this individual in his or her life.
We’re developing Wavepaths as a tool that supports various mental health problems. We don’t have any active clinical data at hand that proves our tools can cure depression. And I definitely don’t want to make any statements along the lines that Wavepaths could be a replacement for antidepressants. But at the very least, we’re confident that it can be a great support for people who seek help for their mental health and wellbeing. And we’re committed to continue building an approach that’s evidence-based as well as developing ways that people can access these methods over the coming months and coming years.
I think a good future will include not only antidepressants, not only psychotherapy and not only Wavepaths; instead, it will be a broader repertoire of tools that are available to care providers and care seekers.
Music has always been an essential part of shamanic experience and indigenous cultures, and it continues to be so. It’s clear that the sustainable future of the planet and humanity is possible only in dialogue between indigenous traditions and modern science. How do you see the collaboration of these two aspects?
I think both can learn a lot from each other. I don’t think it’s a one-directional way. There are various things we can learn from traditional cultures, and these have to do with their understanding of ritual and structure and their insights and how experiences can be influenced with various tools, including songs and music. At the very least, I think we can gain deep inspiration from their worldviews and the place that music and songs have in those worldviews. In these traditional psychedelic medicine environments, songs are as important as the medicine itself and are considered as sacred as the plant medicine itself.
But the flip side of the coin is true as well. In our search for finding ways to work with psychedelic medicines, we should not merely borrow things from traditional cultures, because we have a very impressive legacy ourselves. Look at the psychodynamic theorists, the existential psychotherapists, the humanistic psychotherapists, the experiential therapists, the transpersonal therapists, and also contemplative traditions from the East. So, as you suggest, there’s a great opportunity here to integrate insights into a unified model. A unified understanding of how to work with people, how to work with the mind, how to work with inner conflicts and illnesses that arise at various points in our lives. Those things are so natural to all of us, because life is this highly unpredictable, challenging journey that we’re all a part of.
I’d say that one of the insights we can borrow from all of these traditions I mentioned, including our own, is that suffering is part of life. It’s unavoidable. And rather than trying to fight the symptoms of the challenges we’re going through, they’re in fact an opportunity to look into the way we’re living our lives and what’s limiting us to live life. What are the inner conflicts that are part of our lives, and what are the ways that we can build a more constructive relationship with ourselves and our lives?
Suffering is part of life. It’s unavoidable. And rather than trying to fight the symptoms of the challenges we’re going through, they’re in fact an opportunity to look into the way we’re living our lives and what’s limiting us to live life.
I know that you had a transformative, or breakthrough, experience yourself. And it was through psychedelics. How did that change your view of the world?
I’ve had numerous experiences that were transformative. They range from psychedelic experiences to romantic relationships, profound and meaningful friendships, and travels to different countries. There are many transformative experiences that have shaped me and continue to shape me. When it comes to how psychedelics changed my view of the world, I’d say they gave me an even stronger fascination for consciousness and an even greater humbleness regarding what we know and what we don’t know about consciousness. And a greater openness to look at other models beyond neuroscience that should collaborate in order to tackle this phenomenon, or challenge the understanding of this phenomenon of consciousness.
Musician Jon Hopkins. Photo: Matthias deLattre
Do you think science will ever be able to understand what consciousness is? Very many people believe that it’s unlikely there will ever be a fully scientific account of consciousness.
I’d actually say yes. Of course, science is a large umbrella term, but the very essence is concerned with formulating hypotheses, testing those hypotheses through experiments, and then confirming or rejecting those hypotheses. And as long as science is done with integrity, with the highest of standards, it’s a great tool that can be used to answer many hypotheses, although not all of them. For example, science will never be able to confirm the existence of God. Because there’s not a single experiment we can think of that will help to confirm the existence of God.
But when it comes to consciousness – something that’s such a central part of our of life, and not only human life but life in general – I’m optimistic. I don’t see a reason why science wouldn’t be able to tackle it. In fact, it’s making great progress on this front. And I think various conclusions will be found exactly by interfacing these different disciplines rather than looking only at neuroscience. Can we bridge phenomenology, can we combine philosophy of the mind with neuroscience and psychology and human development? All these different things.
Science will never be able to confirm the existence of God. Because there’s not a single experiment we can think of that will help to confirm the existence of God.
You once said that we as a culture have the capacity to heal ourselves. The positive side of the pandemic is that so many people are going inwards now, discovering their spiritual side, etc. We recently had an interview with Dennis McKenna, and, speaking about psychedelics, he said: “I think that they’re a tool, a catalyst for many people. Psychedelics are a good catalyst for the wake-up part of it; they can wake up many people. But then the next step is the wise-up part. We need to wake up, and we need to wise up.” In your opinion, what role can psychedelics play in the “wise-up” part? And is the global awakening, the shift of common consciousness towards a better planet, a better human, possible without psychedelics?
An interesting point. Saying that it’s impossible without psychedelics would be too radical a statement for me. It’s definitely possible without psychedelics. But I think psychedelics have a unique role to play, given their power. Some might argue that, considering the urgency of the global crisis, psychedelics are to a certain degree a very important tool worldwide to facilitate these changes. And I agree with the fact that psychedelics have significance beyond the mental health system. Like right now there’s this strong scientific focus on clinical trials, but what about the role of psychedelics in the lives of all of us? And what about the role of psychedelics in our spiritualities? In the ways we reflect on our lives and the way we facilitate change in our lives, even without significant psychiatric diagnosis?
I’ve read the work of Dennis and Terence McKenna quite extensively, especially when I first started this whole adventure about fifteen years ago, and I have great admiration for their work. I also think there’s still so much to learn and be reminded of in the works by Terence McKenna, notably, Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations. He really viewed psychedelics as tools for cultural transformation. In fact, any tool that radically challenges the way we view the world and ourselves will do that. Any tool that challenges the work we’re doing, the way we live our lives on a daily basis, our values, what we prioritise in life, the way we connect with people, the way we understand, connect and feel nature – all of that will have massive implications for how culture is changing.
And culture is changing all the time, primarily because of all sorts of technologies and political revolutions. When it comes to technologies, there are so many examples of instances where technology has radically changed culture and our societies. And when we view psychedelics or psychotherapy or psychedelic medicine, broadly speaking, as a technology, there’s no doubt that it has tremendous potential to change the world for the better. But the way that this is going to be approached in the coming years is absolutely essential for it to be either be a success or a massive disaster.
Any tool that challenges the work we’re doing, the way we live our lives on a daily basis, our values, what we prioritise in life, the way we connect with people, the way we understand, connect and feel nature – all of that will have massive implications for how culture is changing.
Because there are many risk points as well.
Exactly. And maybe this is an important footnote to add to what I just said: psychedelics don’t necessarily make people better. In fact, there’s lots of evidence for the opposite as well. For example, in the 1960s and 70s there were whole cults built around psychedelic experiences that turned into suicide cults. Psychedelics are simply one of the many technologies and agents out there that allow us to enter an altered state of consciousness. But there’s nothing intrinsic in that, at least according to my current understanding and the way I currently view these things; there’s not necessarily any implicit intrinsic goodness about being in an altered state. They’re simply states that provide an opportunity for change.
It’s really where our focus is, where our attention is, what our intention is, and what the environment is that influences our experience, including not only the music and the therapist, but also the cultural environment and the ideas that are embedded in that environment. All of that influences the outcomes of that experience.
This is why I’m so passionate about sound and music, because we’re constantly embedded in sounds. We’re literally embedded in sound all day long, and we often give the qualities of that sonic environment over to the coincidences of how that environment has been designed by others, or the streets that we live on, or you name it. And therefore this is really an invitation to think more thoughtfully about how we can design our sound environments so that they will really benefit us.
* In 2019, the FDA and EMA granted breakthrough therapy status to psilocybin for treatment-resistant (TR) depression (phase 2 clinical trials) and to MDMA for TR-PTSD (phase 3 clinical trials).
