This podcast is predicated on the belief that if we all work together, we can still lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave as our legacy. And it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is now urgent; that we need to let go of the assumptions we'd made about career paths or future constructs and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the process of making it through. Five years ago when we began, it was possible to imagine that the world might stabilise with a vestige of the old system as a scaffold for the new. That assumption is growing increasingly ragged. At the same time, it's becoming increasingly obvious, at least to me, that the shifts we need to be in the world are primarily inner; that the truly urgent work is in healing both our own and the global human psyches, that we need urgently to remember how to connect with the web of life so that we can ask it 'What do you want of me?' and respond to the answers in real time. That we need, in short. to evolve.

But we need mentors and guides along the way. It is possible that we could perhaps each carve out our own route, but part of being human is sharing best practice, is having elders and mentors who open the doors of possibility for those who strive to walk the ways of healing. And this week's guest is one of those elders and mentors; he's a trailblazer of the most incandescent kind.

Professor Christopher Bache is professor emeritus in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and on the Advisory Council of Grof Legacy Training. He grew up in a Catholic household in the southern US and spent 4 years at a seminary training to be a priest before deciding this wasn't the path for him. Moving into academia, he took degrees in the US and at Cambridge and finally a PhD by the end of which he had concluded that, 'using language derived from finite existence to describe an infinite God was like shining flashlights at the stars.' He duly finished graduate school as 'a deeply convinced agnostic with a strong atheistic bent' and went on to teach the philosophy of religion as an academic study.

So far, so academically straight. He took a post teaching at Youngstown University in Ohio - and then he read Ian Stevenson on reincarnation and Stanislav Grof's work on LSD. And 45 years later, I read his book, 'Diamonds from Heaven: LSD and the Mind of the Universe' and realised that here was someone who had walked with the Heart Mind of the Universe. Here is someone who has taken himself to the edge of being, in order to understand the process. As you'll hear, over the course of 20 years, he took 73 truly heroic doses of LSD in very carefully controlled conditions and then, over the past 20 years, he has reflected deeply on the results. I'll let him tell his story: it's truly remarkable. And what he brings to us is visions of how humanity could be: it's not guaranteed - but it's the opening to a door of possibility where every one of us can play a part, where, as he says, if we can align ourselves with the needs of the living planet, find out what's ours to do and devote ourselves to doing it, we have no idea what might arise.

For many of us, this feels like a true dark night of the soul. So I offer this conversation as a ray of potential, that out of this immense pressure, might arise the conscious evolution of humanity: if we can all find ways to be the change.

Chris Bache website https://chrisbache.com/ABOUT
Chris Books https://chrisbache.com/BOOKS-1
New Extended Edition of The Living Classroom https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Living-Classroom-Second-Edition
Stanislav Grof (a website devoted to him and his works) https://www.stangrof.com/
Bill Barnard Liquid Light Book https://liquidlightbook.com/
Soul Centered Healing https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/soul-centered-healing-a-psychologist-s-extraordinary-journey-into-the-realms-of-sub-personalities-spirits-and-past-lives-ed-d-thomas-zinser/310221?ean=9780983429401

Is it possible that 2024 might have been the year of 'Peak polarisation' around the world and that from hereon in humanity might grow less divided, not more; that we might use technology and social media wisely to bring the best of ourselves to the table, becoming the best we can be in service to life? Audrey Tang certainly thinks so in this wide-deep, mind-expanding conversation, we explore everything from the dual nature of AGI to the potential for liberational education that gives young people a sense of agency, interaction and the common good, to ways to rescue democracy to recipes for sound sleep.

Until recently, Audrey Tang was Digital Minister of Taiwan: the country's first transgender, post-gender, and youngest ever Minister of state. In this role, Tang helped bring the .g0v movement into the mainstream and brought with it the concept that democracy could be a social technology with a focus for good. In 2014, at the time of the Sunflower Revolution in which Tang took part, confidence in the government was measured at 9%. Six years later, it was up to 73%. In that time, there had been shifts in everything from the concept of education, to healthcare, to the provision of broadband, to the online submission of taxes. Then the pandemic hit and, by any measure, Taiwan's response was one of the most flexible, emotionally and politically literate in the world. With no need for lockdown, they kept public confidence high and the death rate low. More recently, the Government began 'pre-bunking' the possibility of foreign interference in the General Election of 2024 and the end result saw all three parties agree that it had been a free and fair election, with a population who felt heard and engaged. How different is this to the western experience of maximal polarisation.

Since the end of May 2024, Audrey Tang has been Taiwan's Ambassador at Large in charge of Cyberspace Governance, instrumental in bringing ideas of a post-polarised world to those who dance amongst the levers of power - and doing so with charm, grace and a fierce, sharp intellect that makes the balance between polarities feel like the only possible way forward.

Audrey is probably not entirely alone in swimming both deep in the world of code and stretching wide across the understanding of what it takes to bring humanity to a place of agency, connection and sufficiency, but I don't know of anyone else who has this as a life's goal. This was the most mind-expanding, heart-firing conversation imaginable, and it was an astonishing joy and an honour. I hope it inspires you to be part of a growing, evolving, re-connected world.

Audrey has been the subject of a documentary: 'Good Enough Ancestor' - at the time of this podcast, the trailer is available, but the full video will be released in early January 2025

Plurality.net https://www.plurality.net
Download and donate here https://www.plurality.net/chapters/
Good Enough Ancestor Trailer https://youtu.be/L_AAhYk6I3M
Good Enough Ancestor https://vimeo.com/1010351047/07c278e0d0
TimeShifter App https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/timeshifter/id1380684374
Vivid App https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/vivid-double-your-brightness/id6443470555?mt=12
Tenet movie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6723592/