2
" That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn’t able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, “the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast.” Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her
own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was
supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn’t come back either.
And that’s the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you’ll always wonder if you could have gone
deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back. "
― Steven Kotler , Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
3
" When free from the confines of our normal identity, we are able to look at life, and the often repetitive stories we tell about it, with fresh eyes. Come Monday morning, we may still clamber back into the monkey suits of our everyday roles—parent, spouse, employee, boss, neighbor—but, by then, we know they're just costumes with zippers. "
― Steven Kotler , Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
5
" While we've painted the guardians of the pale in a somewhat reactionary light, let's give the gatekeepers their due. What lies beyond the pale isn't always safe and secure. Outside the fence of state-sanctioned consciousness, there are, to be sure, peaks of profound insight and inspiration. But there are also the swamps of addiction, superstition, and groupthink, where the unprepared can get stuck. "
― Steven Kotler , Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
16
" [T]he self “is not an unmitigated blessing,”6 writes Duke University psychologist Mark Leary in his aptly titled book, The Curse of the Self. “It is single-handedly responsible for many, if not most of the problems that human beings face as individuals and as a species . . . [and] conjures up a great deal of personal suffering in the form of depression, anxiety, anger, jealousy, and other negative emotions.” When you think about the billion-dollar industries that underpin the Altered States Economy, isn’t this what they’re built for? To shut off the self. To give us a few moments of relief from the voice in our heads. "
― Steven Kotler , Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
19
" And the benefits of selflessness go beyond silencing our inner critic. When free from the confines of our normal identity, we are able to look at life, and the often repetitive stories we tell about it, with fresh eyes. Come Monday morning, we may still clamber back into the monkey suits of our everyday roles—parent, spouse, employee, boss, neighbor—but, by then, we know they’re just costumes with zippers. "
― Steven Kotler , Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work