Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

by Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal

Overview

National Bestseller

CNBC and Strategy + Business Best Business Book of the Year

It’s the biggest revolution you’ve never heard of, and it’s hiding in plain sight. Over the past decade, Silicon Valley executives like Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk, Special Operators like the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, and maverick scientists like Sasha Shulgin and Amy Cuddy have turned everything we thought we knew about high performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising short cut. They're harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition.

New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler and high performance expert Jamie Wheal spent four years investigating the leading edges of this revolution—from the home of SEAL Team Six to the Googleplex, the Burning Man festival, Richard Branson’s Necker Island, Red Bull’s training center, Nike’s innovation team, and the United Nations’ Headquarters. And what they learned was stunning: In their own ways, with differing languages, techniques, and applications, every one of these groups has been quietly seeking the same thing: the boost in information and inspiration that altered states provide.

Today, this revolution is spreading to the mainstream, fueling a trillion dollar underground economy and forcing us to rethink how we can all lead richer, more productive, more satisfying lives. Driven by four accelerating forces—psychology, neurobiology, technology and pharmacology—we are gaining access to and insights about some of the most contested and misunderstood terrain in history. Stealing Fire is a provocative examination of what’s actually possible; a guidebook for anyone who wants to radically upgrade their life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062429674
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/21/2017
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	372,412
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. He is the author of nine bestsellers (out of thirteen books total), including The Art of Impossible, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Bold and Abundance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 40 languages, and appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, TIME and the Harvard Business Review. Steven is also the cohost of Flow Research Collective Radio, a top ten iTunes science podcast. Along with his wife, author Joy Nicholson, he is the cofounder of the Rancho de Chihuahua, a hospice and special needs dog sanctuary. 

 

Jamie Wheal is the author of the global bestseller Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, Navy SEALs and Maverick Scientists are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work. Wheal is an expert in peak performance and leadership, specializing in neuroanthropology––the intersection of culture, biology and psychology and the founder of the Flow Genome Project, an international organization dedicated to the research and training of ultimate human performance. Wheal is a mountaineer who’s guided the North Face of Mount Everest, trained Navy Seals, Olympians and RedBull extreme athletes and advised everyone from the U.S. Naval War College and Special Operations Command to the executives of major corporations including Google, Goldman Sachs and Cisco, among others. His work and ideas have been covered in The New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, INC, and TEDx. Wheal lives in Austin, TX.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Never-Ending Story 1

Accidental Prometheans 4

Part 3 The Case for Ecstasis

Chapter 3 What Is This Fire?

The Switch 9

The High Cost of Ninja Assassins 12

Google Goes Fishing 18

Hacking Ecstasis 22

The Mind Gym 25

The Altered States Economy 28

Chapter 2 Why It Matters

The Ambassador of Ecstasis 33

Selflessness 37

Timelessness 39

Effortlessness 41

Richness 44

Wicked Solutions to Wicked Problems 46

Chapter 3 Why We Missed It Beyond the Pale 51

The Pale of the Church 52

The Pale of the Body 56

The Pale of the State 60

Pipers, Cults, and Commies 65

Part 2 The Four Forces of Ecstasis

Chapter 4 Psychology

Translating Transformation 73

The Bell Tolles for Thee 75

Mad Men 77

Taking the Kink Out of Kinky 81

Good for What Ails You 86

Altered States to Altered Traits 90

Chapter 5 Neurobiology

Outside the jar 95

I Can't Feel My Face 96

The Al Shrink 100

Precognition Is Here (But You Knew That Already) 103

The Birth of Neurotheology 106

OS to UI 111

Chapter 6 Pharmacology

Everybody Must Get Stoned 115

The Johnny Appleseed of Psychedelics 119

This Is Your Brain on Drugs 124

The Hyperspace Lexicon 126

The Molecules of Desire 132

Chapter 7 Technology

Dean's Dark Secret 135

Things That Go Boom in the Night 139

The Digital Shaman 142

Enlightenment Engineering 146

The Flow Dojo 148

Part 3 The Road to Eleusis

Chapter 8 Catch a Fire

The Sandbox of the Future 157

When the Levee Breaks 163

Disrupting the Brahmins 168

High Times on Main Street 174

Nothing New Under the Sun 178

Chapter 9 Burning Down the House

The Atomic Donkey 182

He Who Controls the Switch 185

Spooks to Kooks 187

Soma, Delicious Soma! 193

Ecstasy Wants to Be Free 199

Chapter 10 Hedonic Engineering

"Known Issues" of STER 201

Selflessness: It's Not About You 202

Timelessness: It's Not About Now 203

Effortlessness: Don't Be a Bliss Junkie 205

Richness: Don't Dive Too Deep 206

The Ecstasis Equation 209

Hedonic Calendaring 212

There is a Crack in Everything 216

Conclusion

Row Your Boat or Fly Your Boat? 219

An Afterthought 221

Acknowledgments 225

A Quick Note on Inside Baseball 227

Notes 233

Index 277

About the Authors 294

Editorial Reviews

Reading Stealing Fire, Mr. Lang-Willar said, he became convinced that nothing less than a ‘cultural awakening’ was underway.” — The New York Times

“A mind-blowing tour along the path from sex and drugs to R&D.” — Financial Times

“Stealing Fire is a beautifully written, must-read for anyone interested in living up to their full potential. Kotler and Wheal have produced a user-manual for your hacking your brain to drive high performance.” — Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize, co-chairman of Singularity University, bestselling author

“Stealing Fire cracks the secret code of peak performance so that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.” — Cdr. Mark Divine (USN Ret.), New York Times best selling author, founder SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind

“Meticulously researched and innovatively conceptualized, Stealing Fire is not just a bible for the second psychedelic revolution (drugs not required), but a manual to getting more: out of your body, your mind, and your happiness.” — Neil Strauss, New York Times best-selling author of The Game

“An electrifying, fast-paced journey into the deep potential of the human brain.” — David Eagleman, Stanford University neuroscientist, bestselling author, presenter of PBS's The Brain

“Our linear lives and brains need to be thrown a curve on occasion and this is a masterpiece literary curveball.” — Chip Conley, bestselling author of Peak and Emotional Equations and former Head of Strategy for AirBnB

“Captures the unspoken essence of what men and women on the frontier of human experience, think and do to excel in creativity and performance.” — Michael Gervais, High Performance Psychologist to Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks

“Stealing Fire lays out exactly how to hack the brain...Kotler and Wheal have taken a major bite out of the unknown. If you’re at all interested in knowing how your mind works, this is imperative reading!” — Salim Ismail, founding executive director of Singularity University and bestselling author of Exponential Organizations

“Stealing Fire is a fantastic book about the future of humanity and everything that we can become. Based on incredible stories and cutting edge data, it reveals how our brain and body can be optimized to its greatest potential.” — Andrew Newberg, MD., director of research Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine and author of How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain

“The North Star we’ve been waiting for—finally a distillation of the upper reaches of the human experience unveiled! I am so excited for this book to reach the world!” — Jason Silva, artist, futurist, host of National Geographic's Brain Games

“[Stealing Fire is] well-written, well-documented, and significant work.” — Library Journal

From the Publisher

Our linear lives and brains need to be thrown a curve on occasion and this is a masterpiece literary curveball.

Chip Conley

Captures the unspoken essence of what men and women on the frontier of human experience, think and do to excel in creativity and performance.

Michael Gervais

Stealing Fire is a beautifully written, must-read for anyone interested in living up to their full potential. Kotler and Wheal have produced a user-manual for your hacking your brain to drive high performance.

Peter Diamandis

Meticulously researched and innovatively conceptualized, Stealing Fire is not just a bible for the second psychedelic revolution (drugs not required), but a manual to getting more: out of your body, your mind, and your happiness.

Neil Strauss

Stealing Fire cracks the secret code of peak performance so that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.

Cdr. Mark Divine (USN Ret.)

Reading Stealing Fire, Mr. Lang-Willar said, he became convinced that nothing less than a ‘cultural awakening’ was underway.

The New York Times

A mind-blowing tour along the path from sex and drugs to R&D.

Financial Times

Stealing Fire lays out exactly how to hack the brain...Kotler and Wheal have taken a major bite out of the unknown. If you’re at all interested in knowing how your mind works, this is imperative reading!

Salim Ismail

An electrifying, fast-paced journey into the deep potential of the human brain.

David Eagleman

Stealing Fire is a fantastic book about the future of humanity and everything that we can become. Based on incredible stories and cutting edge data, it reveals how our brain and body can be optimized to its greatest potential.

Andrew Newberg

A mind-blowing tour along the path from sex and drugs to R&D.

Financial Times

Reading Stealing Fire, Mr. Lang-Willar said, he became convinced that nothing less than a ‘cultural awakening’ was underway.

The New York Times

The North Star we’ve been waiting for—finally a distillation of the upper reaches of the human experience unveiled! I am so excited for this book to reach the world!

Jason Silva

Reading Stealing Fire, Mr. Lang-Willar said, he became convinced that nothing less than a ‘cultural awakening’ was underway.

The New York Times

A mind-blowing tour along the path from sex and drugs to R&D.

Financial Times

Steven and Jamie have done a wonderful job of balancing the promises, perils, and how-to prescriptions of engineering peak states such as ‘flow.’

Tim Ferriss

02/15/2017
Kotler (cofounder & director of research, Flow Genome Project; The Rise of Superman) and Wheal, an expert on peak performance and leadership, have written a book on altered mental states and the effects thereof. Their introductory premise comes from a party organized by Alcibiades, an ancient Greek general and politician who provided his guests a mind-altering drink that terrified them at first then altered their consciousness. The authors relate to the uses of controlled substances, such as alcohol, marijuana, LSD, and legal practices such as meditation, yoga, or sexual activity to obtain these states of mind. Activities that provide highs, such as mountain climbing, Navy SEAL achievements, and some Silicon Valley practices, are used as examples of behaviors that can substantially add to our lives and productivity. The state of "ecstasis," the abilities of the brain to extend consciousness to new areas, is the goal here, and several methods are explored to achieve or sustain it. The authors provide a great deal of substantive documentation to support their premises. VERDICT This well-written, well-documented, and significant work is also controversial. Yet, all readers can find value in its contents. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]—Littleton Maxwell, Robins Sch. of Business, Univ. of Richmond

Library Journal