Christopher Bache is a professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, where he taught for 33 years. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Trained at Notre Dame, Cambridge, and Brown, Bache spent seven years earning a PhD — a process that turned him into a hardcore agnostic. He then began a 20-year self-experiment taking high-dose LSD using protocols developed by psychedelic pioneer Stanislav Grof.

For two decades, Chris lived a double life — a professor in public, and in private, a man conducting 73 high-dose LSD sessions in search of insight into consciousness and reality. He kept the work hidden from his university for most of that time, even while teaching courses on Eastern religion, mysticism, and consciousness. He is the author of several books including “Dark Night, Early Dawn,” “The Living Classroom,” and “LSD and the Mind of the Universe” — the book in which he finally told the full story of his psychedelic explorations.

In this conversation, we explore whether psychedelics hold genuine spiritual and philosophical insights not otherwise accessible through meditation or contemplative practice, how meditation and psychedelic exploration can support each other, and whether psychedelic experiences build systematically over recurring sessions, revealing greater insights each time.

We also get into why some people have life-altering shifts after taking psychedelics while others seem unfazed, how to better integrate peak mystical experiences into everyday life, and the deepest insights Chris tapped into during his 73 high-dose LSD sessions — including what they revealed about consciousness, reality, and the mind of the universe.

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