Dr. James Hardt (Interview Archive)

Some years back, a paper in the Journal for the Study of Consciousness pointed out a structural resemblance that caught people off guard. The molecules behind LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, bufotenine, and the rest of the well-known psychedelics shared a shape in common with compounds found in onion and garlic. According to that work, these molecules held onto thermal energy, and once they crossed the blood-brain barrier they could set off something like a small, localized fever. That gives at least a chemical foothold for Yogananda's old advice to steer clear of onion and garlic.

There is a saying in the Arab world that carries the same idea in a different form. After the devil finished his mischief in the Garden of Eden and walked out, garlic is said to have sprung up where his first foot landed, and onions where the second one fell. The folk tradition treats both plants as hostile to a calm mind. None of this is a comment on taste, and it sidesteps whatever health benefits people claim for them. The only concern is what they do to the stillness someone is trying to reach while working on their consciousness.

In the interview, Erik turns to another part of Dr. Hardt's work. Alongside the program that combines alpha neurofeedback training, a managed diet, and a kind of sensory deprivation built around losing track of time, Hardt was once asked to work with the United States military. Erik asks whether that is something Hardt can actually talk about.

Hardt says he cannot name the 24 U.S. Army Green Berets who went through the training, which took place on a classified Army base on the East Coast, but he is willing to describe the results broadly. He calls it a remarkable chance. In certain respects those men were the most interesting group he ever sat with, because training was woven into how they lived. Every morning they woke up intent on being measurably better at something tied to their mission by nightfall. The intensity and commitment they brought to it goes well beyond anything you tend to find among civilians. Hardt notes that a few people on a serious path toward enlightenment come close to that level of resolve, but these soldiers were something else.

Getting them into the work was not smooth. They had been told they would volunteer for it, which is its own kind of contradiction. The men came in two 12-man teams, and one of those teams pushed back hard against the whole premise. Their resistance deepened during the roughly month it took Hardt to set up the equipment inside a building and construct the six-person training space, since they ran their sessions in groups of six. While he built it out, the soldiers were sent off on a retreat and told that the meditation they were doing there amounted to the same thing as the brain wave training waiting for them.