Original subtitles

[Music]

please joe tell us what japan is well

japaning is uh making a hole in the

skull nothing else just that yes in the

skull in the in the bone in the bone

yeah now why would you want to do that

well the reason is to increase the

volume of blood in the brain

the volume of blood in the brain yeah

and what does that do well it gives you

more energy

and a bit more consciousness

[Music]

i was pleased that i decided to make a

movie because it turned out a great help

the double function helping me to detach

myself from the natural reluctance i

felt to be subject to such a happening

making the film as a sort of mantra

now i just have to clean up and wait and

see what happens

[Music]

uh

[Music]

treponation derives from the greek term

trapanin which is a borer

and trephination is a french variant

which refers to some form of drilling

they're pretty much used interchangeably

and basically both denote making a

perforation in the skull treponation is

an operation on

the bone

there is no um

operative

procedure there

on the brain this isn't a lobotomy this

is not anything that's going to damage

brain tissue when it's properly

performed it's very ancient it's the

oldest operation in history it's been

done since the stone age all over the

world

right up until

the first world war it was done commonly

everywhere in the first world war they

started brain surgery lobotomy

and then very clever brain surgeons have

been prodding around in the brain ever

since and of course they have to trapan

first carbonations were done in many

parts of the world

the oldest treponations date the

neolithic it's around 8 000 years ago

those are in europe

and the procedure became very widespread

in europe by

3000 bc it was done virtually every part

of western europe greece rome into the

near east libya algeria

and as far south as kenya medical texts

from china

as early as 3000 bc describe treponation

trefonation in prehistoric times was

pretty much the only form of surgery

practiced in terms of major surgery

except for amputation

amputation is the only

other one that was practiced until

fairly recent times when things like

abdominal surgery and chest surgery were

practiced

the majority of skulls are in peru and

the collections in the united states all

came from peru

unfortunately with trefonation you've

got

you either the person either

it was either healed or they died there

was not

soon thereafter

so you can actually see for example in

this one

uh almost the day these cuts were

produced this person died they're so

fresh and so without any kind of

degeneration or ossification at all

calcification of any kind in some cases

you can see the

the marks of the operation very well

like here you can see very clearly where

they were cutting through

and in the drilled skull you can see

very

clearly also the individual drill marks

so it was something that may have been a

bird bone and sand we don't know what

they were using in fact some kind of

bone or a metal tool and an abrasive

this would have taken a long time if you

can imagine some of the treponations are

very large three four inches in

diameters exposing a very large part of

the skull and yet

they healed

and they healed to an amazing degree

some individuals were trepped as many as

seven times each one done at a different

time each one showing healing our other

evidence shows that

the trefeners tended to avoid

areas of the skull that are covered with

muscle and and

tendons and and would be difficult to

get to cut through once you get down to

the temporal areas you have the

temporalis muscle

with a lot of blood supply and nerves

and it would be a very difficult place

to operate

so this area up here is the easiest for

access certainly the earliest

trefonations had a survival rate of

about 40 percent

so more than half of the patients died

shortly after the operation

by the time you get to the inca empire

in the 14th and 16th century a.d you

have

survival rates of 75 percent which is

much better than western medicine did

until antiseptic techniques were

popularized in the in the latter part of

the last century and a lot of our common

ideas about how primitive cultures and

prehistoric cultures functioned tend to

be uh we tend to infantilize them we

tend to make them think that they're far

more primitive than were and i don't

necessarily think they were they were

they were

extremely advanced or anything but they

they practice common sense and crafts

and uh medicinal crafts were part of

what they did and uh we we i learned to

give them credit for developing such a

practical way of dealing with this in

the fourth century bc hippocrates

described the surgery in great detail

and then celsius the roman physician

writing around the time of christ

described the procedure and it was

celsius procedure that was done

throughout the middle ages even

until this century

the technique of celsius was used so

this is a very ancient procedure there

are some scattered reports up until the

last century of people doing trefonation

in isolated towns

in peru and bolivia

and unfortunately no one has been able

to actually

confirm those but there are some

eyewitness accounts from the 1890s of

traditional healers doing trefonations

and people who had survived them

so somewhere

who knows hiding out there in the andes

there may still be someone who knows how

to do one

[Music]

dawn in the uplands

the land of the key sea

the land of mystery

and a chance to see the operation of the

skulls

the medicine man

in old africa he is the man who knows

everything

there is a crisis here

and the witch doctor must act

and so

he prepares

testing the sharpness of the blades

all night long the preparations continue

the preparations of the body

of the mind

and of the soul

the time is at hand

the preparations are nearing completion

[Music]

green hairy leaves are used as swabs

these leaves are poisonous if taken

internally but considered to have great

healing power

the operation is about to begin

no anesthesia here

no hypnosis

only the psychosomatic belief and faith

in one man

the witch doctor

opening of the cranial cavity is the

most delicate of operations

[Music]

after three and a half hours the patient

is tired

she is given something to drink some

water

[Music]

skull surgery

treponation in the outback

no oxygen

no surgical lights

no scrub nurses no anesthesiologists no

neurosurgeons

not even sanitary sterile conditions

and yet

the chances of survival

96

the patient's head is washed clean with

the old scrub water

[Music]

warthog fat is used as a dressing

what condition is the operation directed

against

anything from cancer of the brain

to simple headache

strips of banana leaves are used to bind

the wound shut no stitches here

and after seven and one half hours with

a large hole in her skull there for the

rest of her life

the patient walks away

and it is a time for the doctor

time for him to show the results of his

skill

other trephanations others with

permanent holes in their skulls

holes covered so thinly by scalp that

each person must wear a head garment to

protect his brain from the sun

one person has had thirteen such

operations

the kisi of kenya many ways they're

they're very similar to what the inca

we're doing

they're using very simple implements

oftentimes in this case they often use

things like pieces of metal from tin

cans or pocket knives things that are

metal and there are common objects today

that you know are different from what

the inca would have in their hands

simple things are cut

i don't know where the concept in europe

came from of releasing demons that that

clearly is something in the middle ages

that people have talked about as a

a reason for trephination exactly how

that evolved i don't know but

that's something that

has erroneously sometimes been extended

worldwide uh to

say that that's why everybody trephined

to release demons from the head i think

i think it was it may have been true in

europe at a certain time period but

it's not a human universal i don't think

it is more likely to me that these were

being done

for some therapeutic reason that the

patient kept coming back for them and

that they were done for reasons that we

don't understand

basically every priest cast did some

form of skull binding or trypanning like

that even the christians who never

expect to do anything

um the monks tunctua

is a relic of when they used to japan

and the reason for the priest and the

ruling cast trepanning was one because

they felt better but two it's because in

in those societies the priests and the

kings used to take

the magic

whatever it was mushrooms

i

they took the substances of the gods

and it was found out that

the people who had

been japan

um were less inclined to

flip out freak out when they came off

the gods mixture

so that's why it became a kind of um

inbuilt thing that the priest cast was

japan

there must be a very good reason why

the stone age people

from their own up to modern times

have been trapping all over the world

not just in europe everywhere

and why

the

contemporary primitives are still doing

it this is a painting of bergo

another

old dutch painter and this

person

is most interesting he has been trapped

and you can see an owl on his chair the

owl means his wisdom has come back

this one shows another treponation

clinic they are putting a bandage around

his head he is finished and this is the

wrong bell from his head

and this patient is tied to the chair

so you can see here too treponation one

after the other

this is a picture of hieronymus bosch if

i translate the letters into english

they say master cut the stone quickly

my name is flipped out cat

so it means

i'm flipped out

please cut the stone

to cure my insanity

because it was done to cure insanity

throughout the world

and migraine those negative

things of humanity that got it a bad

name it became associated with insanity

so people would say i need that like i

need a hole in the head meaning it's the

worst of all the possible things you can

have

and that's because all the people who

had holes in their head

had been insane

bart hughes was the first person

who knowingly

made a hole in his skull to restore the

inner cranial pulse pressure when i met

him i mean the first thing that struck

me about him was well he's the sanest

man i've ever met very impressed with

bard he's a genius and

he's actually the only genius i know

very interesting to listen to on almost

any

scientific

biological subject

i've studied medicine

in order to become a scientific

discoverer and that's what i am

and i wanted in the first place to

discover

how to cure

psychosis

and i found it can be cured by skull

treponation then i found more

i found

skull treponation

gets you high there were two people

who

sitting with me the three of us

in a van

told me

a thing once said

he had had a car accident that had left

him with a hole in his forehead

and i could feel the hole

and the other said i have always had a

hole here in the fontanelle

in other children

it seals

around two years

and in me he said it never sealed it has

always stayed open

and he said so i don't have to smoke

marijuana for i'm already high anyway

and the other one said

all right

it's correct with these hays

but i also have the hole here and i

still smoke marijuana because it gets me

still a little higher than just a hole

how many people that you know of have

traveled

well i know i'm just guessing about 20

people

now press the perforator against the

skull

manually rotate the hudson snap lock on

the driver until the perforator is in

the engaged position

hold the assembled perforator and driver

perpendicular to the skull

now apply power maintaining constant but

controlled pressure while drilling

[Applause]

i decided that i did want the permanent

method of increasing my brain blood

volume known as treponation

and i began studying the operative

procedure and gathering together the

instruments

that i would need to

be able to do this on myself and i

started off by um

trimming the hair back

i had hair at that time actually i had

some hair i should i should say i had a

full head here a very small patch was

shaving my hair hair that much and just

here

for vanity's sakes i could cover it with

a hair grip afterwards very important

thing was that we'd bandaged all the

hair

around because it's very important

sterilization is the most important

thing i

made a t-shaped incision

right here on my forehead uh horizontal

and then a vertical

just a little cross cut which just opens

up by itself because of the tension

of the fluid in the area so you left

with a neat little hole and i had a

shield over my

brow here

so that

there wasn't any blood dripping in my

eyes to obscure my vision

okay so i i pulled the

flaps of skin back and inserted a fairly

sharp pointed bit

to get a pilot hole started in the skull

bone i was trepanned in march 1995

in a hospital in cairo i might have

considered

trapanning myself but um

amanda was

quite keen to try and get it done

medically i used the

method of a

electric powered

flexible shaft drill

to do my operation which i had hung

up above my head in a comfortable

position so that i could reach up and

hold that

drill

bit handle

comfortably

and also look into a mirror and i'd

practice this

drill bit

placement and whatever on

a

piece of bone previously in my case i

started with the hand japan and

progressed which is a lot easier with

electric especially doing it yourself

it's like trying to uncork a bottle from

inside it i went ahead

using the sequence of drill bits a pilot

drill a larger faster cutting drill

through the first layer of bone into the

spongy inner bone it feels as though you

come through the skull

much sooner

than you have because the middle of the

bone is actually very soft and that's a

real shock because you don't expect it

to come so soon and then as i got

through to the bottom of that i shifted

to a much smaller blunter drill this is

the drill bit which fitted perfectly

through the little hole the drilling is

probably the shortest part of the actual

operation he drilled a rather small hole

and then he

broke around the edges and actually you

know the second you're through because

then there's no resistance i knew the

drill was harmless

and

i wanted to know how it feels

if you push the drill inside

this

fire

well you don't feel it

inside is no more feeling

so you can push it in

and

the smooth

point of it doesn't do any damage yeah

where on your head did you drill the

hole just here

that was just because i was looking in

the mirror so i had to it was the

easiest place to do it it's not

necessarily the best place but the

median line is the best place because

that's where there's less blood because

it's through the

arteries of you know the final smallest

twigs gone up each side what is this

sufficient size

well um

six millimeters is sufficient you know i

don't know what the smallest size would

be

whether a bigger home makes you higher

or you know honestly all of those things

are very interesting maybe two hulls

better than one i don't think so

it's the restoration of something you

had once before

and that is when you were a child you

had a fontanelle that responded to the

heartbeat

and that response to the heartbeat

produced a very active

vital individual and as you became an

adult that pulsation was lost

so what you're getting is your childhood

level back sometimes i feel my energy is

really

buoy and but i think that happened even

before the accident i had a tendency to

be hyper at times

uh but when i run now i've had some of

my best running

really recently like that i've had in

years like since i've been 18 i'd say or

20.

and it's a real energy rush and just

falling into stride and just feeling

really good running in the dirt i don't

get stressed out as much as i did before

i'm definitely more relaxed but i don't

know what to attribute that to

because uh my

my injury was a life-threatening one and

the surgeon let me know that i probably

should be dead so i don't know if it has

to do with that the fact that i feel

just really really fortunate to be alive

to be here once one understands that all

that is happening is that you're giving

your brain more blood so that it can

function clearer like any other organ

when it's needed to function more more

blood is directed to it

um

it puts it all on a completely different

workaday level today we know that a hole

this size which is less than 3 8 of an

inch

is adequate to

restore pulsation so i

went ahead drilling and as

i was using the

blunt drill the drilling got rather slow

and

um the very bottom of the drill there

broke through the bone

and i could

feel it start to give way

at which point i knew that i had

penetrated through the bone and it was

time to stop the drilling it was a very

very quick

operation i couldn't quite believe it

was over

i do remember actually a terrific

feeling of sort of

delicious or cold shower i did it in the

middle of the night

and

that was a success

it was finished in half an hour

only it took me four hours

to get the blood of the walls for i

hadn't counted

on the electric drill

making a fountain of blood

that went

on the ceiling i hadn't counted on that

that was the one thing i hadn't counted

on but that happened i withdrew the

drill

the newly restored pulsation

blasted that blood that accumulated up

there into a spout coming out of my

forehead and for a moment i freaked i

thought oh no i've

i've cut into an artery

and

it was a very strange moment

i had completed the operation i was

elated from that but then i had a horror

reaction there for a moment and then i

heard gurgling in my skull as the new

equilibrium of brain blood volume and

brain water adjusted itself

it was very quick a terrifying ordeal

but it was quick

and i didn't painless he was numbed

first and then he went through just here

um

immediately he got through

he thought he'd got through just before

actually getting point and

something although i wished and longed

for him to have got through

i wasn't i was unsure

and joe came and checked and no he

wasn't through so my god the drill had

to start up again and um

and then a few seconds later i knew he'd

got through

and it was

like

the wings of a butterfly or something

or somebody had switched a tiny switch

inside me and suddenly

it felt so things were moving again like

they should be

you know just like this

moving again

and then i thought well as i'm an artist

and as

um

one doesn't seem to be able to get any

um serious media cover

i'll

make a film of it

although i showed this film of my own

treponation

i am not in favor of self-trepination

i think it should be done by the medical

profession

i show the film now in the hope that it

may attract the attention of some doctor

able and willing to start their

essential research into the subject

without which it will not become an

accepted practice available on the

national health to anyone who wants it

and maybe as

art is a complete non-entity in the

modern world and it's just a financial

game not a function which carries great

psychic truth that used to in the old

days

i make a film and maybe with that i can

help wear down the taboo against

the knowledge

i don't want to recommend anybody to do

it themselves

i mean i really don't think that's a

sensible thing anybody who's listening

to what one's saying don't go off and

get a drill and i think you can do it

yourself

um without really studying it very very

carefully and asking someone who knows

or whatever i mean it's not a sensible

thing to do

um what you should do is go and find a

doctor to do it for you

i studied medicine

at amsterdam university which is here i

did the final exam and i was refused

they have a tactic to

say no to you even if your marks are

high and i didn't

feel like repeating it because the next

time they would refuse me again

they refused me because i had been in

the publicity about marijuana

and about the third eye

i had learned of freud

that people

need something to become sharp

freud sniffed cokey and he was punished

by nose cancer

that's what you get if you sniff cocaine

so

i realized that i was not going to sniff

cocaine but

that something was the matter with using

drugs

and

that finally made me decide in 62

to investigate marijuana smoking

most people at that at that time in that

period were using drugs to increase

their brain blood volume to expand their

consciousness and they were doing it in

a kind of willy-nilly way with

very variable results some people were

having good experiences and some people

were having bad

but used to have a scale you said well

if an adult is zero and an acid is a

hundred

and say smoking hash is fifty or sixty

depending on the quality

then treponation's perhaps thirty

it's like

an eleven year old i was i think that's

the sort of level of

energy and enthusiasm and i had um

taken a lot of psycho vitamins

i found that one couldn't really use

them as a working tool for life

they were more tripped to the funfair

now the mechanism of brain blood volume

had

come to my mind

after marijuana smoking standing on the

head

by an american

who told me it got him high

and then i decided i had to go to prison

to have scientific circumstances every

day the same when man stood upright he

obviously got immense advantages of

sight and movement of the hands and

everything when the monkey ape stood

upright but then the disadvantage was

that gravity pulled blood

out of the brain tries to do my head

and then they rushed into the cell

the

officials of the prison and they said no

no no that is not allowed here so i

wasn't allowed to stand on my head

and gave up the investigations

but i knew already that it did get you

slowly a little lie i think there's a

kind of urge

to get high to expand the consciousness

and people without knowing it um

chase it one way or another either they

have a habitual

habit of losing their temper or driving

dangerously or going to football matches

or sport or sauna i

worked out

a way of

first sucking the blood as much as i

could from the abdomen

to the lungs

in the lungs

and then

while

keeping the abdomen constricted

inspiring with air fully and then

pressing up the blood through the veins

there are no

valves in the veins

between the lungs and the brain i knew

that from anatomy

and you have to know that for otherwise

it's no use if there are valves but they

aren't

so you can

from the lungs

push the blood up into the brain

and i did this

time after time but on this

other yoga method that i designed

it didn't work out until

the

third day

then halfway the day

suddenly i felt

as if corks from bottles were

squeezed out i felt

at six different places all at the same

time

and after that

i felt

a hot feeling at the skin of the back

and this feeling is described in yoga

books old yoga books

as kundalini

the

hot snake at the back at the same moment

i started laughing and

i was top high

for it is that quickly once

the blockages

are gone

the

brain

blood volume is immediately increased

completely

i was sitting

singing

and giggling about

how funny the fate of mankind was

to

be so unhappy

and

be able to be so happy by just taking

his blood in his brain

and i thought well this message is

the one and only important message there

is and five hours after

the kundalini the beginning of it all

i was as down as

that morning when i woke up

i was

a graduate of university college oxford

which is where

bill clinton went to study as a rhodes

scholar i was given the task of teaching

him

international

relations after 1919.

[Music]

john lennon was visiting amsterdam with

yoko ono and they were receiving all

kinds of people and john lennon kept

telling me that he wanted to have the

third eye too and i said well i'm

certain you have it

third eye people are your kind of people

who do such difficult things as you

getting a whole

singing group together that becomes

world famous

writing songs that everybody is saying

now wants to hear i said there's no

doubt about it that you have the whole

he said no no no i don't believe it he

kept wanting it and i kept contradicting

him and telling don't drill it

for it will be a deception you will

notice no difference

and yokono understood me well

[Applause]

[Music]

so

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

in

1550 machiavelli writes down

that

every change

in society

that an individual

pushes forward

meets with

a gigantic

rejection by society

which threatens his life

and makes it very difficult

to

bring about

because of the authorities in society

that have not

brought about those changes themselves

there's no evidence that under normal

circumstances

the brain function is limited by blood

flow

so that

increasing blood flow isn't going to

make things better there is a a very

tight control of blood flow through the

brain

it's directly related to the metabolism

of the brain with the energy the brain

needs and it's very tightly regulated if

the flow goes below a certain level you

suffer if it goes above a certain level

you suffer blood flow to the brain is

kept pretty constant

no matter what the status is of the

skull does removing that piece of the

skull result in increasing brain blood

volume

temporarily it might yeah i might

but it would reach a new steady state

where it would restore in other words

unless the the uh

unless the uh

space under the scalp start just kept

swelling

sooner or later the pressure there is

going to come back to normal

because you can't keep increasing the

volume of spinal fluid other than under

the skin

you know that you have a big bulge

there are mechanisms that help control

blood pressure and so on in the brain

uniquely to the brain

that other organs don't have the brain

is quite sophisticated in that way so

that when you

uh when you're when you're when you're

ill or you're injured

your body is basically designed to

preserve your brain's function

and will sacrifice other parts of the

body in order to maintain the the oxygen

and glucose supply to the brain it'll go

from a certain level to about 10 more of

consumption but the blood flow

is

is only regional changes you see so

there's no it cannot go very high if you

increase the blood volume more than the

normal flow you will start

stressing the the the function of the

system the point of the whole

is not to

make

the brain

surface larger

or anything like that the point of the

hole is so that the membranes which

surround the brain

can expand on the heartbeat

because in order to have pulsation it

has to be against an elastic and

expandable

surface the brain membrane

can expand on the heartbeat and

thereby give birth pressure to the

contents

if

there is

anything moving outward

the

easiest way to get a picture of

expanded consciousness through increased

brain blood volume is

through

understanding about the vasoconstricting

properties of all drugs which get you

high

if the veins are constricted you have

the same amount of blood going up

through the arteries into these very

flimsy little capillaries which are very

expandable

less is coming out through the vein so

the capillaries expand

um

and

there are a lot of capillaries a lot of

veins in the brain a lot of cells and

that's happening all over so the brain

gets flooded with blood in the baby i

mean this one here you can feel here the

fontanelle

where the the plates you know there are

two fontanelles one here and one here

when you finish growing at the end of

growth all the sutures have sealed

together right and the skull becomes a

completely rigid case of bone around the

brain so the brain as an organ can't

pulsate on the heartbeat now the reason

for making a hole is to allow it to

pulsate again unless of course um

he had a metopic skull

there are a percentage of skulls known

as metopic where the sutures don't seal

[Music]

ten percent in amsterdam of people

the frontal suture does not seal and

they have found on many graveyards all

over the world

that if an archive was present

then

the open frontal sutures belonged to

work masters doctors

notaries

generals

captains of industry but always to

the

top class and never to the bottom class

the

lowest workers

we know very precisely what happens uh

uh what do two holes that you make in

the head because probably i think in

terms of trepidation there's more

trepidation

now in the last 50 years than has ever

been done before because first of all

there are many more people secondly the

techniques have evolved now so that

people have neurosurgery there was no

neurosurgery 100 years ago so now there

are so many people we know exactly what

happens to them we know the effects of

these and one thing we know for sure is

that they don't we don't suddenly have

saints and and savants

developing from this procedure

theoretically if one is able to

constantly

change the perfusion to the brain then

you might have some changes in neuronal

activity some enhancement i guess

theoretically it's possible

but the whole problem in the theory that

has been proposed by the treffinators

has been is that

any any changes would not

if one had a transient change i don't

see how it would be translated into a

chronic or long-standing change well

i'll go out of limb i mean the

possible mechanism might be something

like um

just the just the trauma of producing

the hole

will irritate

uh the brain and that you know to some

extent

it'll cause probably some

regional

uh swelling and irritation or something

like that it might have some sort of

reciprocating effect on

the dynamics they think exist it but

it's it's not that easy to produce

significant changes in csf flow or blood

flow

especially when you don't ever ever do

anything to the blood or the csf you

don't actually somehow intervene in the

system that's um supposed to change or

whatever you really i don't know how you

could even even speculate there would be

one it'd be interesting to

do research on it and i'm sure there'd

be lots of volunteers i've got lots of

volunteers

you know who would be proud of me

subjects and research program if someone

would just do it i want it done they

might as well study on me i'm a fairly

normal person and you recently did a

traffic nation

sure yeah we operated on a

seven-year-old boy who had a rock

thrown in his head and uh had a

depressed skull fracture so

in that instance what we did was we

created a

hole in the skull drilled out the bone

we repaired the bone and then replaced

the

the bone in its normal state

this is a modern day drill bit that we

use for

creating burr holes or trefonations the

drill itself actually has a little

mechanism within it where once the skull

is perforated through both its tables it

stops automatically so that the brain in

the covering of the brain isn't injured

here's a skull where a

hole has been made through both the

inner and outer tables and then once

it's gone through it just turns but no

longer cuts

there's a great need for

a genius

from caltech or mit

to

take up the subject of

electroplasmography

which is

measurement

of

blood

pulsation

intracranial pulse pressure inside the

skull

through some electrical means

without opening the skull okay so that

the average person walking down the

street

can go into the hospital

get a test done

and determine whether his pulse pressure

is

positive in which case he wouldn't need

a hole in his skull

or negative if it's a research project

on human subjects it has to pass a board

of review

board

irb they call intramural research

or

i doubt that eddie board would approve

this

and if they were to do it on their own

without a review board they would

i think open themselves up for

malpractice because no one's actually

done a controlled study of this

so everything i'm saying is couch within

that

i can't imagine controls ever being done

i mean it's it's uh it's hard enough to

get more innocuous things

you know approved for that kind of human

research we've been trying to develop a

better way of looking at brain movements

in the living person and i i was guinea

pig myself

for three hours i was in an mri scanner

while they made a movie of my brain

pulsations and i have no holes in my

skull other than normal ones for my eyes

and my spinal cord coming out the normal

holes

and there is a pulsation because first

of all

the there's all these fluids surrounding

the brain and there's this big hole at

the bottom and what you see is the brain

is pulsating and it's moving

in and out of that hole so there's a

pulsation distinct measurable you can

see the whole brain pulsating like not

as much as the heart pulsates

but it's pulsating we've done research

where we make openings in animal skulls

to

study experimentally study head injury

uh we not noticed any sort of changes in

perfusion are associated with trapping

you know the opening alone but on the

same token we didn't really think about

the opening in the skull as being

significant so it hasn't been studied

the same way as an actual traumatic head

a brain injury study medical science

hasn't addressed themselves to

explain

how what is happening when

consciousness is undoubtedly expanded

what is more conscious than conscious

it's sort of a joke that goes on with

some of my italian friends who

constantly tell me about buying extra

virgin olive oil

what's more ex virgin than virgin you

know i don't understand

is there a consciousness at a level

above

you know what is considered normal

certainly i think a creative musician a

creative physicist is thinking at a very

abstract level that itself is a very

high level of abstraction then there is

spiritual consciousness

and this is a very interesting field

because and this is we have no

objective documentation of it but you

have a lot of anecdotal and historical

experiences that have been written by

for example the philosopher boober

martin bubert

in his writings described very clearly

that there are two fundamental types of

mind basically there is the

average person and then there's the

ecstatic person the person who can feel

this ecstasy which again is a very

strong and powerful emotion and this is

the basis of spiritual experience this

is mysticism i think it's an undoubted

fact

that one can change the level of

consciousness that one experiences if

the whole brain

with

full

brain metabolism

brain blood volume

is

working then in yoga literature it is

called being god the collective

unconscious

has come to consciousness

that's what it is

and i call that the rest of the brain

has become

i

conscious attempts have been made to try

and get some physiological correlations

with

these kind of mystical powers or bodily

powers i call them also because

the classical set of studies have been

carried out by an indian physiologist

who studied here then worked at the

national institutes of health

he went back to india

and was able to get

yogi's who were expert in

suspended animation they could

live in a small

grave basically that was dug for them

and they would survive for up to a week

with no food no water

and no more air other than what was uh

given to them you know you can

alter your bodily

functions and reduce the metabolic rate

uh quite remarkably slowing the pulse

dropping the blood pressure uh dropping

a temperature increasing the temperature

and this has been done and has been

documented also with a lot of

biofeedback work

but in terms of a chemical correlation

with consciousness at a higher level

there have been no studies done that

that have shown anything people have

attempted

but one of the problems is that this is

an area which is at the boundaries of

science

scientists usually tackle problems

what are called well-defined problems

there are very few people who will

go off at a tangent and try and discover

something totally new every everybody

starts off in science

learning something learning a technique

and very often they do a very good work

following that technique but to go off

at tangent and do something new takes a

lot of courage and if you don't have

funding you don't do the science that's

always the problem first you must know

all that is known

and then you must find what is not known

and then you must decide what is

important

to sort out yourself well take pavlov

he long ago

had one aim to cure insanity he found

a cure and the cure was

giving the dogs food with hash in it and

amphetamine

are there any scientific evidence that

this is an actual uh

has medical i think as doctors the first

um promise that we make is to do no harm

to people and so i think we have to be

terribly careful about anything which

isn't really proven i only would ask

doctors that they add something to their

practice called trepination on demand

continue practicing medicine you guys

are doing a great job we're a healthier

world than we've ever been before

but please

let this opportunity

be available i consider

it

the function of the

profession the medical profession

the brain surgeons

to do the operation but before he can

start doing that

it must be scientifically verified by

the profession they should be studied

carefully to see

whether this is true or not because you

know if you believe something

and you do it you follow that belief

you will always

as long as your belief is maintained you

will feel the benefit of that belief if

you believe

that

putting

straws of a certain color through your

earlobes that you will relieve all pain

it will relieve all pain for you i'm

open to the possibility that these

changes could be

due to some physiological change my

change in attitude my greater acceptance

however i don't know because i don't

have a test case absolutely crucial to

have some kind of a

control mechanism for these subjective

judgments because

those are your dependent measures so

somebody says okay my memory is better

my memory is worse we test them

those things are subject to their own

behavior and attention and belief that

what they took was an effective

substance

[Music]

i asked to have the hole filled in

and the surgeon thought it was probably

it made for a sound or skull surviving

an accident or a car accident or a

biking accident something like that

that i'd be less likely to have any

brain damage occur recently i've

have not felt probably as

euphoric

or

as full of energy i feel more

fortunate

on a steadier level

although i do have creative spurts

especially in my writing

i'd say recently though i have been

uh probably a little more stressed

for a while i remember i wasn't i was

pretty carefree i don't know that had to

do the fact that maybe um being alive

has that the joy of that has worn off a

little bit or the freshness of like wow

i just survived something really badly

has worn off a little bit

and i'm more back into the humdrum of

everyday

life

what is the evidence that there is an

improved performance other than this

what they say they feel

right but the fact that they i mean

calmness and whether that's delusional

or not or is still doesn't deny that

they have this and they also have you

know but that could be delusional they

may feel calm because they did something

to themselves and they that they thought

should make them feel cough so they feel

cold the placebo effect is known it's

about 30 percent you know it's all it's

a big that's why all drugs have to be

tested beyond the placebo effect if it's

a placebo effect i recommend it yeah

to address the point of the placebo

i think the fact that

when we thought joey had got through

and the fact that one didn't notice any

difference

and then he had got through one did

notice a difference

i think that that shows

that it's not perceived effective if i

had gone to the trouble to have a

treffin to have a hole in my head

it i you know be very very difficult for

me to think that it wasn't helpful

to think that all that was foolish and

that i shouldn't have done that or i was

placing myself at risk for you know for

an infection and death i think that the

there's a real uh there's a real problem

a real i think there may be

serious

you know underlying

psychological problems in these

individuals

and they definitely should be evaluated

they all have a common background

of drug taking

and and so you know with that kind of

background there is a certain

um

mindset

of what you expect to happen when you do

something like this

you see and that that that mindset will

be similar because of the similar

background

they're not they are not a random

sampling of people doing a treffine

hole on themselves they are a certain

special group in a small group who have

a common history

who have certain you know problems that

they're trying to solve in their lives

and then carry out this very traumatic

thing so it's not surprising to have a

common experience the profession has not

started even studying the subject

because they reject it from the

beginning they say that is nonsense i do

not have to spend time neither to study

this

nor to verify this i think he's

delusional

and there's a lot of suggestion that

could be passed from one person to

another about odd things like that let's

do some research let's do some research

rather than just sensationalize it in

the newspaper how viable

a thing is that is is

is life that boring the way it is in

normal consciousness

that you need to take those risks to

to live it more fully

and this vicious circle has not been

broken for 30 years and it can go on for

30 centuries

for you cannot force them to do anything

you cannot make them interested in it

if someone would be interested in the

subject

his colleagues will drop him as

insane or

wrong at least well it's interesting to

see someone actually actually has been

japan and just because i always thought

it was just like there was going to be

this hole and like blood dripping off

yeah

you know it would be sore

so good on you for coming on joe thank

you yeah strawberry

uh do not do this at home we're talking

something quite quite adventurous i've

been

detected

a fraud many times already

that's what people do to

anybody who tells something that people

do not know

no anesthesia

no anesthesia

this isn't a lobotomy