Interview on the Spirit Rx Podcast

Joshua Pritikin joined Dr. Hummel and Dr. Luke on Spirit Rx Podcast (Season 2, Episode 13) for a conversation about faith without belief. They explore the mystery-belief spectrum, how tightly we hold our convictions, the role of psychedelics and community in spiritual experience, and how to make awe reliable rather than accidental.

Listen on the Spirit Rx Podcast site

Transcript

Welcome to this edition of the Spirit Rx Podcast, the greatest podcast in the world. We are here today with Joshua Nathaniel Pritikin. Did I say that correctly? Yeah. Great. He has written an incredible book called Religion, Unburdened by Belief: The Way of Open Inquiry. It just has so much depth to it, and we’re going to be going into so many amazing things about it. But just to get started, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, what got you into writing this book, or what got you to where you’re at?

I’ve always been interested in our inner experience and how emotions work, and I studied Eastern religions as a hobby for many years when I was in my twenties and thirties. I just happened to run across James Carse’s book, The Religious Case Against Belief, maybe around 2022. I was astonished by how insightfully he pulled apart religion and belief, and I thought it was a very compelling approach. But then halfway through the book, I felt like he dropped the ball and didn’t really develop the idea to its full potential, and that’s what I’ve tried to do with my book.

The thing that I think was so amazing when I was going through your book was just how in-depth it was, how much it covered. I have not had the chance even to read it all, because we’ve had it for such a short period of time, and that’s why as soon as it comes out, I’m going to buy it, because I just want to sit there with it. There’s something about having the pages in your hand that really makes it special. How many days until the book is actually released and available?

The book will be released June 15th. Probably when you have this posted, it won’t be a long wait.

All right. Sweet. So we’ve got little tidbits, this preview, so to speak, of the book, and we’re happy to talk to you about all of this. Tell us a little bit about your background personally. You mentioned a little bit, but some life experiences that kind of led you on the journey toward where you are today.

Sure. I was one of those teenagers who got into computer programming early, in the early 1990s, and then my career developed along those lines. I got into doing software for financial applications, and that wasn’t very fulfilling personally. So I eventually got a PhD in quantitative psychology, which is about statistics, statistical software, and also experimental design. It’s very science-focused, but with a focus on psychological data. Then I’ve tried to combine that rigor and those scientific inclinations with the study of inner experience and emotion. I made a career shift a couple of years ago. I was stuck in a postdoc in Virginia, and my academic career wasn’t taking off like I had hoped, and I saw an opportunity to switch to talk therapy. That’s what I’ve switched over to, and that’s what I’m doing now professionally.

A little birdie told us that you had a very strange encounter with a judgmental pigeon. Could you share some about that? That one was so interesting to me, and I’d love to hear more about it.

This actually happened. I did have lunch with Dr. Michael Greger in 2024 in Roseburg. The connection is that, back before we knew much about diet and lifestyle medicine, my grandfather was a self-taught savant when it comes to nutrition and what to eat to reduce the odds of disease. Some of you might still remember Nathan Pritikin’s name. He had a live-in center where people could get better, could treat their chronic diseases. And that’s how Dr. Greger got into medicine: his grandmother was really sick and she had angina. She had checked into Nathan Pritikin’s Longevity Center in Los Angeles. She improved dramatically during her stay there, and that’s what inspired Dr. Greger to get into medicine, and that’s part of why Dr. Greger’s NutritionFacts website exists.

The other similarity between Dr. Greger and me is that we’re both trying to enhance people’s autonomy. His concern is advancing people’s autonomy with respect to diet and lifestyle medicine. He’s trying to educate people about the right things to eat so you don’t have to rely on authorities like your doctor or the FDA or whoever’s in charge of health in the US right now. And I’m also, in the context of religion, trying to enhance people’s autonomy to have religious experiences that have been regulated by authorities or intermediated. There have been gatekeepers to religious experiences, and I’m trying to give people more autonomy. The pigeon was like our unofficial waiter, and it was looking at us with disdain, I think. I wrote something like that.

Just for people who may not know, Dr. Greger wrote the book How Not to Die, I believe, right? Yeah. So he’s very well respected and known in the nutrition community. And I thought what was fascinating about your conversation is that it was a unique place. It sounded like a little bit of hustle and bustle and hard to concentrate as much. But basically, you were expressing a very interesting concept around psychoactive medicines and things like that, and he was focused on the nutrition and this expectation of you to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps around that. Is that basically the overview?

Yeah, we were talking past each other. The pigeon was thinking, “What are you guys doing?” Dr. Greger has worked really hard to get the word out about largely what Nathan Pritikin started. He has seized the opportunity for offspring that still have the Pritikin name to use that name to write books, to popularize, to contribute to amplifying his message. And so that’s how he saw the meeting, as a way to encourage me to write a book, probably on nutrition. But then I was coming at it from a different angle, from the perspective of religion and how we can use psychedelics in religion.

All right. I love that. Different kind of question here. One of the things that I notice is that culturally, especially here in the US, we seem to be, you can use whatever term you want, but post-modern, whatever, it seems like we’re really redefining or reconsidering our institutions, and religion being a big one. There’s not this idea of, “Our family, this is our faith. It just has been, and it continues to be, and regardless of what I think in my own mind, this is just what we believe.” A lot of those things have been questioned, and maybe with the internet and more light being brought into the area, we’re starting to take a harder look at that collectively. But that also means that many people, especially older adults, have let go of those faith systems that maybe they grew up with, and so they’re reconsidering things, which is fine. But I think that there’s also this, “Okay, I know I don’t quite believe that thing that I was taught growing up, but now what do I believe?” So it seems like there’s that big void, that big question mark of what now. And then that’s starting to shape a lot of things. Even things like our politics can have some polarization, and there are these gaps that are going on there. I’m very excited to read your book, because I think some of those questions or thoughts that I have myself that I’ve just shared, I think there’s going to be some constructs in there that might help us as we want to rebuild or reshape some of those beliefs, both personally and culturally as a group. Can you speak to any of that?

Yeah, you’ve described how I feel the culture is developing very beautifully, and I agree with your analysis. I’ve written the book for that audience: the people who are spiritual but not religious, who have looked at the religious traditions on offer and felt like they’re not quite a fit and are open to considering something new. And hopefully the proposal that I’ve put in this book will be attractive because it doesn’t require you to believe anything. In fact, it doesn’t ask you to hold metaphysical beliefs. In large part, it’s asking readers to reduce their conviction in both beliefs and disbeliefs.

I think that is such an important aspect. It’s funny, when I was going through your book, one of the things that really resonated with me was that, because I feel like I’m in that category. I personally fit in that category of someone who really believes in the importance of keeping a very open mind and not grasping too strongly to certain beliefs that we may have been trained in throughout our lives. But I’m hoping to explore that maybe just a little bit with you here. You refer to this as the way of open inquiry, right? Can you give us just a general overview? What does that mean, the way of open inquiry?

Yeah. In chapter three, I introduce this idea of the mystery-belief spectrum. On one side are traditions that are more focused on mystery, on questioning, on having religious experiences and challenging the interpretations of those experiences. And on the other side are traditions that are more focused on, “Here’s the book that we subscribe to. We’re asking people to memorize it.” They’re not really willing to entertain challenges to the answers that are provided. So those are the two extremes of the mystery-belief spectrum. What’s interesting about using this to look at religion is that you can analyze a religion without really knowing much about it. For example, if you look at Judaism, there’s the ultra-orthodox variety of Judaism, which is more on the belief side, where authority is invested in the rabbis, and there are many strict rules that you’re asked to follow. But on the other side, a more mystery-aligned approach to Judaism is the Reform branch, which is more where rabbis have less authority, and the individual practitioners are asked to develop their own moral sense about right and wrong and how to have that relationship with their religion. And the book really advocates for the mystery side of the mystery-belief spectrum.

How about artificial intelligence? I bring that up for a couple of reasons. One is that, to me, artificial intelligence is a great tool that can be used in certain things. But when I ask it a question, it’s going to give me an answer, and I’m going to then, as the user, assume that most of what that answer entails is true, because, after all, it was scoured off of the internet, it’s the most popular response to my question, and it starts to learn me or know me and it customizes it to me. But then I can say, “Okay, now I believe the answer that AI has just given me,” so now I’m actually growing a belief off of that answer. So the more I lean into AI, that can also shape my belief system. Now, flipping that around, you, as an author, can write a book. You could have the idea for this book, push it all out to artificial intelligence, and get the entire thing written. And then how much of that is you versus how much of that is the belief of what’s popular or popularly true in this moment? Can you speak to that, to artificial intelligence and how it’s playing a role in our belief system, how we shape that?

Okay. The listeners should understand why you’re asking this, because at the end of the book, I disclose that I used artificial intelligence as a writing assistant to help me write the book. I love the question, and maybe I could just take it in a slightly different direction.

Yeah, do that.

Because in my mind, one of the important things that AI is doing is that it’s acting as an externalization. What I mean by that is that it’s a technique that’s used in play therapy with children very frequently. The idea is that, instead of asking children to talk directly about a difficult experience, suppose a child is suffering from anxiety, you would engage them in playing with toy animals in a sand tray, something like that, where they can express those emotions through manipulable characters. This makes it easier to talk about difficult feelings. And I think AI is playing the same role for us accidentally, at the scale of our whole culture. It’s really showing how identified we were with intelligence, and challenging that.

That’s actually a really awesome point you bring up. I love that. Because I have noticed that many people in our society, especially folks who have spent their whole lives learning a subject, whatever that subject might be, they really connect with people’s perception of them as being highly intelligent. And when that is challenged by a massive system that can connect to just a conglomerate of information all at once and give you a profound answer so quickly, it can be almost ego-shattering. For sure. So one of the things you brought up is the play therapy with kids, and I know that this is actually a little part of, I only know a tiny piece, so I’d love for you to expand on this. You use internal family systems, right, in your practice. Do you mind just telling us a little bit about what that is, for those who may not know, and just give us a little overview?

Yeah, I’d love to. Internal Family Systems was developed by Richard Schwartz, back, I guess, in the ’60s or ’70s. He was trained as a family therapist, but as he was working with individual clients who were suffering from eating disorders, he noticed that his eating disorder clients were describing their internal landscape in a way that was very similar to how he worked with family members. He made this connection between family members, multiple-people kinds of situations, and how the similar kinds of family dynamics were appearing within a single person’s inner landscape. So he developed this analogy. The easiest way to understand parts is through mixed feelings. Suppose you’re driving to work late. A part of you wants to get to work on time. A part of you is afraid about being pulled over by the police. Maybe another part is frustrated that you didn’t leave enough time, you left too late, so you’re having to put yourself in this difficult position. So what Internal Family Systems does is help you unpack these mixed feelings into their individual components, so you can get to know them and develop more harmony among your parts.

And how does that apply to the concepts that you’re bringing about in the book? Because I’m assuming that the mixed feelings are a big part of what people go through with their religious systems and their beliefs, and the conflicts that often occur.

One of the major conflicts that I address in the book is this conflict between science and religion. I address it through a parts dialogue, where a hypothetical person is facilitating a discussion between two parts that are part of their prayer team and another two parts that are part of their science team.

It’s a tangent, but you speak a little bit about the modern meaning crisis, this idea of purpose and what am I supposed to be doing. Can you just speak to that in general, the modern meaning crisis?

Okay. I think the issue is that many of these spiritual practices are practices that are done solo. Meditation is something that everyone just does in solitude. I touched on that modern meaning crisis as a way of focusing on the problem that we’d like to be able to have ceremonies, to have spiritual experiences together in community.

And I’m very excited about that topic, too. It’s something that I’m currently exploring, and I see a huge need for that group interactive spiritual connective experience that not only conveys information for the individual but for also the group, the community. And that’s where a lot more connectedness comes. I think, going through COVID, a lot of things changed. One of the big things is how much time we have alone versus with others all got distorted. So some people were too much alone, and some people were stuck in confinement with another person too much, so they were too much together. But I think we’ve moved, in general, toward more isolationism. A person can choose to have all their groceries delivered. They could just never leave the house. At first that might seem great. “No one’s going to be judging me. I’m not going to be triggered by anyone else’s interaction.” But when we start to lose that connection with others, that creates a lot of problems, a lot of mental health problems, a lot of spiritual problems. I love it that you’re addressing that topic in your book.

So one of the things I just want to ask you about is some of the things you talked about with self-experimentation. I thought this was really cool, and what I loved about what you did there was your experimentation journal that you created. I was hoping maybe you could share a little bit about what you were doing, almost scientifically, in terms of your exploration of some of these plant medicines.

Yeah. And just as a preface, I want to acknowledge that this experimentation journal is from the last chapter, which is a bit more playful. I did perform experimentation with different cannabis recipes on myself, and some of those experiments did not turn out very comfortably. It’s just a limited amount of time, but it can be very uncomfortable for those couple of hours. I was inspired by this website, let’s see, I think it’s called Cannabinoids with Turkey. I found this site fascinating. Most people only know about THC and CBD, and that’s about it. They think cannabis is just those two substances in some ratio. But there are actually maybe 10 or 15 different cannabinoids. CBN is one of the most interesting ones, in my opinion. There’s also CBG. There’s quite a variety. What’s interesting is that they have an entourage effect. If you just use one of them, it’s different than if you use them in combination. So exploring all the combinations is something I thought was fascinating. The one I put in the book was where you have equal amounts of CBN and CBD, and somehow these two cannabinoids seem to balance each other in a very precise way. With this combination, you don’t have excessive hunger, which I feel is something that challenges beginners and may be unwelcome. Some people may look for that effect, but the subjective experience is very relaxing, so it seems like a great combination for beginners.

I love that you touched on that, because I think it’s good for our listeners to understand a little bit behind this. When we’re referring to cannabinoids, unfortunately, our society for a long time has demonized drugs, and especially certain ones in the plant medicine world. Yeah, except for alcohol and nicotine, which have been glorified. Yes, which is crazy, especially comparatively. So the point with that is that we actually have, in our brains, that we’re finally exploring, and actually in many aspects of our body, cannabinoid receptors. And what happens when we introduce these different cannabinoids? The one that is so popularized that everyone is focused on is THC, right? But, like you said, there are so many different components, and not all of them have that same psychoactive effect as THC, and they can all create different benefits and changes and help us in a medicinal way, in a very powerful medicinal way. So I just wanted to bring that up. And what I want to express is how cool it is to have someone looking at the individual components and saying, “What if I put this at a different ratio and tried this at a different ratio?” And I know that led to some very uncomfortable evenings.

It’s all worth it. Worth it for the science.

So it’s like you went through a process of self-experimentation, right? You were using different ratios of these medicines in order to quantify and qualify certain aspects of those different ratios, and it led to some really interesting trial-and-error experiences that you went through. Going through that process, did it teach you anything about the realities of a self-experimentation path to self-discovery?

I’ve used my inclination for science and scientific experimentation in combination with understanding our emotional landscape. And that’s really an overall aim of the book: to make religion more scientific in the sense that weightlifting is scientific. In weightlifting, you have a measurable challenge. You apply yourself, and you get accurate feedback about whether you’re moving toward your weightlifting goals or not. It’s very predictable and reliable. If you go to the gym every day, you’re going to see results. So I wanted to make religion, instead of accidental or haphazard, I wanted to make religion more scientific, more like weightlifting.

What kind of reader would be a great fit for this book? In other words, a person seeking to know more, who would really be drawn to this?

A person who was interested in more reliable, predictable access to religious experiences, who wanted more autonomy in relation to religion. The other thing is, from the title, it may seem that this book would be a good fit for atheists, because I don’t ask people to adopt any metaphysical beliefs. But atheists may also feel challenged by this book, because I see holding a belief with strong conviction as the same whether it’s a belief or a disbelief. I ask people to reduce their conviction in disbeliefs as well as beliefs.

And how about, let’s say, for parents? They’re in this age where everything needs to be redefined a little bit. What advice would you give to a parent that wants to really help guide their child to being open, but also on a path of their own spiritual journey?

Okay, that’s a big question.

It’s huge.

Maybe I could mention, and this is in the book too, there’s an approach to parenting called hand-in-hand parenting, which I really admire and I’ve used with my clients. One of the things I really admire about it is that it really reduces parenting down to four techniques that are very simple to unpack. The simplicity is one of the important things in these psychological theories, because it gives you a kind of clarity.

I agree with the concept of simplicity. In fact, I’ve heard it said that one of the attributes of genius is someone who can take a very complex topic and distill it down so that everyone can understand it in a simple way. So my big question is around one of the things that I really liked that you outlined. You had given a numbering system about how attached people are to their beliefs, the level of belief. Maybe you don’t want to go too deep into it, but I’d love to just explore that a little bit, because then we can dive into the different categories that people can fall in with that.

Yeah, I’d be happy to go into it. I have a copy of the book here, and I flipped to the right page luckily. Let me just start out with the first couple of columns, just naming the different categories. A conviction score of zero would just be like a “maybe” about it. You feel no need to defend it in conversation. Then, with a bit more conviction, you have an inclination to believe it, so you think it’s more likely than not. And then like an opinion, that would be a score of two. You’d express your opinion in conversation but maybe not argue about it too much if challenged. And then, going up in conviction intensity, we get to commitment: you are committed to believing or disbelieving something. And then the strongest level of conviction I suggested could be called a core identity, where you’re willing to defend this belief to the death.

And so do you feel that a lot of the conflicts that are existing in our world around religion in general are that people are grasping too strongly to those core convictions?

Yeah, it does fit the pattern here. You might believe that it’s hot today, and then if you look at the thermometer outside, you can get evidence that your belief is true, so that it becomes more like a fact. But different kinds of beliefs need different kinds of evidence. Another example would be, suppose you’re a mechanic who knows how to fix cars. You have some beliefs about how to fix cars, and you can show that those are accurate by successful repairs. Weather forecasting is a different example, where you have a probabilistic belief, maybe a 70% chance of rain. That’s better than just an intuitive belief, but it’s not as sure as a “this car is fixed” kind of belief. So I guess what I’m advocating for in this book is that, in the context of religion, what kind of evidence do you need to shift a belief, to increase the conviction of a belief, to say that it’s knowledge? That’s the kind of contrast that I’m drawing. Does that make sense?

It actually helps me understand where you’re guiding with the concepts of the really strong conviction. Because in understanding that strong conviction, we can differentiate the importance of it, that it is essential in many things, and then things that it may not be so essential in, that could actually be harmful, or difficulties that are sprouting from that in our society and for individuals. That leads me to trying to understand a core conviction. If someone really has that, is there a way for people to look at their core convictions without destroying who they are, necessarily, to explore those and reframe them and change them, and maybe shift toward something that benefits them more?

I think that’s what we do in talk therapy, right? But that really depends on the willingness of the individual to look at their core beliefs. I think that’s the way it should be. You can’t force anyone to reduce their conviction in something if they really believe it. No one should feel like their core identity is threatened and shattered. That’s not a comfortable feeling.

So would you say that plant medicines can be something helpful in changing or shifting that thinking?

Yeah, for sure. There are some studies I cite in the book that look at the effect of psychedelics like psilocybin on beliefs. And it seems like it can go in two different directions. It could be used for revealing beliefs that you’re not really aware of. And psilocybin can amplify conviction in beliefs as well, so that you might end up believing something with even more conviction than before your psychedelic session.

We have asked you a lot of questions about a lot of topics today. Is there a topic that we’ve not asked you about that you would really like to share?

I think the main takeaway is that if you feel like your access to religious experiences is haphazard and accidental, like these experiences of feeling connected with a larger being or moments of beauty and awe, and if you feel like these experiences are valuable and you’d like more predictable, reliable, consistent access to these experiences, then pick up this book, because I try to make it as straightforward and scientific as possible, so you can just put it on your calendar: “I’m going to use this Saturday to have a religious experience,” that kind of thing.

That was great. I appreciate that a lot, so thank you so much for your time today, sharing with us. We’ve touched on a lot of interesting topics, and like I said, looking really forward to reading the book and learning more. There’s so much more than we could even touch on. I just want to say, even my cursory review of pulling things out and looking at different aspects, I was pulled into parts, and I got kind of lost in pieces, because I thought it was so good, aspects of it. So I’m really looking forward to the book coming out, because I want it in my hands. I want to review it. I want to really connect it to my own life. What I picked up from our conversation today more than anything is that, Joshua, you’re a very intelligent individual. It’s obvious to me. You have a depth of knowledge in your field, and I think it’s a huge benefit to everybody out there. I don’t think there really is a certain person that this fits better than others, because there’s something in this book that I think everyone could glean and pick up from. So I’m just grateful you came on and shared some of your views and intelligence with us today.

I really appreciate your interest, and your interest in getting a print copy. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to make it available in local bookstores, in Ashland and Medford and Grants Pass, and by ordering on my website. I have a collector’s edition, and really they’re the same, but the collector’s edition also has a flip-book animation in the margins, and it also has an index. So it has a few more goodies for you.

And those who haven’t had the opportunity, when we share your information on our podcast, we also give your website. I just want to share, check out his website. It’s super cool. That’s a really cool website. It’s set up in such a unique way and very artistic, and there are just lots of little pieces on there that people will find. Little treasures, I’ll put it that way.

Yeah, I’ve tried to hide lots of surprises there. Hopefully it’ll be fun to explore.

Thanks again for coming on today. It was great having you.

I’m looking forward to reading your book.