Psychedelics Today co-founder, Kyle Buller, TALKTALKTALKS Life, Death & Beyond
Kyle shares how a near death experience led to the study of transpersonal psychology and the future of psychedelic training.
At the end of 2023, I sat down to interview Kyle Buller, co-founder and VP of Education at the media outlet Psychedelics Today. Normally my interview process happens in two parts: podcast recording, followed by a written interview. In this case, there’s only the podcast recording. What follows is the transcription of the first part of our conversation. It’s been edited, with certain words taken out for clarity.
Kyle is an expert storyteller. I’m both awed and humbled by the story he shared. He begins with the retelling of his adolescent near death experience. From here he takes us through his discovery of psychedelics and transpersonal psychology and holotropic breathwork—landmarks on the path that ultimately lead to the birth of Psychedelics Today, an organization that’s been personally meaningful to me. More on that another time.
For now, enjoy the TALKTALKTALK!
Listen to the full conversation with Kyle HERE. And watch it HERE.
Trigger warning: this interview contains talk about hospitals and needles.
Vivi Henriette: Let me see if I get your title correct. Co-founder of Psychedelics Today. Head of Teaching—I know, there's a fancier way of saying that. Breathwork Facilitator. Therapist. What am I missing?
Kyle Buller: You nailed it. Yeah, so co-founder of Psychedelics Today. I guess I hold the title of VP of Education and Training. I’ve put my therapy practice on pause, so I’m not actively a therapist but trained as a therapist. The only reason I put therapy on hold is because things have gotten so crazy here at Psychedelics Today, and I've been traveling on the road a whole bunch.
Vh: Let's start from the very beginning. You had a profound near death experience when you were young that set you on this path. I know you've discussed it at length in plenty of places. That stated, if you're not tired of sharing the story, maybe we can start from there?
KB: I've always been really interested in consciousness. Even as a young kid, I would always have intense, vivid dreams. I started to create interesting dream maps as a kid. Sometimes, when I would go to bed, I would have the intention of going back into certain scenes and interacting with certain dream figures. My mom always told me I was talking to people....It felt like I was probably in tune with something. Then, as your personality and ego forms, and you start to become a human in the world, that stuff starts to shut down.
I started becoming interested in consciousness, again, around the age of 15. I was a freshman in high school, and we had to do a book report. I just started getting into snowboarding at that time....At that point, maybe I was snowboarding for a year or two, maybe three years. But I picked up this book called Snowboarding to Nirvana. It was about this guy who went to Nepal and ran into this monk, and the monk taught him Transcendental Meditation. In the book they're weaving meditation practices, and there's a little bit of mysticism in there too—about time traveling or floating.
And I became fascinated. Like “Man, I wonder what the human mind is capable of, if these stories are true?” I started practicing some of the meditations in the book, and I remember having some profound experiences with it. Then a year later, I got in a bad snowboarding accident, so I like to make the joke that I actually snowboarded to Nirvana — not that I'm enlightened. But, you know, just having a really profound experience and snowboarding got me there.
“If you ski or snowboard, you know you don't call your last run. And I guess I didn't know that back then. “
It was New Year's Eve. I was a sophomore in high school. I didn't want to go out and party with my friends. I just wanted to be out in nature. So me, my brother and his friend, we went up to a little resort in the Poconos in Pennsylvania called Camelback, and we were night skiing. During the day, it was really warm. When it's really warm, the snow's a little bit more, obviously, malleable and lots of mounds start to get kicked up as people are carving and doing all that.
So we were night skiing, and it's starting to freeze a bit, and it's starting to become a little bit more slick. My brother's friend fell, hit his head. He was wearing a helmet. He was okay but just a little rattled.
We went inside. We just got there, and I really wanted to take one more run. So I said, "Let's just take one more run. Garrett, you don't need to come out, if you don't want to....Then we'll pack it up and go home."
If you ski or snowboard, you know you don't call your last run. And I guess I didn't know that back then. So I planned out this really long run where it was going to actually be a few runs. Then we would call it a night. There's a trail there called the Nile Mile. It was a big kind of snake, so you'd have these big switchbacks. I was going really fast, just kind of bombing the hill. I was going around the second turn, on my toe edge. As I was coming out, the way the light was casting, I didn't see this mound of snow until I got there. You're wearing goggles, the light's casting all sorts of different things, and sometimes you just can't see these little mounds because of how the shadows are. As I came out, and as this mountain started to emerge, I just thought, "Oh, shit. If I hit this, I'm going to die."
Time started to go really slow. I had a million thoughts racing through my head, every sort of scenario. "How do I get out of this?" I tried turning. I tried stopping. I tried everything I could, and it felt like I was playing around in slow motion. Nothing was working. And this mound of snow just sucked me in. I flew through the air about 30 feet or so. It wasn't high. It wasn't really high in the air. It was just very long because I was going fast. And then the nose of my snowboard hit, my shoulder hit, and I heard a loud pop. I immediately started gasping for air screaming, kind of death grunting, like I couldn't breathe. Hearing a pop I thought I snapped a rib. And then feeling all this pain in my chest....I definitely broke something.
I'm laying face down. My brother and his friend come up, and I tell them I can't do anything. So they go and try to get somebody to help. I'm sitting there lying face down in the snow, just grunting. I can't breathe. I'm watching all these parents and kids whizz by me, nobody's stopping. And it was these two snowboarders that stopped. These—you might define them as the park rats hanging around the park. They're throwing snowballs at you, calling out all sorts of foul names. They stop and say, "Hey, are you okay?" And I said "no." And they're like, "Well, we need to put a snowboard in front of you, so nobody comes around this turn and just runs into you."
Thankfully, they blocked that off. They put a snowboard in front of me. And then they asked if I had a lighter. They're trying to smoke cigarettes. And they stayed with me the whole time. It's the stereotype. You figured these are punk ass kids who wouldn't stop. Maybe they’d spray you with snow for being on the ground. But they're the only ones that stopped and put a snowboard in front of me while all these parents passed by me.
My brother and his friend came back. I don't know, like 30, 40 minutes later, and they told me ski patrol wasn’t coming. "What do you mean?” They said they talked to the liftie, and he brushed them off. So those kids got really pissed. They said, "We're gonna get ski patrol. F these guys." I don't know who these kids were. But—thank you. Thank you for hanging out with me.....Luckily, it was a small mountain and ski patrol passes most of the trails every 30 or so minutes. Right after they left, ski patrol came. They tried to check my vitals on the mountain. Then got me on a toboggan and down the hill.
“I guess when I left, they just looked at my dad and said, ‘You know, your son's in his golden hours, and he may not make it.’ I can't imagine what it's like to be a parent to hear that.“
By the time I got to the first aid station, my dad was there, he was really scared. I'm in the first aid station. They're checking me out. They're asking me, "Are you usually this pale?" I don't know. You know. I'm not paying attention to that stuff at that age. And then they're asking, "Is your pulse typically really low?" Again — not something I'm paying attention to at that age. So I'm saying, "No, I don't know." They said, "Well, your ribs are fine. There's no bruising. There's no indication that anything's fractured or broken. But you have really low vitals. And that's worrying us."
At that moment—I didn't grow up religious, but I started to pray to God. I remember the first thought that popped in my head was, "Oh, shit, I'm gonna die."
They said, "We think you have internal injuries." I just remember praying, "God I know I never went to church, but I'm too young to die. Please save me." I was terrified. I was scared and in so much pain. I just found this out a few years ago. My dad was recounting the story of talking to the paramedics…."You know, your son's in his golden hours, and he may not make it." I can't imagine what it's like to be a parent to hear that.
I'm in the helicopter, and my phone’s blowing up. All my friends are calling me. The first responders are like, "Whose phone is that?" I'm just thinking my friends are probably pissed at me because I'm ignoring them and not showing up to these parties that I was supposed to go to.
They got me to the hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. My uncle was a first responder there for the township. As soon as I got to the ER, he's by my side the whole time. By the time I got to the ER, there was a thought that I didn't think about dying. I was in so much pain. I was cold. I also started to feel this contentment around me. I started to kind of have this expanded consciousness. I remember laying there, my uncle standing beside me, and they're jabbing me with needles. They're trying to tap an IV. I hear this one nurse say, "I can't get an IV in his arm. His veins in his upper body are collapsing.” They had to take out this huge needle and get in my femoral artery, down my thigh. I hear this other nurse say, "I'm having a hard time getting a pulse on him." I'm hearing all this, but not thinking anything bad. I'm starting to feel a little bit of bliss, and I had this thought, as my uncle was standing beside, “Here's somebody that I consider to be family. This is somebody blood related to me, and I'm about to go somewhere I can't take anybody. This is a journey that I'm going to take by myself, no matter how connected I am with somebody.”
At that point, I thought, "This is really interesting. All the doctors are panicking and freaking out, and I'm just starting to become really calm." I could feel the anxiety. It felt like my consciousness was interwoven with their anxiety and feelings. I could feel all that. But at the same time, there's this sense of peace that I was okay. After they got me hooked up with IVs, they did a sonogram on me....They said, "You have a lot of blood in your abdomen. You have massive internal bleeding, and this is probably why you're in so much pain and you feel so sick. We need to do emergency surgery. We need to figure out where this is coming from first, so we need to get you a CAT scan."
“I felt like I was in The CAT scan machine, but that I was also on the other side of the room with them. I was in both places at once. “
While I was in The CAT scan machine, that's when things were really starting to take off. I was so cold. I was shivering. The doctors are yelling at me over the intercom to not fall asleep. I could hear them give instructions, “Take a deep breath in.” They were coaching me through it. I'm just starting to fall asleep. I'm getting really cold, I feel like I'm submerged in a tub of ice water. No blood circulating through me. I'm just getting sleepier and sleepier. The doctors are saying, "Stay with us, Kyle. Stay awake. We're here with you." I felt like I was in The CAT scan machine, but that I was also on the other side of the room with them. I was in both places at once. Then this light came over me, this light orb, and I heard this voice, and it wasn't an external voice. It felt more of an internal voice, but it didn't feel like my voice. It felt like something else but my voice at the same time.
"You're going home. You're going back to the stars, where we all come from, and this physical life is going to cease to exist, but you'll continue onward. The more that you struggle with this experience, the harder it's going to be, so the more that you can relax into this experience, the easier the transition will be for you. This is just a transition. Your physical life will cease to exist. But you'll continue onward."
I started to feel all this bliss and love and beauty, and I remember going, "I'm going home. This is what we all wait for." At the same time I'm hearing these doctors say, "Don't fall asleep on us, Kyle. Stay with us. Stay with us."
I'm thinking, "This is it. This is what I've been waiting for."
I share the blissful part of the story—but after many years of doing this work, I got in touch with this scared part, the deeper part of me that was terrified that I was never going to see my friends or family ever again. It was all going to go away. I don't typically acknowledge that when I share this story, but it was something that just came up in the previous few years of doing deep inner work, where I got in touch with realized, "Holy shit! Yeah, I was terrified that I wasn't going to wake up or see anybody ever again."
They wheeled me out, and they brought me to the OR. They told me they were going to give me anesthesia. They're giving all these instructions. "We're going to count backwards...." And the last thing I remember, before I completely blacked out—and I don't know if I blacked out from anesthesia, or from the blood loss—but I just remember hearing them talking about trying to shave my chest, so they could do the operation on me. The last words I remember hearing before blacking out was, "Should we use an electric razor or straight razor?” Then everything went black.
I woke up as they were wheeling me back to the ICU. They're reeling me back. I took this huge, deep breath, and it felt like my soul entered back into my body. I shot off the stretcher. It was a split second. I woke up off the stretcher. It felt like my soul had just reentered my body. I remember taking this huge breath of life, and sitting up. I was shaking and convulsing, and I remember hearing the nurse saying, "He's awake, and he's cold."
Then I plopped back out on the stretcher and woke up in the ICU, with my family all around me.
Vh: Have you ever gone back to think about the voice that said, "We're going home?" The one that said it's ok to go back. Do you ever think about why that voice changed its mind? Was another voice encouraging you to stay?
KB: That's the thing that really messed with me. In traditional near death experiences, people have these experiences of going down a tunnel of light. Maybe they meet some ancestor or angels or entities, however they describe it. When you hear some classical near death experiences, people talk about having agency in returning home. Returning back here to Earth. I felt like I woke up, and I had no idea what I was doing here.
“The analogy that I use is I woke up with a map on my chest. This was a new map of the world that I now live in. It's different from the world where I used to live. And that screwed with me.”
And that took a while. It took a while for the anesthesia and the drugs to wear off to start questioning that. The analogy that I use is I woke up with a map on my chest. This was a new map of the world that I now live in. It's different from the world where I used to live. And that screwed with me. Where did this information come from? Why am I thinking differently? Who gave me this information? Deep in my bones, it felt like I went somewhere, and I couldn't explain it. I didn't have the memory or recollection—again, these classical near death experiences, of going down this tunnel of light. All I remember is this voice and this light telling me I'm going home. Then all of a sudden I wake up in the ICU, and I'm back in this world.
It created some existential challenges for me over the next few years, from 16 to 19.
Vh: Over those next few years, did you have therapists? What was that process like? How did you get on the path that you're on now?
KB: I didn't have any therapists, and I find that to be interesting. It's something that I talk about. Our culture isn't psycho spiritually literate to maybe even ask the question....Somebody just had a profound experience and almost died. Maybe we should ask him, "How do you feel?”
I don't blame anybody for not asking me that. I talked to a lot of my friends about it, and I'm sure they got sick of hearing me. When you're that age, you're not thinking about existential issues....
Sometimes I'd get in trouble in school because I was like, "This is all bullshit. I don't want to deal with any of this stuff. There's better ways to live your life and I'm not going to waste my time here." Sometimes I would get in trouble in school by pushing against authority figures because I had this radical view on life all of a sudden....I remember there was a teacher who was upset about how I was acting, so she wrote an email. I went back and read this email a few years ago. My mom had printed it out at some point.
"I don't know if you know much about Kyle's near death experience and his new ideas and philosophies, but I think you should give him another near death experience to shake some sense into him. He's got so much potential, but he's completely misguided, and so you should probably give him another near death experience."
I read this and thought, "Wow, that's really, really messed up." I would talk about the absurdity of reality during that time. For a lot of people, it was probably a lot to hear from a teenager. I remember I got in trouble one time in school. I forget what I was doing. I think I was goofing around and spinning around on a chair in class 'cause I had just kind of given up on doing anything in school, and I ended up going to the principal's office. I was explaining a little bit about my psychological well-being in the sense of this stuff's absurd....I've been through something intense, and I'm having a hard time making sense of it. I remember the principal saying, "Well, you should just be thankful that you're alive."
“I entered back into a death Bardo. I entered back into this the state of nothingness, meeting entities. I was reliving my near death experience and meeting these things that gave me information.”
Everybody's so worried about the physical safety and not thinking about the psycho spiritual aspect. That was challenging to navigate, and I fell into a heavy existential crisis. I did find some support in my junior year of high school. In our English class, we were studying and reading a lot of existential writers. We were reading Camus and a few of these other guys, and I really gravitated towards, connected with, that teacher—and that teacher actually saw something in me and my writing and was encouraging me to explore this a little bit more. She gave me all these book recommendations and found interest in the things I was writing. This person was supportive. She gave me a lot of hope and a sense that I was able to explore these dark ideas.
I came across a paper that I wrote for her class over a decade ago. I was searching through files. It was pretty dark….I was talking about the absurdity of life. There's no meaning here. Humans create their own suffering. We create our own boxes, and we have a hard time getting out of them. Why do anything in life if we're all slaves to our mental conditions? Stuff like that. I didn't have any hope at that time. Going back and reading....I was in a really dark spot. I didn't have too many mentors or folks to lean on, and I think it was because of the place I grew up. Those supports weren't there. I think it was just part of the culture at that time. Not to blame anybody. It was where I was.
To some degree, I'm thankful I didn't have that support because it made me go through it by myself in a sense. Trying to figure it out and make my own meaning out of it versus having other people try to decipher and make meaning out of it for me. It wasn't until I was 19 [that I took mushrooms]. I had already started experimenting with alcohol and cannabis at that point. I didn't do any sort of substances in high school. I was pretty much a square. I remember I had this idea that people are getting high, but the only thing you need to get high on is just being alive. Even though I was in a dark place, I was thankful to be alive and didn't want to damage my body or anything like that.
Then the depression and suicidal ideation starts to kick in. I'm getting older, and I start to experiment a bit more. After I got out of high school, me and a friend of mine, we ate mushrooms and went out into the woods. I didn't know anything. I had one previous experience with what what we would call a museum dose—a very small dose, nothing to prepare me for what I was about to go through.
We went into the woods. I think I ate two grams and had a full on mystical near death experience all over again. I had this psychedelic trip, and it helped me to relive my near death experience and provide meaning to what was going on. As I mentioned, it's like I woke up and this new map was on my chest, but where did it come from? During that psychedelic experience, I entered back into a death Bardo. I entered back into this the state of nothingness, meeting entities. I was reliving my near death experience and meeting these things that gave me information. Do I believe it was 100% true? I don't know. I'm not dogmatic that this is exactly what happened, but it allowed me to process my experience and recontextualize it in a way that had me coming out scratching my head going, "How could somebody ingest something that grows from the earth that could replicate death like that?"
It pulled me out of my depression. I explored some of the reasoning behind a lot of my thinking at that time, especially around the suicidal ideation. It was along the lines of “I physically don't want to die again, but there's a part of me that is having a hard time letting go of the old part of me. This new part is emerging, and there's conflict between the two. There's a sense that I want to go home because that was the feeling I felt when I died. This life feels too hard, but it's not that I actually physically want to leave. Part of me just wants to feel that feeling again.”
That's going on through that psychedelic experience, “Holy shit! How could you take this and then re-experience that all all over again?" That got me super intellectually curious around the therapeutic potential....
I always approached it in a spiritual healing container. Anytime I ever did any of that stuff more recreationally, it just never ended well. That sent me down this path to study transpersonal psychology. I did a bachelor's in transpersonal psychology. It was a unique program where I got to work with some great mentors and teachers. You asked me about therapists and stuff like that—I was taking an eco psychology course. My teacher at the time, Michael Watson...He'd saying he’s saying he’s a shamanic practitioner, and I just felt that I needed to tell this guy my story. After class ended one night, I said, "Hey, I just need to share my story with you."
I remember he looked at me and said, "If you grew up in a traditional culture, the elders would have stepped in and taught you this new way of being and seeing, but you didn't. You grew up in your culture, and you had to figure it out yourself."
That was the first time I felt seen and heard by somebody. Somebody gets it. Somebody understands what that might be like as a young child. Then I got super into the idea of rites of passages and how, as a culture, we don't have rites of passages. How to properly support psycho spiritual experiences and crises. So that's how I started down this path.
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