The Real NZT: When Limitless Meets Tantra

Yesterday I was watching Limitless for the first time when it hit me — that scene where Eddie Morra first takes NZT and suddenly the world becomes luminous, patterns emerge from chaos, time slows down... I've been there. Not through some fictional pill, but through years of tantric practice.

[The recognition sent chills down my spine. Hollywood had accidentally documented the subjective experience of kundalini awakening, dressed up as a pharmaceutical thriller...]

The Uncanny Parallels

Watch Eddie's transformation closely. His eyes become brighter, almost luminescent. Colors pop with impossible vibrancy. He can suddenly see connections everywhere — in conversations, in market patterns, in the flow of human behavior. His peripheral vision expands. He catches falling objects without thinking. Women are magnetically drawn to him.

Sound familiar? Because that's essentially my life since 2018.

No accidents while driving — ever. I catch people before they trip, snag falling dishes mid-air, pluck rolling fruit off counters. No thought involved. Just pure, instantaneous response from a body-mind system operating at frequencies most people never access.

The Spotlight Expands

In neuroscience terms, what's happening is an expansion of the reticular activating system — what I described in "Amplify Your Perception" as the spotlight effect. Most people walk through life with a narrow beam of awareness, filtering out 99% of available data.

But when kundalini rises through consistent tantric practice? That spotlight becomes a floodlight. The bandwidth expands. Suddenly you're processing information at speeds that make ordinary consciousness feel like dial-up internet.

[My tea just started sliding off the desk. Caught it without looking. This stuff becomes so normal you forget it's supposed to be impossible...]

Reality Becomes Plastic

Here's where it gets really wild. Remember Eddie's line about seeing patterns everywhere, about reality becoming "a system you can navigate"? That's literally what Reality Transurfing describes — and what tantra reveals experientially.

The movie shows him predicting market movements, reading people's intentions before they speak, navigating social situations with supernatural grace. In my experience, this comes from what tantra calls spanda — the vibratory essence of reality itself. When you're attuned to it, you're not predicting; you're flowing with currents that were always there.

Last week in a meeting, I knew exactly what the CEO was going to say three sentences before he said it. Not psychic powers — just reading the energy patterns that precede physical manifestation.

The Temperature Control Thing

This one's almost too specific to be coincidence. I can literally warm a room with my presence, turn a hug into a transmission of heat. It's basic tummo (inner fire) practice from the Six Yogas of Naropa.

My current teacher, Lama Glen, would laugh at Hollywood thinking this requires a pill. It's just conscious energy circulation — something humans have been doing for millennia.

Sex Becomes Transcendent

The movie hints at this but doesn't quite go there. On NZT, Eddie becomes irresistible, his sexual encounters charged with impossible intensity. What they're really describing is what happens when sexual energy is no longer leaking unconsciously but circulating as refined spiritual fuel.

Rarely ejaculating. Staying in pleasure states for hours. Knowing intuitively what your partner needs before they know themselves. This isn't performance; it's presence. When kundalini is active, lovemaking becomes a gateway to non-dual awareness.

[Even writing about this, I can feel the energy starting to move up my spine. Some things are better experienced than explained...]

The Shadow Side They Got Right

But here's what Limitless understood that most spiritual teachers won't tell you: power without wisdom is dangerous. Eddie's paranoia, ego inflation, the crashes — all real.

When I was "on a mission" in 2018-2019, pushing hard with intense practices, I experienced similar shadows. The energy was so strong I could go 45 days without certain "energy leaks" and not even notice. But that forceful approach? It's unsustainable. The movie's portrayal of addiction to the state is spot-on.

As I wrote in "Energy Sovereignty", the real work isn't about chasing peak experiences but finding sustainable flow. Less force, more invitation.

The Formless State

There's a scene where Eddie describes his consciousness expanding beyond his body, where he's simultaneously aware of everything while being perfectly still. This maps exactly to what I experienced in the formless realm:

No sense of a "doer." The body moves, fulfills its needs, navigates reality — but there's no central controller. You become an observer of the flow rather than its director. This is what both Reality Transurfing and tantra point toward: action without the friction of a separate self.

Beyond Human Into Being

The movie frames all this as becoming "superhuman," but that's the Western materialist lens showing. What tantra reveals is that these capacities aren't super-human — they're deeply human, just rarely accessed.

The ability to perceive more, process faster, respond intuitively, generate massive energy — this is our birthright. We've just been running on 10% of our capacity, like computers with most of their RAM occupied by junk processes.

[A fly just landed on my screen. In this state, I can see each movement of its legs in crystalline detail. The ordinary world becomes infinitely fascinating...]

The Missing Piece

What Limitless doesn't show — can't show — is the most important element: love. All these siddhis (powers) without an open heart become weapons of ego. But when they arise from genuine tantric practice, they're inseparable from compassion.

You don't manipulate reality; you dance with it. You don't seduce others; you invite them into presence. You don't hoard energy; you become a conduit for it.

The real NZT isn't a pill. It's the systematic awakening of your energetic body through practices that have been refined for thousands of years. It's sustainable, it's transformative, and unlike Eddie's fictional drug, it leads not to addiction but to freedom.

Your Turn

Have you noticed expanded capacities through your spiritual practice? Moments where time slowed down, where you knew things before they happened, where your body moved with impossible grace?

These aren't fantasies or coincidences. They're glimpses of what becomes stable through sustained practice. The question isn't whether these states are real — it's whether you're ready to do the work to embody them.

Hollywood got one thing wrong though: you don't need a dealer. You need a teacher, a practice, and the willingness to let your old reality dissolve.

The pill is you. Always has been.

Keep bending light and hacking minds,

• Cian