“I had two different lives,” Kimbal Musk said. “I had a very serious accident when I was 37 and prior to that accident, I was much more like you described, very much a hardline techie.”

In 2010, Musk broke his neck skiing. The Tesla board member said he was paralyzed for three days before a doctor performed a surgery to fix his spinal cord. (Musk shared a photo on Facebook from the event later on in 2020.)

“I’m not a religious person. I don’t subscribe to any of the religions, but I felt the voice of god. I felt a deep resonance in me,” Musk told Asprey, adding he wasn’t sure at the time whether the surgeon would be able to heal him.

Musk cofounded his locally-sourced restaurant The Kitchen in 2004, but he said the experience changed how he approached running the company. Kimbal Musk is also the cofounder of two other food-related companies, a nonprofit called Big Green, and the urban-farming startup Square Roots.

“It was in that moment where I said, ‘God, if I am healed, I will really dedicate myself to food in a way that would make the planet a better place,'” he said, adding that the experience made him more “soul and spirit oriented.”

Musk said he had a similar spiritual experience later on in his life when he tried ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic known for its hallucinogenic properties. The drug is traditionally associated with spiritual ceremonies but has more recently been used to treat PTSD.

Musk said the drug released a chemical in his brain that simulated the feeling of dying and said the experience was similar to when he broke his neck, calling it a “great way to go in and talk to your own spirit.”

“It was like ‘Oh wow, the voice of God is back,'” he said. “It was a powerful experience for me, but I didn’t necessarily need it that second time. I already had it and it’s the meeting of souls and spirits I now apply to the food I cook my family.” (You can watch Musk talk about the experience in the video below, the topic comes up at the 40:48 minute mark.)

Musk is far from the first to associate the drug with the feeling of dying or increased empathy. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment on his experience ahead of publication.

The restaurant founder has been associated with psychedelic drugs in the past. Elon Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson said Musk tried to convince his older brother to attend an ayahuasca ceremony in 2020. Musk has also been known to attend Burning Man alongside Elon Musk and reportedly took ketamine recreationally at a party with his older brother, according to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal.