Program Notes
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Neal Goldsmith
http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/1594772509[NOTE: All quotations are by Neal Goldsmith.]
“Personality is a strategy devised by a two year old.”
“Parenting is like that. You don’t want to be directing your child. You want to be more like a forest ranger than a farmer, making sure that if lightening strikes and there’s fires you go put it out. But other than than you let the bramble grow, beautifully, and wholly, and healthfully.”
“If you have a psychedelic experience, then your meditation practice is illuminated, and understood better, and aerated, if you will, conceptually aerated. You see it more clearly. It’s not as musty, and the two go together, because mediation without psychedelics is kind of blind, but psychedelics without meditation is rootless.”
“Ritual instantiates what works.”
“Spirituality is not some big supernatural thing. It’s just the advanced stage of normal human development.”
“Psychedelics and meditation go together.”
Psychedelic Healing:
The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development
By Neal M. Goldsmith
Neal Goldsmith’s WebSite
Neal Goldsmith’s Contact Information
A recent, wide-ranging interview with Neal Goldsmith for the Comcastro podcast
A recent write-up/interview with Neal Goldsmith in Brooklyn Magazine
A recent interview with Neal Goldsmith in Bedford and Bowery magazine
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space.
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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And I’m very pleased today to begin by thanking Nimileth, Darren B., Tim H., Jason B., Jacqueline K., and Mona F., all of whom have recently made donations to the salon, either through registering on the forums or by making a direct donation.
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forums or by making a direct donation.
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And I also would like to thank the fellow salonner whose name I don’t know yet, because she or he made their donation through Bitcoin.
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But if that’s you, and you’d like to be added as a lifetime member to the forums, well,
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please let me know either through a private message on the forums or through the contact
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form on our website, which you can find at psychedelicsalon.com.
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form on our website, which you can find at psychedelicsalon.com.
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And I guess that I should also let you know that in addition to donations that come in through our forums, at the request of several of our fellow salonners, I’ve added a donate
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button that also includes a Bitcoin address, should you wish to donate that way.
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And again, I want to thank all of our donors throughout the years for keeping us
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going. I really couldn’t do it without you. Now, today I’m finally getting to podcasting a talk by
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somebody who should have been represented here in the salon a long time ago. His name is Neil
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Goldsmith, and he is one of the guiding lights behind the Horizons Perspectives on Psychedelics
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conferences that are held each year in New York City.
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Although I haven’t had the opportunity to attend one of these conferences myself,
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many of my friends have, and without exception they tell me that
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it’s perhaps the best conference that they’ve ever been to.
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I guess one of the best things about it is probably the number of attendees
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is kept to what I consider a more manageable size,
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so that it’s really a lot easier to find and meet with new people who are also interested in psychedelics.
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And as the date gets closer for this year’s conference, which is going to be held this coming October 7th through the 9th,
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I’ll be sure to let you know more about it.
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through the 9th, I’ll be sure to let you know more about it.
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Neil Goldsmith has a master’s degree in counseling from New York University and a PhD in psychology from Claremont Graduate University.
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He conducted his dissertation research on the factors that facilitate or inhibit the
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successful utilization of mental health policy research as a federally funded doctoral research assistant at Princeton University. Thank you. articles and is a frequent speaker on the spiritual emergence, resistance to change,
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transpersonal psychology, drug policy reform, and the post-modern future of society.
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However, I know Neil primarily as one of the more important elders in our community and
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one who has been very supportive of both the psychedelic salon and of the psychedelic community
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in general.
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So today I’m going to play a talk that he gave in which he discusses what he has termed
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Psyche-ology.
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That’s right, I didn’t misspell the title of this talk, and soon you’re going to learn
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what he means by this new word.
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Also, I think that many of our older fellow salonners are going to relate to Neal’s personal
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story of how he drifted away from using psychedelic medicines for a while and why and how he began working with them once again.
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Now, here is Neal Goldsmith, psychedelic elder and professional therapist, speaking to an audience of his professional, but not necessarily psychedelic, peers.
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This is what I like to think of as a psychedelic education for the uninitiated.
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And if you are a professional yourself,
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then you know what a gutsy step out to the edge that this talk is, given the audience.
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I’m interested in policy research.
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My dissertation was on research utilization,
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how good research gathers dust on the shelf all too often. And after doing corporate work and internal research and technology
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transfer for a while, I started taking psychedelics again when I was about 40. And as you can
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imagine, you know, it changes things. So my life completely changed over a period of time.
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So my life completely changed over a period of time.
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My worldview changed, my clinical philosophy changed,
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and therefore my clinical practice changed, of course.
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So when I was starting out my career and I was a therapist,
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I was a Rogerian, so I would repeat back, honest reflection,
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back what people had said with a little bit of… It was one of those annoying therapists, really,
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who just sort of repeats what you say and um but now it’s very different now i’m i’m really
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very present so that’s just one example and i’ll talk more about that um so uh i wrote a book called
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psychedelic healing it’s subtitled um uh in entheogens uh the promise of entheogens, the promise of entheogens for psychotherapy and spiritual development.
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Now, usually, you know, those two things, I guess maybe we think of those as related and overlapping,
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but lots of times in science they’re not really thought of that way,
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sort of like two separate areas of nuts and bolts in science
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and sort of spirituality and gut stuff that’s intuitive.
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And so, you know, we’ll talk a little bit about that duality.
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All right, so let me tell you why the term psychology.
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You know, when I first submitted the proposal here, and they accepted it, and they’re very nice.
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And by the way, thanks to Maurizio and everybody here.
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They’ve been so nice to me, and they’ve been very accommodating and all.
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So anyway, so they put it in the program, and the first version of the program online said psychology. And they said, oh, we thought it was
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a typo. But I made up that word, psychology, because I realized that, you know, the study
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of psychology, although it’s now a pharmaceutical and a laboratory and a physiological kind of a
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study, you know, is really based on the soul.
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And as I started, you know, my own experience with psychedelics
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and began to see, you know, illuminated really in a sense myself
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and others in the world around me,
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I began to realize that it wasn’t so much changing or curing or fixing
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or certainly not medicalizing or surgery or things very mechanistic,
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but really that would make people feel better through therapy, through the process of therapy.
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It wasn’t really analytical, although analysis is important to figure out what your mommy did and what your daddy did.
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That’s all very important for the therapist to know.
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But the actual, I don’t want to say healing process. It’s more like an alignment process or a freeing process or an opening process
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rather than a fixing, changing.
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It’s not change.
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In fact, the desire for change is part of the problem.
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It’s a natural process, like a flower unfolds.
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So let me continue.
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So as I realized that,
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I began to deal differently with my clients.
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I call them clients, not patients,
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because they’re not sick.
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So why psychology?
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Because psychology is really sort of founded on and should continue to be the study of
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the soul.
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And I spell soul with a small s, because I don’t want to make it a religious or supernatural concept.
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For me, soul is a convenient word.
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Unfortunately, it’s overlapping with religion, and there’s lots of bias and all,
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so perhaps we shouldn’t use it.
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But it’s a really good catch-all phrase for the deepest part of us.
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And if you’re a physiologist, you can think of it in different ways, chemically or what have you,
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but it’s the deepest, most profound part of us.
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And when we touch that, and to me, in my philosophy, that’s perfect.
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And when we touch that and get aligned with that perfection, then everything sort of melts
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from the bottom up and realigns, like straightening your posture when you’re sitting slouched.
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And you think, somebody says, oh, posture. And you say, oh, posture. Wow. And you become
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aware of your posture like you weren’t at first. So this illumination process that psychedelics help.
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So that’s why psychology.
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I’ll talk a little bit about psychedelic therapy,
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about the research on spiritual development,
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and some methodological and theoretical issues that remain.
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I want to talk about the psychology approach to psychotherapy,
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and then I’ll give you some summaries and conclusions.
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So the best way to think about this duality that I was talking about
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between the spiritual world, if you will, and the physical world, if you will,
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is what was happening in research psychology around the turn of the 1800s, the 19th century.
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around the turn of the 1800s, the 19th century.
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So who knows about William James’ The Variety of Religious Experience?
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Okay, goodly number.
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Published in 1902.
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And it was really the first sort of scientific approach to spirituality and religion.
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But around the same time, a few years earlier,
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Wilhelm Wundt created the first experimental psychology lab.
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So this was the emergence from the soul, from the animistic, from the tribal,
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from the direct experience of the environment and the integration into it into a more particularized, objectified, separate kind of approach.
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It’s the Cartesian duality where you separate soul or heart or spirit from the mechanistic world.
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Now, that’s very effective. I mean, look around us.
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We have this wonderful facility and rows and machines and computers. My God, we’ve got so many things that we benefit from the mechanistic approach.
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But when it’s not tied to or rooted in the original spiritual psyche approach, it becomes misguided. It becomes like a machine, just like a lawnmower out of control, just going down
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and mowing down everything, instead of being guided by in-touchedness with our truest self.
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So, psychology, you know, psychology is not in the dictionary. I made the word up,
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and it’s an awkward word. It doesn’t flow off the tongue like psychology. It’s psych-e-ology,
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and it’s good that way, because you notice it. And that’s why
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I use an awkward word. Because I wanted people to
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remember psyche. Oh, what is the psyche? Ah,
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the psyche. Right. Because I want
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the word itself to remind people of the
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concept. So,
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you know, psyche is an interesting word.
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Like, in psychedelics, people
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think, translate the word psychedelic as
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psyche meaning mind, and delos
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like to manifest. And so it’s mind manifesting. But the word psyche in Greek really as psyche meaning mind, and delos is like to manifest.
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And so it’s mind manifesting.
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But the word psyche in Greek really doesn’t mean mind,
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except in one limited sense.
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It means soul. It means essence.
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It’s related to the word for breath.
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The word is pushke.
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And it’s soul, spirit, mind, life, breath.
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So perfect. I mean, breath. So perfect.
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I mean, what a great word.
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And so we’ve taken it in psychology and made it into a clinical laboratory, pharmaceutical study. But in reality, even the word psychology is based in the word psyche.
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All right.
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So how did I get to this?
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I want to just tell you briefly about my own experience.
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So I took psychedelics as a kid.
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I’m 62, so I graduated college in 73.
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So I was right in that period.
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And I took psychedelics back then and had a good time doing it.
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But it was very intellectual.
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I would sit around with my buddies and we’d trade witticisms and stuff.
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It was very intellectual and like that.
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And I don’t think I had really a profound spiritual and mystical experience from period of time and then I got into other things and jobs and you know
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I wondered if people were still taking psychedelics because I wasn’t as the
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decades went by and but you know I do see news report you know six hundred
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thousand tabs of acid seized so I knew certain some people were taking acid
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stuff and so when I got to be about 40, a relative of mine suggested that I take MDMA.
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This was in the 80s, the earlier mid-80s. And I did. I had a remarkable experience. And it was
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a trip, you know, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I was so primed for this. I was about 40,
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and I was going through transitions. And so I went back to the dealer, and I said,
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what else do you have? He says, well, I have LSD and this and going through transitions. And so I went back to the dealer and I said, what else do you have?
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He says, well, I have LSD and this and that.
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I said, well, give me some of that LSD.
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And so I prepared for my trip.
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I put out my psychedelic record albums.
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Well, wait.
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So I was petrified because I was taking acid after like 20 years.
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And I was afraid.
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I wanted to see if I’d sold out, essentially,
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if I’d become an asshole.
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And, you know, with age and distance and whatnot.
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And, you know, the question was,
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well, what if the answer was yes?
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You have sold out.
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So I was petrified.
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I didn’t know what to expect.
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And I had forgotten really what psychedelics were like,
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even though, you know,
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I just had forgotten the personal experience of it.
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So I put little post-it notes around the house with reassuring phrases like,
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it’s only a drug, you’ll be down soon, you’re okay, things like that.
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Right?
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I was so scared.
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So, you know, thinking like if I was, oh my God, I’m so terrible. And I’d run into this
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note. Oh, okay. Right. You know, and that would reassure me. So this is my protection. So, um,
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so I took a half of a blotter thinking I’d, you know, ease into it. And, you know, I waited and
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waited and things, it’s sort of like, this is noticeable. It came up and it noticed,
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and then it went down.
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And I said, oh shit, you know, after all these years, I’ve wasted my opportunity. I’m getting this week, you know, disco shit. I better take some more. And I took the second half. And then,
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of course, the first half came on in earnest because, you know, psychedelics come on in waves
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and the first wave you don’t feel after a bit, but then it comes on and you go into your roller
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coaster. So I said, oh shoot. After I’d taken the second half, I said, I’m in for a stronger experience than I had anticipated.
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Anyway, so I had this wonderful experience with my eyes closed.
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And I’m telling you this not just as sort of a trip report,
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but because it really changed my clinical practice
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and it influenced my whole world worldview in terms of the psyche.
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So I had my eyes closed and I had this vision of this beautiful field with purple flowers
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and mountains. And I was going down, down, down. See, for me, it’s like psychedelics
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isn’t about getting up high. It’s about going to the roots, getting down. So I was going
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down under the ground. And as I got under the ground, I saw these like roots. They were like animal tails, but
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they were roots. I knew these were my psychological roots. And in my mind’s eye, I said, great.
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You know, I was just, I was still basically straight. I was just getting into the experience.
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I said, operant, I’ll fix those roots. Fantastic. And so I, in my mind’s eye, I zoom in close, like I’m going to fix it. I go
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like this. Okay. And my roots went and squealed and pulled away. And I knew what had happened.
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Like they were, I was too, you know, picky and I started feeling bad. I said, all right, later for
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you. I’m going to just, I’ll come back to them later. I didn’t want to get into a bad circle. So I keep going down. And as I go down, I notice this, at the bottom,
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this beautiful, throbbing, glowing orb.
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And I knew that was the ground of my being.
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That was my soul.
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And so I went right down to it.
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And as I touched it,
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I mean, even to this moment,
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I feel that same experience.
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It was just, everything was okay.
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I released, I relaxed.
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It wasn’t like some, you know, I obtained enlightenment or some truly transformative experience.
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I had a lot of work to do after this.
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But that one reconnection with my deepest self and the sense of okayedness,
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with my deepest self and the sense of okayedness. I hadn’t felt anything like that probably in my whole life, certainly in decades.
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So I was just transformed and I came up in my mind’s eye still with my eyes closed
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and I saw those roots again.
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And this time I said, you know, okay, I get it, it’s okay, don’t worry.
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And my roots went, ahhh, and opened up to me.
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So then I got up.
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I opened my eyes, actually, and I started looking around.
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And I saw those Post-it notes.
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And I just felt such empathy for the person who had written them.
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Because I really saw clearly what was you know, was going on. I had
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relaxed. It’s like seeing clearly. It’s not a matter of like figuring stuff out and gaining
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more. It’s a matter of taking the static and the tension and releasing it. And so you can
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just see what’s really there all the time anyway. It’s like the tension, the knot in
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your psychological muscle is what, when it’s released, then the vision.
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You see just clearly.
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So in any event, so I came up, and by the way, I didn’t want to listen to any of that Jimi Hendrix,
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even though I love Jimi Hendrix.
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I wanted to listen to Bach, and I had a wonderful, you know, rest of the day.
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It was a really remarkable experience.
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And then, you know, I continued to take psychedelics thereafter, roughly monthly.
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I liked mushrooms. And, you know, that continued to take psychedelics thereafter, roughly monthly. I liked mushrooms.
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And, you know, that happened for a period of time.
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That was about 20 years ago by now.
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So what that said to me was that there’s this core shell concept that I thought of,
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where the core was your deepest self, your truest self.
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And the shell was like the interface with the environment.
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And that’s where the ego, that’s where the ego’s job is, to interface, to categorize things and to gather things and win or compete and stuff like that.
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But that’s just a tool of the true core self.
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But when we’re babies and our parents are having at us, you know, it’s like, oh, my God, you know, the baby thinks, how can we be safe?
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That ego thing is really powerful.
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I’ll go there.
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And I can figure things out and I can analyze and hide behind it.
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And the stuff in the core that’s not being honored and loved by my parents fully,
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the pain involved, I can bury that.
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So you bury your core.
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And you disidentify with your true self, your original self.
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And you identify instead with this aspect of your personality,
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and we cut off the deepest part. So we’re not a full, now this is good stuff to have too,
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but it’s got to be connected fully down to the core, and therefore guided and shaped or directed
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by the essence, by what we emit, who we really are. And when you cut that off, then this gets disconnected.
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So anyway, that’s a strategy devised by a two-year-old.
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I’m scared. What do I do? I’ll become an ego.
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But it locks in. It’s a perfect system.
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So the logic of it is hidden.
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And there’s a buzzer, you know, like a trigger.
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And then there’s the system.
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And the baby’s not aware of it,
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because the baby’s not cognitively developed enough to be aware of it it’s built in it’s genetic it’s a defense mechanism and it works
00:19:29 ►
beautifully it’s called personality we choose one so if parents are aggressive maybe we’ll fight back
00:19:35 ►
if the parents are aggressive maybe we’ll get meek if the parents are meek maybe we’ll come on come
00:19:39 ►
on come on grab them if the parents are meek maybe we’ll back off four-way table sort of in a way
00:19:44 ►
a two-by-two table anyway so you know personality is a strategy devised by a two-year-old.
00:19:49 ►
And so the task of adulthood is to wake up to what we did when we were a kid, what we had to do.
00:19:55 ►
Thank you so much, defense mechanism. You saved me. But now I’m an adult. I’m not two years old.
00:20:02 ►
I’m capable. I don’t need to hide in some strategy. I can be present.
00:20:08 ►
But it’s an automatic pilot system, so it takes some attention-getting to see that, to recognize it,
00:20:17 ►
because the system’s perfect. It’s built to protect us.
00:20:20 ►
So this issue of integration of the surface mind and the deepest self,
00:20:28 ►
so that it’s all one whole thing, like a flower, you know, that is a seed,
00:20:32 ►
sinks down roots, develops and grows over time with the proper conditions,
00:20:36 ►
sunshine, soil, water, that’s it.
00:20:38 ►
It doesn’t need to be directed.
00:20:40 ►
It just does it.
00:20:41 ►
It’s pre-programmed, and it unfolds in this beautiful way
00:20:44 ►
when all the resources and environment
00:20:46 ►
is alright, and we’re the same way really
00:20:48 ►
so parenting is like that
00:20:49 ►
you don’t want to be directing your child, you want to be more like
00:20:52 ►
a forest ranger than a farmer
00:20:54 ►
making sure if lightning
00:20:56 ►
strikes and there’s fires, you go put it out
00:20:58 ►
but other than that, you let the bramble grow
00:21:00 ►
beautifully and wholly and healthfully
00:21:02 ►
so integration
00:21:04 ►
of those two things ego Ego is great,
00:21:06 ►
but it’s got to be grounded. And then reintegration is about after the trip. It’s a whole different
00:21:12 ►
concept. So what do you do? So you have this experience on the weekend, and it’s magnificent.
00:21:21 ►
And then you go back to work and to the mortgage and the family and everything else, the job and the boss.
00:21:30 ►
And it used to be like you go to a non-smoking seminar on the weekend,
00:21:34 ►
and then by the following Friday you’re smoking again because all your colleagues are smoking around the water cooler.
00:21:40 ►
And so it’s a similar sort of thing.
00:21:41 ►
So the idea of reintegration, it’s the most important part of the psychedelic experience.
00:21:46 ►
As profound as the psychedelic experience can be and as illuminating as it is,
00:21:50 ►
if you hide from it after a week or two, then not only is it a waste,
00:21:55 ►
it’s actually worse because you’re even more firmly defended against this thing that you saw,
00:22:03 ►
but now you don’t want to see anymore.
00:22:05 ►
So it’s very costly to put down a brick wall over something you’ve seen.
00:22:10 ►
And, you know, how can you not see what you’ve seen?
00:22:13 ►
Very costly to repress.
00:22:15 ►
So it’s worse if you’ve seen it and then you can’t implement it.
00:22:20 ►
So reintegration back into life is the most important thing.
00:22:25 ►
But if you do have this mortgage and this boss and all this problem,
00:22:31 ►
what are you going to do about that?
00:22:32 ►
And even if you quit your job, you’re still in a capitalist system.
00:22:35 ►
So then you can become a panhandler or something.
00:22:37 ►
That’s not right.
00:22:38 ►
We have to come back Bodhisattva-like and change society
00:22:42 ►
so that the environment that we come back into after our trip
00:22:45 ►
is conducive. And that’s why the hippies went to communes, so they could have their own environment
00:22:52 ►
and not be, you know, kind of sullied, if you will. But, you know, that’s why we come back and
00:22:58 ►
that’s the ultimate thing. Because when you take a psychedelic and you want to hold on to it,
00:23:03 ►
so you meditate. So psychedelics alone are just a brief illumination.
00:23:08 ►
And if you’re lucky, you remember it. It’s great.
00:23:10 ►
And meditation, really the other technique, is wonderful.
00:23:15 ►
But you can lose yourself in a drone-like repetition of technique and method.
00:23:23 ►
And unenlightened teachers can just say,
00:23:25 ►
keep trying, you know, do it a little differently this way.
00:23:27 ►
But if you have a psychedelic experience,
00:23:30 ►
then your meditation practice is illuminated and understood better
00:23:34 ►
and aerated, if you will, conceptually aerated.
00:23:38 ►
You see it more clearly. It’s not as musty.
00:23:40 ►
And the two go together.
00:23:43 ►
Because meditation without psychedelics is kind of blind
00:23:45 ►
but psychedelics without meditation is rootless.
00:23:51 ►
So you can’t have this change into a different configuration
00:23:54 ►
and then expect it to stay.
00:23:58 ►
It’s like memory metal.
00:23:59 ►
It comes back to the old configuration.
00:24:01 ►
So when you’re in the new configuration,
00:24:03 ►
you want to hold it long enough for the roots
00:24:07 ►
to go in, for the mortar to harden, to re-harden in the bricks that you’ve now reconfigured
00:24:13 ►
of your home. This is research on spiritual development in terms of psychedelics. There’s
00:24:20 ►
a vast literature. So I should ask, how many people here are,
00:24:26 ►
let’s say, therapists, can I ask? Healers or helpers of some sort? Okay, cool. And how
00:24:32 ►
many are familiar with the psychedelic, the research on spiritual development, the work?
00:24:40 ►
Not that familiar. Let me just give it briefly. So first of all, there’s some theory about the origins of religion
00:24:45 ►
that the cave people,
00:24:48 ►
the foragers,
00:24:50 ►
would have naturally come across psychedelic
00:24:52 ►
plants and have taken them.
00:24:54 ►
Some people speculate this is the origin
00:24:56 ►
of religion in the
00:24:58 ►
experience of a psychedelic
00:25:00 ►
plant. Now Andy Letcher, who wrote the book
00:25:02 ►
Shroom,
00:25:03 ►
questions that. He says there’s no evidence for that, actually,
00:25:08 ►
really, and there is zero evidence. It’s really speculative.
00:25:11 ►
I recommend that book, Shroom. Shroom, it’s called.
00:25:16 ►
Terrible name, really. He’s an enthusiast, but a
00:25:20 ►
complete empiricist. So if there’s no evidence, forget it. He won’t
00:25:23 ►
include it in what’s allowable
00:25:25 ►
in his worldview. But ritual in tribal use, if you think about it, it’s interesting because
00:25:32 ►
they have experience. They know this works or that doesn’t work. Like, for example, they
00:25:36 ►
know that lysogides can create a spontaneous abortion. It’s a uterine dilator.
00:25:46 ►
That’s why the discoverer of LSD, Albert Hoffman,
00:25:49 ►
was looking for medical applications of the lysogydes,
00:25:52 ►
and there had been anecdotal evidence that these were uterine dilators,
00:25:56 ►
and so he was experimenting with it and came up with LSD.
00:26:01 ►
So tribal people don’t give it to a pregnant woman.
00:26:05 ►
They’ve learned that over the millennia.
00:26:07 ►
So if you think about it, it’s like research, it’s like an experiment,
00:26:10 ►
only instead of having your conditions simultaneous,
00:26:13 ►
so no dose, low dose, medium dose, high dose, different drug, different dose, etc.,
00:26:18 ►
all done simultaneously, they do it sort of, you know, chronologically.
00:26:24 ►
So they try something for 100 years, and they try, you know, if it works or doesn’t,
00:26:27 ►
and it becomes instantiated into ritual.
00:26:30 ►
And ritual is like methodology for us here, you know.
00:26:34 ►
Our methodological guidelines are essentially ritual.
00:26:37 ►
Ritual instantiates what works.
00:26:41 ►
So as far as the research is concerned, people definitely report mystical experiences.
00:26:45 ►
And generally they’re sort of thought of as four different levels.
00:26:48 ►
The sort of sensory-visual colors and whatnot, the psychodynamic and historical, the sort
00:26:54 ►
of global or—I’m trying to think of the word—just, you know, that which is holistic
00:27:04 ►
or gestalt about the earth,
00:27:05 ►
Gaia, the Gaia sort of approach to the universe and the earth.
00:27:08 ►
And then the fourth level is like white light, ego death.
00:27:14 ►
So, and those, you know, you could slice it into five stages, I’m sure, if you wanted to,
00:27:19 ►
but that’s as good as any.
00:27:20 ►
And those four stages go, if you think about it, over time.
00:27:24 ►
So it can be over the course
00:27:25 ►
of an evening, you can start with visual and then move into something more profound or go through
00:27:30 ►
your psychology. Or over time, as the months progress, as you become more familiar with
00:27:35 ►
psychedelics and relax into them, or even as you age over the decades, you might have more profound
00:27:42 ►
experiences over time. Oz Janiger found that I think it was 24% of people had a spontaneous religious experience with LSD
00:27:48 ►
with no religious iconography in the room.
00:27:53 ►
And then I think it was 87% had a religious experience when there was religious iconography in the room.
00:28:03 ►
But 24% had it even without.
00:28:06 ►
And it’s, you know, religious.
00:28:07 ►
We call it religious.
00:28:07 ►
I spell religion with a small r.
00:28:10 ►
It’s like they have a spiritual,
00:28:12 ►
a self-grounding, a profound experience.
00:28:16 ►
Pankey, you know, did the famous Marsh Chapel study
00:28:19 ►
where he gave divinity students,
00:28:21 ►
and it was a controlled study.
00:28:22 ►
Half of them got psilocybin,
00:28:24 ►
and they all ranked
00:28:25 ►
it as one of the most profound experiences of their life and now there’s new research uh um
00:28:31 ►
roland griffiths at um uh johns hopkins and others are looking at um the use of psilocybin
00:28:38 ►
for end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients and um it’s it, very effective. And what it really does is,
00:28:45 ►
in a sense, it’s not a medicine.
00:28:48 ►
It’s not like penicillin.
00:28:51 ►
It doesn’t have its own operant effect.
00:28:55 ►
It releases, it changes,
00:28:56 ►
and then we see differently as the patient.
00:29:00 ►
And patient in this case,
00:29:02 ►
because they’re cancer patients.
00:29:03 ►
But the doctor is different too.
00:29:06 ►
Because when the doctor is administering a mechanistic drug,
00:29:08 ►
you know, it’s going to have its effect.
00:29:10 ►
But when the doctor is facilitating the emergence of some spiritual experience
00:29:14 ►
or a grounding or a centering,
00:29:16 ►
then the doctor isn’t really a doctor like we’ve been thinking of doctor.
00:29:20 ►
And medicine isn’t medicine like we’ve been thinking of medicine.
00:29:22 ►
And science isn’t science as we’ve been thinking of science. And science isn’t science as we’ve been thinking of science.
00:29:26 ►
And therefore, you know, the world is not the world as we’ve been thinking of the world.
00:29:31 ►
So it changes stuff.
00:29:35 ►
So it begs the question, you know, is it real?
00:29:38 ►
Is it neurochemistry or is it, you know, soul?
00:29:42 ►
And that’s, to me, that question reveals the answer.
00:29:47 ►
It’s a spurious question because it’s either or.
00:29:49 ►
And when I see duality, I smile because duality is indicative of the ultimate unity,
00:29:54 ►
of the transcendence of the duality, of the integration.
00:29:57 ►
It’s like dialectic.
00:29:58 ►
And so when somebody says, you know, the Arabs and the Jews,
00:30:02 ►
or my wife and my husband, or, you know, any of these stupid dualities, material and spiritual.
00:30:08 ►
It’s ridiculous.
00:30:10 ►
There’s one reality, one beautiful, blooming, buzzing reality,
00:30:15 ►
and the physicists are looking at it from this perspective and counting it in detail,
00:30:19 ►
and the spiritual people are looking at it from this thing and thinking of the whole and the connection.
00:30:22 ►
And it’s the same thing. It’s life. Here we are.
00:30:24 ►
It’s one thing.
00:30:25 ►
So, you know, and we should broaden our worldview from the mechanistic worldview of medicine,
00:30:36 ►
mechanistically, pharmacologically, for example, to think about things like psychosomatics,
00:30:42 ►
spontaneous remission, placebo effect, stigmata research.
00:30:49 ►
You know stigmata research?
00:30:50 ►
People start bleeding in the palms of their hands around Easter time.
00:30:54 ►
But archaeological evidence shows that people are crucified here, not here.
00:30:59 ►
And the reason they’re crucified here, if they’re crucified here,
00:31:01 ►
it just splits right through the finger, and they will fall. But if you crucify them here, it’s held up by the wrist.
00:31:10 ►
So people were not crucified in the palm. So when the painters in the Middle Ages painted it,
00:31:16 ►
for some reason they did that instead. So people got the depiction of what crucifixion was like
00:31:21 ►
from looking at these paintings. And then they created blood here.
00:31:25 ►
It’s not a visitation from God. God wouldn’t make that mistake.
00:31:31 ►
Okay? So it’s proof positive of the power of mind over body, mind over matter. And the
00:31:39 ►
integration, the different, the less mechanistic and more holistic, more gestalt kind of way that the universe works, including us.
00:31:48 ►
I mentioned the PEAR research down there,
00:31:50 ►
the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research,
00:31:53 ►
and Dean Radden is here.
00:31:55 ►
I highly recommend you see that work.
00:31:58 ►
They did things like computer simulations on random number generation
00:32:01 ►
that was influenced by focusing on it,
00:32:05 ►
and they found lots of significant research,
00:32:08 ►
including things like menstruating women and ovulating women
00:32:10 ►
have different effects on these computer random number generators.
00:32:14 ►
Groups have different effects than single people.
00:32:17 ►
Loving people, people in love have a different effect than people who are not.
00:32:21 ►
It’s wonderful work.
00:32:23 ►
All right, so there’s lots of issues remain. I’m
00:32:27 ►
not going to go into these. It’s sort of psychedelic oriented specifically. But you can take a look.
00:32:32 ►
And I will send anybody the slides if you’d like it. But you can see there’s some big issues
00:32:38 ►
about rescheduling and training. And the research is coming on strong. Johns Hopkins, UCLA, NYU, there’s lots of locations.
00:32:49 ►
I refer you for the people who are interested in the research to look at maps,
00:32:53 ►
M-A-P-S dot org slash research.
00:32:57 ►
Maps is the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies.
00:33:00 ►
It’s a really wonderful organization.
00:33:02 ►
And their research page lists all the research paths current and planned.
00:33:07 ►
All right, so the psychology approach to psychotherapy.
00:33:15 ►
As I’ve been pointing out to you, there’s an issue of balance and integration.
00:33:20 ►
You know, it’s like if you have—if this is 12 o’clock and here’s 2.30 and here’s 10.30, it’s in balance, you know.
00:33:28 ►
And everything’s in balance.
00:33:31 ►
So you have a wife and a husband, let’s just say.
00:33:33 ►
Or I said before, a parent and a child where one’s angry and one’s meek or angry back.
00:33:38 ►
So there’s this balancing thing.
00:33:40 ►
And so in our individual, it’s the same thing.
00:33:42 ►
So let’s say we’re repressed as children, so now we’re all meek and shy.
00:33:46 ►
But there’s a balance.
00:33:47 ►
We can’t just be meek and shy.
00:33:49 ►
It’s imbalanced.
00:33:50 ►
So there has to be this sort of angry part somewhere, too.
00:33:53 ►
Where is that?
00:33:54 ►
Down below, below the brick wall.
00:33:57 ►
But it’s down there.
00:33:57 ►
It’s imbalanced.
00:33:59 ►
Because imbalanced systems are not stable.
00:34:02 ►
I mentioned the seed with innate developmental stages
00:34:07 ►
and the unfolding of which leads to wisdom.
00:34:09 ►
Spirituality is not some big supernatural thing.
00:34:14 ►
It’s just the most advanced stage of normal human development.
00:34:18 ►
And normal human development entails like fall, fall, fall, walk.
00:34:28 ►
Babies learning to walk fall all the time.
00:34:36 ►
Do you yell at them? No, you applaud. You’re applauding their effort. Because you know that they’ll fall, fall, fall,
00:34:41 ►
and eventually they will walk. It’s the same thing with psychotherapy patients. You know, they come in and they,
00:34:45 ►
you know, are all upset. You know, I have a smile because they’re starting their journey. They come to me not here, but they come to me here when they’re on their way back up.
00:34:50 ►
And I know with some guidance and help that they’re going to be able to do that.
00:34:53 ►
So, you know, it’s like, you know, failed relationship, failed relationship, failed relationship, successful relationship.
00:35:00 ►
It’s the same thing.
00:35:02 ►
You don’t want to, you see a flower blooming with these perfect conditions,
00:35:07 ►
and you’re impatient, and there’s this rosebud.
00:35:09 ►
You say, wouldn’t that be lovely to be a flower?
00:35:10 ►
Let me take my tweezers and open up the petals.
00:35:13 ►
And, of course, you kill it.
00:35:16 ►
So just, you know, Faith, the three-legged dog.
00:35:19 ►
Faith is a two-legged dog.
00:35:22 ►
Sorry, I say three.
00:35:24 ►
Faith is a two-legged dog. Sorry, I say three. Faith is a two-legged dog.
00:35:25 ►
She was born without her front legs.
00:35:27 ►
And they found her in some shelter
00:35:30 ►
and they taught her to stand up on her hind legs.
00:35:33 ►
And she goes now to military bases and hospitals.
00:35:38 ►
Why?
00:35:38 ►
Because you ever see a three-legged dog?
00:35:40 ►
Are they sad?
00:35:41 ►
Are they neurotic?
00:35:42 ►
No.
00:35:43 ►
They’re playing, they’re happy, they’re natural.
00:35:45 ►
And so that’s kind of the attitude we need to cultivate toward our own innate development.
00:35:52 ►
But you know something? The sapling and the kindly farmer. Let’s say there’s a sapling and a boulder
00:35:57 ►
rolls down the hill and goes on to the sapling and stops. And it doesn’t kill it, but it knocks it over. And so 20 years later, a farmer, a kindly farmer walks by,
00:36:09 ►
and he sees this now tree that has a horizontal part, a boulder, and a vertical part
00:36:15 ►
because it’s bent to grow up to the sun.
00:36:18 ►
So he comes with his crowbar, and he takes the boulder and gets it off.
00:36:22 ►
Now, does the tree go,
00:36:23 ►
Of course not. It’s like that way.
00:36:27 ►
But it’s got flowers, it’s got seeds, it’s fine.
00:36:29 ►
So it’s the same way with us,
00:36:31 ►
and like with Faith, the two-legged dog.
00:36:33 ►
It’s okay.
00:36:34 ►
It’s the essential okayedness.
00:36:36 ►
And the essential okayedness
00:36:38 ►
is the release of the knot in the psychic muscle
00:36:41 ►
that occludes our vision.
00:36:44 ►
Like a tornado, you know. A tornado
00:36:46 ►
is just air, basically, right? But it’s black, and you see it all twisted up. Now, if it could
00:36:51 ►
unfurl, it would just be atmosphere, transparent, essential, oxygen, but not in the way, not
00:36:57 ►
distracting. So our personalities, our neuroses, our triggers distract us, and we think this is
00:37:04 ►
an object, something out there.
00:37:06 ►
And we say, well, you’re to this or you’re to that.
00:37:08 ►
But it’s really, where is it coming from?
00:37:09 ►
It’s based on here.
00:37:10 ►
It goes down to here.
00:37:12 ►
So when you see it here, not up here, fixing it, changing it.
00:37:16 ►
When you see it down here and you release it,
00:37:19 ►
then this goes away.
00:37:24 ►
And what’s left is just what’s out there.
00:37:26 ►
Clear vision.
00:37:27 ►
People.
00:37:28 ►
How can I help you?
00:37:29 ►
What about you?
00:37:30 ►
No, I’m okay.
00:37:30 ►
How can I help you?
00:37:32 ►
I’m okay.
00:37:34 ►
Alrighty.
00:37:35 ►
So, to sort of summarize then.
00:37:39 ►
The psychology approach, the awkward word,
00:37:42 ►
is about the direct experience of the foundation of our true self.
00:37:47 ►
So as infants, we’re all perfect.
00:37:51 ►
And love, perfect parenting, you know, that sort of non-dual thing right in the center is about a mature parent.
00:38:00 ►
A spiritually awake, you know, spiritual is a weird word.
00:38:03 ►
It’s just mature awake relaxed
00:38:05 ►
loving person being a parent and then when the child does you know test you in these different
00:38:11 ►
ways you just understand what’s going on and you treat it with love consistent love because love
00:38:17 ►
is what makes us as infants i mean able to just be like that seed and unfold naturally so if you
00:38:24 ►
don’t have love it’s like a rock outcropping,
00:38:26 ►
and the seed has to go off to the side to get the sunlight.
00:38:29 ►
And it’s like that sapling with the boulder on it.
00:38:32 ►
It’s not formed properly, and it’s less stable, of course.
00:38:36 ►
So when you have love, it’s just shining like sunlight
00:38:39 ►
is the shining of love onto the individual.
00:38:41 ►
And so the fall, fall, fall, walk.
00:38:43 ►
The baby falls when it’s trying to walk, and it looks back at the parent. You know, am I okay? And the
00:38:48 ►
parent says, you’re beautiful. And the baby says, okay. And then the exploratory, investigatory
00:38:55 ►
learning process has been reinforced. So love is the central issue of infancy, and then
00:39:03 ►
of course later on.
00:39:10 ►
Receiving unconditional love allows you to release and to relax even as an adult and to see the essential love at our root.
00:39:15 ►
So neurosis then, osis, I hate that word, neurosis.
00:39:19 ►
It rhymes with psychosis.
00:39:21 ►
It’s a diagnosis.
00:39:22 ►
And it ain’t.
00:39:23 ►
It ain’t that at all.
00:39:25 ►
You know, neurosis is the natural developmental process.
00:39:29 ►
Development is stage-wise, okay?
00:39:30 ►
So you go along relatively straight, and then you come across some challenge, some developmental challenge.
00:39:35 ►
And you beat your head against the wall for a while.
00:39:36 ►
And then through some miracle of integration, you find yourself up on the next level.
00:39:43 ►
And when you’re on that next level and you look down, let’s do it this way.
00:39:45 ►
If you’re up here and you’re looking down to that thing that was bothering you before,
00:39:48 ►
you say, oh, from this perspective, oh, that’s obvious.
00:39:52 ►
Because now you got it.
00:39:53 ►
You’re reintegrated at a more complex level of intelligence.
00:39:57 ►
So you walk around for a little straight, and then you hit another barrier.
00:40:01 ►
You say, oh, I got this.
00:40:02 ►
This doesn’t go on forever.
00:40:04 ►
This is not an endless wall.
00:40:05 ►
This is stepwise development. So when you, when you’re hitting your head against the wall in that
00:40:09 ►
stepwise development process, you will inevitably eventually get to the next level given proper
00:40:15 ►
sunshine, soil, and, and, and, and light. That’s pathologized. Oh, you can’t function. You’re upset.
00:40:23 ►
You’re anxious. Let’s give you a pill.
00:40:26 ►
It stops you.
00:40:27 ►
I worked at Sanctuary at Burning Man for a while,
00:40:30 ►
and it was an alternative to the medical tent
00:40:32 ►
where they would give you a shot and put you to sleep
00:40:34 ►
when you were having a difficult time.
00:40:37 ►
But if you can have a safe container to let your difficult time go down,
00:40:42 ►
like Sanctuary at Burning Man,
00:40:44 ►
then you can recover and say, Yeah, you know, I remember what I was going through.
00:40:48 ►
I’ve learned a lot from this experience, instead of being put to sleep.
00:40:51 ►
And it’s sort of the same thing.
00:40:54 ►
Love enables us to relax and release.
00:40:57 ►
The desire for change is a reflection of the problem, not the solution.
00:41:01 ►
Oh, and there’s this developmental dance.
00:41:03 ►
I had this transcendent experience, right?
00:41:04 ►
I told you about it, about going down to the ground of my being and seeing everything okay.
00:41:09 ►
But there was another experience about 18 months later at Burning Man. I won’t go into
00:41:13 ►
great detail on it, but that was a cathartic experience. I was with some psychedelic therapists,
00:41:21 ►
a wonderful opportunity to have that experience myself at Burning Man.
00:41:26 ►
And we started the session, and I said, well, I’ll go down to the ground of my being.
00:41:32 ►
I’ll be about 20 minutes, and I’ll come back up, and we’ll start a session,
00:41:36 ►
because then I’ll see everything’s okay.
00:41:37 ►
And they looked at me like I said, what?
00:41:40 ►
They said, go there now.
00:41:41 ►
And I said, no, no, you don’t understand.
00:41:42 ►
And I explained to them about the throbbing mound and all that stuff. And they said, go there now. And I said, no, no, you don’t understand. And I explained to them about the throbbing mound and all that stuff.
00:41:46 ►
And they said, go there now.
00:41:49 ►
And I won’t go into detail, but I resisted for like a half an hour.
00:41:53 ►
And finally I said, all right, all right, I’ll go there now.
00:41:55 ►
I closed my eyes.
00:41:56 ►
I wake up.
00:41:56 ►
I say, no, no, you have to understand.
00:41:58 ►
It’s like a black hole with an event horizon.
00:42:00 ►
If you go down past it, you’re inevitably going to go into it.
00:42:03 ►
I can tell you, I’ve been there many times, about my mother and all this stuff.
00:42:06 ►
Go there now.
00:42:08 ►
So I went there now, and I experienced
00:42:09 ►
my mother thing with the pain
00:42:12 ►
that I haven’t felt since I was two, since I
00:42:13 ►
originally felt it. And that
00:42:15 ►
was transformative. So I
00:42:17 ►
realized that this dualistic
00:42:20 ►
dance of transcendence,
00:42:22 ►
which makes you feel love
00:42:24 ►
and safe and understanding, and then
00:42:27 ►
catharsis, which through the safety and the relaxation, you’re enabled to go deeper.
00:42:32 ►
It’s kind of like MDMA in a way.
00:42:34 ►
It takes the defenses away so you can go deeper down into the trauma.
00:42:38 ►
Well, a transcendent experience of love and bliss, be it MDMA or otherwise, will likewise
00:42:43 ►
enable you to go more deeply in the required,
00:42:47 ►
necessary second half of this dance, which is catharsis, because you’ve got to go there.
00:42:52 ►
You can’t just bliss out every week and think that you’re going to melt your problems away
00:42:56 ►
without dealing with them. It’s not like that. But they do work together.
00:43:03 ►
Anyway, so psychedelic therapy, of course, can be safe and effective when used as directed.
00:43:08 ►
And lastly on this chart, there’s ways to change policies and bureaucracies.
00:43:13 ►
And since we know how to do that, we’re like honor bound to do it.
00:43:16 ►
So you need to be active, would be my admonition.
00:43:20 ►
This is the last slide.
00:43:22 ►
So the idea here is that psychedelics,
00:43:25 ►
psychology is a framework for a different kind of definition of healing.
00:43:29 ►
Like I said, spirituality is the advanced level of normal human development.
00:43:34 ►
The healing power of the whole organism is not supernatural.
00:43:39 ►
It’s the way the body, it’s the way physics works.
00:43:42 ►
And psychedelic medicine is mediated by this peak experience.
00:43:47 ►
The doctors aren’t giving you, like, penicillin.
00:43:49 ►
It’s something that if you have, the research shows that if you have a peak ego death style experience in the research,
00:43:56 ►
that you’ll be much more likely to lose your fear of death, to stop drinking alcohol,
00:44:02 ►
to have rapprochement with your family, or whatever the clinical effect is,
00:44:06 ►
the peak experience is kind of like, is correlated with that effect coming out.
00:44:11 ►
But psychedelics are just a window.
00:44:14 ►
You know, Aldous Huxley said the doors of perception.
00:44:16 ►
But really it’s more like a window, because you can’t go through that door exactly.
00:44:19 ►
You can see it, but then when the trip goes away, you’re back.
00:44:22 ►
So he called it a gratuitous grace.
00:44:25 ►
It’s not earned or deserved.
00:44:26 ►
It just falls into your lap, really.
00:44:30 ►
And remember, of course, a spiritual experience isn’t a spiritual life.
00:44:33 ►
That takes a long time.
00:44:35 ►
You can give a spiritual experience to, let’s say, an 8-year-old or something,
00:44:38 ►
and they might be enlightened for an hour,
00:44:41 ►
but would they really be able to integrate that into their life
00:44:49 ►
without the humus and the loam and the detritus of experience for things to take root into?
00:44:54 ►
Like as if you gave a 70-year-old that same thing, they might actually have a more integrated
00:44:59 ►
experience. And it requires a daily practice like meditation. And we need to change society to complete our own development and those of everyone around us. So, you know, we want
00:45:09 ►
to integrate the material view of this. We don’t want to leave it behind, but the material
00:45:13 ►
view of drugs and pharmacology and the psychological view of healing pathology, okay, but also
00:45:19 ►
the spiritual view that we are, at essence, incarnate energy, that we are patterned, precipitate energy
00:45:26 ►
out of the background field of which is best conceptualized as love.
00:45:32 ►
Any questions?
00:45:35 ►
Go crazy.
00:45:36 ►
Ah, good question.
00:45:39 ►
Generally speaking, no.
00:45:41 ►
However, you know, psychedelics are powerful,
00:45:45 ►
and if you have a history of mental illness or a family history of mental illness,
00:45:51 ►
these are genetic components, so you’re likely to have that as well.
00:45:54 ►
In essence, you’re sort of in a way more fragile.
00:45:57 ►
And so a psychedelic experience can, in those very rare cases,
00:46:03 ►
a small percentage of the population, cause a break, a psychotic break,
00:46:08 ►
which creates a scar, even in the best of us.
00:46:13 ►
So they don’t make you go crazy, in general.
00:46:16 ►
For the average person, when you screen out the population for people who have a family history of mental disorder,
00:46:22 ►
then they are safe and effective when used as directed.
00:46:25 ►
The crazy thing that we hear a lot about, about people freaking out and running to the hospital
00:46:29 ►
and that sort of stuff, has to do with resistance to the effect of the drug. It’s not the effect of
00:46:35 ►
the drug to make you think all crazy stuff. The effect of the drug is to make you see yourself
00:46:40 ►
and to see clearly. That’s the true effect. So if you’re not ready to see clearly
00:46:45 ►
or to understand what’s around you, if you’re too invested in your systems or your neurosis
00:46:50 ►
or your personality, then you’ve got a big problem because you’re seeing clearly, but you don’t want
00:46:55 ►
to see clearly. So what do you do? You split. You have a psychotic break. And if you’re a healthy,
00:47:01 ►
regular person and you have that experience, it’ll last for a day.
00:47:05 ►
I mean, it’ll last for a few hours and then you’ll have reverberations or bruising, essentially, for days or even a few weeks.
00:47:12 ►
But then you’ll come back to equilibrium.
00:47:15 ►
But if you’re one of those people who has the family history of mental disorder,
00:47:19 ►
then it may precipitate or trigger the onset of schizophrenia.
00:47:25 ►
And one piece of research said that the average age for onset of schizophrenia is 24,
00:47:29 ►
and in psychedelics it’s 22.
00:47:33 ►
So if you have this family history.
00:47:35 ►
So screening those people out, then, no.
00:47:39 ►
It’s safe and effective when used as directed.
00:47:44 ►
Yes?
00:47:45 ►
Can you say more about if…
00:47:47 ►
Ah, yes, I’m glad you asked that, too.
00:47:50 ►
First of all, I don’t see, I don’t do psychedelic therapy.
00:47:54 ►
And I’m not just saying it because the camera’s on.
00:47:56 ►
It’s actually true.
00:47:57 ►
I couldn’t really be speaking and writing books about it.
00:47:59 ►
I wouldn’t want to thumb my nose at the authorities
00:48:01 ►
and get busted and all that stuff.
00:48:03 ►
I’m kind of a wimp.
00:48:04 ►
So I don’t do to thumb my nose at the authorities and get busted and all that stuff. I’m kind of a wimp. So, I don’t do psychedelic therapy.
00:48:06 ►
But, because of my book and because of my focus,
00:48:11 ►
lots of young people, especially, who are interested in psychedelics will come to see me.
00:48:16 ►
And these are people who are actively involved in exploring psychedelics for their personal development.
00:48:21 ►
And they want some guidance.
00:48:22 ►
They want to speak to a psychologist who doesn’t, you know, think of them as weird or crazy or who understands. And so when those people come to
00:48:30 ►
me, it’s really great. I say, listen, you know, if you’re going to take, I can’t, I’m not advising
00:48:34 ►
you, but if you’re going to take psychedelics, take your psychedelic on a Wednesday and come
00:48:38 ►
see me on a Thursday, or take it on a Thursday and come see me on a Friday. So there are people out there who will sit with you.
00:48:46 ►
Just be a sitter, not a therapist.
00:48:48 ►
And so, you know, that’s, for me, the sort of ideal situation.
00:48:53 ►
And then the next session, when they come in, I do hour and a half sessions.
00:48:56 ►
We really, really get into it quite deeply.
00:48:59 ►
Ask your question again, please.
00:49:01 ►
Yeah, daily practice.
00:49:02 ►
Ah, yes. Thank you.
00:49:04 ►
Well, first of all,
00:49:05 ►
meditation. And meditation also has a lot of baggage. The word psychedelic has baggage and,
00:49:10 ►
you know, whatever. So meditation, I tell my clients, don’t meditate, please. It’s too
00:49:16 ►
complicated. Don’t meditate. Just sit quietly, loosen your clothing, Breathe. Focus on your breath.
00:49:28 ►
Don’t meditate, though.
00:49:29 ►
Because I don’t want them to… People get nervous about meditation.
00:49:32 ►
But meditation, to me, it’s like the one-two punch.
00:49:34 ►
It’s psychedelics and meditation go together.
00:49:37 ►
You have to have a spiritual practice to integrate, to instantiate,
00:49:41 ►
to give root to the insights.
00:49:44 ►
Not even insights. that’s too individualist
00:49:46 ►
or separate, like an idea of a separate thing,
00:49:49 ►
but your whole changed worldview.
00:49:51 ►
This released, relaxed, clarified, opened up, aligned,
00:49:58 ►
you know, your posture, all these metaphors I use today,
00:50:00 ►
all of that stuff, that space doesn’t stay
00:50:03 ►
because you’ve got the presh of your society,
00:50:06 ►
of your life, of your whatever, pressing you back into the old posture, to use that metaphor.
00:50:12 ►
So you need something on a daily basis that’s kind of like a mini psychedelic experience or to help it take root.
00:50:30 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
00:50:33 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:50:38 ►
And should you wish to learn more about Neil’s work,
00:50:41 ►
then I recommend that you buy a copy of his book,
00:50:42 ►
Psychedelic Healing,
00:50:46 ►
The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development. And I’ll link to that in today’s program notes, which you know you can
00:50:51 ►
find at psychedelicsalon.com. Now, after listening to Neil’s talk for a second time, I’m realizing
00:50:58 ►
that the next time somebody asks me what she or he should know about taking a psychedelic medicine for the first time in a
00:51:06 ►
non-recreational way, well then this talk is what I’m going to refer them to. If Neil hadn’t already
00:51:12 ►
given a title to it, then I think I’d probably call this program something like, How to Use
00:51:18 ►
Psychedelic Medicines for Personal Growth. Of course, that isn’t nearly as clever as psychology, which is a word that I’m going to try to work into my everyday vocabulary now.
00:51:31 ►
Psychology. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
00:51:35 ►
Although I probably shouldn’t admit this, I sometimes become a little uncomfortable when the subject of spirituality comes up, mainly because my mind tries to conflate it with ideas of my childhood religion.
00:51:50 ►
And so I really have to thank Neil here for explaining that spirituality is not some big supernatural thing.
00:51:56 ►
It’s just the advanced stage of normal human development.
00:52:00 ►
And that is now a way for me to think about spirituality with, well, without all of the old religious baggage that I’ve often associated with it.
00:52:10 ►
Now, before I go, I’d like to again mention a few of the articles
00:52:13 ►
that I’ve posted in some of my Flipboard.com magazines.
00:52:17 ►
In the past, I’ve only mentioned the Psychedelic Salon magazine,
00:52:21 ►
but just to let you know, I have several other online magazines as well,
00:52:25 ►
including What’s Up with the USA, Freedom in the Balance, Human Madness, and Wave of
00:52:32 ►
Action.
00:52:33 ►
Now, here are a few of the stories that I’ve covered in the Psychedelic Salon Magazine
00:52:37 ►
fairly recently, and these are titles of the stories.
00:52:43 ►
The pizza box that doubles as a weed pipe will make all your munchies dreams come true.
00:52:50 ►
There’s a good picture with that one, too.
00:52:52 ►
Medical marijuana helped me when nothing else could.
00:52:56 ►
Dope destruction clouds wafted into supermarket car park.
00:53:00 ►
The war on drugs isn’t even working in prison.
00:53:04 ►
This California town wants to be the next marijuana mecca.
00:53:08 ►
Jamaica’s legalizing weed and replacing the Queen of England.
00:53:13 ►
Hundreds of global figures call for end to disastrous war on drugs.
00:53:18 ►
We’ve got to have the guts to rethink the so-called war on drugs.
00:53:23 ►
Bernie Renews’ to Legalize Pot.
00:53:26 ►
And an alternate story titled,
00:53:29 ►
Pot Smokers Have More Sex, Apparently.
00:53:33 ►
And that story discusses a condom maker’s survey
00:53:36 ►
that finds marijuana users tend to have more sex,
00:53:39 ►
more sexual partners, and more confidence in the bedroom.
00:53:43 ►
Of course, if you are a pot smoker, well, then you don’t need a survey to know that.
00:53:49 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:53:53 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.