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013 - Pallamary’s Paths of Shamanism

Jun 12, 2017, 69 min read

Program Notes

Guest speaker: Matt Pallamary

http://mattpallamary.com/Matt Pallamary

Date this interview was recorded: April 28, 2017

After hearing from Matt Pallamary at the San Diego storytelling in last week’s episode, here’s an interview with him about the tools of shamanism applied to writing, the pitfalls of gurus and his many stories and lessons from his decades spent diving deep into the many paths of shamanism.

Check out his website ( http://mattpallamary.com/ ) to see the wide range of books he’s written.

http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/0692778055
A Sequel to DreamLand by Matthew J. Pallamary

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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19 ►

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:24 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:31 ►

And I’m really looking forward to listening to today’s interview that Lex Pelger did with my good friend Matt Palomary.

00:00:40 ►

In fact, that interview was conducted right here in my little office that technically, I guess, is the actual physical Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:45 ►

But the truth is, this room is so small that only Lex and Matt could fit in it for the interview, and so I was out in the living room visiting with Mike and Brian from Symposia at the

00:00:51 ►

time. As you know, Matt Palamary has been involved with the salon for many years now, and he and I

00:00:58 ►

go way back to both the Palenque conferences and to many ayahuasca ceremonies. In fact, we actually met when we

00:01:06 ►

wound up sitting next to one another at an ayahuasca ceremony almost 20 years ago.

00:01:12 ►

Obviously, we have a lot of tales that we can tell about one another, but

00:01:16 ►

we’re going to save those for another day. And I guess that I should also point out that while

00:01:23 ►

his books are published under the name Matthew Palomary,

00:01:26 ►

and while he usually goes by Matt, in our little psychedelic community out here on the coast,

00:01:32 ►

most people call him Mateo.

00:01:34 ►

However, I still think of him by the name that I gave him, which is Casawack.

00:01:38 ►

I call him that because, well, to me, he’s a cross between Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac,

00:01:45 ►

a wild man and a great writer.

00:01:47 ►

But when he told his mother about my name for him, she said,

00:01:51 ►

oh, that’s not right. You are a much better writer than Kerouac.

00:01:56 ►

And I have to admit that she was absolutely correct about that.

00:02:00 ►

And if you don’t believe me, well, then try reading On the Road,

00:02:04 ►

and then follow it by reading

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Mateo’s latest novel, Nothing, right afterwards, and I think you’ll see what I mean. So now let’s

00:02:12 ►

join Lex Pelger and Matt Palomary as they talk about ways in which shamanism and writing intersect.

00:02:20 ►

Today’s show is made possible through your crowdfunded support on Patreon. Unlike other crowdfunding sites,

00:02:26 ►

Patreon lets you chip in a few bucks a month to help us keep the lights on.

00:02:30 ►

Find out more at patreon.com slash symposia.

00:02:53 ►

I’m Lex Pelger, and this is Symposia on the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:03:01 ►

This week, I’m pleased to be bringing you an interview with the expert on shamanism, Matthew Palamari.

00:03:05 ►

During the Blue Dot Tour and after our great storytelling night in San Diego, I got to stay at Lorenzo’s house and interview his friend the next morning. He’s a

00:03:10 ►

very impressive writer, and his ideas of using shamanistic techniques for creative people, for

00:03:16 ►

writers, is a fascinating part of his work. Please don’t call him a shaman, as you will hear. Most of

00:03:21 ►

the good ones don’t want that title, but he is someone who has studied these things for a very long time and can hold forth about some of the similarities you

00:03:30 ►

see between different traditions. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for

00:03:36 ►

having me. It’s great to be in 2.0. I’m still in the mix and I woke up on this side of the dirt,

00:03:42 ►

so it’s a good day. Always a good day. Yes, sir.

00:03:50 ►

So I actually wanted to start more with your knowledge of shamanism because it sounds like you’ve been studying that a very long time.

00:03:54 ►

How did that first become something on your radar that you started exploring?

00:03:59 ►

Well, it’s interesting because I’m a writer, obviously.

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I’m a perspiring writer, and I’ve been at it for a long time.

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I’ve been over 30 years and teaching for 25 at major writers conferences. And I was interviewed a while back for, I’m always interviewed for writers

00:04:10 ►

things all the time. And they asked me about that, that question, how did I get into it?

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And I started to really think about it. And I kind of perked into my head because I started

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thinking way back. So now what i’ve been telling people is i’ve

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been studying shamanism all of my life and as a kid i loved tarzan i loved the wild man i remember

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jumping in creeks as a kid and like oh okay where are the alligators you know and i want a knife to

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put in my mouth and all that cool stuff so i was fascinated with the wild man and then um when i

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was in my late teens 20 ish and i was in the

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air force i got turned on to carlos castaneda and i got really obsessed with that and then i started

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studying more and more and eventually um to make a long story short i took an honors course in anthropology. Well, first off, I was writing shamanism stuff anyway.

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I may tell that story, how one of my short stories got me connected with Terrence McKenna

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and all these other things that came out of that.

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But I was very much into the shamanism, and it became more and more of a theme in my writing.

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So I had been researching shamanism and anthropology on my own, and when I in my writing. So I had been researching shamanism

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and anthropology on my own. And when I took an anthropology course and I got into it, I was like,

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this is everything I’ve been doing on my own, you know, and I was getting a lot of research from the

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UCSD library here in San Diego, which is renowned, especially for its medical stuff. So I really got

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into that and I was reading it and I hit it off with that professor who actually had been, he went to UCLA with Carlos Castaneda.

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And his honors course was A Forest of Symbols, Orientation and Meaning to South American Indian Religions.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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So, I was like, yeah, I’m there.

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And I aced that course.

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And I became, through that, really a specialist.

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So I’m all about shamanism worldwide.

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Because shamanism is universal.

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And every single religion in the world goes back to shamanism.

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I was researching a book.

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And I was actually researching lycanthropy, which is the werewolf mythos.

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Which actually ties into shapeshifting.

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And I had the revelation that shapeshifting goes back primarily,

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it’s worldwide, but it primarily goes back to the Amazon

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where it is the largest concentration of visionary plants.

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And I made the connection between visionary plants and shapeshifting.

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And that’s what sucked me in.

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And then I studied ayahuasca for 10 years before I found it.

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And then when I got to go, and people told me,

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oh, you’re brave, you went to the jungle and all that.

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And I’m like, no, I could not not go.

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I have to go.

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It’s no question.

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I don’t care what it costs.

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I have to do this.

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And I did.

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And I got taken in by the shamans.

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And like I say, now it’s coming up on 20 years.

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And I’m facilitating things more now.

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And I’ve learned a lot.

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But all of the things of the universality of shamanism have come to bear upon me.

00:07:18 ►

And I read tons and tons of stuff, anthropology.

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And then a lot of what I did in the jungle and a lot of what I learned through ayahuasca,

00:07:27 ►

I learned through ayahuasca.

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Then I went back and read the books.

00:07:31 ►

But I kind of already knew it, if that makes any sense.

00:07:35 ►

I have a book.

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I wrote most of it, but it was a collaboration called The Infinity Zone.

00:07:41 ►

And it’s about perfect form and motion.

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And it gets very deeply into sacred geometry

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and everything i learned was from ayahuasca then i followed up with the other books so um everything

00:07:52 ►

now in my life goes back to shamanism it underpins all of my writing um i lecture on it frequently

00:07:59 ►

um and i and i and i now can say uh without hesitation I’m an authority on shamanism.

00:08:08 ►

And I love on my webpage, www.mattpalomary.com.

00:08:14 ►

M-A-T-T-P as in Paul, A-L-L-A-M as in Mary, A-R-Y.com.

00:08:19 ►

It’s author, editor, shamanic explorer.

00:08:24 ►

I will not and I refuse get this out there world and universe. It’s author, editor, shamanic explorer.

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I will not and I refuse get this out there world and universe.

00:08:33 ►

I would never ever refer to myself or call myself a shaman.

00:08:35 ►

People have done it.

00:08:38 ►

I even, I get, if you’re familiar with, I feel a little bad about it,

00:08:42 ►

but if you’re familiar with Sea Realm podcast and KMO,

00:08:44 ►

which we have some history and he was interviewing me,

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I think the first time and he called me a shaman and i went off on him and i felt bad afterwards because i kind of went

00:08:49 ►

overboard but i don’t only don’t play that um but so when i started teaching in the writers

00:08:56 ►

conferences and i made my name as a weirdo writer so to speak. My workshop was originally horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

00:09:06 ►

And as the millennium came in 2000 and all that, I noticed that there was getting more spirituality

00:09:12 ►

into my workshop. So now it’s been changed to fantastic fiction. So it’s fantastic fiction.

00:09:18 ►

It’s P-H-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C fiction. And it’s literature of the visionary, supernatural,

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metaphysical, horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

00:09:26 ►

And I wrote a book, which also took first place

00:09:29 ►

in the International Book Awards for writing and editing.

00:09:32 ►

And it’s fantastic fiction,

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a shamanic approach to story structure.

00:09:36 ►

And that’s what I primarily teach and lecture,

00:09:38 ►

and that’s what my workshop is now called.

00:09:40 ►

I can do an hour lecture.

00:09:42 ►

I can do a weekend lecture.

00:09:43 ►

I can do a week.

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I can go on forever.

00:09:46 ►

Combining two of the oldest arts that we have, I can do an hour lecture, I can do a weekend lecture, I can do a week and go on forever. Wow.

00:09:46 ►

Combining two of the oldest arts that we have, shamanism and storytelling.

00:09:50 ►

Yeah.

00:09:51 ►

Go ahead.

00:09:52 ►

And I’m curious, as you studied shamanism, what features seemed common to these different paths that you were looking at?

00:09:59 ►

Whether practices with or without entheogens or um what brought them together yeah great so when i was

00:10:07 ►

studying in anthropology courses and things one of the things i read was the myth of the flood

00:10:14 ►

how universal it was and i read about you know i read some really really sort of minimalized arcane

00:10:22 ►

religions for lack of better words.

00:10:25 ►

I prefer to say spirituality over religion.

00:10:27 ►

That’s a whole thing.

00:10:28 ►

I mentioned that last night.

00:10:31 ►

But the universality, first off, that the myth of the flood was everywhere.

00:10:36 ►

Like, whoa, you kidding me?

00:10:37 ►

And that got my attention.

00:10:38 ►

I started looking, and I realized if you study shamanism worldwide,

00:10:42 ►

you’ll realize that the beliefs, the core beliefs are the same, whether entheogens or not.

00:10:48 ►

One of the things I’m proud about in my historical novel, Land Without Evil, is the fact that it’s visionary experience.

00:10:55 ►

And I did it all.

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It was all fasting and dancing.

00:10:57 ►

I did it without substances.

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And I did that on purpose because I got myself into high schools.

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And this is back in, that came out in november of 99 so i had full-on tripping

00:11:07 ►

visionary experience but there were no substances so it was being accepted and i got and i worked

00:11:13 ►

really hard because i wanted to get not only the literary nod but i wanted to get the anthropological

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nod and i got them both which i was really proud of because i really worked hard to make things

00:11:21 ►

right that particular book um book is about the first contact

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between the Jesuits and the Indians in South America,

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but it’s told from the Indians’ point of view.

00:11:32 ►

Wow.

00:11:33 ►

Yeah, and it’s very deep, deep, deep shamanism.

00:11:36 ►

So it’s a universal.

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You’ll see they dress the same.

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Other things, you know, like quartz crystals are sacred.

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Other things in every single religion in the world,

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every single one has its

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roots in shamanism. Period. End of story. Buddhism really lines up nicely. Taoism is really in line

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with it. They’re all shamanic in the beginning. So I wanted to go back and bypass all the crap.

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You know, I was raised Catholic, although I rebelled when I was about six. There’s a bunch

00:12:03 ►

of stories about that too.

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But I wanted to really go back to the roots and find out the universal thing. And what I like to call myself now is a cosmic citizen. And I just want to mention briefly that everything I’m telling

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you right now, universal, blah, blah, blah. This is all in my universe. I never force anything on

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everybody. I have 13 books in print. To me, they’re all offerings. You can take it or leave

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it. I’m not arguing with anybody. I’m not forcing my point of view, but this is based on my experience

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so far and what I’ve done. That’s what you can never argue with. And I would be curious,

00:12:36 ►

how did high school kids and young people respond to this as you got to go out to those places?

00:12:42 ►

Here’s the thing. Shamanism has many definitions.

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There’s the wounded healer.

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One of the primary definitions of shamanism is being a bridge.

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So in my case, which I’ve managed to do, knock on wood.

00:12:59 ►

That was on my head, by the way.

00:13:04 ►

Okay, so shamanism is a bridge.

00:13:10 ►

So traditionally shamans would go visit cosmic realms,

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visionary realms, multiple dimensions,

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whatever their experience happens to be,

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soul retrieval, whatever they happen to be doing,

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go out to these places that have a completely different set of rules of what reality really is,

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sometimes quite insane or seemingly so,

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get the knowledge,

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and then come back,

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and share it,

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and make the connection between there,

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wherever that is,

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infinitely,

00:13:34 ►

and coming back,

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to bring that knowledge.

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And to be able to,

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truly in shamanism,

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to be able to go out and be completely psycho,

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and navigate these psycho places, I’m being a little facetious, but to navigate these places, and then to go out and be completely psycho and navigate these psycho places I’m being a little

00:13:46 ►

facetious but to navigate these places

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and then to come back and be like sort of totally

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normal in the world

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that is what shamanism

00:13:54 ►

is really all about is all of that

00:13:56 ►

so it’s all about bridging

00:13:57 ►

so what I’ve been working on a lot is

00:14:00 ►

bridging

00:14:00 ►

particularly so in

00:14:04 ►

my writing life Ray Bradbury was one of my mentors.

00:14:07 ►

Charles Schultz,

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Charlie Brown was a dear,

00:14:08 ►

he was like an uncle slash dad to me.

00:14:11 ►

Chuck Champlin,

00:14:12 ►

who was a leading LA Times film critic

00:14:13 ►

for 25 years.

00:14:15 ►

These guys all took me in

00:14:16 ►

years and years ago.

00:14:17 ►

I was the youngest,

00:14:18 ►

they became my colleagues.

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They were my mentors,

00:14:21 ►

they became my colleagues

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and I was the youngest workshop leader

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for 15 years

00:14:24 ►

at the Santa Barbara Writers writers conference which is major and um in the shamanic slash entheogenic

00:14:32 ►

world i have other mentors uh stanley krippner is a very very dear friend of mine we’re fans of

00:14:37 ►

each other we just love the hell out of each other land without evil is one of his favorite books and

00:14:41 ►

i’ve been told by a mutual friend he has it up on his mantelpiece in a place of honor.

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And he told me he’s read it twice, and he loves it, and he recommends it to everybody.

00:14:52 ►

Well, my latest book, which, by the way, if these go in order, thank you, Lorenzo.

00:14:57 ►

I heard he gave me a really good plug for this.

00:14:59 ►

So my latest book is called Nothing, which is a sequel to Dreamland, and it’s a book about computer-generated dreaming. I wrote the first book with a very dear friend of mine. He left the planet about 10 years

00:15:10 ►

ago, but he was a famous DJ back in the 70s. He was one of the very first people to break,

00:15:15 ►

like Hendrix and Zeppelin on FM radio. He was big in Pittsburgh, and it was a big transmitter,

00:15:22 ►

so he was brother love. And as a minor, minor little side story, he was brother love and he’d go around in robes, you know, and he’d have all his crew with him.

00:15:29 ►

And he was like Mr. Psychedelic guy.

00:15:30 ►

He loved to smoke weed.

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But he never did any psychedelics.

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Until he met me.

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And I took him on his first mushroom trip.

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And that was a whole, we had a blast.

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But anyway, we wrote that book.

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And now there’s a computer game called Counter-Strike.

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Okay. My nephew, he’s not my nephew by blood, but he’s my nephew for all intents and purposes. As a

00:15:54 ►

matter of fact, his middle name is Matthew after me. Him and his older brother was there last night.

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You didn’t really get to meet him, but he looks like Jesus. I tease him. I always call him Jesus and then he calls me Uncle Moses.

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But Jordy, the younger one,

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is one of the top three

00:16:09 ►

international Counter-Strike players

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in the world.

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And Stan Krippner,

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aside from being the guy

00:16:18 ►

who brought the Shaman Rolling Thunder

00:16:20 ►

to the Grateful Dead,

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he did big thought experiments

00:16:24 ►

at Grateful Dead concerts.

00:16:27 ►

He’s best buddies with Mickey Hart.

00:16:29 ►

He ran the Maimonides Dream Research Institute

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in New York in the 70s for like 10 years.

00:16:34 ►

Stan’s a legend,

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and he’s just an amazing, wonderful person.

00:16:39 ►

Like I said, we just…

00:16:40 ►

I have a similar love affair with Jim Fadiman.

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I can tell you Jim Fadiman stories too.

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We got these really deep connections that go back

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Before we even realized it

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But anyway, in this book Nothing

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Stan agreed to be a character

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And it’s named after my nephew

00:16:54 ►

Jordan Nothing Gilbert from Counter-Strike

00:16:57 ►

Right?

00:16:57 ►

And Jordy’s like 25 now

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And Stan is like the elder elder

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And I’m in between

00:17:03 ►

And one of my purposes in the book was

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to make that connection that that bridge between Stan the legend and Geordie the legend and there’s

00:17:11 ►

like 60 years between them and I happen to be 61 myself so I’m like right in the middle but

00:17:15 ►

I love these guys and I have very deep connections with them in a deep way so that was a big part of

00:17:20 ►

my book of writing nothing and it starts off with a computer generated dreaming and the leftovers from

00:17:26 ►

that,

00:17:26 ►

that came in dreamland and,

00:17:29 ►

uh,

00:17:30 ►

it ends with ayahuasca.

00:17:31 ►

I’ll just say that.

00:17:32 ►

And I,

00:17:33 ►

I,

00:17:33 ►

I can,

00:17:34 ►

I can just imagine what Lorenzo said and I won’t,

00:17:36 ►

so I won’t get into that,

00:17:37 ►

but,

00:17:37 ►

um,

00:17:38 ►

it’s all about bridging.

00:17:39 ►

Yeah.

00:17:39 ►

Lorenzo actually called it the best thing he’d ever read about an ayahuasca

00:17:43 ►

experience,

00:17:44 ►

which is about as high a praise you’re going to get for anything.

00:17:48 ►

Especially from him, right?

00:17:49 ►

Mr. Jaded, so to speak.

00:17:52 ►

And, you know, through the years, aside from the different studies I’ve done, I’ve worked in a number of different traditions.

00:17:57 ►

I even took a very intense two-year shamanic study course where I got to do the whole Weechel pilgrimage, the peyote hunt, the all-night ceremony, the pilgrimage.

00:18:07 ►

That’s where I got this, you know, Mount K-Mato.

00:18:11 ►

And I’ve done all those things.

00:18:13 ►

And actually at the peak of it, there was a two-year period where I sort of kept track

00:18:17 ►

and I was doing ayahuasca 30 times a year in like three different traditions at the peak of it,

00:18:23 ►

along with tons of other things.

00:18:23 ►

in like three different traditions at the peak of it,

00:18:24 ►

along with tons of other things.

00:18:31 ►

So it’s really spoken to me, and it’s become my place,

00:18:35 ►

and I feel it’s really important to carry on and bridge and share with this great work that you guys are doing.

00:18:37 ►

And I’m happy to have survived the leap from 1.0 to 2.0.

00:18:42 ►

You made it, baby.

00:18:45 ►

Speaking of,

00:18:45 ►

with that many different traditions

00:18:48 ►

that you’re working with and presumably

00:18:49 ►

different plant medicines, did you have trouble

00:18:52 ►

navigating between these different worlds?

00:18:54 ►

Because sometimes traditions

00:18:56 ►

can be rather strict about how and what

00:18:58 ►

they work.

00:18:59 ►

Interesting. That’s a good question. You’re very good, by the way.

00:19:02 ►

I’ve done tons of interviews.

00:19:04 ►

Thank you for that. Here’s a good question. You’re very good, by the way. I’ve done tons of interviews. So thank you for that. So here’s the thing. Here’s the thing that I’ve gone through.

00:19:25 ►

personal coach, someone who worked with big Hollywood movie stars and producers,

00:19:33 ►

things of that nature. And she had some other clients and anybody who worked with Ayahuasca,

00:19:37 ►

she told him, stop, you can’t be doing that. It’s messing you up. Don’t do it.

00:19:45 ►

Every single one except me. And she told me to keep working with it. And she pushed pushed me and I worked with her for four or five years

00:19:47 ►

once a week, an hour session

00:19:49 ►

it was expensive but she was good

00:19:50 ►

and I struggled for three or four years

00:19:54 ►

with the process of ayahuasca

00:19:56 ►

and her process of finding the wounds

00:20:00 ►

and the traumas that needed to be found

00:20:02 ►

she was more like a surgeon

00:20:04 ►

ayahuasca brings everything up it just throws it in your face and goes deal with it right but she was very precise and the traumas that needed to be found. She loved it. She was more like a surgeon.

00:20:06 ►

Ayahuasca brings everything up.

00:20:07 ►

It just throws it in your face and goes, deal with it, right?

00:20:11 ►

But she was very precise, and she encouraged me,

00:20:15 ►

and I really went through three or four years of which end is up.

00:20:17 ►

It’s struggling, and I finally brought it all together.

00:20:22 ►

So ultimately, in the end, the whole process of growth is the same.

00:20:26 ►

The goals are the same. The approaches are,

00:20:33 ►

there’s a multitude of approaches. And I’ve done, over the years, I’ve done tons and tons of personal therapy with people. And I know now, for the most part, which psychedelics can be used in

00:20:39 ►

which way, at what point, to help somebody to get to a certain place by ultimately following the same process which underlies it all.

00:20:48 ►

And it all has to do with personality and integration.

00:20:53 ►

I won’t get into that now.

00:20:54 ►

That’s like, you want to do a podcast, I know we can do that,

00:20:57 ►

but that goes on very deeply.

00:20:59 ►

But the point is there is actually a process,

00:21:03 ►

and when I first connected with Terrence McKenna to find

00:21:05 ►

out that there could actually be spirituality

00:21:07 ►

and psychedelics for me was a huge revelation

00:21:09 ►

because I had an insane

00:21:11 ►

younger childhood with no guidance and I was doing

00:21:13 ►

some really crazy kamikaze shit

00:21:15 ►

back then

00:21:16 ►

maybe I still do it sometimes now

00:21:19 ►

but anyway the fact that there was

00:21:22 ►

that and then when I started learning from the shamans and

00:21:23 ►

this coach I’ve managed to bring it all together now.

00:21:26 ►

And it’s also infused my writing.

00:21:29 ►

I also want to mention very quickly, this is in my fantastic fiction book, something you said.

00:21:37 ►

One of the core aspects of shamanic thought is the journey to the underworld.

00:21:44 ►

In South America, you get swallowed by the jaguar. the underworld where you get in in south america you get swallowed

00:21:46 ►

by the jaguar other places you get dismembered other places they take all your bones out and

00:21:51 ►

replace them with crystals but it’s all the same thing ultimately being swallowed by the jaguar

00:21:56 ►

that whole concept well that concept which goes back pretty much to prehistoric primeval times is actually the core of Joseph

00:22:05 ►

Campbell’s hero’s journey.

00:22:08 ►

That’s where it really came from.

00:22:10 ►

And if anybody spends any time

00:22:12 ►

studying Campbell,

00:22:13 ►

particularly the hero with a thousand faces,

00:22:16 ►

you will find all those elements

00:22:18 ►

are actually shamanic.

00:22:19 ►

And he even probably even at some point

00:22:22 ►

I’m sure he’s come out and even said it.

00:22:23 ►

But that was another thing.

00:22:32 ►

And so the whole creativity and the shamanic exploration I was doing and I was also exploring the whole creativity of writing.

00:22:35 ►

I’ve managed to now over all these years, get it all together.

00:22:38 ►

So now I have a very good grasp of it.

00:22:41 ►

Wow, that is very powerful.

00:22:43 ►

And it does go all the way back. Orpheus had to go to Hades to find his love.

00:22:46 ►

Exactly. Yes.

00:22:48 ►

And so I think something that happened in the generation before mine,

00:22:53 ►

we got to see in Zig Zag Zen that it was psychedelics

00:22:56 ►

that helped turn on an entire generation

00:22:58 ►

to the possibilities of Zen Buddhism and Buddhist practice.

00:23:01 ►

And it feels like for my generation,

00:23:04 ►

there is more, these

00:23:06 ►

psychedelics helped us to understand about the shamanism that people are now talking about. I

00:23:10 ►

think there are probably a lot of people listening right now who are curious, who know these drugs

00:23:14 ►

are helpful, but would like to figure out ways that they could make rituals for themselves,

00:23:18 ►

but also to find a path that might work for them. What would be your advice to a young seeker who

00:23:24 ►

these words are

00:23:25 ►

really resonating for? I’ve had their mushroom trips, but want to take it to the next level,

00:23:28 ►

maybe that doesn’t involve drugs or involve drugs in a different way.

00:23:32 ►

That’s very good. At the risk of sounding extremely modest, I suggest reading my books,

00:23:37 ►

particularly Spirit Matters, my memoir, because I wrote that not only as a memoir,

00:23:43 ►

but I wrote it as somewhat of a guidebook for younger people.

00:23:47 ►

Like, you know, way back when I was in the crazy younger days,

00:23:50 ►

I got strung out on speed for a while and things got nuts.

00:23:54 ►

And I learned a lot, but I learned the hard way.

00:23:59 ►

So I like to think, and I’ve had this told to me hundreds and hundreds of times,

00:24:03 ►

that people can read that, what I went through with my experiences experiences with what I knew at the time, which wasn’t anything.

00:24:11 ►

Then they can go, okay, I don’t have to do that.

00:24:14 ►

So they can read what I experienced, take off the level of how I got it to that point, and then they can go further without having to go through all that crap. And I’m actually very impressed listening to people last night

00:24:28 ►

when we did our little event there

00:24:29 ►

and listening to what Caitlin had to say

00:24:30 ►

and looking at her and how young she is to me.

00:24:33 ►

And I’m like, wow.

00:24:34 ►

She’s gotten there at this point.

00:24:37 ►

Well, okay.

00:24:38 ►

She got from people like me and other people

00:24:41 ►

like Terrence or whoever what she read

00:24:42 ►

got to that point quickly.

00:24:44 ►

So she’s at that age.

00:24:45 ►

She may be now.

00:24:46 ►

I don’t know how old she is.

00:24:47 ►

She’s mid late 20s, whatever it is.

00:24:49 ►

Right.

00:24:49 ►

For argument’s sake, late 20s.

00:24:51 ►

Well, where I see her now is maybe where I was in my 40s because it took me that long and I didn’t have much to go on.

00:24:58 ►

You know, I was totally on my own.

00:25:00 ►

And I actually when I got really nuts about things after doing a lot of things, I took a break for 13 years.

00:25:09 ►

Wow.

00:25:10 ►

Yeah.

00:25:10 ►

Just felt it necessary.

00:25:12 ►

I wanted to go baseline.

00:25:13 ►

Because I tell people, especially younger people now, you’re getting high all the time.

00:25:17 ►

That’s all cool and good and groovy and everything.

00:25:20 ►

But if you’re getting high all the time, you get to a point where if you come back to baseline consciousness, baseline consciousness actually becomes an altered state.

00:25:27 ►

And we actually go through our lives going through altered states.

00:25:31 ►

And there are subtleties that you don’t realize in the beginning until you spend a lot of time.

00:25:36 ►

And for me, for better or for worse, I’ve always been a kamikaze.

00:25:40 ►

And I’m a renowned hardhead.

00:25:43 ►

And most things I’ve’ve blown my brains out,

00:25:46 ►

and then, oh, microdosing?

00:25:47 ►

Oh, what’s that?

00:25:48 ►

Oh, okay, I’ll try that,

00:25:49 ►

and that’d be like some years after

00:25:50 ►

repeated me blowing my brains out, you know?

00:25:54 ►

But it’s,

00:25:57 ►

to read and study and find out,

00:26:00 ►

the important thing of this work is integrity,

00:26:04 ►

and I’ve known through the years Now, the important thing of this work is integrity.

00:26:10 ►

And I’ve known through the years a number of people who get what I call guru-itis.

00:26:12 ►

And it drives me nuts.

00:26:15 ►

Now, I’m a writing mentor.

00:26:17 ►

I’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of writing students.

00:26:18 ►

And I’ve been teaching all the years and all that.

00:26:20 ►

And if you want to call me a writing mentor, that’s okay.

00:26:21 ►

I’m okay with that.

00:26:23 ►

I’ve had Ray Bradbury as a mentor.

00:26:25 ►

I’ve had all these guys, right? And I’m carrying on what they taught me and carrying it forward. So you can call me a

00:26:29 ►

writing mentor. I’m okay with that. But when I start to get made into a guru, that’s when I back

00:26:35 ►

off. And I was actually about 10 years ago, I was leading ayahuasca sessions for four or five years

00:26:39 ►

and these people started really making me into a guru. So I bailed. Because they get caught up

00:26:47 ►

and they don’t realize the power of the plants.

00:26:49 ►

And in my humble opinion,

00:26:50 ►

when you’re doing this best work,

00:26:52 ►

you are really channeling.

00:26:55 ►

You’re bringing it through.

00:26:56 ►

And I always love to make this reference.

00:27:00 ►

I do not consider myself a genius.

00:27:05 ►

I’ll own the fact that I’m a legend in my own mind,

00:27:08 ►

and that’s okay.

00:27:08 ►

That’s my playground.

00:27:10 ►

But some years ago,

00:27:12 ►

they did a survey of all the geniuses

00:27:14 ►

they could find in the world at the time.

00:27:16 ►

And the one thing that they all had in common,

00:27:18 ►

every one of them,

00:27:19 ►

every one of them said,

00:27:20 ►

it ain’t me.

00:27:23 ►

So when I’m in my element,

00:27:24 ►

when I’m lecturing, whether it’s at a writers conference

00:27:26 ►

or at public think for shamanism or whatever

00:27:28 ►

it is

00:27:29 ►

I never rehearse I don’t write anything down

00:27:32 ►

I know this stuff I’ve been living it

00:27:34 ►

I am it

00:27:35 ►

funny little story I could tell you in a minute

00:27:38 ►

but I am it and I know it

00:27:40 ►

so when people come at me now I

00:27:42 ►

know I get tapped in

00:27:44 ►

and sometimes I surprise the hell out of myself what comes out of my mouth and I know it. So when people come at me, now I know I get tapped in.

00:27:46 ►

And sometimes I surprise the hell out of myself with what comes out of my mouth.

00:27:48 ►

You know?

00:27:49 ►

Because it is.

00:27:50 ►

It’s beyond me

00:27:51 ►

and I’m just figuring out

00:27:52 ►

how to tune into that place on the dial

00:27:55 ►

to get that information.

00:27:57 ►

It’s a little bit of a quick funny side story.

00:27:58 ►

I won’t go too long.

00:28:00 ►

Years ago when I was married

00:28:02 ►

and I went to the jungle

00:28:02 ►

and I did the whole,

00:28:04 ►

was doing the whole dieta, the ayahuasca dieta.

00:28:07 ►

And when you do it and you’re doing all those plants and you’re on the restricted diet,

00:28:10 ►

you end up smelling like the jungle.

00:28:13 ►

That was part of the diet.

00:28:15 ►

If they’re going to go hunting, they would do the dieta and they wouldn’t have the human smell

00:28:19 ►

so they could go in and literally kind of be invisible in the jungle.

00:28:23 ►

So I came back from the jungle and my girlfriend says to me,

00:28:26 ►

or my wife at the time, she says,

00:28:28 ►

you smell like the jungle.

00:28:31 ►

And I looked down and I gave her these big white eyes and I said,

00:28:34 ►

I am the jungle.

00:28:36 ►

That got her excited in a good way.

00:28:38 ►

I bet.

00:28:39 ►

Yeah.

00:28:40 ►

So it is universal.

00:28:43 ►

There’s a lot out there.

00:28:44 ►

I’ve seen connections now that I did not know

00:28:47 ►

and so for me it’s very important

00:28:48 ►

to reach out to young people so they can understand

00:28:51 ►

and the integrity

00:28:53 ►

is the

00:28:55 ►

utmost importance

00:28:56 ►

there have been shamans in South America and these women

00:28:59 ►

go and then they take advantage of them

00:29:00 ►

and these women are like oh they have the ayahuasca experience

00:29:03 ►

and their heart opens because ayahuasca is about opening the heart and they have this heart opening experience and they

00:29:07 ►

look up and there’s a shaman and then they get this attachment. You know like kids in school,

00:29:11 ►

right? You fall in love with the teachers and all that shit, right? The hot teachers, right?

00:29:14 ►

Like that. And then the ones who are at a particular level who don’t really have integrity

00:29:19 ►

can take advantage and that to me is like the ultimate, ultimate, ultimate cardinal sin.

00:29:25 ►

Same with being a writing teacher.

00:29:26 ►

I’ve worked with a lot of people with their memoirs

00:29:29 ►

and they’re opening themselves to me

00:29:30 ►

and they’re totally being vulnerable with me

00:29:32 ►

and to take advantage of that is so wrong.

00:29:37 ►

So it’s very important.

00:29:38 ►

Anybody you know, if you’re working with them

00:29:40 ►

in any sort of mentor position to have that integrity,

00:29:44 ►

this is the most important thing and people have to know that they’re working with them in any sort of mentor position to have that integrity, this is the most important thing.

00:29:46 ►

And people have to know that they’re safe with you.

00:29:48 ►

When you’re doing an ayahuasca session, if you’re leading a session, you have to make sure it’s a safe container.

00:29:52 ►

You have to make sure they can be vulnerable.

00:29:55 ►

And that’s important.

00:29:55 ►

And there’s a lot of people out there who have guru-itis.

00:30:00 ►

One more little side thing.

00:30:01 ►

Don’t hit me again.

00:30:04 ►

I’ve been a burning man twice

00:30:06 ►

and i was speaking about shamanism as a matter of fact and um i was there a few years ago and

00:30:12 ►

i was walking around and there were all these gurus with their followers and dude it almost

00:30:17 ►

turned my stomach and now that i’m older and i’m jaded i’m like man you don’t even know what you’re

00:30:22 ►

talking about you know and all your sheep that are following you.

00:30:25 ►

And it’s kind of really a turn off for me.

00:30:27 ►

So it’s sort of one of my little pet peeves.

00:30:31 ►

The other one, and I’ll stop again.

00:30:33 ►

I promise you I will.

00:30:33 ►

But this is a very important one.

00:30:36 ►

The way that ayahuasca has been treated by Hollywood makes me totally insane.

00:30:45 ►

It’s misrepresented.

00:30:47 ►

Now, I got no bones to say I’m an authority on shamanism

00:30:51 ►

and no bones about saying I’m an authority on ayahuasca.

00:30:55 ►

Even the guys in the jungle, the guys that take care of me,

00:30:57 ►

they all give me the top-notch respect

00:31:00 ►

because I’ve taken everything they can throw at me.

00:31:03 ►

Now, I was a big fan of Breaking Bad.

00:31:07 ►

I love that show for numerous reasons,

00:31:10 ►

being a writer, all that stuff.

00:31:12 ►

And there’s another show on called The Path.

00:31:15 ►

And the character who was Jesse in Breaking Bad

00:31:18 ►

is in The Path.

00:31:20 ►

And I watched like the first or second episode

00:31:22 ►

and they had this thing where he goes off

00:31:24 ►

to this ayahuasca session.

00:31:25 ►

It was such bullshit.

00:31:27 ►

I got really pissed off.

00:31:28 ►

I was with my friends.

00:31:28 ►

I turned off the TV and I just started raging.

00:31:31 ►

You know, they had this like guru guy in a robe

00:31:33 ►

playing stupid music and hot chicks dancing.

00:31:35 ►

It was total bullshit.

00:31:37 ►

And I saw another one, some show,

00:31:40 ►

Don Cheadle was in it and they were a corporate thing

00:31:42 ►

and they all went off for a night and did ayahuasca

00:31:44 ►

and it was bullshit

00:31:45 ►

and it made me crazy it made me nuts because it’s

00:31:48 ►

not it

00:31:48 ►

misrepresents the reality

00:31:51 ►

the true reality of it and it makes me

00:31:53 ►

crazy so it’s been one of my really pet peeves

00:31:56 ►

I was doing an interview last year and I

00:31:57 ►

and it was being recorded and I started going off

00:32:00 ►

and I started saying a lot of bad words

00:32:01 ►

because I got so passionate about it so I’m

00:32:04 ►

it’s one of my things.

00:32:06 ►

That’s crap.

00:32:07 ►

It’s not the real thing.

00:32:09 ►

And it’s important for me to people have truth.

00:32:18 ►

Do you have any favorite representations you’ve seen, either fictional or in a documentary that you think are good, helpful learning experiences?

00:32:19 ►

Yeah.

00:32:25 ►

I mean, again, sorry to be Mr. Plugger, but my work.

00:32:39 ►

I’ve struggled all of my writing career to take those things that are often non-rational and hard to articulate and put them in a way using words and metaphor that people can have some sense of what the experience is about without having to be there.

00:32:41 ►

So there are those. A friend of mine, Setti Gersh, I can’t remember his last name.

00:32:47 ►

He’s going to kill me.

00:32:48 ►

But he did a nice little documentary on ayahuasca.

00:32:51 ►

He’s also a specialist in Indian keros.

00:32:55 ►

And I’ve studied a lot of them too.

00:32:58 ►

So that’s been a pretty good one.

00:33:01 ►

And there are some other ones that are good.

00:33:04 ►

But in terms of the mainstream media

00:33:06 ►

and what they think is ayahuasca

00:33:08 ►

and what is it in the representations,

00:33:09 ►

like I said, it just makes me nuts.

00:33:11 ►

So if I get any opportunity to change that,

00:33:14 ►

I’m going to do it because

00:33:15 ►

people can go off

00:33:17 ►

on these weird things and they hear a little

00:33:20 ►

something or I’ve got enraged

00:33:22 ►

a few times. There was someone, I’m not going to mention

00:33:24 ►

any names, but I was in the jungle with someone some years ago and we were doing five sessions as a group and

00:33:30 ►

they only did three and then they came back and wrote this book on ayahuasca like they were a

00:33:34 ►

guru and me and my mentors we went little nuts so it’s been very important for me to represent in

00:33:41 ►

the right way and I think my memoir again again, Spirit Matters, shows my path.

00:33:48 ►

Shows me from being a little kid first hyperventilating, you know, and then sniffing glue, and then

00:33:54 ►

discovering, you know, acid and all that.

00:33:57 ►

It’s all in there.

00:33:58 ►

So to me, it’s important.

00:34:00 ►

And it’s not something, if you continue on this path, you’re going to get opened up in ways you may or may not like.

00:34:06 ►

And if you continue to push the envelope,

00:34:09 ►

then you’re going to hit the dark.

00:34:12 ►

And you have to hit the dark.

00:34:13 ►

If you really want to grow in spirit,

00:34:15 ►

you have to experience the light and the dark.

00:34:17 ►

And if you continue with ayahuasca, it’s going to take you to both places.

00:34:20 ►

And you’re going to have those moments.

00:34:22 ►

Terrence McCann, I forget how he articulated it,

00:34:24 ►

but he used to say, if you don’t have that moment where you think,

00:34:26 ►

oh shit, what did I do this for and I took too much,

00:34:28 ►

then you didn’t do enough.

00:34:29 ►

So if you don’t have those moments.

00:34:31 ►

And when you learn the light and the dark,

00:34:35 ►

then you can find the center because the center is really where it’s at.

00:34:39 ►

And I know people who, oh, I just want to feel good

00:34:41 ►

and I just want to do ecstasy and I just want to embrace the light.

00:34:44 ►

Sorry, folks, but that’s bullshit.

00:34:47 ►

Yes, embrace it and love it, but also the same for the dark

00:34:51 ►

because you cannot have one without the other, and in the end, they’re ultimately equal.

00:34:55 ►

And for me personally, I always love to say fear and death are my two greatest teachers.

00:35:00 ►

And if you don’t embrace the dark, you’re missing the point

00:35:03 ►

because you’ve got to be able to navigate the light and the dark equally from that center point.

00:35:08 ►

Do you hear that a lot from people coming to you saying, well, I had this one bad experience, so I’m never going back again?

00:35:15 ►

Absolutely.

00:35:15 ►

Absolutely.

00:35:16 ►

And I’m often – well, I’ve also seen people like one guy had a really bad problem with alcohol.

00:35:26 ►

He did one ayahuasca session, got his ass beat,

00:35:30 ►

and that was the end of his alcohol problem.

00:35:34 ►

Here’s the thing.

00:35:36 ►

People would say through the years, oh, I did acid.

00:35:39 ►

It was bad acid.

00:35:40 ►

I had a bad trip.

00:35:40 ►

That’s bullshit.

00:35:42 ►

You had the psychological stuff that was inside of you,

00:35:45 ►

your shadow stuff, which is buried,

00:35:47 ►

which this is really ultimately all shadow work,

00:35:49 ►

is buried.

00:35:50 ►

And shadow is what you don’t want to see in yourself

00:35:52 ►

and what you deny.

00:35:54 ►

So there’s a thing I’m sure you and listeners have heard,

00:35:58 ►

the whole concept of set and setting, right?

00:36:01 ►

Well, where’s your head at?

00:36:02 ►

And what’s going on below the surface?

00:36:04 ►

And, you know,

00:36:05 ►

I’m just, I’m just saying this stuff. If you are somebody who happened to be molested by a child,

00:36:09 ►

then you, and, uh, and you buried that your whole life and you have some weird behavior and you

00:36:13 ►

don’t know why for whatever reason. And then you do something like ayahuasca or acid, um, and that

00:36:19 ►

comes up and you, where did that come from? Right. And you can have a really horrible experience,

00:36:21 ►

and where did that come from, right?

00:36:23 ►

And you can have a really horrible experience.

00:36:27 ►

But ultimately, and I can say this for sure with ayahuasca,

00:36:32 ►

the darkest, horrible experiences are probably some of the most beneficial once you integrate it and you realize that you called out an aspect of your shadow

00:36:37 ►

that you were denying.

00:36:38 ►

So, you know, when you’re in the jungle and you’re drinking

00:36:41 ►

and you’re doing the dieta and you’re having a limited diet

00:36:43 ►

and you’re doing these other plants and this stuff comes up and you’re by yourself.

00:36:46 ►

There’s nobody to project your shit onto.

00:36:47 ►

There’s nobody to blame but yourself.

00:36:49 ►

And you’re with yourself and you realize, my God, geez, give yourself a break.

00:36:55 ►

You know, cut yourself some slack.

00:36:57 ►

So even bad experiences are good.

00:37:00 ►

But you have to be very careful when you’re facilitating, particularly like with ayahuasca.

00:37:04 ►

You can’t be taking anything like any SSRIs or MDMA or anything like that that affects serotonin.

00:37:09 ►

You’re looking for trouble, and you can go into convulsions and die.

00:37:13 ►

So you have to be very aware of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it,

00:37:17 ►

and you have to be prepared to deal with what’s going to come up.

00:37:20 ►

So when I screen people for things, I do a good check.

00:37:23 ►

If you just had some bad experience

00:37:25 ►

if you were raped two weeks ago you’re gonna flip out in a session because it’s gonna come out

00:37:29 ►

um you know so it’s all about learning another thing of shamanism is that shamanism is about

00:37:36 ►

mastering energy and the path the shamanic path is called the power path and you’re trying to

00:37:42 ►

find that center that i’ve been mentioning on and off here. When you find that center,

00:37:45 ►

that’s your place of power.

00:37:47 ►

What happens in the middle of a hurricane?

00:37:50 ►

Nada, right?

00:37:52 ►

That’s the place of power.

00:37:53 ►

You’re not moved.

00:37:53 ►

So if you’re traveling through

00:37:54 ►

a heavenly, beautiful, colored realm,

00:37:58 ►

or you’re in the darker steps of hell,

00:37:59 ►

which is some of the most sickest,

00:38:00 ►

twisted city you’ve ever seen,

00:38:02 ►

if you’ve had enough experience,

00:38:03 ►

you realize you’re navigating.

00:38:06 ►

And even though you can enjoy one

00:38:07 ►

and have horrible feelings in the other one,

00:38:09 ►

you know how to stay in the center

00:38:11 ►

throughout both of them

00:38:12 ►

and you stay that way and you learn.

00:38:14 ►

Something you said earlier

00:38:15 ►

made me think about this too.

00:38:16 ►

I want to mention very briefly.

00:38:18 ►

In indigenous cultures,

00:38:19 ►

particularly in South America,

00:38:21 ►

in indigenous cultures,

00:38:23 ►

sleeping,

00:38:28 ►

dreaming, waking consensual reality,

00:38:31 ►

for them, they’re all the same.

00:38:33 ►

It’s a continuum.

00:38:34 ►

And they carry the same weight.

00:38:39 ►

So they can give their dreaming as much attention and energy as they can in their visions.

00:38:41 ►

And you know yourself, anybody who’s listening knows,

00:38:43 ►

you could be in a dream and be doing the weirdest shit right floating or flying or breathing underwater and in that moment it’s

00:38:50 ►

real to you and you’re totally accepting of it and there’s lots of reasons for that which i won’t get

00:38:54 ►

into now that’s a whole nother lecture but the point is for them um everything carries the same

00:38:59 ►

weight so what has happened to me through all my years of experience with with psychedelics and

00:39:03 ►

bringing in the spirituality is that what happened to me in my dreams and in my visions began to cross over into my waking state.

00:39:12 ►

And they all started to blend together.

00:39:14 ►

When they started really doing that in earnest is when the magic started really coming into my life, my waking life.

00:39:21 ►

And I’ve been through some tough situations that I would not have been able to survive if I hadn’t have done the work I had done. That’s a fact. So states of consciousness

00:39:32 ►

is a continuum and they give them all the same amount of weight and you start to learn the

00:39:37 ►

crossing of the realities. And I have a whole thing on that too, but I won’t go off on a tangent

00:39:41 ►

this time. That is fascinating stuff because it’s hard for some people in this current generation

00:39:50 ►

because it’s so often that we have some of our first spiritual experiences on a psychedelic

00:39:55 ►

at a party or at a festival.

00:39:56 ►

It’s not a safe space for it, and there aren’t that many safe spaces for it.

00:39:59 ►

Here, Lorenzo has at least two copies of Aldous Huxley’s The Island Right Here, beautiful little old editions too.

00:40:07 ►

And I still think it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen written of what a psychedelic society could look like in the future where it has integrated points in your life where you have a certain experience.

00:40:18 ►

What would you lay out in your ideal world of a society that has a more integrated approach to these drugs and to these practices.

00:40:29 ►

Yeah, well, a big part of it, which I’m very pleased to see now, is the acceptance that’s starting to happen.

00:40:35 ►

You know, I’m familiar with Charlie Grobe.

00:40:39 ►

So Charlie’s another good friend of mine.

00:40:41 ►

And Charlie’s done mine and Lorenzo’s.

00:40:44 ►

But, you know, we have adventures in history

00:40:46 ►

that you want to know about.

00:40:48 ►

I’ll get us all in trouble.

00:40:50 ►

But anyway,

00:40:51 ►

point being,

00:40:52 ►

I’ve had deep, deep, deep respect

00:40:54 ►

for Charlie for his work

00:40:55 ►

because he’s been

00:40:56 ►

taking the medical approach.

00:40:59 ►

You know, he did

00:40:59 ►

the first study of

00:41:02 ►

mushrooms for death anxiety.

00:41:07 ►

So Charlie’s been pushing it in that direction

00:41:09 ►

with the legitimacy of medical,

00:41:14 ►

doctor-approved things,

00:41:17 ►

and I’ve been pushing it in the literary front,

00:41:19 ►

and we cheer each other on in different ways

00:41:21 ►

because I’m taking it into the mainstream in another way.

00:41:26 ►

And as I mentioned last night,

00:41:28 ►

I was very pleased when Spirit Matters won the San Diego Book Award

00:41:33 ►

for the best spiritual book because it was all about my drug experiences.

00:41:36 ►

And it starts with an ayahuasca session.

00:41:38 ►

It ends with the ayahuasca diet.

00:41:39 ►

And here I am in San Diego, and there’s a lot of Christians

00:41:42 ►

and right-wing people and all that stuff here.

00:41:44 ►

And so to be able to win and be taken as a spiritual book and not as a drug book was

00:41:50 ►

very pleasing to me.

00:41:51 ►

And that was one of my goals.

00:41:52 ►

Just like I mentioned with Land Without Evil where I had visionary experience, but it was

00:41:55 ►

all fasting and dancing, which allowed me to get into schools.

00:41:58 ►

It’s funny, those little things, you look for the cracks when you can get in and break

00:42:02 ►

open new ground.

00:42:04 ►

So to have it in a structured way, and one of the conflicts between

00:42:08 ►

Huxley and Tim Leary is that Tim Leary just wanted to turn everybody on.

00:42:12 ►

Huxley was totally against that. He was like, this needs to be really structured.

00:42:16 ►

One of the other great things that Charlie Grobe

00:42:19 ►

did is he was the chief medical witness in the first ayahuasca case

00:42:23 ►

with the UDVahuasca case with the

00:42:25 ►

UDV. Are you familiar with the details of that?

00:42:29 ►

Yeah, yeah.

00:42:29 ►

So that set the

00:42:31 ►

precedent. This is

00:42:33 ►

religious freedom.

00:42:35 ►

As Casey Hardison will be more than happy to tell

00:42:37 ►

you after his 10 years in the slammer over

00:42:39 ►

in England, they’re in cognitive liberty.

00:42:41 ►

And when you approach it in a way

00:42:43 ►

that is structured, with structure and guidance, which is the most important thing cognitive liberty and when you approach it in a way that is structured with structure and guidance which is the most important thing that’s when you get the things

00:42:50 ►

back then and even when i was doing it um you know when i first did acid it was around 1970 71

00:42:57 ►

and i was in boston and we used to get it from mit and the chemist’s name was my favorite martian

00:43:03 ►

and they were four-way hits.

00:43:06 ►

And it took me doing about eight times before I could handle one.

00:43:09 ►

Wow.

00:43:10 ►

But I was going out and I was blowing my brains out and tripping and I was with some hardcore

00:43:14 ►

people.

00:43:15 ►

And there was no guidance.

00:43:17 ►

There was no, I didn’t know, nobody knew anything.

00:43:19 ►

We were just frying our brains out and I did that for quite a while.

00:43:23 ►

And then when I ended up some years after that taking the break for 13 years, and then when I got exposed to Terrence McKenna and realized there could be spirituality in it, bang, it took me in a whole new direction.

00:43:34 ►

Wow.

00:43:35 ►

Yeah.

00:43:36 ►

It is kind of the hope we hope to see is bringing together all these different models.

00:43:41 ►

You have your literary attack.

00:43:42 ►

Charlie Grobe has his medical attack.

00:43:44 ►

all these different models. You have your literary attack. Charlie Grobe has his medical attack.

00:43:48 ►

And to take something of Huxley’s Brahman approach to psychedelics in a structured,

00:43:53 ►

along with Timothy Leary’s belief that you can put these drugs in the American consciousness and people can take it, which was naive, perhaps, but also really beautiful and trusting of everyone.

00:44:00 ►

And to see those ideas hopefully come together in this third generation, where we take the wisdom of the biochemistry and drug interactions, and then combine that with all of

00:44:09 ►

these practices that have been going on for millennia, where there is a whole other huge

00:44:14 ►

branch of knowledge that is in a silo apart from the peer-reviewed medical research. And the hope

00:44:19 ►

is that, especially here in the West, that we will have more universities that have shamans at them and vice versa.

00:44:26 ►

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting.

00:44:27 ►

In my own experience back,

00:44:29 ►

I have a long experience with technology.

00:44:34 ►

I started off working on the tube equipment

00:44:36 ►

in the Air Force,

00:44:37 ►

and I went through tubes to transistors

00:44:39 ►

to solid states to integrated circuits

00:44:41 ►

to microcomputers to minicomputers

00:44:42 ►

to mainframes back to PCs back to networks.

00:44:45 ►

I was a big IT manager.

00:44:46 ►

So it was great because I learned how energy works because electronics is actually the

00:44:50 ►

study of how electricity works in electronics.

00:44:54 ►

So it was a great basis for the shamanism.

00:44:57 ►

But I was doing things when I was a manager with people because I understood the energetics

00:45:01 ►

between people and shamanism.

00:45:03 ►

And the MBAs and the PhDs were freaking out. They were afraid of me

00:45:06 ►

because they didn’t know how I was doing it

00:45:08 ►

and they thought he must be doing something illegal

00:45:10 ►

and all this crazy stuff that they

00:45:11 ►

couldn’t handle and I was

00:45:14 ►

following shamanic concepts that

00:45:16 ►

I had learned. So

00:45:17 ►

it’s important and I also want to mention that

00:45:20 ►

substances

00:45:21 ►

altered states

00:45:23 ►

aren’t always necessary.

00:45:26 ►

Some people don’t need them.

00:45:28 ►

And the process that goes on underneath

00:45:30 ►

that I referred to about psychological integration

00:45:32 ►

and being on the power path

00:45:34 ►

and becoming a man or a woman of power

00:45:36 ►

doesn’t always need outside help

00:45:41 ►

from psychedelics and plants.

00:45:43 ►

They’re wonderful tools.

00:45:43 ►

It’s my path.

00:45:45 ►

But some people just don’t need it.

00:45:47 ►

People can just do it.

00:45:48 ►

People can do it through yoga, through fasting,

00:45:50 ►

through different types of self-discipline.

00:45:52 ►

As they say, you know, it’s a cliche,

00:45:53 ►

but all roads lead to Rome.

00:45:55 ►

And when you start to understand

00:45:56 ►

the underlying processes of what’s going on,

00:45:59 ►

then you understand and you can talk to different people

00:46:02 ►

and know how to navigate different things

00:46:04 ►

to help them rediscover who they really are.

00:46:07 ►

Because that’s what this is all about.

00:46:09 ►

I’m not learning so much about ayahuasca.

00:46:13 ►

I’m rediscovering the truth.

00:46:17 ►

And for me, when I take ayahuasca,

00:46:20 ►

especially in the jungle,

00:46:22 ►

that to me, in my universe,

00:46:24 ►

is the voice of Mother Earth.

00:46:27 ►

So I can

00:46:27 ►

go down and hang out with Mom and talk to Mom

00:46:29 ►

for a while and say, hey Mom, what’s up?

00:46:32 ►

And

00:46:32 ►

there’s this whole thing

00:46:34 ►

in shamanism or whatever, archetypes

00:46:37 ►

about, there’s the

00:46:39 ►

dark feminine and the light

00:46:41 ►

feminine and the dark masculine and the light

00:46:44 ►

masculine. They’re primary archetypes. Ayahuasca is considered to be the dark feminine and the light feminine and the dark masculine and the light masculine. They’re primary archetypes.

00:46:47 ►

Ayahuasca is considered to be the dark feminine.

00:46:50 ►

And it’s also considered to be a fire medicine.

00:46:55 ►

And fire is transformation and purification and alchemy and all of that stuff.

00:47:02 ►

It’s all tied in the same way.

00:47:05 ►

The first step, burning off that excess.

00:47:08 ►

The dross.

00:47:10 ►

Yeah.

00:47:11 ►

And there are all these things, which I won’t get into now,

00:47:13 ►

but there’s all these things about fire and gold that relate

00:47:16 ►

and the elemental spirits and energies.

00:47:19 ►

As a matter of fact, for the purpose of discussions,

00:47:22 ►

you could say spirit, you could say energy,

00:47:29 ►

they’re the same thing. And when you start to see it and you start to realize that everything is indeed energy and everything you do is energy and everything, everything is energy.

00:47:38 ►

I mean, even now I’m talking into this microphone, right? I’m creating energy with my vocal cords.

00:47:42 ►

It’s going into this thing, you know, it’s getting through process, maybe a little bit of filtering to take out the noise, blah, blah,

00:47:47 ►

blah. You’re storing it there. Whenever, whenever anybody hears this, they’re going to be hearing

00:47:52 ►

what I’m doing here and look at how many permutations and shifts and changes that,

00:47:56 ►

that energy has been through and then, then parlay it out. Right. And there could be, you know,

00:48:01 ►

thousands of people listening to this at the exact same moment. It’s remarkable.

00:48:05 ►

But it’s all energy.

00:48:06 ►

You know?

00:48:07 ►

Totally.

00:48:08 ►

Wow.

00:48:09 ►

That’s beautiful.

00:48:10 ►

Thanks.

00:48:10 ►

It makes me wonder.

00:48:12 ►

You sound like more than most you got a lot of your wisdom directly from people and listening.

00:48:18 ►

But I’m always curious about what books of the old books perhaps were the ones that were really influential for you that was a big shift in mindset when you found well first off i’ve read all the castaneda stuff a bunch of times

00:48:31 ►

and then i read um some critical a lot of critical stuff about him also because he had some integrity

00:48:37 ►

issues which came to light but it doesn’t matter because you can find truth in anything you can

00:48:44 ►

find truth with catholics you can find truth with muslims buddhists it doesn’t matter because you can find truth in anything. You can find truth with Catholics.

00:48:45 ►

You can find truth with Muslims, Buddhists.

00:48:47 ►

It doesn’t matter.

00:48:48 ►

There’s truth everywhere.

00:48:50 ►

But when I went, so then I went through the 13 years of baseline.

00:48:55 ►

And I mean, I wouldn’t even take an aspirin if I had a headache.

00:48:58 ►

I wouldn’t drink caffeine.

00:49:00 ►

I was hardcore and I was a vegetarian.

00:49:01 ►

I was a vegetarian for 23 years but 13 of that

00:49:05 ►

and when I finally

00:49:08 ►

found out

00:49:10 ►

about Terrence McKenna

00:49:11 ►

and I read his Food of the Gods

00:49:13 ►

that

00:49:15 ►

was huge for me

00:49:17 ►

that was my shift

00:49:19 ►

like wow I can trip and there could be spirituality

00:49:22 ►

in it are you kidding me

00:49:23 ►

and I went off on my own.

00:49:26 ►

This is probably 1995.

00:49:28 ►

I spent like a thousand bucks.

00:49:29 ►

I bought the pressure cooker.

00:49:31 ►

I bought all the shit.

00:49:32 ►

And I grew my own mushrooms.

00:49:34 ►

And I went back in with a spiritual intention

00:49:37 ►

and had things just start opening up to me

00:49:39 ►

like you wouldn’t even believe

00:49:40 ►

in ways that you couldn’t even imagine.

00:49:43 ►

And so I thought, okay, this is it.

00:49:46 ►

And I started going further and further along that path.

00:49:48 ►

So that was a good one.

00:49:50 ►

But there’s just tons and tons of books.

00:49:52 ►

When I went to my first entheogenic conference,

00:49:55 ►

which was in 96 up in Frisco,

00:49:58 ►

Terrence was there, Charlie was there,

00:50:00 ►

Sasha Shilgan and Ann Shilgan,

00:50:02 ►

all these people were there.

00:50:04 ►

And I didn’t have any money and I had my credit cards

00:50:06 ►

And I filled two shopping bags

00:50:07 ►

550 bucks worth of books

00:50:09 ►

And I read them all

00:50:10 ►

That’s the spirit

00:50:11 ►

Yeah yeah yeah

00:50:12 ►

So I just noticed Secret Chief

00:50:14 ►

This is a really good one

00:50:16 ►

In fact if I remember correctly this was published by Maps

00:50:18 ►

By Myron Stolaroff

00:50:21 ►

Who Lorenzo knew really well

00:50:22 ►

There are some other ones by Myron Stolaroff, who Lorenzo knew really well.

00:50:26 ►

There are some other ones,

00:50:30 ►

but I’ve been distilling all those things into my own and trying to take it to the next level.

00:50:32 ►

So for me, all of my mentors,

00:50:35 ►

they did the best that they could

00:50:37 ►

with what they had at their disposal.

00:50:40 ►

And then I can take it and I can prove upon it

00:50:42 ►

because I’ve had more at my disposal.

00:50:44 ►

And people like yourself and other younger people can take what I’ve done, like I mentioned earlier, and then take it.

00:50:50 ►

Here, you learn this from me.

00:50:51 ►

You don’t have to go out and get whacked out on a fucking crank, you know, and lose your mind for a while and get paranoid and all that stuff.

00:50:56 ►

You know, no, I did it for you, you know.

00:50:59 ►

So now go on and take it to the next level.

00:51:01 ►

One of the funny things people would tell me is um over the years they’d say

00:51:06 ►

thank you for going to the jungle for us and it took me a few years to really figure it out and

00:51:11 ►

it was true because when you heal yourself you’re healing the collective in one way or another

00:51:15 ►

we’re all connected and when you do this work deeply and you stick with it for a while you’ll

00:51:20 ►

start to see your external realities shift and change. And you’ll see that other people will come into your life that are reflecting those positive

00:51:28 ►

aspects of yourself.

00:51:30 ►

And you get this resonance happening.

00:51:33 ►

I can tell just the way we’re talking and all that and what you’re asking me.

00:51:36 ►

You get me.

00:51:38 ►

You know what I’m saying?

00:51:39 ►

Some people don’t get me.

00:51:40 ►

And people who haven’t been on this path, I spent many years scaring people on purpose.

00:51:50 ►

Now you just do it naturally yeah long story there but then i stopped doing it but i realized i was still scaring them without trying so i had to really ease it out even more and now sometimes

00:51:56 ►

every once in a while people are just afraid of me and it’s because i’m all about the darkness

00:52:01 ►

i was told years ago that one of my purposes is if there’s too much darkness,

00:52:07 ►

my purpose is to bring in the light.

00:52:09 ►

And if there’s too much light, to bring in the darkness.

00:52:11 ►

And I’ve always been drawn to the darkness.

00:52:15 ►

My first short story collection is The Small Dark Room of the Soul.

00:52:19 ►

And I might mangle this quote, but it’s been used by other people.

00:52:22 ►

And it opens and it says,

00:52:22 ►

And I might mangle this quote, but it’s been used by other people. And it opens and it says,

00:52:25 ►

Throughout the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to seek the truth.

00:52:31 ►

Part of that truth lies within a small dark room.

00:52:35 ►

One we are afraid to enter.

00:52:38 ►

Dot, dot, dot, dot.

00:52:39 ►

So I’m drawn.

00:52:40 ►

And when I do work with people and I’ve helped people,

00:52:43 ►

whether it’s an ayahuasca or

00:52:45 ►

some type of therapy whether

00:52:47 ►

psychedelic or not I will

00:52:49 ►

go into the dark

00:52:51 ►

with anybody anywhere

00:52:53 ►

because I’ve

00:52:55 ►

learned it and I grew up with it

00:52:58 ►

and it’s now I realize

00:53:00 ►

that for the most part

00:53:01 ►

all the stuff that you’re afraid of is exactly what you need

00:53:03 ►

to be embracing.

00:53:06 ►

Of course, you’re not going to walk out in front of a Mack truck.

00:53:08 ►

That’s just instinct.

00:53:09 ►

I mean, you know, not like that extreme.

00:53:11 ►

But for the point of the things that you are afraid of is exactly what you should be looking

00:53:16 ►

for because that’s where the growth is.

00:53:18 ►

Wow.

00:53:19 ►

Thank you for that.

00:53:20 ►

That’s a beautiful piece for us, I believe, to stop on.

00:53:24 ►

And thank you so much for your work in

00:53:26 ►

giving words to these concepts because once people hear them for the first time then they’re free to

00:53:31 ►

follow it just like you said about food of the gods ah we can put this drug and spirituality

00:53:36 ►

thing together and your work is taking that to the next level so thank you so much this is

00:53:41 ►

matthew palomary the book is nothing along with many other great books that you heard and we’ll link to

00:53:46 ►

in the podcast notes. Thanks so much for joining

00:53:48 ►

us. Thank you so much for having me and thank

00:53:50 ►

you for being a solid, good, great. You get

00:53:52 ►

A plus for interviews, bro. Thank you.

00:53:54 ►

Cheers. Thanks. Special shout out to Brett.

00:53:57 ►

I’m blank on his last name.

00:53:58 ►

Sorry. Brett Green, my platonic life partner.

00:54:00 ►

Yes. Brett Green, because he kind of

00:54:02 ►

dialed me in with you guys. So a special shout out to Brett

00:54:04 ►

Green. All right.

00:54:05 ►

Thank you, brother.

00:54:05 ►

All right, thank you.

00:54:06 ►

Cheers.

00:54:06 ►

Thanks so much.

00:54:07 ►

Cheers.

00:54:11 ►

Thanks again for listening to Symposia on the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:54:15 ►

Do us a favor.

00:54:17 ►

Go to your favorite podcast app and leave us a rating, leave us a review, or tell your friends.

00:54:22 ►

That’s how you can really help us out.

00:54:27 ►

us a review or tell your friends. That’s how you can really help us out. Thanks to Matt Payne who engineered the sound, Joey Witt for the intro music, California Smile for the outro music,

00:54:32 ►

and Brian Norman who produced the show.

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