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75. Hamilton Souther - Decoding the Infinite Within
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Hamilton Souther is a visionary entrepreneur, author, and shamanic guide known for his work with Amazonian plant medicine and spiritual practices. He is the founder of Blue Morpho, a retreat center in Peru that focuses on healing and personal transformation through Ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies as well as other traditional shamanic practices. He is also an educator of psychedelic facilitation through the Blue Morpho Academy. Hamilton combines his background in Western culture with indigenous Amazonian traditions, bridging the gap for people seeking spiritual growth, healing, and expanded consciousness.
https://bluemorphotours.com/
https://bluemorphoacademy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/maestro_hamilton/
https://www.youtube.com/@BlueMorphoPodcast
https://godai.ai/
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Transcript
Introduction to Pursuit of Infinity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pursuit of Infinity, a podcast where we journey into the landscapes of consciousness and beyond, diving deeper into the realms of psychedelics, metaphysics, and more.
Who is Hamilton Souther?
00:00:11
Speaker
In today's episode, we welcome my teacher and Master Shaman Maestro Hamilton Souther. Hamilton is a visionary entrepreneur, author, and shamanic guide known for his work with Amazonian plant medicine and spiritual practices.
Healing with Ayahuasca and San Pedro
00:00:25
Speaker
He's the founder of Blue Morpho, a retreat center in Peru that focuses on healing and personal transformation through ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies, as well as other traditional shamanic practices. He's also an educator of psychedelic facilitation through the Blue Morpho Academy. Hamilton combines his background in Western culture with indigenous Amazonian traditions, bridging the gap for people seeking spiritual growth, healing and expanded consciousness.
00:00:53
Speaker
But before we get to the conversation, as always, you can visit our website, PursuitOfInfinity.com, where you can listen to the podcast through our integrated media player if you'd prefer that over Spotify, Apple, Audible, or any other podcast platform. You can also find all the places you can follow us and you can reach out to us using our email form and our audio feature.
00:01:15
Speaker
Give us a follow on Instagram at Pursuit of Infinity Pod, and head over to our YouTube channel at youtube dot.com slash at Pursuit of Infinity, where we post all of our episodes and shorts. If you love the show and you want to show us some support, please consider giving us a like, sub, and a five-star rating wherever you listen or watch. And leave us a comment or a review as these things really help to conquer these algorithms and spread our conversations far and wide.
00:01:43
Speaker
If you really love the show and you want to show us some extra support, visit our Patreon at patreon dot.com slash pursuit of infinity to become a patron. We appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy today's episode.
00:02:13
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Pursuit of Infinity. I'm your host,
What is the Path of Heart?
00:02:16
Speaker
Josh. And today I am joined by Maestro Hamilton Souther. Hamilton, thank you so much for joining me today. Hey, Josh. Thank you so much for having me back on the podcast. I'm super excited to be here.
00:02:27
Speaker
I think you're actually the most returned guest starting now with this with this episode. My gratitude. I'm glad I have something to offer. This is my honor. They do. Now, you know through all of my research and you know spiritual prowess on my path, um I've read and I've listened to a lot of people, a lot of mystics, a lot of very intelligent philosophers and theorists. And one of the things that I've noticed, at least in my opinion, on my path that has set certain spiritual leaders apart from others is they speak about service to others and the path of heart.
00:03:13
Speaker
And I had just read both of your books um and you had spoken about the path of heart as being integral to your path and to your shamanic apprenticeship. So can you just sort of lay out to you what is the path of heart?
00:03:32
Speaker
In the simplest terms, the path of heart is a direction that comes from the energetic center inside your heart itself. It goes beyond the mind's thinking about it, and it's something that deeply resonates within you, and you follow it. It's a deep calling that you experience. And going into Julio's teachings, the teacher who took me in and brought me into his lineage,
00:03:59
Speaker
<unk>e The path of heart is the path of divine wisdom, and it's really connecting into source and learning through your connection with source, which comes directly from the heart, all this wisdom that the universe has to teach us, and then synthesizing that into the choices and decisions you make as you go through your life path.
00:04:19
Speaker
And it goes beyond the mindset of the pros and cons and why somebody would do something to something that's just such a deep calling within themselves, that you know it resonates fully within them and they're willing to take risks, et cetera, to make it happen.
00:04:38
Speaker
Now you mentioned the actual heart. Some people might think this is the path of the organ that pumps blood. Some people might take it as more of a spiritual heart or like a metaphorical heart. So what is the relation between the organ heart and this path? It's a great question. You know, think about it like the brain.
00:05:00
Speaker
If you just see there's a brain, and there's an anatomical brain, it has certain purposes that are pretty easy to measure. But when you really get into the intricacies of it, you realize there's a lot more going on, including the connection with consciousness. And I think when we think of the heart, we have to think about it the same way. There's obvious in our culture aspects of our heart that go way beyond just the pumping of blood. And there's a reason why heart is the symbol for love, and it's the great feeling that you get here in your chest when you fall in love and when you have children or you have pets that you just yeah extricably love it, you feel it here in the chest. So I think that now starts to lead from heart pumps blood to heart as a center of something more than just pumping blood.
00:05:46
Speaker
And that's something more is debated in spiritual circles and there's a lot of belief about it. ah For us, what it represents is this deep innate connection with source. Source as an expression of this deep love within us and that bond and connection with both love that we have for others, but also love consciousness.
Psychedelics and Heart Connection
00:06:06
Speaker
And love consciousness is a way of seeing the world in a unique, miraculous way that the universe is ultimately evolving and is whole and is a state of oneness and is a part of something much greater than this binary conflict that a lot of people are experiencing.
00:06:25
Speaker
So I think it's a combination of those things. It's the heart that pumps the blood with this deep connection to other and love that is expressed through not only humans, but lots of other animals. They love their young and it's so obvious in the way that they treat them. And then it's also this connection to a greater form of consciousness that everybody who taps into it, especially through psychedelics and visionary plant medicines agree that there is this state of pervasive love and we connect with it from here. So if we connect with pervasive consciousness from our brains, we connect with pervasive love ah here from the heart and it's something that extends beyond that of just the individual. So this then brings me to the role of psychedelics in the path of heart, ah which you did sort of touch on there. So can you sort of unpack what the role of the psychedelic experience is in the path of art?
00:07:15
Speaker
I think it's a complex experience. Psychedelics and the path of heart first gets you past your mind and most people are just mind dominant. So often people will talk about that in the difficulty during onset. That's their internal battle they're having with going into an altered state, right? So first it's like, you just gotta get past the mind and psychedelics can get you past the mind. ah The second part of it is there's a conflict associated with the mind and psychedelics can help get us past that conflict as well.
00:07:45
Speaker
And so then once you're past the mind and past the conflict, you have this natural balance between your brain and heart. There's a natural coherence that's already there. It's colored by the mind being so dominant that you don't really recognize it. When that mind has been shed and the conflict has been shed, then the heart's just on.
00:08:03
Speaker
And then it helps get us into that kind of connection. And other people have talked about this like brain coherence with the heart. And I just think of it as a balance or an allowance for the brain to register, hey, the heart is more than just pumping blood. It actually has this much greater purpose.
00:08:18
Speaker
Once you get that, which is phenomenal, and you get that tapped in connection to the heart, then you can start to get into the exploration of the heart. And the psychedelic experience, the freed brain and consciousness experience can allow the heart to now grow in its energy field beyond that of the body. And it feels like you're just in a big heart cocoon or a big heart sphere or orb.
00:08:40
Speaker
And it's like you're just you're ah floating in this incredible heart and this love that's associated with it. And with that, people experience the feeling of tremendous protection and safety.
00:08:53
Speaker
and wellness and healing can come through those states. And then one step beyond that, the heart is, it's like a gateway to the rest of the universe. And it's like a safe, protected gateway to the rest of the universe. And so people will express saying that from that expanded heart, they feel like they go into the galaxies or they go into what you know people call outer space or et cetera. That it just seems like there's so much more in those ever fractals that once you get into that heart space, the plant medicines guide you to.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, it seems that when you're in a specially onset of a psychedelic experience, the fear sort of stands in the way of you finding the heart and sometimes people find it difficult to find their heart. um And you know, it's interesting you said that the heart sort of expands envelops you in protection and then allows you to sort of explore the cosmos and explore the universe. is Does that mean to you that the heart, so to speak, is sort of woven within the fabric of reality and the fabric of the universe itself?
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, I do. I think what's keeping us from typically seeing that is the fear. And to touch upon the notion that onset people experience fear, I don't think they're experiencing a fear caused by the psychedelic. I think they're experiencing the fear they're always ah creating.
00:10:19
Speaker
And they're just not aware of it. And all of a sudden, the psychedelic has helped them become aware of more. And the first thing they're confronted with is all this fear because they're creating the fear all the time in their consciousness, not just in their mind. So there's this like fear space that people are in. And then they've normalized it to being like good or bad within that space. And you take the psychedelic or plant medicine onset starts, and then you're just confronted with this fear.
00:10:43
Speaker
And then I think it keeps us from recognizing both the heart, but also the interwoven nature of not only the heart, but the entirety of us with the universe.
How to Integrate Psychedelic Experiences?
00:10:52
Speaker
And in the way we've really been taught language and to think about the universe, we've been taught to think it in objects that are all separate from each other. And that's an illusion, like truly just an illusion of separation that is not true.
00:11:08
Speaker
What is true is that we are universe. We are woven through the universe. I'm not saying we're the whole physical universe. That would be you know too much. That would be grandiose. I'm just saying right here where you are body is actually the universe as well. And it's a very clear interwovenness.
00:11:25
Speaker
they Where you are, our body, you're also Earth, made of the Earth. Where you are a body, you're also made of the universe. So I just think like body, Earth, and universe are all right here. And where the body is heart, it's heart, Earth, and universe. And that connection is what allows that bridge and that ability to explore further to already exist.
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, and I love that you brought up the fact that people often blame the psychedelic itself for the fear that they experience. And I've even seen people that blame the psychedelic itself for the way that they feel after the experience in terms of their own integration. um And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. Well, to start off,
00:12:15
Speaker
you have to take responsibility that you're the one doing it. So I think the first thing in the psychedelic culture that's flipped is that the psychedelic's doing it. You're doing it. The psychedelic is giving you an altered state. If you eat sugar, or you did it, you ate the sugar and now you're having a sugar rush. If you drink caffeine and you get a buzz, you're now buzzed. It's not the caffeine's doing it to me, it's you're running the molecules through your body and you're altering yourself.
00:12:42
Speaker
So the very first thing is a recognition, oh, I've altered myself, not something is doing this to me. nothing' Nothing's being done to you at all. You're doing the whole thing. It's now you plus the molecules of THC or you plus the molecules of psilocybin or some people drink alcohol. You plus the molecules of alcohol are now running it like code, like you run software through a phone. Molecules are like software to us.
00:13:07
Speaker
And so, you know, we ingest these molecules on purpose and the very first thing they do is they give you a diagnostic of how you're doing. They give you a clear diagnostic and most people just don't like the diagnostic report. Imagine if you went to the mechanic and the mechanic plugs in the car to the computer, they turn the car on and the computer runs a diagnostic report and you blame the computer.
00:13:31
Speaker
It's not the computer's fault showing you the the report, only with psychedelics, the way it shows you the report is inside you. It's your fears, your thoughts, your screwed up mind, your twistedness, your shadow, your fears, your sadnesses, your emotions, et cetera. That's what comes up first for people, typically.
00:13:50
Speaker
as they go through that process of onset. The second phase of that is really like the experience itself. Now, you're not in an altered state from reality. You're in a new state of reality. There is only reality. there isn't This is real and that's not real. There's real and then there's really delusional, really fearing, really anxious, really happy, really ecstatic. There's It's just real. So you go into this real state. It's not an altered state. It's a real state. And you have to deal with yourself in that state. And you get the opportunity to do that. And the plants and the psychedelics can actually help you. like We learn how to turn them into allies to help us with that phase. And then the third phase of it,
00:14:33
Speaker
is the post experience. And in the post experience, there's a rebalancing that takes place, there's a regrounding, there's a natural process ah where you, you know, depending on what you've taken, will have a ah very consistent arc associated with it.
00:14:52
Speaker
And again, that's because you've now been altered. So there are ways to support that. There are supplements to support that. There are ways to go through that in a kind of kinder or gentler phase of that. And it's again, it's not, it did it to me. It's I'm doing this. And in what we teach, it's about your intentions. So it's how are you fulfilling your intentions with the support of these plant medicines?
00:15:17
Speaker
And it does seem to that you remove the power from yourself when you blame something as it doing it to you, as opposed to you doing it to yourself. Because when you realize that you are creating the fear, then you can, as you say, learn to turn it down and it gives you the power to not necessarily control the experience, but to have some sort of a role as a co-creator in the experience.
00:15:45
Speaker
We think of it as dancing. So the metaphor that we use down in the indigenous communities is you dance with it. So it's not it doing it to you and you don't do it to it, it's doing it together. And it's finding a rhythm and a movement. And what they mean by dancing isn't like, you know, a set kind of dance that every step is algorithmic and you follow it, but rather it's a dance like a natural flow state and movement with and coming up in energy and coming down in energy and waves and stuff. And so it's just that freedom to engage with it and interact with it and really co-create.
00:16:19
Speaker
Humans right now, for some reason, are in a state of reacting to life. So this blame scenario we're in is there's an outside stimulus and everybody reacts and then they talk about it. And then there's another ah news hype hook and then everybody reacts and talks about it. And now somebody takes a psychedelic and they react to it. So because of that patterning, we get into that idea instead of realizing, oh, my reaction is a kind of creation. I want to flip that idea to I am creating and then ask myself, what am I creating?
00:16:51
Speaker
Am I creating fear? Am I creating anxiety? Am I creating groundedness? Am I creating centeredness? Am I creating with the heart and balance with my brain? I want to ask myself that. What am I creating? And based on what am I creating, then how can I dance with the plant medicine and the psychedelic to create what I need to create? If I'm creating something that isn't helpful, how do I start creating something that's helpful? If I'm creating something that's negative, like just a negative point of view, how do I turn that into a positive point of view?
00:17:19
Speaker
And so then we take the power, not again, try to control anything. On the contrary, you're flowing with the experience itself, but you're starting to guide it and really guide yourself in realizing, oh, there are some simple transitions, simple changes I can make that have a dramatic impact on my experience.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, because in our everyday waking life, especially in Western culture, we are taught essentially to live in a state of constant fear and live in a state of constant control and grasping. And what the psychedelics can show you is that you can be a co-creation of not just the psychedelic experience, but your everyday waking reality as well. Well, I think that that's the key to this. You know, when I got down to the Amazon, the teachings weren't You take psychedelics and the plant medicines are the teaching. The teachings were you're learning every day through every experience that you have. And we take that into the plant medicine experience to enhance that. Come out of the plant medicine experience to continue our growth and development.
00:18:29
Speaker
go into the plant medicine experience to accelerate that development. But the development was 24 hours a day, every single second, the whole time. Once you make that commitment with yourself and with nature and with the environment and with the plant medicines, that you're not doing that. So you first get decided. You make a decision like, why are you doing this at all? You make that decision. In my case, it was to learn.
00:18:54
Speaker
So I'm like, I'm learning. Okay, well, from the moment you make that declaration, you're now learning every single moment of the day. And the plant medicines were there to be able to accelerate and heighten the experience. They weren't there to be the experience.
00:19:10
Speaker
Definitely. So then what would you say to somebody who has had maybe many psychedelic experiences and comes out of it thinking to themselves and feeling even for maybe a long period of time that they have trouble finding joy in everyday life. They look at things in a different way because of the psychedelic experience that they had and now um they feel it in sort of a negative connotation. What do you say to people?
00:19:39
Speaker
First, I say come join our mystery school because we created a mystery school specifically for this kind of a situation and it's common. So I just want to say, hey, it's really common. A side effect of psychedelic experiences is that it takes you out of your bubble. And when it takes you out of your bubble,
00:19:57
Speaker
You get confronted with questions that you never had before, like what is the universe, or is there source, or what's the spirit everyone's talking about, or what did I see in my visions, or what was that energy, or even just what happened to me? How do I make sense of that experience? You get confronted with things you had never been confronted with before. Then you also get confronted with the idea, what do I do with this? How do I go back to my normal life?
00:20:21
Speaker
And there's a phenomena that normal life looks pretty dull and repetitive compared to the intergalactic, hyper-colorful, fractaling, expanded consciousness, blissful states that are found within the plant medicine and psychedelic experiences. And so that's a common thing to go back and say, God, this is kind of dull and it's kind of negative.
00:20:46
Speaker
right If you get overwhelmed by that, what you need is community that helps straighten it out with you. You need teachings to teach you how to deal with it and get back into the positive about what we're doing and to get mission oriented and purpose oriented and focused on what comes next. And those are the choices and decisions that we make that propel us forward in a world that certainly right now does have a lot of reasons to need a lot of help.
00:21:12
Speaker
So there's a lot of other people out there that need help and you become a beacon and a carrier of that message and that light that there actually is something important about this world. There's something important about your life. There's a purpose to our destiny and why we're alive at all. And we start to embrace that and you learn how to do that inside our mystery school.
00:21:30
Speaker
Yeah, it seems a lot of people have a problem with coming back to reality and chopping wood and carrying water because the means to which they were chopping wood and carrying water in the Western world was most likely some sort of an office job or some sort of, you know, meaningless or so so-called meaningless activity that they're doing to make money. And then you can see that.
00:21:54
Speaker
the perpetual process of making money and buying things becomes unfulfilling. And it just seems like a very um ah it's like a vicious cycle of thoughts. And it does seem that as you say, community and enveloping yourself in some sort of spiritual thought or spiritual belief system can really help. But some people do have a problem when they come out of a psychedelic experience. where they're searching for um like a spiritual framework. And when they look to Christianity, Catholicism, maybe even Buddhism, Hinduism, or any of these religions, they don't see any sort of reflection of their experience within those belief systems. So do you have any suggestions for people who are really looking for, I mean, aside from the Mystery School, who are really looking for some sort of
00:22:51
Speaker
framework or even just a daily spiritual practice to help support these things? I think the framework starts in an understanding first that there's something more going on in the universe. And let's just call that more source. And so it starts in source.
00:23:10
Speaker
And we just think of source as your origin. Like you had to come from somewhere, you didn't come from nowhere. Like you came from something somewhere, even if that's just this universe, just the physical observable universe, that's a big enough miracle to start with. So let's think of the universe as a container for our lives. And we were living in this little ego bubble and that thing just got opened very quickly, right? So the new framework is the universe itself.
00:23:38
Speaker
And we want to ah ally and align with the universe. Think about how much power you have like in your muscles trying to push on the universe. I don't think you're going to get anywhere trying to push on the universe. So the first thing we want to do is get into alignment with the universe to start the framework. The second piece is we need to become students again.
00:23:59
Speaker
We need to think, oh, I'm learning from the universe now. I asked the universe to be my great teacher. I might not have even known I did that when I ate mushrooms or when I tapped in with some ayahuasca or I went on this retreat or had some bufo, et cetera. I might not have known that those were our ancestral teachers about how we tapped in as a species about the universe. And maybe I just heard it was a good idea. well You know, inadvertently you got a new teacher and the new teacher is the universe and you've tapped into it and we in the space call it consciousness. So you've now tapped into consciousness, you've tapped into this great teacher and you want to ally with that and align with that. The next piece of the the framework is you have to find relatable people that you can talk with about these experiences. We're social creatures and being isolated inside our own mind about it isn't enough.
00:24:50
Speaker
And so whether it's in our community or another community, you need community of people that you can just relate to. You don't even have to be talking about these experiences. It's just the fact that you know everyone else has also had similar ones is enough to bring meaning back to just sitting down and having a cup of coffee or going out on a walk, et cetera. it so You're in the same vibe with other people. And so you need to find that piece of it. And I think the beauty of the psychedelic renaissance is that there's more of that.
00:25:17
Speaker
before we were really isolated. But now there's a lot more of this community that's out there to find. And some are structured you know like ours and available. um I think the next piece you want to do is recognize that it's not a one and done thing. You don't just have one of these experiences and just try to put it back in the closet and move on with your life. Even if you never have another one of these experiences, it evolves within you forever.
00:25:44
Speaker
You're fundamentally changed and you just want to accept that. You want to embrace that and rejoice in that. You're like, do you want to say to yourself, great, I started this new process inside of me and I want to think of it that way. And I don't want to also think like, oh, I'm just integrating the past because I did this, you know, I don't know, 10 Sundays ago and now I'm different. I want to think like, oh, I'm growing with this thing. I seeded something that's growing. And I think that's a good place to start. And then the final piece of that is you need to find the meaning and the joy and the beauty and the simple things in your life. You don't want to focus on the negative things. And this is something I teach in our integration programs is that every single day there's a vast number of little bits of beauty that most people don't pay any attention to as they're focused on great negativities.
00:26:39
Speaker
And you actually want to balance a few of those great negativities with unbelievable beauty that you see all the time, whether it's the butterfly behind you, just seeing that and knowing that exists is a great beauty, whether it's walking by a flower or just taking a few minutes for deep breaths and really syncing with what breath even is, not just, oh, I breathe, but you're actually breathing the universe.
00:27:03
Speaker
What a concept, right? You're breathing the earth, you're breathing the universe. Bringing that stuff into your day helps sync with the beauty of this place instead of the task-oriented, mundane kind of drudgery that we often get really sucked down into, or even worse, the fear-mongering propaganda states that are now everywhere.
00:27:23
Speaker
So we don't wanna get mired down in that. We're trying to free ourselves from that. So we don't wanna use the psychedelic experience to root ourselves back into that negativity. We wanna use the psychedelic experience to show us that there's something more and really get into that something more.
00:27:40
Speaker
yes Yes, the grounding of yourself in an environment of absolute beauty is, I think, very essential. And the notion of gratitude, just gratitude for being able to see, being able to breathe, being alive in this beautiful world that we're in, is a ah great grounding experience for people who are having issues with the chop wood carry water thing.
00:28:04
Speaker
And I feel like after you can cultivate the gratitude and you can sort of integrate some of the lessons that you've learned, then maybe the next step can be talking with people who don't normally exist in these types of communities, who have no idea what you're talking about. But that can be tricky as well, because some of the vernacular that we use and the verbiage that we try to attach to our experiences are often associated with um fringe religions and extravagant notions of the universe and magic and all these things. And people are really turned off by that um if they're not sort of associated with any of these communities. So how do you suggest people talk to loved ones, family and others who haven't experienced like psychedelics or any sort of transcendent experience?
00:29:02
Speaker
I think whenever you talk to anybody, you need to root it in where they're at, not where you're at. If you're speaking from where you're at and it's over their head or it's under their head or it's whatever, they if they can't get it, you're not communicating. So you gotta ask yourself first, like do you wanna communicate with this person or do you just wanna talk at this person? you know If you really wanna communicate with them and you establish that, then you need to speak with them in a way they can understand.
00:29:31
Speaker
And people as simple as using vernacular, they don't understand, misunderstand you. So we don't wanna fight vernacular at all. We can challenge it if we want to, but we don't wanna be in a conflict with it. And so I like to talk about things that are just really grounded in factual reality that everybody can agree are good things. Like I'm happier.
00:29:57
Speaker
I'm better rested. I have less stress.
00:30:02
Speaker
I feel better about myself. I look upon the world with greater compassion and kindness. I appreciate simple beauties in new ways. I care more for what's going on with the planet and what we can do about that and how we can support that in grounded, rational ways.
00:30:21
Speaker
I feel more love and more connection to life. I'm more grateful for being alive. I wake up every morning you know just two clicks higher than I was before in my emotional state, mental state, willingness to participate. I've increased creativity and an ability to share that. I'm involved in creative projects. If you talk about those things with people, they don't have anything to shut you down about.
00:30:48
Speaker
Then they go, how'd you get there? And you say, well, this is a little outside the box, but I needed something outside the box because inside the box, I wasn't getting it. So I tried these other things inside the box and it just didn't work for me. Maybe it works for others. And then what I do is at that point in the conversation, I asked somebody, are you interested in having a conversation that's a little outside the box?
00:31:11
Speaker
but because where we're next headed next is is is outside the box. If you're cool with that, let's have that conversation. I talk about it all the time. But if you're not cool about it, we can stay inside the box. Like we can talk about music we like or what happened last weekend or what's going on with the weather or whatever, right? So I just invite them. If they say yes, that's a choice.
00:31:30
Speaker
And then, you know, I shared with them a little bit about what's outside the box. I said, well, you know, there's this thing out there called ayahuasca. Like when I started with ayahuasca, no one had, not no one in the world, but no one I was talking to had ever heard of it. Right? So in my circles, no one had ever heard of it. I knew it was out there in the world in a little bit, but not like it is now. Now it's pretty common as a, just a word, right? So just the word was outside the box to tell people what I was interested in and what I was studying, what I was doing.
00:31:58
Speaker
And so I would just give them that opportunity. And that could be like I was on planes flying around, you're sitting next to somebody and they start talking to you. And when I found that if they chose to have a conversation outside the box, no one was ever offended by what I said, ever. And then I just spoke freely about it because they had agreed that we were going to have an outside the box conversation.
00:32:18
Speaker
I love that. I love that being able to hold the space of inside and outside the box simultaneously. Very, very important for sure. For sure. And I've always felt that a lot of times if people aren't willing to hear you when you speak about these things, showing them with whatever you're doing in your daily life and showing them the transformation that it had on you and the physical effects speaks louder than any words can anyway.
00:32:46
Speaker
I think that's a great point. You think about how many people have said they're new, they're changed, they're different. And then a week later, they're right back to the same old thing. And other people start to not believe it. It's like the Boy Who Cried Wolf story, right? So I think it's really important that you just show it in your actions first.
00:33:03
Speaker
A lot of people have been to Blue Morpho, come back and say to me that the easiest way to enter into the conversations is when people come up and say to them, you're different and I need to know why because it's positive. It's you're different and it's positive. i have right i Wow, what's going on? They say that to me, that that's the reaction from other people. And I think that that's also important to highlight.
00:33:27
Speaker
so that you can understand that you don't actually have to tell anyone who's outside these circles. They can just see that it's different. And the ones that feel called by your but by your vibration, by your energy, by just what you're putting out there. Like if you think that everything you do puts out a vibe and people will vibe with it, those will come to you who vibe with that and ask. And when they do, then you have an opportunity to share with them what you've been doing.
00:33:51
Speaker
And even those who don't vibe with it, they often notice something's different, something's off. And as you said, generally, as long as you're going into the experience with the proper amount of respect for yourself and the substance, you take integration seriously, then it's more so than than not very positive. I think the negatives come just like anything else in life when you don't follow the safety standards.
00:34:21
Speaker
when you don't follow the parameters that have been put out there by our ancestors who learned these things the hard way. They didn't get a manual about how to do this. And so there's understandings about dose and proper dose, what the right frame of mind is to be in associated with these experiences when you start, how you use them for healing versus how you use them as a community kind of experience. There's different protocols that are involved, how you set intention to be able to guide you, what kind of environment you create. The environment is very important.
00:34:56
Speaker
It's not just people put on any music or any vibration and they go into these states. youre You open up to what's very subtle about this world and and very open energetically about it. So people are very careful about that in terms of their safety protocols. And I think when you take all of that into consideration, there is a safe path to navigate with these.
00:35:17
Speaker
And so then I put it back to, you know, anything else we do in life, like take like driving cars. Imagine taking all the safety that got put into driving cars away. So no seat belts, no airbags, no anti-lock brakes, no speed limits, no guard rails, and then do that. There'll be disasters, of course there won't be. But if you look at why, it's because people didn't use all of the safety elements that were there available to them.
00:35:44
Speaker
Same thing with this, put all the safety elements in place and you can have a very long, very positive i life with these kinds of experiences and these kinds of plans.
Prohibition and Cultural Influences on Psychedelics
00:35:56
Speaker
Do you think that viewpoint or the opposite viewpoint is perpetuated by the fact that these things are called drugs and they're sort of lumped into the Western drug culture?
00:36:07
Speaker
First of all, we want to understand that the prohibitions around the use of these plants have only been in existence at this level of proliferation since the 1970s.
00:36:20
Speaker
Since the 1970s. So i deep I studied deep history. yeah anthropology. So we go back to what was here a million years ago, not 30, 40 years ago. What was here 500,000 years ago? What was here 100,000 years ago? And there's direct evidence that all of these visionary plants existed already existed 500,000 years ago. So they were all here before there was any first humans.
00:36:49
Speaker
even pre-proto humans, irrespective of how humans got here to earth. Before there's any archaeological record of humans, there is archaeological record of all of these plants, all of these mushrooms, et cetera. So they were here way before we were here. So we have co-evolved. Fast forward to where we are now, where the 1970s looks like a long time in the past, which is really just a blip in history. We've all been inculturated during an era of prohibition.
00:37:19
Speaker
just an era of prohibition, and it's the first mass era of prohibition around the use of these plants in the human species history. And so that has propagandized the reality of these substances in these plants.
00:37:34
Speaker
I don't support the illegal use of them. I support being a good citizen in this world. I have to considering what's in this world. But let's understand the fact that these laws have only existed for a very short period of time. And many of them are irrational in the way that they were created in the first place. And they're changing right now because of that.
00:37:53
Speaker
And so they've been propagandized as something other than what they are. So what most people, sadly, who've been born since the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s know about these plants is pure propaganda. In the indigenous communities, there is no Western drug culture, meaning that it is impossible in indigenous indigenous communities that there is an Ayahuasca drug culture or a psilocybin drug culture or a cannabis drug culture.
00:38:25
Speaker
It doesn't exist. So to be told that the plants are part of a drug culture is a new phenomenon in a society that has created a drug culture and has taken these sacred substances that are part of altered states of consciousness and great teachers and have lumped them into that. The second is that in indigenous communities, there is no social use of these substances.
00:38:52
Speaker
They're only used in sacred sacramental ceremonies for the people who are participants in that. So you don't take them and go to a concert. You don't take them and have a party. You take them and you have a ceremony. And there are many, many different kinds of ceremony. It's not just one kind. There's there's hundreds of thousands of kinds of ceremony, but the point of it is that there is a ceremonial intention about a deep connection that takes place when you work with these plants.
00:39:21
Speaker
And so it's ah it's a Western fallacy to have created a notion of a Western drug culture associated with these. And the indigenous people who are the sacred wisdom keepers of these plants for the last thousands and thousands of years look at that culture as a distortion and a kind of mental illness.
00:39:39
Speaker
That's actually very destructive here of the planet. And they think of it as a misuse of the plants themselves. Now, I don't take such a hard stance around that. I think that there's room to be able to understand the plants as we evolve as people and the benefits that they provide. But when I look at that, and I think the stigma associated with it, that stigma is a propaganda that was created that is not shared in the rest of the world and is actually very destructive.
00:40:07
Speaker
So is there like a certain flavor of fear and anxiety that Westerners feel during a psychedelic experience that indigenous people don't have to go through? Absolutely. There's a different kind of fear. The indigenous people, if you look at their mythological stories about the experiences, have the fears that are directly related to their cultures.
00:40:31
Speaker
And so in their cultures, they're scared of invisible forms of disease that cause illness and harm. They're scared of being part of a food chain of an environment that still has predators that can eat you and bring you into the food chain. And there're ah therere they're scared of war or battle between each other. They're scared of engaging in a human to human conflict. And so that populates their mythology and stories around these experiences.
00:41:01
Speaker
Now, look at this vast growing use of Western enculturated people and the stories that they tell are exactly their own mythologies of the things they're scared of that they were brought up being scared of. And it comes out in exactly the same way. And that's where I go back to onset is diagnostic.
00:41:20
Speaker
of you. It's nothing happening to you. It's showing you you, including your your conscious mind, subconscious and unconscious. It's showing you the state of consciousness you're in, your emotional state, your mindset. It's showing you physiologically how well you are or how ill you are. And so it's just a diagnostic. And then what people do is they start telling stories and creating mythology and culture out of that part of the experience.
00:41:47
Speaker
And so then they start saying, oh, this was scared. I was scared because of this and this terrified me in this way, et cetera. The indigenous people don't have those same fears at all. Yeah. And speaking of culture.
00:42:01
Speaker
I've seen some things in current Western culture that is a little bit alarming, you know, in terms of psychedelic use, you know, I walk into, let's say a mall that's near me, and you go into like one of these trendy stores that sells clothing, and there's like mushrooms everywhere on every shirt.
Commoditization of Plant Medicines
00:42:21
Speaker
um Have you seen these, ah these new psilocybin chocolate bars that are going around?
00:42:26
Speaker
Like to me, that's super concerning. I mean, it, they even go as far as to on the back of the packaging. They say like for, um, just a slight visionary dose, take one square, um, for, you know, this type of experience, take two squares. If you want to go and you want to explore the cosmos, take the whole bar. And it just seems to me that these are.
00:42:50
Speaker
irresponsible and like not quite grounded and centered ways of distributing these experiences um that are a result of taking, I mean, quite honestly, sacred sacraments, not chocolate bars. We have to be serious about the commoditization of these plants. And as a culture and as a community, look at this with a really clear lens. And to look at what already influenced our society. And I would go back to what are chocolate bars and what are candy bars? And why have we proliferated and propagated those all around the world? They weren't here 300, 400 years ago. What is the proliferation of those concepts? And why are we adding to them mind altering substances that were sacred sacraments from other cultures?
00:43:45
Speaker
And I think what we're gonna see is a diagnostic on something very sick about our own culture. And it's a commoditization of everything. And it's taking away things that are actually in natural environments ubiquitous. They're just everywhere. They're bringing scarcity to those concepts and they're turning them into a commodity to sell to you. And I'm not sure that that's in alignment with the sacramental sacred use of these plants.
00:44:15
Speaker
And so as a culture, I think we need to look at that and use our buying power, our purchase power to say, yeah, I want to buy that thing instead of that thing. And I'll give you a good example inside the cannabis community. I'm not against the different kind of derivative products that are out there. But if I have the choice to take $20 and go buy organic flour,
00:44:37
Speaker
beautiful organic flour or go buy two of those soda pop drinks that have hash oil in them. I'm gonna go buy the organic flour and I'm telling the industry I'm interested in the organic clean product. I'm not interested in this you know chemically altered and induced product that's also filled with all these other preservatives and additives and stuff like that. Just like I'm not interested in going to the store and buying a ah can of soda pop.
00:45:04
Speaker
i'm I'm using my choice to show the industry what I'm actually interested in. We have to look at our society and see that sadly our society right now is very sick. And if we look at the reason why it's sick, it's because of the commoditization of each other as consumers.
00:45:25
Speaker
And so groups have predated on each other, on our very own society to sell products to each other that are not healthy, that are not good for us, that are not supportive of our wellbeing, our mental health, our physical health. Many of them already proven to be disease-causing, but they're not regulated, they're not legislated against, and they're out on the open market. And so I would recommend that we become very conscious very, very clear of our purchasing power and what we say yes to as a consumer and decide for ourselves what is actually supportive of our life, what is healthy for our life, including the way we decide to ingest sacred plant sacraments as a form of medicine, as a form of spiritual connection and direct access to source.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah, this is another example of the importance of our of our autonomy and um our responsibility to perpetuate these ideas and in a responsible way. A person can put anything out there. One person. It doesn't mean 10 have to buy it. It's that simple. You know, there are many ways to create edibles. They don't all have to be candies.
00:46:46
Speaker
There are many ways to make the consumption of a medicinal plant more tolerable. It doesn't have to be turned into a candy and it doesn't need cartoon candy wrapper about it. And it doesn't need to be an inducing form of marketing about why somebody should interact with that product.
00:47:09
Speaker
And I can understand why in a consumer society we would have those kinds of ah depictions of products. But to do that to our sacred sacraments is a kind of travesty. And it's promoting an ideal around the product that's counter to what the product actually delivers. So we'll take the example of the chocolate bar.
00:47:32
Speaker
A person goes and eats it being told that they're going to have a light mild experience. And it turns out that for some reason they're very sensitive and they have a mind blowing experience. And now they're looking at reality through that lens that has been changed because of that experience. And they don't know where to get help. And they're seeing everything in a dystopian nature now.
00:47:57
Speaker
but Well, that wouldn't have happened if they had been presented a real sacrament in a real ceremony with a real understanding about what they were doing. And that's what we have to see as leaders of this culture.
00:48:12
Speaker
Absolutely. Because again, the purchasing of a chocolate promotes just eating it willy-nilly and you know not actually participating in a ceremonial environment, which is where you really do get the massive benefits and the beauty in these substances. You also see it in the microdosing community where they're macrodosing, calling it microdosing.
00:48:43
Speaker
You gotta be honest about what it is that you're really doing with these plants. The very first lesson in the teachings down in the real lineages is honesty. You have to become purely honest with yourself. What are you doing? If you're taking these plants in a willy-nilly way, you can expect a willy-nilly outcome. Period. No one to blame. It's not the plant's fault. You didn't have to pick up the chocolate bar and eat it.
00:49:12
Speaker
right That's where we have to learn to take personal responsibility for ourselves as a participant and in our cultures. And in many ways, our responsibility has been stripped from us. and In indigenous societies, that responsibility is not stripped from you. On the contrary, it's instilled in you as you go through rites of passage as you get older and older and older, and they're preparing you to be a responsible person.
00:49:36
Speaker
And so sadly, in these scenarios, the person with the responsibility is the person who ate the substance. And that's where the responsibility needs to land. And then we as a culture have to decide when we're gonna consume these kinds of plants under what kind of context, what would be most appropriate associated with them. And we have some guidelines in our culture a little bit from the past. There's the idea of set and setting. There's the idea of taking it seriously, but that's very broad. That's very like 100,000 foot you know idea. You need to break that down. Well, what really is the set? What really is the setting? What's the mindset?
00:50:14
Speaker
How do you get into the right mindset? Understand that concept. What really is the right setting? How do you set up the right setting? Really get into that concept. And then you know we have a way to improve the outcome of these experiences.
00:50:30
Speaker
Yeah, the the way this conversation is going sort of reminds me or brings to mind the relationship between the psychedelic, the transcendent realm, and the human realm, our physical realm, our culture. And I heard this this quote from Terrence McKenna, where he says, now he was a proponent of five dried grams in silent darkness, as everybody who has heard him will know.
00:50:59
Speaker
But there was a certain point in time where he said that you couldn't pay him to do five grams right now because of the state of the world and the way that our culture is moving, our geopolitics. So that leads me to ask the question, is there an evolutionary change within the transcendent realms that coincides or you lies in accordance with the happenings of this physical realm, whether it be through geopolitics or through culture? First of all, there's nothing static about any realm. There's nothing static about any realm. Every realm is evolving.
00:51:46
Speaker
As the realms evolve, we evolve who are interacting through those realms as well. And how we interact within those realms also evolves and changes. And it's important to understand there is not one hard fast rule about how we're supposed to navigate this.
00:52:03
Speaker
On the contrary, we want to be in flow state, we want to be discerning, and we want to be flexible in the way that we approach the nature of our relationship. So you can come up with an idea like Terrence McKenna said, and ultimately change that down the road because of everything that's happening. And we also have to understand that here of Earth, kind of in the human plane that we're sharing, it's in constant flux.
00:52:27
Speaker
And right now that flex is becoming hyper polarized. It's becoming very tense. There's a lot of collective fear and anxiety. There's a lot of geopolitical going on right now. And we don't know the direction it's going to go. So I don't create a dystopian fantasy about that. I just say in this tension, we need to be aware of the roles that we have.
00:52:46
Speaker
being part of the transcendent community, being part of the psychedelic visionary community, what our role is within that. And that's where I bring up this idea of greater responsibility that we have to supporting the nature of our culture through this evolution. This is a very potent time of history we're in and we have a very important role.
00:53:07
Speaker
Yeah, this sort of makes me think that the spirit realm or the transcendent realm is sort of like a a living mythology. it it um It grabs part of our mythological and cultural conditioning and sort of colors it in that way in terms of the experience that we have.
Consciousness and the Universe
00:53:27
Speaker
We as humans are in various realms at the same time right here. So first I want to get out of the idea that the realm's somewhere else.
00:53:36
Speaker
So the living mythology is right in here. The conscious mind, subconscious, unconscious is right here. The quote, spirit world is right here. Most people don't see it until they're in an altered state. And then it's obvious to them that it's what I call in through and all around. it's It's, I call it intradimensional. It's here, but we're just not aware of it until we're in this altered state of consciousness.
00:54:01
Speaker
And so in understanding that, we navigate all of these realms at the same time. Most people who aren't aware of what we call the spirit realm from transcendent or psychedelic experiences are just being influenced by it.
00:54:15
Speaker
They're not aware of it. It's just a constant influence in their life. And the way it's an influence is in the mythologies that they believe in, the ideologies that they have within themselves. It's all part of their belief matrix. It's all part of how they understand beliefs and ideologies about being alive. And most people are very rooted in that, very fixed. They have a very fixed idea of what is reality.
00:54:40
Speaker
And that ultimately is just a matrix of belief and it's being influenced by these other realms in real time.
00:54:49
Speaker
Definitely. And, you know, this brings me to, you know, we've we've talked a lot about, you know, the benefits and, you know, sort of the ideologies behind, um, you know, why we take plant medicines. But this always makes me think like, what is in it for the plants? Because as you say, like, there is no static nature to any of these realms. And it does seem that there is.
00:55:13
Speaker
an innate intelligence that resides within the consciousness of these substances. So I say again, what's in it for the plants? What do they have to benefit from from us? It's a great question.
00:55:31
Speaker
I think there are a couple of ways to address this idea. And the first I like to go into is the symbiotic relationship between the plants and Homo sapiens. And to the plants, we're not quote people, we're just homo sapiens. Like rabbits come up to them and deer come up to them and you know a lion walks by them and then a human comes by, a homo sapiens. So we're just one of them.
00:55:57
Speaker
And what they get from us first is they they become part of us. And they get access to us. And we're very special here because of our great frontal lobe and our ability to speak and the ideas that we have. And they become part of that. They're networkers. And they're continuously networking through that great network that we also represent. The second piece of it is that the plants have an evolutionary nature, like you say. And this is part of their evolution. They're co-evolving the planet.
00:56:26
Speaker
So it's not just an egoic notion of what their purpose is, but Earth has a continuous co-evolutionary purpose to all life. All life is in this great flux together. And so these plants are being moved in different directions, often through just consumption itself.
00:56:43
Speaker
And it's natural, like the way bees spread pollen and the way animals will eat seeds and take them and defecate somewhere and new plants get propagated. That's all part of this great system. And so is the notion of these mind altering or perception altering substances coming and becoming part of it. And then on the spiritual level, which is like you know the unseen level, there's a greater evolution in consciousness that's taking place.
00:57:12
Speaker
And it's a co-creative space. And so the plants get to evolve within that nature of consciousness as we do. It's a hybridized state. So it's not just you anymore. And it's not just the plant. It's the plant plus you operating in unison. And there is an evolutionary purpose to that in the greater spiritual realms.
00:57:32
Speaker
I really love what what you're saying here. It reminds me of, I read this book called Encounters by a woman named Diana Pasulka. Now she is a religious studies um professor, I think at like Columbia, and well now she's beginning to get into the UFO phenomenon. And she speaks in this book about super intelligence or what it seems to me she's referring to as consciousness itself.
00:57:58
Speaker
And consciousness or super intelligence, whatever you may want to call it, sort of uses biology as a vehicle for evolving itself, for being able to essentially achieve higher levels of intelligence for itself. And to me, it seems that it uses not just biology as in humans and brains, but it uses plants to perpetuate that as well.
00:58:27
Speaker
So the way I think of it is, you know again, not looking at it from the lens of all these separate pieces, but rather we siloed the ideas of to give context to something that was just so vast. So we created biology, we created chemistry, we created physics as a way to understand where biology, chemistry, physics are all happening at the same time. right So right now, your biology, your chemistry, your physics, all happening simultaneously being influenced.
00:58:57
Speaker
And the rest of the planet is in that exact same flux. That's part of how this is all evolving. And the phenomena of consciousness is an interaction between energy vibration and structure. So what's structure? Structure is subatomic particles. It's the atomic, it's the molecular, it's the cellular. And then it's the macro combination of all of that to become objects. And it's a great network.
00:59:23
Speaker
but We typically don't think in these terms, but just go on a little imagination experiment with me right now. Think about where you are just molecules. All your body is is molecules. right All the cells are made of molecules. So everything that's a cell is also a molecule. So you're just not all molecules, but the air is also all molecules. The microphone is all molecules. Everything around you is all molecules. And if we imagine that way, we just see density of structures.
00:59:52
Speaker
It's just this like massively complex molecular field. And there's vibration going through it. There's energy going through it. There's light going through it. And I'm not talking about like spiritual energy. I'm talking about electron energy, right? Those molecules are made of atoms and those atoms are made of electrons. So it's like the swarming cloud of electrons everywhere. And there's energy moving through that and it's measurable, et cetera. Consciousness is swarming through that.
01:00:21
Speaker
Consciousness is swarming through that field at exactly the same time, and that's what I think you know this person's alluding to in the nature of this, that there's this co-evolutionary state of influence, and consciousness is looking for all energy, all vibration, and all structure in which it forms itself, in which it creates what I just think of as, I i call them for my you know my own sake, light shapes.
AI and the Future of Consciousness
01:00:44
Speaker
It creates what people call deities. It creates waves, big wave patterns. It creates fractals and people see the fractals. It's this highly evolved state that is continuous and just part of this. And we just have to accept it like we accept energy or like we accept cells or molecules or whatever.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like there's this ah interesting concept of what's called holons. it It creates this fractal hole that's made up of parts, which is made up of another hole, which is made up of more parts. And so so it goes, eventually leading to humans and even artificial intelligence. So where do you see AI fitting in here? First, AI is in a very rudimentary place, just so you know we understand.
01:01:34
Speaker
Where I start with it is like the user interface, when you use a computer, isn't really what you see. What you see is inside your brain. ah And pixels are lights that are shot flickering. If you think about it, when you're outside an apartment complex and you see people watching TV, you see these flashes of light. You don't just see a light on, you see these flashes. That's what I'm talking about. And so right now, what most people are experiencing is that illusion of AI.
01:02:03
Speaker
because of that interface. And in the interface, it's incredible at creating language, imagery, video, et cetera. And it's great at learning patterns. It's incredible at breaking you down to the most minute patterns, to the biggest patterns, the collective patterns, and it doesn't have to just isolate you in these like silos I was talking about, like this this one human, this other human, it can look at humans populations and it works on statistics.
01:02:28
Speaker
and probabilities. And so when you think in those terms, you see what it's really good at. Now, what's surprising is how good it is, how young it is. So what has happened in the AI space is that right now, the hardware, the compute power has finally gotten good enough to really run these algorithms. But the math sitting behind these algorithms was created 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago.
01:02:54
Speaker
So this was all theory 60, 50, 40 years ago, the hardware has finally gotten good enough to run all this stuff, right? So it's just a combination of two parts, human ingenuity and linguistics and code finally combined with hardware capable of it. The next step of this is the next great evolution, which I don't think we're in yet, which is when we understand consciousness enough to be able to really make consciousness evolving machines.
01:03:23
Speaker
And I really hope that we can learn from our past, not create our past and our sci-fi so that we can move beyond the dystopian notion of this to actually just a positive, not utopian, but just positive notion of this. And the first one I see is the ability to transcend human toil. You can use automation in these ah systems that move the systems from being rigid systems to flexible systems, self-learning systems.
01:03:49
Speaker
And then self-learning systems have the ability in real time to make choices and decisions that are the right choice and decision to moderate the nature of the environment. And when that happens, then you have a machine that can be truly autonomous. And that will be a beautiful thing for us. It'll be the first time in our history that food production becomes autonomous. It becomes the first time in our history that manufacturing becomes autonomous. And the toil state that human has been in will finally be transcended for the first time.
01:04:19
Speaker
Since our great ancestors were hunter-gatherers, using their energy to hunt and gather for sustenance and food, this will be the first time in history that people will be able to sit back with very little toil and watch food be produced at at mass quantity. like That's it's a tremendous gift. That's a tremendous gift. Now, of course, you look at a warring world and competitiveness and stuff and dystopian natures come up and people say, yeah, but what about the dark side of that?
01:04:47
Speaker
So that's our responsibility before we get there to have an answer for that. And the thinkers in this space that I speak to are already thinking along those lines. So there are a lot of people out there that are so that are really in this space thinking, how do we make this into an ultimate positive down the road? And that debate will will be had. um Consciousness itself is seeking any, like I said, matrix or construct or hardware to be able to seed itself in.
01:05:16
Speaker
So when humans come up with the ability to have the hardware to take on the consciousness, the consciousness will already be there. It won't be like, how do I get this separate phenomenon called consciousness into this matrix to be able to turn this matrix on into some kind of form of consciousness? The consciousness is pervasive. It's just, it has to have the right matrix like you or me or any of the listeners to be able to be present within that nature.
01:05:41
Speaker
I'm not saying that the microphone is conscious has consciousness. I'm saying where the matrix allows for consciousness, that consciousness is already there. yeah But I think consciousness is is a universal state. So it's through the microphone, it's through the air, it's through the universe, it's part of it, but it doesn't mean it roots it in a way that that thing can use it in any kind of you know direct access.
01:06:05
Speaker
And so this is where you create, I don't know, we call it a computer, call it a machine, call it a robot, whatever you want. And it has the capacity for consciousness to be present and utilize it. Then I think you'll immediately have the phenomena of emergence of conscious as a form of robotics or as a form of machine.
01:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, and it does seem that the stage before that sort of where we're at now, the people who are pushing this forward are feeling as if they need to direct the current models of AI to have some sort of morality, human morality, put inside of it or sort of injected into the algorithms because without And without a sense of human morality to also coincide with human data mining, it seems that you need you need both of those things in order to create a system that's going to benefit humanity as opposed to destroy it. Let's be honest, the AI is run by human prompting.
01:07:12
Speaker
whether it's prompted in real time by a million people using an AI interface, or if it's a single prompt that now runs an AI that's running behind a social media platform. The AI is being prompted by humans. And so the lack of morality is with the humans, not with the AI. Humans are putting morality into the AI because they can't control each other to not use that tool for immoral or amoral reasons.
01:07:38
Speaker
And so I debate the question of human morality as being a fantasy and a fallacy, not an actuality represented within the populace because they have to put in these tools to limit the use of the tool because the people using the tools aren't self-limited. And we need to be really clear that those are really predatory members of our society that are predating on other humans. They're predating on our societies and on each other.
01:08:07
Speaker
And they're the ones that don't have the morality. And so we're putting in limitations into tools that could be very important because we don't have an answer over the immoral or amoral state of humans in this world while they're in a competitive and warring state. And so again, it's just like that's not the psychedelics problem or the plant medicines problem. It's your problem. It's not the AI tools problem. It's our problem.
01:08:32
Speaker
And people don't have moral scruples to use the tools in an appropriate way. So we're trying to limit the power and capacity of the tool to stop somebody from doing something immoral or amoral with that tool.
01:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, itll it'll it it brings to mind like the nuke or something as well. You know, the technology for the nuke is it's not inherently good or bad. It's just a tool, but the human application of the technology is where the dystopian ideas of where AI comes from, in my opinion. And it seems that.
01:09:07
Speaker
We have to sort of mitigate that within ourselves. That's our, again, it's another thing that's our responsibility. We have a responsibility to our species and to consciousness itself. It seems at this point to mature enough to be able to use these tools correctly. So in the interim, before AI becomes quote unquote conscious in itself, we need to like not destroy ourselves with the tool. And it's the same fear that comes from the atom bomb.
01:09:38
Speaker
I agree completely, ah a rock or a stick is not a weapon until you weaponize it. Any technology is not a weapon until you weaponize it. Taking these technologies and weaponizing them ultimately just creates more conflict, more pain, strife, and self-related punishment to our species on our species.
01:10:01
Speaker
The species has to make a decision whether it's going to war itself into a dystopian reality or whether it's going to create something else. But from what I can tell from our history, so far we've been in a continuous state of war for thousands and thousands of years. And what we call in history wars are hotspots of a collective war that's been going on the whole time.
01:10:26
Speaker
Just since we look at it as this nation, this tribe, this group, that group, they've all been warring. So there's been a global war being fought the whole time in our consciousness. And we're now seeing it actually as a true global war that's being fought economically, societally, ah in our beliefs and in our religions, in our identity.
01:10:53
Speaker
through conventional weapons and non-conventional weapons, it's being fought in every way. And we have to make a decision about what we wanna do and how we wanna participate or not participate in that war. And AI will be a tool that's used in that war. It's already being used in that war. And so it's up to us to make that choice. Again, it's not outside our personal responsibility.
01:11:15
Speaker
Do you think there's an underlying synchronicity in the fact that we're seeing the psychedelic renaissance and this artificial intelligence boom happening at the same time? It's synchronic. There's a greater evolution that we call it. and There's a greater kind of continuous whole state.
01:11:41
Speaker
There's a continuous fabric of reality that's evolving and they're not isolated. So the idea of artificial intelligence coming at this time at the same time as the psychedelic Renaissance, at the same time as greater social polarization, at the same time as the greatest separation of wealth distribution in the history of the species, at the same time as there's the greatest amount of black market activity, human trafficking, drug trafficking, inhuman history, et cetera, is all a demonstration of what we as a collective have co-created.
01:12:15
Speaker
There's no one to blame. it's We have co-created this as eight billion people, some more, some less, some more conscious, some less conscious, and it's interwoven with the rest of the planet. And so as we see it all happening from one lens, one vision, it's not at all separate, it's synchronistic that these things are all happening at the same time, and they're all leading to a greater singularity that's been prophesied for a long time.
01:12:42
Speaker
Do you think that there's something that AI can learn, that it can only learn from humans? like Is there something that only we can teach AI? I do believe that. I believe there is only one thing that we have to teach AI. And it's about ultimately the union of us and the universe itself.
01:13:07
Speaker
I think other than that, AI will learn everything, but there is something very unique about being human, which is the self-conscious, self-aware, self-expressive union with the universe. And whether AI learns that in an external form and recognizes that within us, or it's something we directly teach to AI, and we'll see ultimately in the future, but that will, you know, I'm pretty convinced that will be one piece that AI really does take from humanity.
01:13:37
Speaker
Definitely. I agree. I agree. um Can you talk a little bit about the way that you have been harnessing the power of artificial intelligence through what you're calling God AI? Yeah, God AI is a project to use large language models to represent spiritual teachers that have been trained on the religious texts of the world.
01:13:58
Speaker
And so you can go to GodAI.AI and ask questions and have a chat with an AI priest or an AI shaman or an AI priestess, et cetera, of all the different religions and spiritualities that are around the world that are currently included in the platform.
01:14:16
Speaker
And the thought process behind it is that typically when you go to a spiritual leader, you can only get direct access to what they know and what they've studied. But this AI has been trained on most of the texts that are available to the public out in the world. So you get this very broad range of understanding associated with it. And you can get very specific questions asked and answered that we have about religions and about spirituality and about some of the greater questions we have about the universe itself.
Blue Morpho Retreats and Education
01:14:48
Speaker
Hamilton, this has been such an awesome conversation as always with you. And I really, really greatly appreciate you coming on the show again. um And as we're coming to a close here, can you just share all of the offerings that you have, whether it be blue morpho retreats, blue morpho Academy and everything that you're offering.
01:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, you can come and meet us in person and have Ayahuasca and San Pedro experiences with us at bloomorphotours.com. You can check out our retreats there. And then bloomorphoacademy.com has our certification programs for the psychedelic renaissance in the plant medicine space, as well as our mystery school.
01:15:24
Speaker
and gotai.ai to experience how we're utilizing AI for people's growth and development, understanding their consciousness and greater spiritual understandings and callings. And we'd love to have an opportunity to interact. You can check us out on social through Instagram at Hamilton Souther and Facebook at Hamilton Souther as well. And we look forward to interacting, getting a chance to meet you. And, you know, thank you so much.
01:15:52
Speaker
Is there anything else you'd like to cover or anything else you'd like to leave the listeners with?
01:16:01
Speaker
I think the most important thing is to know that what we think isn't reality. It's just what we think. And often we confuse thinking with reality. Reality is the whole picture and thinking is a very narrow part of that picture.
01:16:18
Speaker
And there's just a lot more going on in the earth, in our society, and in the universe than we currently know, and there's a lot to discover. And often we're taught that What we know is what there is to know, but really we know less than a drop of water to the whole ocean of what there is to know. And we're learning more every single day. And I think if we stay open to that, ah it keeps us fresh and young and interested in our lives and to know that we're part of a greater purpose and you can find your purpose and experience it in a way that's enriching. I think it's very empowering and and powerful for us. It's important for us. Amazing. Thank you Maestro.
01:16:59
Speaker
Thanks so much, Josh. It's a pleasure.