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26. The Psychedelic Experience image

26. The Psychedelic Experience

Pursuit Of Infinity
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This week’s episode is dedicated to psychedelics. We go into the transformational aspects of the psychedelic experience. We detail some of our most memorable experiences and discuss some of the ideas that came through, and how they changed and continue to evolve our perspectives on life, love, and curiosity. 

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Music By Nathan Willis RIP

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Transcript

Introduction to Psychedelics: Purpose and Personal Insights

00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pursuit of Infinity. This week's episode is dedicated to psychedelics. Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that this and all discussions surrounding the topic are in no way a recommendation to ingest any substance. Psychedelics are not for everyone, and these conversations are meant for educational and harm reduction purposes. Above all, these substances must be treated with respect.
00:00:25
Speaker
That being said, this week we go into the transformational aspects of the psychedelic experience. We detail some of our most memorable experiences and discuss some of the ideas that came through and how they change and continue to evolve our perspectives on life, love, and curiosity.
00:00:43
Speaker
But before we get to it, if you like what we do and you want to support the show, we really appreciate a follow or a sub as well as a five star rating and maybe even some kind words of encouragement in the form of a review. These things really help us to expand our reach and credibility, which is so much appreciated. If you really want to show us some next level of you can become a patron at patreon.com slash pursuit of infinity, where you can donate as little as $2 a month to support what we do.
00:01:12
Speaker
Check us out on YouTube. The channel's up and all of our episodes are there. So if you prefer some visuals and want to put some faces to the names, subscribe and keep up with us there. We're also on Instagram at Pursuit of Infinity Pod. So give us a follow and reach out because we would love to hear from you. And with that for the delay, thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this week's discussion.

Curiosity about Reality and Early Experiences

00:01:57
Speaker
So Josh, what made you get into psychedelics, become interested in psychedelics? A few things actually.
00:02:08
Speaker
It started, I think, you know, a lot of people say this, but I really do resonate with it. And I think it started when I was a kid, honestly, just the curiosity of what's out there. You know, I used to lay in bed and just kind of like wonder what the universe was and like, you know, just kind of contemplate questions that a normal child doesn't really, or at least doesn't ask their friends or doesn't talk about, you know, generally in the culture. Not that I think I was like some kind of special child or anything, but
00:02:38
Speaker
I know that some people have, you know, certain dispositions toward like mystical type phenomena. And I always thought that I just had a curiosity for it. I used to just like think about random things. Like one thing I used to think about that's kind of strange. I used to think like, when I was like, when I first got my license, I would think if I'm behind a car,
00:03:01
Speaker
I thought what would happen, really what would happen if I hit this gas right now as hard as I could, and I smashed into the back of this car. Like would I, would I rip the fabric of reality because I would, I as a person would never ever do that. And I'm not going to do that.
00:03:18
Speaker
so i could never know if i'm if i would change or rip the fabric of reality by doing something that i inherently would never do i'm not going to do it so i can't see that weird outcome you know what i mean yeah that might be a strange way to put it but. It was just these weird questions and one of the main questions that i asked myself that i still ask myself to this day is.
00:03:44
Speaker
What is up with the fact that reality is a first person view from the perspective of the body that I call Josh.
00:03:55
Speaker
Like why that is the, I think the fundamental question of the nature of reality is what is going on here and why when I go to sleep at night, does it all turn off and why does all of it act and all of it define itself according to my emotions and what I feel and what, and what I think.
00:04:18
Speaker
And when I started to go down the path of psychedelics and research some of the things that people were saying about them, especially Terrence McKenna and Alan Watts and some of these great Buddhist teachers, I realized that they could sort of shed a light on the path to discovering the answers to those questions.

Journey into Psychedelics: Influences and Global Context

00:04:40
Speaker
And it really wasn't until like 2015, 2016, when I really started to look at the world and see all of the trouble that we've gotten ourselves into and think to myself, like how, how did this happen? And.
00:04:59
Speaker
What is a better way to move forward? Because there has to be, I mean, with all of human intelligence that we have through all the ages, there has to be a method, a way, a doctrine, an ideology, something like that, that will lead us down a better path than what we're currently on.
00:05:14
Speaker
And again, that led me to Terrence McKenna and Alan Watts and some Eastern thought Eastern tradition and, um, you know, just philosophy in general. And I think it truly allowed me to understand the concept that I think you talk about quite a bit, which is how in school, like we're taught, um, what to think as opposed to how to think. And I realized that that, that paradigm.
00:05:40
Speaker
is real and that I ended up on the wrong side of it. So yeah. And it's crazy because you can't know until you know, you know what I mean? You go through like so much of your life thinking, you know how to think just because the people around you agree with what you're thinking kind of, you know, you're kind of in a hive mind until you realize that you don't know how to think. That's like a big realization I had too. But, um, yeah, I,

First Encounters: From Cannabis to Mushrooms

00:06:10
Speaker
I resonate with a lot of what you just said because I feel like I was the same way when I was young. I was always asking myself weird questions. I was always fascinated with my dreams. That's why I started smoking weed when I was pretty young, but it wasn't because some way to numb pain or trauma or something like you might think. It was more of just
00:06:36
Speaker
the need or want to play with consciousness. Like to me it was so fascinating that your whole world could change like that.
00:06:45
Speaker
So after the first time I smoked weed, I was like, this is unbelievable. I didn't think something like that could be possible. And then that's just a baby step compared to psychedelics. So I was also always interested in the whys. And I didn't understand just what was going on around me in a way that I wasn't satisfied with what I was being told. And when I discovered that you can
00:07:12
Speaker
kind of play with your consciousness and alter reality. It's, it was unbelievable. And I was pretty much in then. So was it safe to say that your first psychedelic experience was a cannabis experience? Oh yeah. The first time I smoked weed, it was not like any other time I've smoked weed. Well, actually to clear that up, the first time I smoked weed, nothing happened. It was weird. It was the second time and I smoked a gravity bong.
00:07:40
Speaker
And it was, it was like a psychedelic experience. Um, I smoked a little bit and like the first time I wasn't feeling anything and it hit me like a late reaction. It was like 10 minutes after I smoked, we're all sitting in a circle, like in the woods and my vision just got crazy. Like things were like moving in towards me and then like.
00:08:03
Speaker
the colors were looking different. It was way different than what happens when I smoke weed now or, you know, it was just a whole different experience. And I was like a fit of laughter. I was like, just couldn't believe what was happening. And I would say it was a psychedelic experience. I mean, I was so young that I didn't really understand exactly what was happening, but I knew it was like, it was fascinating to me.
00:08:32
Speaker
And it took me, when I started with psychedelics, I did mushrooms the first time when I was 15.
00:08:43
Speaker
It was also way different than any other mushroom trip I've ever had. It was like, it was way more visual. It was a blast. It wasn't like a necessarily spiritual experience. It was more of like a loving, euphoric, like amazing, like fascination with everything around me. So I wasn't using them the way I use them now, you know, kind of just like sitting back with your eyes closed. I was with some friends hanging out.
00:09:13
Speaker
in their basement and it was just three of us we didn't have the tv on it was just us in silence the whole night like just looking at each other and like laughing and like for me like the room was changing sizes it would turn into like the size of a gymnasium
00:09:32
Speaker
And a second later, I felt like I couldn't even fit in the room. Like this was like pure visuals, like actually like something different than what I experienced now. But that really changed everything for me. Cause that's like, it shows you that something is possible that shouldn't be possible. So that was like a little switch that flipped in me that I, now I knew for a fact that something that shouldn't be possible is possible and it's utterly real.
00:10:02
Speaker
And it was more of like a subconscious flip right there because I hadn't done psychedelics for a while after that. But that was like a big change for me in the way I started to look at things.

Guided Experiences: Alan Watts and Psychedelics

00:10:15
Speaker
And a little different from, from your experience, you know, drugs came into my life late. I think I started smoking weed when it was like my late twenties. I was almost 30 when, um, when I started. Um, and I can say my first psychedelic experience was probably with, with weed as well. Um, in, in the same way that it was for you. Yeah. It's just like totally different for your first time. At least for me, it was like, it was like a different drug when I think back to what happened.
00:10:44
Speaker
And I actually, um, I told this little story on, I was just on a podcast called, uh, Soma, which is an acronym for stories of modern awakening. And, uh, so I told this story where it was the first time I ever heard Alan Watts. I was, so I had been actually here where we are right now. We were celebrating our older brother's birthday.
00:11:07
Speaker
And I had brought weed with me and during this time I was being very reckless with it. I would smoke it while I was driving and I always had it right on my center console. So my car was just freaking of weed at all times. And on the way home, I had gotten pulled over for something stupid and I got arrested for, you know, possession of marijuana and paraphernalia because I had a little bull in the car. And it was the morning of my court date.
00:11:38
Speaker
That was the first time I ever heard Alan Watts and he just blew my mind. It was some, some little excerpt of a talk of his about like animal consciousness. And I was just like, what? And then I proceeded to like go to court and, uh, you know, be charged with whatever. And, uh, yeah, that was an interesting experience. So like having, having heard him for the very first time, dude, I totally forgot about that. That happened to you.
00:12:07
Speaker
Um, it's funny now you bring up Alan Watts and now that makes me think of the first time I was introduced Alan Watts, which was through you. I had no idea who Alan Watts was. I've heard the name and I've heard you talk about Alan Watts, but I never knew who he was or heard him speak. And the first time I heard him speak was at your place in the dark.
00:12:30
Speaker
on four grams of mushrooms and it blew my mind. I, cause like I was, you know, pretty deep four grams and I was just thinking to myself, how, how is this possible? It was like a perfect, he was so good at communicating things that like are always like in the mind. And it was, it was an amazing experience. And to this day that that's one of my top ultimate, uh,
00:12:58
Speaker
psilocybin experiences. It was incredible. The way I like to describe that, that's like a set in setting that we like to do. And I like to call that like the tour guide experience, you know, it's like when you, when you get, again, we were on four grams, and when
00:13:19
Speaker
We played these videos. So what the video is, it's a, there's, there are YouTube videos and they are like chill step songs mixed in with Alan Watts quotes. So Alan Watts will speak the chill step music will get really low. So it's not interrupting with like the actual, uh, vocalization of Alan Watts. And then he'll stop the chill step music will rise again in volume and then you'll get to sort of contemplate what you just heard. It's a very small little excerpt and then like a little more of the song.
00:13:50
Speaker
And that setting, like I, again, I like to call that the tour guide dose and like the tour guide experience, because you know, when you're in this frame of consciousness, that mushrooms puts you under your mind is so open and so impressionable because so Stan Groff called psychedelics, uh, nonspecific amplifiers of mental processes. So.
00:14:13
Speaker
When you have a nonspecific process of like mental amplification, whatever's coming into your head in the physical environment will be amplified. And that's why we say set and setting is so important because you don't want to have the wrong things being amplified. Um, and people who aren't really used to taking psychedelics a lot of times, even if you take them without any music or without any sort of a tour guide, quote unquote.
00:14:38
Speaker
Uh, you can still find yourself in some sticky situations. So a good thing to do on some, on some of your first really deep, uh, large dose experiences is to have that tour guide and to have Alan Watts or a guy or someone like that sort of guide you through and give your mind stimulus. That's going to be beneficial to it within a realm where you're having these like non-specific amplified mental processes.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a perfect way to put it, like a tour guide. Cause that's how I felt. I had never tried mushrooms that way before. Like I said, that was the first time I heard Alan Watts. So I was just blown away. I was like, this is the best. It was perfect. Cause you know, when you take, if you take mushrooms and you don't have a tour guide, like then you're dealing with 100% you, which not to say you're not dealing with yourself with like the, the tour experience, but.
00:15:33
Speaker
it was like I was able to really relax and let the ideas from Alan Watts flow through me and like it was that's like a perfect way to explain it is I was like taken for a ride and I was being guided and the music was great too the chill step is works well but it's it's interesting like you said set and setting like the variety of experiences you can have with psilocybin based on how you're feeling and where you are because
00:16:01
Speaker
you know the same dose if you do it like let's say Terrence McKenna his move is always silent darkness like that is next level shit like that's purely yourself and that's a deep experience um I haven't done silent darkness but uh I like what I want to do next time maybe is

The Role of Music in Enhancing Psychedelic Journeys

00:16:23
Speaker
um you know just darkness with music with no beat maybe like just kind of like some tones something that i can latch my hearing onto but i've noticed with sometimes drums on psychedelics are really kind of mesmerizing to me kind of i don't want to say it takes me out of it but it has such a large influence on my experience like a beat
00:16:49
Speaker
or also with vocals, like if there's talking, but music that is more, you know, kind of slow or even like the music we listened to when we did DMT, it was like piano and it was like a little bit of nature noises. It wasn't heavy. There's no beat drops. You know what I mean? It was very relaxing and subtle. So I want to try that. Maybe try some type of music like that next time. I totally agree.
00:17:19
Speaker
Either that, or I would like to do something that is more culturally traditional. I know that a lot of times when I used to trip, we used to listen to Indian flute music, which is absolutely beautiful when you're under the influence of psychedelics. Let me pose to you an album. Well, I think we might be thinking the same thing, because I wanted to just bring one too.
00:17:46
Speaker
God, the East Forest. Yeah, nailed it. Right. So it's like music. I forget what's the album called. It's called Music for Mushroom. See, dude, that I've been thinking about that, too, because and interestingly enough, that that album supposedly is I haven't heard it yet and I'm not going to listen to it until.
00:18:03
Speaker
I'm, you know, taking psilocybin. I want it to be fresh, new to my ears. So I haven't listened to it yet. I've been tempted to, but supposedly this album was created hurt, like to guide you through a trip. So it's like a tour without the actual, uh, voice or like language, you know, influencing your ideas. But so I guess this album is just long enough to last for like a whole trip, right? Like a couple hours long.
00:18:30
Speaker
And it's kind of shamanic, I'm guessing. I guess I haven't heard it, but from what I've read and I've heard East Forest, that's his name, right? I've seen him on a podcast talking about how he made it.
00:18:45
Speaker
So I think that should be the move. I listened to like 10 to 20 seconds of it. And I skipped around just a little bit so I could get a vibe for what it is. And yeah, it's very tribal, very natural. There's a lot of like nature sounds in it. And I think it would be the perfect guide. East Forest is the man. Actually, did you know before Ram Dass passed away, East Forest actually visited him and spent a bunch of time with him and made an album
00:19:15
Speaker
with kind of like what we're talking about, like the Alan Watts chill step, but it was his style of music and intermixed in there was Ram Dass like at his old age in his eighties, you know, just giving wisdom

Ego Death and Questioning the Self

00:19:29
Speaker
to East forest directly. Uh, and he made an album out of that. Wow. That's awesome.
00:19:34
Speaker
Ramdas also gave him a name. You know how like Neem Karoli Baba gave Ramdas the name Ramdas and like these gurus, they give people names. Well, I heard him tell a story East Forest about during one of these sessions that they had where they were discussing stuff. He thought in his mind, like, I want to ask him for a name.
00:19:55
Speaker
I wonder if he'll give me a name. And I forget if it was one of those like synchronistic moments where like Ram Dass just gave him the name or if he actually, I think he did ask for one. I think he was like, you know, sort of trouble you sir, but may I please have like a spiritual name so I can redefine myself as, you know, a newly awakened being kind of thing. And he gave him the name Krishna, which is awesome. So he goes by Krishna, he goes by East Forest, neither of which are his birth name, but
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's it's interesting because you hear like the stories about Rondas and stuff. It seems like I mean this man was just on such a different level because like you said you weren't you're not sure in the story if it was like a synchronicity thing like he just gave him or he had to ask for the name but from people who've been around him it seems like
00:20:42
Speaker
there's a lot of those synchronicities that just happened. He is on a completely different level. It's a shame that he passed. I wish we had more. Thankfully, there's a lot of stuff out there. I'm just starting to get into some Ramdas. It's mostly unexplored for me. There's so much interesting content and material from all these amazing people to listen to.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm starting to get into some Ramdas. Do you by chance have an Audible account? No. Please download Audible and get the audio version of Ramdas's most recent book that him and his writer Ramesh Radas wrote. It's called Being Ramdas. And what it is, is an autobiography of Ramdas, um, where he basically spoke this to, uh, Ramesh, his co-writer and.
00:21:38
Speaker
It's, it goes through all of his life, his entire life story and all of his transformations. And it's a beautiful introduction to Ram Dass and it's a, an amazing, um, like foundational piece of education for anybody who has listened to Ram Dass quite a bit. It's just is one of my favorite audio experiences I've ever had.
00:22:00
Speaker
behind my absolute favorite, which side note off topic is David Goggins' book. Oh, yeah, he's insane, dude. That is the most beautiful piece of audio entertainment in the whole history of the world, in my humble opinion. But yes, please, if you ever want to get into Ramdas, listen to that. And I can gift you that book for free. If you download the Audible, I can gift it to you. Not to everybody, but just to you, Joe. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That definitely sounds like a perfect book. Like I said, I'm just
00:22:27
Speaker
Just kind of getting into Ronda. So he started his journey with psychedelics and he would say, and I've heard him say multiple times that the most important night of his life was the night that Timothy Leary gave him mushrooms for the first time. So psychedelics have a way of transforming you from something as far off as a Harvard psychologist.
00:22:51
Speaker
who is filthy rich and comes from a massively rich family to a Yogi who moves to India, renounces all finance and follows a guru for years. It's amazing that a mushroom or a few mushrooms can make that much of a transformation. So in your view, what makes psychedelics so transformative?
00:23:19
Speaker
Um, I mean, it's like everything I, with psychedelics to me, it's like, uh, it changes everything about reality. So, and in my opinion, it allows you to see truth, like truth that you wouldn't normally recognize it or be able to see.
00:23:39
Speaker
And also, and I think this is what happens to a lot of people early on when they start using mushrooms specifically. Um, I forget who said it, but basically mushrooms want you to like them. So like the first couple trips, it's a little less heavy. It's still, you know, intense and you know, it's usually pretty euphoric. But once you get past that phase,
00:24:03
Speaker
it's super introspective. So that's when it really helps you to learn about yourself. And I think that's like a huge thing that transforms people is because they have to start looking at themselves differently.
00:24:16
Speaker
And furthermore, once you get even past that, I feel like with psychedelics, you have to deal with your own shit before you can go to the next level, let's say, until you can really start getting the gems, you would say, of like secrets of reality or downloads or whatever people like to call them. So I think once you get past that second phase, not necessarily past it,
00:24:43
Speaker
But when that second phase of like all the introspection, if you can kind of get through it, then you start to realize that you are everything basically. So once you can kind of collapse the duality of subject and object, the more you learn about yourself, the more you learn about reality in general.
00:25:05
Speaker
So in my opinion, it kind of dissolves all boundaries. It allows you to identify with a higher self rather than the ego. So a lot of people are familiar with the term ego death. That's like something that happens with people and they take a higher dose of a psychedelic. And so when that happens to you, it's
00:25:30
Speaker
I think people have it misconstrued a little bit like they have an ego death and then they think that they no longer have an ego. So like that shit isn't how it works. With the ego death, it just lets you see that you aren't your ego. So it allows you to kind of dig deeper and try to figure out what you actually are. Like what am I?
00:25:53
Speaker
If I'm not this ego, then what am I? So with the ego death, it's an important thing, but you have to realize that your ego is still in check. But I think that's one of the most transformative experiences you can have is an ego death, because then you can begin to question what you are, if not the ego. And more specifically, it sort of
00:26:18
Speaker
turns off your default mode network, which is the center of the brain that defines itself as its thoughts. And that's another way of saying it defines itself as the ego because your ego is what you think you are. You're defining yourself as your thoughts and your preferences at that point. And it's like Adelix.
00:26:40
Speaker
When they switch that default mode network off, that's sort of like a filtering system. So when you take that filtering system out, it allows different parts of your brain to communicate with one another at a rapid pace. That's why you see people experiencing synesthesia, which is experiencing, um, one or more sense as one. I think the.
00:27:00
Speaker
Like you were saying the notion of switching off that default mode network, that's the essence of it. So like you were saying with people claiming to have had ego deaths, I think the reason they use the word death is because it is so extraordinary and it is so transformative, but I think more accurately, it's like an ego switch. You get to switch your ego off for a little bit so that when you do put it back on.
00:27:24
Speaker
you're able to jump back on
00:27:40
Speaker
these experiences where it feels like you're going through a death because you have to relinquish everything that you thought you were. And, um, but yeah, I think ego recognition might be a more accurate term, like something like that, because really what you're doing is identifying it for what it really is, which is not you, you know, it's just this thing that you've built up as, you know, to survive in this state of consciousness as like a human being.
00:28:06
Speaker
Psychedelics it opens up everything and it makes magic real like you think things are impossible and it just shows you a whole another way like it will transform you when you have a psychedelic experience and then you realize that reality isn't what you thought it was so we are taught all the same story, you know in our culture about what reality is and
00:28:31
Speaker
And since we all have the same story, it seems real. You know, we never verified this stuff for ourselves. We were told it and so were all your friends and family. So you guys walk around like with a hive mind thinking you have an idea of what's going on. And when you take the psychedelic, what happens is all that just dissolves. So now it's just you figuring it out for yourself. You know, all that, uh, all the things that you were taught about, like the nature of reality itself,
00:29:00
Speaker
is all going to change when you take a psychedelic.

Beyond the Ego: Contemplating Existence

00:29:03
Speaker
So I have an unanswerable question for you, but I want to hear your thoughts on it. Um, you said, and we both said that when you take a psychedelic, you realize it shows you that you are not your thoughts. You are not who you think you are. And people that had never taken a psychedelic people who hear you hear meditators and spiritual people always say this, like what you learn is you are not your thoughts. You're not who you thought you were and all that. So.
00:29:29
Speaker
Who are you then? What, who does it show you that you are? Or is it more of a question of it really is showing you what you're not? I think it's both. Yeah. I think it's easier to get the showing you what you aren't like that. That's a pretty clear one, but then figuring out what you are is, uh, that's tough and it takes, you know,
00:29:53
Speaker
It's just one of the hardest questions you can ask yourself. I like the Rumi quote that it goes, you are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop. Meaning that you are it, the whole thing. You're not some little minuscule tiny piece of something that you are the thing itself. But yeah, who am I? What are you really?
00:30:20
Speaker
A good word is awareness, I think. I mean consciousness or awareness. You are that which is aware. Like I said, you aren't your thoughts. You're the thing that is aware of your thoughts. You are the thing that looks at your thoughts. You aren't your body. You're the thing that is aware of a body. So like that's where I do a meditation where first like a concentration exercise where you'll focus on like one part of your body and try to get your awareness really heightened.
00:30:49
Speaker
And so you're super focused on a single thing like maybe the feeling of your fingers being pressed together. And then it's more of like a contemplation even than just meditation because then what I try to do is put the awareness that's on my fingers onto itself. So putting awareness on awareness and that's what you are.
00:31:12
Speaker
And it's tricky and it's not easy to do, but when you're taking a psychedelic, it seems like that type of thing becomes clear to you. And it's interesting because when you take a psychedelic, you'll actually see things dissolve. You could have, quote unquote, like a physical experience of your body dissolving or
00:31:36
Speaker
feeling yourself just turned into nothingness or something like that's what other like people will say that you are nothing and everything so it's like it's kind of weird and it's almost impossible to try to explain it through language and that's why I've said this to you and we've talked about this before that like the truth cannot be spoken so something like this transcends language and we've also talked about this before because language
00:32:07
Speaker
is built of dualities. And what we're talking about is something non-dual. It's like the unification of everything. It's form and formless. And another thing you could say what you are is love with a capital L. Like at the core of it, you are love and so is everything else because the everything else isn't separate from you.
00:32:29
Speaker
Another way to put it is the witness that I've heard as well, like the witness of your thoughts and the witness of who you think you are as opposed to, you know, your preferences. And it also brought to mind when you were talking about your meditation, there's a really cool Sam Harris meditation and I haven't actually heard it, but I've heard people talk about it. And during this meditation as part of it, he says, imagine the back of your body, like look at your back. And then he says, who is that? That's looking at you.
00:33:00
Speaker
And I love that because it really brings to like a physical, almost biological sense, the concept of the witness in a way where you can't escape the concept of witness because you're able to actually see it physically in a manifested physical form as opposed to just sort of conceptually hearing someone talk about it. Yeah. Alan Watts said something similar. I don't know the whole quote, but basically he was like, um,
00:33:28
Speaker
was having you ask yourself like what is that thing behind the eyes so like when you imagine what's behind the eyes it's it's another kind of interesting thing to contemplate or like meditate on but another thing that's awesome with psychedelics is like you said when imagine like your back or whatever like just imagining something when you're on a psychedelic
00:33:52
Speaker
It's like you can go to like different dimensions basically where you can think things and see them like with your mind's eye. It changes. Like one of the things that's really big with psychedelics is closed eye visuals, which is why a lot of people, me included, when you take psychedelics, you like to lay back and just have your eyes closed because you're able to see impossible things.
00:34:19
Speaker
Things that, you know, make you question everything. And also you encounter, sometimes you'll encounter entities and hear voices and you can ask questions and have them answered.
00:34:30
Speaker
So it's unbelievable and sometimes I feel like we're unworthy. It's like it has to exist because we're just blessed basically. I don't know how else to put it. It's like the gratitude I have for psychedelics is amazing. But at the same time,
00:34:53
Speaker
They can be so hellish and terrifying. It's such an interesting relationship to have because we talk about all the beautiful things that psychedelics do for you, but it doesn't come without a price or you have to pay a price. You have to go through some tough things in order to come out on the other end with love and beauty.
00:35:18
Speaker
but it's never really easy. I've had, you know, a few experiences that were just smooth sailing all the way through, but usually
00:35:27
Speaker
Every single time, for the most part, you're going to go through some challenging parts. And the thing is, after you get through that, that's what helps you grow and transform because then you know that you can get through it and then you find love and beauty and all this other amazing stuff on the other side. And speaking of being blessed,
00:35:52
Speaker
And speaking of the vast range of experiences that these substances can provide.

Mystical Experiences and Spirituality

00:35:58
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about the mystical experience, the experience of feeling God. Cause that is the one that I think a lot of people that haven't taken psychedelics have a problem with understanding and a problem with like, quote unquote, believing.
00:36:13
Speaker
Those experiences have also been the most powerful for me and the most transformational when I've had experiences where I'm connecting to the only thing that can be described as God. So what are your thoughts on that? Also, it's definitely the hardest thing about psychedelics to articulate. And that's another that goes to what I said is the truth cannot be spoken.
00:36:38
Speaker
For me the experience I had with God, the most intense one I had was with DMT. Before I started taking psychedelics, I was atheist.
00:36:49
Speaker
And the more, you know, I kind of matured, just generally not talking about what psychedelics, uh, I became agnostic because that's just kind of where my logic sent me. But after using psychedelics, I now can say that I know like deep inside of myself, I know that God
00:37:12
Speaker
is real and it's insane because there's no way to really explain it but psychedelics can do this for you. It's just something that will happen if you use psychedelics properly and use enough of them. This will be revealed to you and I think it's important to know that
00:37:35
Speaker
The more you learn about yourself, the closer you get to God, in my opinion. And from my experience with using DMT and having a God experience,
00:37:48
Speaker
I've learned that God isn't something separate from me, that it is me, and it's an eternal, not even being, it's just an eternal thing. It is eternity. It is reality itself. But it's just unbelievable that from taking these things, you can have a knowledge that's undeniable about God.
00:38:15
Speaker
You know, it's kind of hard to explain past that because you have to have the experience. And honestly, psychedelics made me kind of respect religions a little more because I've never been religious, but now I get that I think
00:38:32
Speaker
that they were actually trying to point to something. It wasn't just some mindless stories or things I used to think about religion when I was an atheist. I now have a little more respect for it because I think that religion generally is trying to point to divinity, which is absolutely real. I think probably most religions were
00:38:59
Speaker
You know, they might've come from psychedelic experiences. I think that's kind of safe to say because it's an undeniable experience to have. Um, like we talked about the mysteries of Eleusis and I think that, you know, it's pretty clear that was a psychedelic experience that, you know, created a God experience. Personally, for me, DMT was the most clear, undeniable and transforming when it comes to my spirituality.
00:39:26
Speaker
Um, and I think the next time I do mushrooms, it's going to be pretty wild too, because since I've had that experience, the undeniable, like merging with God in eternal, like eternal love, like that's basically what happened since then. Uh, everything has changed dramatically for me and like my outlook.
00:39:49
Speaker
Um, and I've taken smaller doses of mushrooms since that experience. And I feel like I've become a little more sensitive, even like a little more hypersensitive because of that awareness of myself or, you know, the entire experience I had had a big impact on me.

Profound Insights and Higher Consciousness

00:40:07
Speaker
So I have a feeling when I have my next, you know, high dose mushroom trip, that it's going to be, uh, highly spiritual.
00:40:16
Speaker
But who knows every time I expect something from a mushroom trip. I get something totally different Yeah, my most extraordinary mushroom experience was it was a few years ago actually with five and a half grams and it was just an absolute Transcendent experience where I was able to connect with God whatever you wanted to find as God and I don't even like saying it as connect with God because I
00:40:42
Speaker
There's so many assumptions that come with that word. So what I can say is that it was a connection with what only can be described as God. Yes. And my most recent mushroom experience, which was over a year ago, by this point, we don't really take them very often and for good reason, but it was four grams and we were all together actually. Yeah. And I got this.
00:41:11
Speaker
crazy transmission where I was able to, because usually I don't, you know, on four grams, usually I don't really like jump to the God dimensions as easily. It takes me a little more sometimes. But this last time I was able to merge with that spiritual connection of whatever you want to call it. And it almost seemed to me as like,
00:41:36
Speaker
There are the way that we define God in our minds, when you void of language, when you don't use spiritual or religious language, it seems that the way that we define God is a seemingly higher level of consciousness or a seemingly higher dimensional understanding than what we currently have here. So something that's like an extraordinary miracle type of experience that you can
00:42:03
Speaker
that you could have never imagined happening before. So that's what it felt like I was merging into, but it feels like there's levels to that. And the five and a half gram experience that I had, it felt as if I was, uh, connecting to like the largest part of God itself or something like that, like a very large portion of God. And this last experience, it felt almost as if I was merging with the
00:42:33
Speaker
intelligence or the level of consciousness or dimensionality of earth, of the planet. And I was able to
00:42:42
Speaker
ask it questions like you told me is like, ask me anything, anything you want. And I would ask it a question and it would give me a little wink and it would send me a feeling and it would say, I can't answer that question for you in English because you're not posing it quite correctly because you're using English. So I'm going to give you this feeling here. That's going to answer the question for you, but it's not going to answer it in English. So you got to figure out what that means. And also.
00:43:10
Speaker
Like that, that was, that was amazing. And, you know, that I could really explore anything, but also another thing that it, that it showed me was, it was like an, an urgency to it and urgency in the form of.
00:43:26
Speaker
I was once connected to this thing and we were like, and by I, I mean humans, like the species of human life. We were once connected to this higher mind, this thing, this frequency, whatever you want to call it. And we both had the same goal. You know, we were helping each other. We were in a symbiotic relationship with spirit.
00:43:49
Speaker
And we have branched off somehow, we got possessed by something that changed the way our minds work and took us away from the goal that we were ultimately trying to reach, which is the reason that we're here, which is the reason that we've come out of the earth.
00:44:07
Speaker
is so that we can achieve whatever this goal is. And I guess we see it as a goal because we like to see things from start to end. We like to see an ending point. We like to get finality and closure. It might not even be something as, uh, as linear as that, but it's a common motivation. It's a common spirit, a common sense of soul. And it was like pleading with me like, please come back. Like we need your help.
00:44:34
Speaker
You know, and it gave me almost like a Rick and Morty vision of like, um, like Rick standing behind, like, uh, you know, pallets or something like shooting at the enemy. And like, he looks over at Morty to try to get him to help. And Morty is just off in his own world possessed by luxuries and Starbucks and things like that. And he's like, yo, like get back over here. What are you doing? Like trying to slap it out of him. It's like, it was.
00:44:57
Speaker
trying to slap this ulterior motive out of me and say, come back here. I need your help. Like I'm going to get shot. I'm going to fail without you. Like we need you, we need each other. So come back here. And that was, that was revelatory to me as well. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's crazy. Like, like you said that how you can get answers, you know, ask questions and get answers, but the bitches.
00:45:22
Speaker
that it's beyond language. In my opinion, these truths are beyond human. So right now, we operate with our logic and reason and our human thoughts. And when you hit these states that are just transcendent
00:45:43
Speaker
and purely divine, it's like you can fully understand it beyond understand it. You are it. The information, whatever you want to call it, it's all there and you understand fully. And this doesn't even describe it even at all.
00:46:02
Speaker
But the thing is, the truth can't be spoken, as I said before, so you can't give it to anybody else. That's the strange thing about it. You have to have the experience and then you know it. That's why, like I said, I know God exists. It's because I had the experience. I can't tell you how or what it is rather than, you know, it's everything and it's absolute love.
00:46:27
Speaker
infinite and that's the thing why it's interesting this thing doesn't end like it's infinite if you can try to wrap your head around infinity like it's impossible

Understanding Eternity and Experiencing Love

00:46:40
Speaker
So like you were saying with God, how you can get to like different levels of these like divine experiences. I've gotten the experience of basically like the love, whatever you want to call this thing. It, it, it goes for infinity. So like you, I was getting, you know, battered with love by God myself for eternity. So like, even though I can't,
00:47:06
Speaker
use my language right now to describe it perfectly, but in that moment, I understood existence as eternity. Like I was in a place with no time. There was no past, present, only eternity and this infinite absolute love that was going into me and it was
00:47:24
Speaker
Infinite as in it the power was it could go forever like you thought you were feeling the most love that was possible and then it just Amplified more and more and more and so I know that it was just so much more even yet um, but like things like experiencing those levels of love or
00:47:46
Speaker
eternity in a moment, those are things that are beyond human. And so it can't be described accurately or it can't be even felt properly in
00:48:00
Speaker
your current state. Even thinking back to it, I only have almost like a dream of the experience. I remember it perfectly, but I can't feel it. I'm incapable as a human to feel that. And as you were saying before with this goal that we had or something that we should be pushing towards, something deep within me
00:48:26
Speaker
just tells me that it's all consciousness. It's all about raising our consciousness and awareness. And that's when you start to understand the oneness of everybody and reality itself. And we can start treating each other better. When you realize that you aren't your ego and the thing that you are is united with everything around you, then it makes it harder to treat, quote unquote, others in a bad way.
00:48:55
Speaker
What you said reminds me of Ram Dass quote, and he said that this came from his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and he said that God, Guru and Self are the same. They're one and the same. And I think what he means by that is
00:49:10
Speaker
You know, little old me, we think that we are who we are and we are our preferences and we're separate from God and that the guru can help us get to God. But I think what the guru is meant to teach you is that you already are like you already have everything that you think you need. Therefore I am you, you are me and we are God. Like that's the whole lesson is that God, guru and self path, person and spirit are the one and the same.
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, because in my experience, like God experience, whatever you like to call it, um, it was revealed to me that I am God, you know, meaning we all are. It was like, uh, there was no separation and it also revealed to me that I will never die. Like that I am eternal and I know it because I experienced what eternity is. And it's, it's the moment we're in right now. This moment is eternity. And, um,
00:50:09
Speaker
Yeah, there's no there's no death in a sense like this state that you're in is ever changing and it will always be changing.
00:50:18
Speaker
So it was an incredible experience to completely recontextualize reality for me, and especially it recontextualized my idea of what God was. I've had other divine experiences with psychedelics, and I had a grasp of it, but this last DMT experience was a full-blown revelation for me.
00:50:48
Speaker
It's amazing how it can help a human being deal with his mortality, really. I think that's something that a lot of us obsess over and it's terrifying to think about your death and then to have an experience where you feel like you went through death and then came out on the other side as eternal love, as God. It's just nothing can compare to that.
00:51:16
Speaker
And that brings up the fact that you said before, you can't describe it to someone who hasn't had the experience.
00:51:25
Speaker
But I think the only way that you can describe it to someone who hasn't had the experience is just simply by them observing your actions and how it's affected your daily life, how it's affected who you are, uh, the things you think about your value systems, whether or not your priorities have been rearranged, if they needed to be, and how much love you're giving in the world. And if you can see such a radical transformation in someone, then I think that is a good way to describe it because people.
00:51:56
Speaker
People want that, you know, this new age movement of bettering yourself that has been ever so prominent as of late.
00:52:06
Speaker
It's driven by the same thing that the psychedelics give you. It's, it's driven by this deep innate biological need to align yourself with something that's higher than you. That is divine in some sense. I think we all have that in us. And like you said, the nature of religion was to point to this thing. Religion was the very first way in which we tried to find the path down this road. So I agree.
00:52:34
Speaker
Religion is not what I used to think it was. I was a staunch atheist before and I didn't think religion had anything to teach us except they were cool stories. But now when I look at holy books and when I do research on different religions and different ways of thought, um, you see them converge. You really do. And I think I brought this quote up before, but it was another roundhouse quote where he talked about spirituality as being like a giant mountain.
00:53:04
Speaker
And everybody starts at the, at this big giant base and we all take whatever path we need, whatever path is maybe easier, whatever path is more fulfilling, whatever path we feel like taking, we take it up the mountain. But as you get farther up the mountain.
00:53:19
Speaker
What are the paths to do? They converge. And when you get to the top, they become one. And it's indistinguishable who took which path when you're all on the top of the mountain. And that is, I think, the direction that all spiritual thought is going in, the same direction.
00:53:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's got to be basically like infinite ways to get to the thing. And I think we have such this, like this deep craving for, you know, divinity, you know, or however you want to describe it, because, you know, that it's the thing that we are. It's like a lot of people, I mean, I can speak for myself as how I used to feel. I always felt like something was missing. You know, I didn't understand what was happening around me. I didn't feel whole.
00:54:05
Speaker
Like something just wasn't off. I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand reality, you know, but I knew that, you know, it was more than just, you know, you know, at that time it was like kind of depressing for me, you know, it's like, is this all there is? I knew that that wasn't the case. Um, and you know, psychedelics just allowed me to open up a door that, you know, I thought was never possible to open.
00:54:34
Speaker
I've always had the feeling that there was something more to reality and more to myself and I just thought it's not possible to know. If I could know, I would. My rationality and logic, somebody would have figured it out.
00:54:51
Speaker
It's kind of how I thought, you know, if God was real, somebody would have proved it, or, you know, we would all know. But it's just so far beyond that. And it's an experience to be had. And it changed everything for me. I think Albert Einstein, he said, you can live your life in two ways. That one, that there is no miracles, or there are no miracles, or that all there is are miracles.
00:55:19
Speaker
And since I've had some of these experiences, I've started living the latter. I mean, I can do the quote unquote mundane things in life and see how absolutely incredible it actually is. Like I can look at like my cat and just see the perfectness and like just
00:55:37
Speaker
And it's just an entirely different way to experience reality. So in my opinion, after you have one of these experiences, it probably will be pretty apparent to those around you. But it's not like I'm walking around floating, you know, and like some holy guru or something. But everything in my life has been recontextualized in a way that allows for God to be a part of it and for me to be a part of reality itself.

Recontextualizing Life: From Nihilism to Spirituality

00:56:07
Speaker
rather than just kind of a nihilistic way of looking at things and just trying to rationalize my way through life. It's something that's beyond human logic, something that's beyond rationality, and all these things that we think are so absolute are just relative. So this allows you to kind of transcend the relative and start to understand things about yourself that are just not possible in a human state
00:56:38
Speaker
I think what drives a lot of atheism is anger. And I think that anger stems from the lack of connection with the spirit and with what, you know, quote unquote God, because something that inevitably for me resulted from having these mystical spiritual experiences as a result of psychedelics was that I was able to, and I'm continually able to cultivate
00:57:05
Speaker
love and compassion in almost all situations where before I would look at something and it would automatically be. Something to scrutinize, something to judge, you know, it's like the video game book or movie reviewer, you know, you look at the, the subject, the piece of art, and you're looking at it with an eye of judgment because you're thinking about what you're going to write about that piece of art.
00:57:30
Speaker
And that's how I looked at all of reality. What am I going to say about this? What's my opinion about this going to be? And I define myself as that. And it was just an anger based ideology that was void of a true connection to love and spirit. But after these transformative expansion experiences.
00:57:52
Speaker
my life is just full of love and compassion. Everyone around me, I feel their love, whether or not they're sending it to me, it doesn't matter. I still feel it. I feel them for who they are. It feels like I have this, this connection to people that I just want to
00:58:09
Speaker
love, I just want to hug everybody. And, you know, I might be called a hippie by some people and they might be right. But I think that is one of the most important lessons and also one of the most prominent ways that a person can understand just what a real psychedelic experience with real set goals in mind, respecting the substance can do for you.
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I think I say this to people that haven't done psychedelics and are curious about it or say that they might try it. I always reassure them that it's going to be a powerful experience and it's not a recreational drug. The way we've been taught in our culture.
00:58:54
Speaker
We just use this blanket statement of drug and then that's like any substance that the government doesn't want you to take. In my opinion, psychedelics aren't drugs and they're not recreational.
00:59:11
Speaker
It's medicine. It can be medicine. For me, it's a way to get in touch with reality and myself in a way that is unmatched. It's consciousness expanding. The way it can expand consciousness is just until you have the experience isn't able to be comprehended.
00:59:35
Speaker
I remember having my first spiritual experience on a psychedelic and it was beyond comprehension. In that moment, you know that everything has changed. You're not going to be the same and reality is not going to be the same for you anymore. I always have the most gratitude for these things because
01:00:01
Speaker
You know, they, they heal people and you know, they, they changed my life. Um, and it's, it gives you something that you can bring back. It's not just like an amazing experience. And then you go back to your shit life. Like you.
01:00:16
Speaker
have the experience and it transforms you and then your life can become better. You see it's helping people with depression and all this. I think that's in the mainstream now. I think the more we go into this in the mainstream, they're gonna
01:00:35
Speaker
realize that the reason it helps with depression is because it adds a spiritual aspect to people and their lives. I mean, that's how it was for me, you know, being addicted to drugs and just kind of, you know, just depressed, anxious, all that type of stuff. I could just say, yeah, psychedelics cured my depression or this and that, but it's so much more than that.
01:00:57
Speaker
You know, it added a whole other layer to reality and it made spirituality a real thing for me, not just a word. It, you know, it helped me understand myself. And like you said, it also helps you understand other people so much better. Like the empathy you get from using psychedelics is real. It helps you, or it helps me.
01:01:23
Speaker
Basically, deal with everyday situations so much differently and better than I usually would have. Instead of just using the ego to judge, judge, judge just like you were saying, now I try to understand and appreciate the other perspective. Even if I don't agree with it, I can recognize that it's just my ego and my preferences. Not that I'm absolutely right, it's all relative and it's all
01:01:47
Speaker
you know, it's all worthy, it's all valuable. I'm not, you know, my preferences are no better than anyone else's, even though as the ego, I always think they are. As we all do. Yeah, that's just what it is. And it's also interesting that it changes the way that you look at and define death. That to me
01:02:13
Speaker
doesn't make any sense. Why should that happen? Why on earth should you be able to mitigate the fear of death from someone who is facing it due to cancer?

Altering Perceptions of Death and Mortality

01:02:24
Speaker
Stage four, you know, they have a few months to live. And you know, they're taking psilocybin as part of these trials. And
01:02:33
Speaker
They are losing their fear of death. That to me is such an interesting part of these substances. And I think it goes along with what you just said about adding that spiritual layer to life. It helps you to recontextualize everything, not just what you're doing, but what you're going to do and what is going to happen to you when you become so old or sick that you can no longer live. And you have to make the transition to whatever is next.
01:03:02
Speaker
And it supports the fact that there's something that is next and it's not a cop-out type of a next where my physical body is going to be going to heaven and I'm going to find all the people up there that I miss that have passed away before me and I'm going to be in the pearly gates or whatever. Who knows? It might present itself in that way, but.
01:03:26
Speaker
What I can say is that it has given me and a lot of other people the intuition that there's something after we lose ourselves, after we die and Josh is gone, everything I define myself as is gone. My preferences, all of that. Once that is all gone, whatever is leftover, whatever that witness is, is going to go on somewhere in some other form.
01:03:51
Speaker
whether or not it's the Alan Watts quote, where he says, I'm going to say two statements. When I die, I will be reborn as a new baby without any memory of what I, of my, my previous life. That statement one statement two is when I die, a baby will be born.
01:04:13
Speaker
Those two things are saying the same thing. It's similar to that. Or I like another quote by Ram Dass where he says, death is like taking off a tight shoe. All these things that you can't seem to let go of, death is your opportunity to let all of that go.
01:04:31
Speaker
You can let go of everything that you think you are. And a lot of us are not ready for that by the time we get to death. And I think psychedelics by adding that extra layer onto life helps you to get to a point where you can transition in a thoughtful and hopefully healthy way. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the most beautiful aspects of psychedelics is what it does.
01:04:59
Speaker
regarding people's ideas of death or people that are dying of cancer, it's just amazing. And you think about our culture, it's like we are so clueless when it comes to death. When you look back to ancient cultures, like the Egyptians, Tibet, all those cultures would prepare for death and try to understand death in an entirely different way.
01:05:28
Speaker
For us, it's just something we avoid and we fear. I think probably in those ancient cultures, they were probably using psychedelics because it makes you confront death and understand it on a deeper level. When I had my experience I was mentioning before with DMT, as soon as the trip started, my initial thoughts were kind of like panicky because it's so intense.
01:05:59
Speaker
Like kind of to myself or whatever's there. I'm asking about death. Like, Oh my God, everybody's going to die. Like kind of a panic about death. And the response I was getting, this was before I had fully, you know, been peaked into this experience. The response I was getting was almost like.
01:06:16
Speaker
It was so dismissive because I was asking like, Oh my God, you know, my brother's going to die. Everybody's going to die. I can't, it's going to be so horrible. And it was just this missing me. Like it was a joke. It was like, you don't understand death at all. Your questions aren't even worthy. Like it's just like, it was such a preposterous thing to, uh, put forth. And it was like, no, just look here and I'll show you something real. And then that's when I had an experience with God eternity and
01:06:46
Speaker
this absolute love. And it just showed me that whatever we fear about death, it's just completely our own weird thing. And it's probably, I mean, I'm sure universally human beings are afraid of death, but I'm pretty sure that other cultures have overcome that in different ways and understood it in a different way. Whereas now we just kind of
01:07:13
Speaker
fear it and look away. I think with the help of psychedelics, you can understand that it's not something to be feared, that it's just something that happens to you and it's not the end of anything that's going to happen to you. As I said, the feeling of eternity lets you know that being never stops. You'll always be being. I mean, it might not look the same as this or feel the same, but you'll always be being.
01:07:44
Speaker
Yes, like Adelix, they have a way of recontextualizing death from a biological survival need to a broader sense of what it actually is that's happening to us and what we really are before and after death.
01:08:04
Speaker
Because I think we, we look at death through a lens of survival because that's the way our biological evolution has guided us because we have to survive. And if you get too caught up in survival and you limit the sense of spirit.
01:08:22
Speaker
and soul or whatever goes deeper than the survival of your biology, you're only looking at one aspect of it. And I think when you contextualize death as something that's broader, maybe has a meaning and a purpose as opposed to something to be feared, I think that's a big deal as well is that I can look at death and I can say, I should die. Like there's a purpose behind my death, not that I should live forever, but that
01:08:49
Speaker
in order for things to properly move and properly progress.
01:08:54
Speaker
in our species, we have to die. And then the new generation takes over and the new generation grows and then they die. And then we continuously progress and evolve. And don't be scared because you're still part of it. Just because you die in the 1800s doesn't mean that you're not going to get to see the birth of the internet. Maybe you'll get to see it in some sort of a new biological entity that, you know, you could maybe reference reincarnation or Hinduism for.
01:09:20
Speaker
That to me is a more accurate view of what it is that we are doing and what it is that we move on to. If you look at the duality of life and death, you can transcend it into just life with a capital L. When something dies, it's still creating more life.
01:09:44
Speaker
like let's say like creation and destruction like all there actually is is like creation with a capital C I mean when something is destroyed it's still creating it's all creation like you can say even um like a nuclear bomb blows up a city like that's destruction well actually it's creation I mean it's creating radiation it's creating rubble it's everything is always creating something as human beings we just have a bias
01:10:12
Speaker
based on our survival. So we always bias things that help us survive. But if you can look at it from, try to look at it from like a non-human perspective, all that's happening is creation and life and it's beautiful. You know, if you can take yourself out of the picture, then you can have a different understanding. And if you can, you know, I try to
01:10:37
Speaker
I don't know, identify, I try to just be as reality itself and understand the beauty of it. Um, and then you can look at the world as just pure creation all the time. And you know, death doesn't have to be a sad thing. You know, it's sad that you don't get to see somebody maybe when they die, but if you understand them as you, um,
01:11:01
Speaker
It's just them returning back to you. Um, and I think it's a, it's a beautiful way to look at things. And death also physically means life. Like think of composting as a concept or recycling. Like you're taking something that is no longer in use and you are repurposing it for something that you can use. And eventually that's going to break down and the same thing's going to happen to that.
01:11:25
Speaker
And if you look at a lot of like mycelial networks, fungal networks and things like that, they grow and they begin in the substrate of biological death. So when something dies, it becomes fertilizer for something else to grow.
01:11:43
Speaker
And whether or not you put a value system on what life means more, that's on you. That's your problem. And that's another thing that psychedelics taught me. And so it manifested itself in my life in a way where like, I don't like to kill bugs anymore. I don't like, I don't like to, like, I really try to avoid hitting animals on the road. And every time I pass.
01:12:08
Speaker
you know, a deer or a mangled animal on the road. I like, I just like, I take like a moment of silence for it, you know, because if that was a human body on the side of the road that you just drove by and you saw these tire marks that were soaked in blood spewing this thing's guts across the road and it wasn't even a recognizable animal anymore. If that was a human body you saw, you would freak the fuck out. Oh yeah. That's, and that is just as valuable life as ours, you know, all life is precious.
01:12:38
Speaker
Yeah and I have the same problem now and I've had it for a while now with like especially with bugs like I don't want to kill them. And but at the same time it doesn't even matter anyways. But I do I it's just it's like a deluxe you have a new sense of empathy with other living things.
01:13:01
Speaker
Cause it, you know, it just gets rid of all boundaries. So then you can identify with all life rather than, you know, putting up as many walls as you can just to protect yourself. It's just a bigger picture that I've gotten from psychedelics for sure.
01:15:51
Speaker
you