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Speaker 1: Now Here's a Highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Stephen Gray has been involved in spiritual work and psychedelics

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Speaker 1: for fifty years. This includes more than twenty years as

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Speaker 1: a student and occasional teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, a dozen

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Speaker 1: years actively involved with the Native American Church, Peyote prayer ceremonies,

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Speaker 1: guest membership in the Ayahuasca using Sento Dame Church, and

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Speaker 1: experience with a number of other entheogens. He's an author.

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Speaker 1: He's the author of Returning to Sacred World, a Spiritual

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Speaker 1: Toolkit for the Emerging Reality, and editor, as well as

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Speaker 1: one of eighteen contributors to the popular Cannabis and Spirituality

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Speaker 1: and Explores Guide to an Ancient Plant spirit Ally, he

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Speaker 1: teaches people about the spiritual benefits of intentional cannabis use

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Speaker 1: and conducts cannabis meditation and sound journeying ceremonies. For the

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Speaker 1: past ten years, Stephen has co organized the influential spirit

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Speaker 1: Plant Medicine Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. He's the author

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Speaker 1: or Sorry. He is the editor of How Psychedelics Can

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Speaker 1: Help Save the World, Visionary and Indigenous Voices speak Out

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Speaker 1: with contributions from Christopher Baich, Zoe Helene, Dennis McKenna, Martina Hoffman,

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Speaker 1: the Dank Duchess, Jamie Wheel, grandmother Maria Alice, and others.

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Speaker 1: Stephen Gray, Welcome to Coast to Coast. How are you? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Hello again, Richard. Great, great to speak with you again.

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Speaker 1: Let me ask you because I noticed that many of

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Speaker 1: the contributors a dozen or more that are in the

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Speaker 1: that have contributed essays to how Psychedelics can help save

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Speaker 1: the World also were previously speakers at the Spirit Plant

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Speaker 1: Medicine Conference. So just tell us a little bit about

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Speaker 1: the spirit Plant Medicine Conference in Vancouver. I know the

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Speaker 1: most recent one just wrapped up last month in November.

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Speaker 1: What's it all about? Well, it's actually thanks for the question.

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Speaker 1: It's actually, I would say, exactly the same mission or

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Speaker 1: motivation as thought of the book. It excuse me, that's

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Speaker 1: ostensibly the role of psychedelics. But the psychedelics or sacramental

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Speaker 1: medicines or plant medicines, whatever you want to call them, anthogens.

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Speaker 1: They're not in a sense to be all an end all.

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Speaker 1: When you do some lovely you had some lovely quotes

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Speaker 1: from that doctor Jordan read or John read anyway, you know,

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Speaker 1: when they're used safely, effectively in optimal circumstances, the optimal

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Speaker 1: set and setting, as it's often said, set meaning intention

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Speaker 1: and all you bring to the situation and setting meaning

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Speaker 1: the actual environment that you do it in the condition

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Speaker 1: the container, as they say, when they are used properly

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Speaker 1: that way, understood properly by the right people. Because they're

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Speaker 1: not forever body. They are ultimately at their best in

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Speaker 1: service of an awakening and awakening journey that is going

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Speaker 1: to be essential, as you know brought up a couple

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Speaker 1: of times in your intro for the health of the

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Speaker 1: planet long term. So that's what the conference is about,

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Speaker 1: just as the book. And as a matter of fact,

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Speaker 1: fourteen of the twenty five contributors in the book have

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Speaker 1: also spoken at the conference. And that's no coincidence because

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Speaker 1: I know them all because I'm the person who finds

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Speaker 1: them and negotiates with them and all that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, I already knew a lot of

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Speaker 1: those people, and I thought, well, you know, they have

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Speaker 1: things to say that I think would be really useful

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Speaker 1: for this book. Let's put them in there. So we

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Speaker 1: bring these people up to Vancouver. It's a three day

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Speaker 1: conference held University of British Columbia. One thing that I

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Speaker 1: think it's really special about our conference, and I'm not

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Speaker 1: just saying that because you know, it's like, it's not

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Speaker 1: like talking about your child and you know you got

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Speaker 1: the smartest kid in the class or whatever. It's it's

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Speaker 1: actually something that many, many people have said over the

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Speaker 1: years about this conference. It's I don't know if it's unique,

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Speaker 1: because I haven't been to all the conferences in the world,

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Speaker 1: of course, but it has a quality of energy connection

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Speaker 1: between people that actually is palpable and builds over the

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Speaker 1: course of the weekend, and so by Sunday it's like

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Speaker 1: it's almost as if it's you know, one giant beating

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Speaker 1: heart in that large room. You know, it's four or

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Speaker 1: five hundred people. And one of the things we've deliberately

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Speaker 1: done is not have breakout rooms like some larger conferences

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Speaker 1: to it's all in one room. So we almost think

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Speaker 1: of it as a sort of like a quasi ceremony,

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Speaker 1: you know, a ceremony light lte, you might say, and

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Speaker 1: so we're sharing space. It's as if you know, I

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Speaker 1: know your program sometimes talks about UFOs it's as if

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Speaker 1: we have all entered into a spaceship and taken off

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Speaker 1: for three days and then land at the end of

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Speaker 1: that time. And one of the things, by the way,

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Speaker 1: that has supported that you mentioned in your intro for

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Speaker 1: me that I have a book called Cannabis and Spirituality

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Speaker 1: and that I edited and contributed to and so it's

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Speaker 1: sort of part of the whole pantheon of psychedelics in

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Speaker 1: that sense. And on the Saturday night for the last

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Speaker 1: three years that we've had the conference, we've actually had

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Speaker 1: a cannabis ceremony in the hall with one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty to two hundred people. Not everyone wanted to stay

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Speaker 1: for it. The ones who really wanted to stay for

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Speaker 1: it stayed and it was about an hour and a

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Speaker 1: half of meditation, sound journeying, guided breathwork stuff, all under

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Speaker 1: the influence of cannabis. We have some very generous friends

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Speaker 1: that provided with provided us with a couple of hundred

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Speaker 1: pre rolls of their amazing medicine. They have a farm

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Speaker 1: up in the interior of British Columbia and their medicine

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Speaker 1: sun grown organic only, with companion plants around it. And

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Speaker 1: they are in fact educators and they make these this

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Speaker 1: really beautiful, these medicines that are expansive and uplifting, and

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Speaker 1: so people have this experience and kind of shake their

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Speaker 1: heads and go what cannabis can do that? So it

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Speaker 1: all has to do with intention in the setting that

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Speaker 1: I talked about, and then so on the Sunday when

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Speaker 1: people come in, they're energized and lifted even more so. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: that's I could say more about the conference, but I

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Speaker 1: think that's probably as much as you wanted to hear

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Speaker 1: about it for now. Right, you mentioned breakout rooms, which,

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Speaker 1: of course many people who attend conferences are familiar with

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Speaker 1: breakout rooms. Maybe in your case you should call them

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Speaker 1: a break on through rooms, just an idea for the

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Speaker 1: break through room. Yes, for the outside or there's not

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Speaker 1: familiar with the use of psychedelics and they may look

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Speaker 1: at them as escapism. You say, they're quite the opposite.

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Speaker 1: They're the opposite, literally the opposite of escapism. They are

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Speaker 1: reality medicines. Explain, well, yeah, I'm not a scientist, so

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Speaker 1: I don't know all the you know, biochemical explanations for

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Speaker 1: what actually happens with them in that regard, but essentially

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Speaker 1: what they do is they open and connect channels. There's

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Speaker 1: been some really interesting research. I do know this much.

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Speaker 1: Actually i've seen these images. I don't know if they're

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Speaker 1: MRI images or something like that, of as if you're

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Speaker 1: looking down at a skull or brain and it's a

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Speaker 1: you can see, you know, a sober or brain in

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Speaker 1: normal functioning status, and they're light, they're little lit up

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Speaker 1: places around the perimeter on the inside of this skull

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Speaker 1: or brain. And then right beside that they have another

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Speaker 1: image of exactly the same situation, the same skull, but

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Speaker 1: it's now under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms, and now

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Speaker 1: you're seeing lines connecting up all the different parts of

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Speaker 1: the brain or numerous different parts of the brain. So

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Speaker 1: on that straight physiological or biochemical level, these substances are

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Speaker 1: opening up connections and channels in the brain. They are there.

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Speaker 1: I think it's probably important for people to know. They're

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Speaker 1: for the most part, the natural ones, in particular the

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Speaker 1: plants and fungi are extremely non toxic. Like the dosage

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Speaker 1: you would have to take of psilocybin mushrooms or ayahuasca

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Speaker 1: or LSD or payot or watchumas and pedrocarctus and not

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Speaker 1: even to mention, can this to toxify yourself? Would you'd

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Speaker 1: you'd be you know, more than gone, you know, and

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Speaker 1: from the mental effects of it, long before you had

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Speaker 1: even a remote inclination or a sense of any kind

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Speaker 1: of toxicness. Although, of course, for anyone familiar with ayahuasca,

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Speaker 1: it is a purgative that oftentimes causes you to throw up,

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Speaker 1: but that's purifying, a detoxification process that's happening. So on

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Speaker 1: that simple level, there's an opening that's going on on

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Speaker 1: the which you might call the mental plane, or you

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Speaker 1: could even call it a spiritual plane, or even the

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Speaker 1: healing plane. What they're doing in that opening is there, Okay?

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Speaker 1: So it essentially requires for some people what would probably

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Speaker 1: be a leap of faith, I suppose, and it would

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Speaker 1: go something like this, there is an eternal divine reality.

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Speaker 1: If there any Christians in your audience, it doesn't belong

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Speaker 1: to Christianity, it doesn't belong to Buddhism, it doesn't belong

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Speaker 1: to Islam, it doesn't belong to any religion. It's a

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Speaker 1: universal potential available to every single human being, regardless of iq, etc. Etc.

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Speaker 1: It is what Buddhist teachings call I use Buddhist imagery

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Speaker 1: or language a lot, because I studied it for a

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Speaker 1: long time, I practiced it for a long time. So

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Speaker 1: it's the sort of way of talking about this. It's

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Speaker 1: most familiar to me. But I'm not meaning to be

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Speaker 1: in any way since exclusive about that. So what Buddhist

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Speaker 1: teachings say, and this is based on experience, by the way,

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Speaker 1: not on a collection of a body of beliefs. It's

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Speaker 1: based on people that sat up on that plateau and

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Speaker 1: Tibet for a thousand years and explored mind by sitting down,

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Speaker 1: And as Terence McKenna, the great psychedelic philosopher, it, sit down,

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Speaker 1: shut up, and pay attention, you know, and allow your

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Speaker 1: mind to calm down and just pay attention to the

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Speaker 1: reality that's outside this collection of beliefs and concepts that

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Speaker 1: you hold. Right, So, what the psychedelics potentially do is

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Speaker 1: they open up parts of the brain that connect you

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Speaker 1: to an unconditioned reality that is, you know, a priori

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Speaker 1: preexisting permanently. You might say, it's it's the source, the

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Speaker 1: unified source consciousness of the world or of life altogether.

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Speaker 1: That is real. It's and it's accessible on you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe not to the ultimate level of understanding the full

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Speaker 1: full depth of the mystery of existence altogether, but enough

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Speaker 1: to know that, as you said in your intro, and

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Speaker 1: I think referring to this stuck to read, that we

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Speaker 1: are connected to a divine, creative, loving, eternal source and

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Speaker 1: we can access that to the point where we can

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Speaker 1: where it can become our program, our functioning guide. It's

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Speaker 1: not easy. It's a long term journey. In fact, many

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Speaker 1: would say it takes many lives for that to happen. However,

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Speaker 1: as you also indicated in your intro, introdectory type remarks,

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Speaker 1: it's essential now that there'll be a rapid awakening for

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Speaker 1: many people, and some psychedelics, again, in optimal circumstances, can

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Speaker 1: help with that. Right. Yeah, we should stress we're talking

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Speaker 1: about the use of them in optimal circumstances. In a

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Speaker 1: control setting, I would I would imagine, you know, under

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Speaker 1: some sort of supervision, right, you should have I would

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Speaker 1: you would use the buddy method. I'm guessing here, right,

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Speaker 1: you would have someone to make sure things don't get

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Speaker 1: out of hand, or that that you're you know, you're

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Speaker 1: in good hands, right. Well, yeah, And there's several sort

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Speaker 1: of levels or layers or versions of to do that.

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Speaker 1: So that's a really important topic actually, So let's go

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Speaker 1: from one end of that continuum to another, so to speak. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we just have about we just have about a minute here,

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Speaker 1: so let's start that that discussion and then we'll carry

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Speaker 1: it on after the break. So, yeah, let's just begin now.

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Speaker 1: We have about a minute here. We're not going to

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Speaker 1: be able to get into it at the level that's

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Speaker 1: required to make it clear. But there's everything from just

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Speaker 1: doing it alone, doing it without intention, doing it meaning

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Speaker 1: any kind of psychedelic you know, casually without paying any

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Speaker 1: attention to the setting, any of that stuff. And then

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Speaker 1: there's doing it alone but with intention, and then it

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Speaker 1: goes from there to having a sitter and then a

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Speaker 1: guide and or a therapist and a ceremonial situation. Those

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Speaker 1: are the sort of layers of sort of sophistication, complexity

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Speaker 1: and protection that would be involved. Listen to more Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast am every weeknight at one am Eastern and

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Speaker 1: go to Coast to Coast a m dot com for

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Speaker 1: more