WEBVTT - The Shaman and the Scientist: Hallucination 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.120 Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera. 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:11.000 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind? 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:18.360 From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:20.200 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.640 I'm Julie Douglas and this episode is The Shaman and 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.960 the Scientist Hallucination. It is more or less a part 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.520 two following up on our episode The Shaman and the 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:35.919 Scientist My Egoic Mind. Both of these deal with psychedelics. 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.040 So just on the last podcast, just want to let 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:39.720 everyone know off the top of the podcast if you 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:41.680 didn't get it from the title or the description, Yes, 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:44.680 we're gonna be talking about psychedelic substances in this episode, 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.280 but we're gonna be talking about them largely from scientific standpoint, 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:50.279 and from the standpoint is some very exciting and very 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:53.920 important research that continues to go on right now into 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:59.520 how these substances affect the human mind and what those 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:02.680 effects can actually reveal about the inner workings of the 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.640 human mind and potentially aid us in dealing with some 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:11.360 very real mental problems, mental ailments, etcetera. And again this 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.000 was borne out of the exhibit for I Am the 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.920 Black Jaguar, which is at Emory University, and uh, there 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.080 was a talk there that you attended with doctor Katherine 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:25.240 McClain and doctor Charles Raison at this very topic. Yes, 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.200 fascinating topic. Dr Katherine McClain involved in a lot of 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:32.360 this exciting research at John Hopkins where they're they're taking individuals, 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:37.600 they're exposing them to these various psychedelic substances and then uh, 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.800 interacting with them, getting their perspectives on on what they're 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:44.520 feeling and what's happening, looking at their brain, using radioactive 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.640 tracers to observe exactly how this is affecting their mind. 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:50.760 Lots of fascinating research, and as we discussed in the 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.600 last podcast, we're in at an interesting stage in the 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.400 sort of ebb and flow of psychedelic research. Psychedelic research, 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.360 it makes it sound kind of silly, but research into 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:01.600 psychede ex and how they affect the mind, because this 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:03.640 is all this sort of kicked off in the fifties 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.280 mid fifties, but by the end of the sixties took 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.640 a dive to basically nothing because of the politics and 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.320 the cultural bash backlash, and he didn't really get picked 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.520 didn't pick up again. Until the nineties, and finally achieving 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:19.720 some level of of steam again in the Dan of 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.000 the twenty one century. But of course, a lot of 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.480 these substances have been in use for thousands of years 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.240 through shamanic practices in various parts of the world. What 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:35.120 we're talking about here are anthony ogenic substances, uh, psychoactive 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:39.560 substances used in religious or spiritual context. Yeah. To put 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.480 it in a Simpson's standpoint, Homer Simpson takes peyote and 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.320 then he talks to a space coyote, uh that talks 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:49.160 to him and helps him deal with his problems. That's 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.280 kind of I mean, that's the pop culture simpsons simplified 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:56.320 version of shamantic experience where some wise person a holy 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.480 man or woman in a traditional setting that also you know, 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.560 probably engages in various cultural traditional medicines. They give you 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:05.919 a magical substance one of these, you know, the mushroom 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:08.880 or the vine of ayahuassa, and then you take it. 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.359 The shaman probably takes it to probably in higher doses, 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:16.440 and then guide you on the experience. Yeah. And actually 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.919 I had read that shamans were sometimes picked for their 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:24.640 ability to bring on these states of these altered states 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:28.440 of consciousness. Um by doing it actually just on their 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.880 very own and not necessarily using any sort of substances. 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:36.360 So uh, they were definitely looking for people who had 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:40.120 this ability to expand their minds into access at part 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.280 of their minds that that that we don't normally use 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.880 during the day, right or throughout the day, I should say, so, 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:52.800 here's this idea that comes online that perhaps hallucinating is 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.320 natural to humans, right, because you've had it in these 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.000 rituals for thousands of years, we've had it in practice 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:02.840 in this attempt to try to get a better understanding 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:06.360 of our place in the world. But also you have 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.000 something called d m T which is naturally occurring in 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.640 nature die methyl trip to me yea. And this was 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.440 this was first synthesized by British chemists in the nineteen thirties. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.120 It has a psychotropic properties that were discovered twenty years 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.599 later by Hungarian born chemist Stephen Sarah but then intent 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:28.920 two Nobel laure Julius axel Rod he discovered d MT 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.200 in human brain tissue. Okay, leading us back to the idea, 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:34.280 this isn't something you just synthesize, this is something that 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.600 is is in the mind that exists already up. So 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:40.000 this led to speculation that the compound plays a role 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:44.440 in psychosis. People research that possibility and eventually abandoned it 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:48.920 again because of all the backlash against research into psychedelics anyway, 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.080 but this was the beginning of our understanding of what 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:53.600 d m T is and and what role it plays 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:56.880 in these experiences, the shamanistic experiences, because it's always been 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.320 a part of our brain, and it's present in plants 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.080 such as that the yeah, exactly, and so we're when 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:04.840 we talk about it being present in the brain, we're 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.760 talking about trace amounts of these d m T molecules. 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.920 So obviously it's not any sort of amount that's going to, 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:16.359 uh say, allow us to accidentally start tripping because somehow 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.560 there was some sort of trigger that occurred. But it 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:23.560 does lead people to question why d m T is 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:27.040 in the brain, what sort of role it's playing. And 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.320 it should be noted that d m T is closely 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.760 related to seratonin, which is the naturally occurring neurotransmitter that 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:37.640 psychedelics effect so widely, and the pharmacology of d m 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.200 T is similar to that of other well known psychedelics, 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:45.360 So there's definitely a relationship going on there. It's just 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.320 a question of again, what sort of role might d 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.280 m T play in the mind? UM. There have been 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.320 some people who say that it's produced by the penny 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:56.640 on gland, but we don't know that for sure. Yes, 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:01.120 don't go stealing pennil glands thinking you're going you're triggering. Yeah, 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:03.039 that's true. That's a good point. It leads us to 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:06.320 this question about whether or not hallucinations or something that 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:11.480 are produced normally in nature, and whether or not hallucination 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.680 is something that humans are supposed to do. UM. I 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:18.080 bring this up because there's a two thousand eleven study 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.760 at Whole University in the uk UM which has to 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:27.200 do with hallucinating colors. Now. UH scientists asked a group 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.680 of pre screened people to look at a set of 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.760 gray patterns and try to visualize color. Eleven members of 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:37.720 the group had been identified as highly susceptible to hypnosis UH, 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.840 and then seven of these subjects were not susceptible at all. 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:44.680 The study found that all subjects who were easily hypnotized 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:49.240 reported seeing a range of colors even while not under hypnosis. 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.640 In other words, their brain was hallucinating colors um and 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.240 then m R I scans corroborated this and showed that 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.520 the parts of the brain linked color perception lit up 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:03.760 when they saw in otations imaginary hues of colors. So 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.480 you have this idea coming online that you know there 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.040 are parts of the brain that can work in conjunction 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:12.640 to create the reality. And we talked about this a 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:17.960 thousand times that what we construct is reality is uh, 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.880 I should say, rather, our perception really is an approximation 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:24.080 of reality, and that each of us is looking at 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:26.480 the world in a completely different way. We're just sort 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:28.840 of all agreeing on a couple of things to make 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.440 sure we have some continuity in life. Now, it's interesting 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.040 you mentioned that because on the subject of b MT, 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:37.240 the subject of any of these substances, one of the 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.800 things that Dr Catherine mcclaim brought up, specifically stressing the 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:44.480 research environment that they use at John Hopkins where they 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:48.760 have they don't just inject people with these psychedelic substances 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:50.720 and then put them into like a padded room or 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.600 something tomorrow, right, they have a they have a really 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.640 calming um space that has some you know, abstract art, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.640 has some Buddhas has some other really just a spiraitual 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.880 iconographies some comfy couches, and they do a certain amount 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.640 of priming too, because they don't want to throw somebody 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.360 into some read nightmare trip, you know, they want to 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:11.200 send them on a more or less positive trip. They 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.080 can't guarantee it, but they did find that on I 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:18.440 believe psilocybin that outside of a clinical environment, about thirty 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.000 of the people would say that they had a mystical 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.520 experience inside of the experiment. When when they were controlling 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.040 the the environment in which they were taking, you know, 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.040 and surrounding them with this kind of mystical and calming stuff, 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.000 they would see a seventy percent of the test subjects 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:35.720 reported having a mystical experience. So what you're saying is 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.959 again a lot of it is suggestion, right, and yeah, 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.160 and going into it with with certain expectations as well. 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:44.440 You kind of see that with d MT as well, 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.360 because I was looking at some of these accounts of 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.280 of what d m T is like and um. In 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:53.440 a letter to Alan Ginsburg, William Burrows described his own 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:55.480 And it's of course important to know that William Burrows 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:57.959 did a lot of things. I did a lot a 0:08:58.000 --> 0:08:59.720 lot of drugs. He did a lot of drugs, so 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.160 he's he's maybe not the you know, a pure test subject. 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:05.760 But he reported like the first time he took it, 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.640 it was he he felt himself turning into a half man, 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:13.280 half woman and that he was space time traveling. Whereas 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.440 your buddy John Horrigan, author of Rational Mysticism, he had 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:19.760 a totally well not a totally different experience, but he 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.000 had a different take on the experience. Yeah, he took 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:25.840 some ayahuasca because he is very interested and at the 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:28.199 time of writing his book Rational Mysticism, was trying to 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.359 get to the bottom of what is a spiritual experience? 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:33.560 You know, what's going on in the brain, what's going 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:35.719 on with you know, scientist, what's going on with Shalman's 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.200 and uh So he had the ayahuasca trip and it 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:43.040 was not um It was not probably pleasurable. It did 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.760 not seem like it was for him. But was it 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.400 mind altering? Did it open up his perception that it 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.520 seems to have done. Yeah, he said, quote after I 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.680 threw up, I had a cosmic panic attack in which 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.679 I was menaced by a malevolent day glow hued polyhedra. 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.000 Have no desire to repeat this experience. So there you go, kids, 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:06.400 if you're thinking about doing the ayahuasca. UM. But it 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.160 is really important. And this is what McClean says, particularly 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:11.800 in her talk at Emery when she was speaking about 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:16.160 therapeutic effects of psilocybern which is um. If you think 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:17.920 about it as shrooms. You probably heard it on the 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.920 street shrooms um. She had was saying that it is 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.679 very important to try to guide the person into having 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.760 a sort of breakthrough with the experience and having as 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.920 pleasurable experience as they possibly can't aka not having a 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:33.920 bad trip. Yeah, And that's a part of the whole 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.040 shamanistic deal too, is that the ideas that you had 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:41.040 a guide, there's a certain desired experience. That is then 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.960 the attempt to create this experience via surroundings, via priming, 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:48.920 via a certain story or narrative or our mythos surrounding 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.160 that experience Versus somebody you know who just I don't know. 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.160 Is that a concert and somebody passes them something and 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:59.640 they take it totally different experiences. One is steeped in 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.080 expectations and priming, in the idea that you're going on 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:06.880 a journey, you're attempting to get somewhere perhaps change something 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.200 about you, figure something out, and the other is taking 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:14.240 something and seeing what happens and watching fireworks. As we've 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.760 been discussing in this episode in the Other Shaman and 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:22.840 the Scientist episode, our consciousness is not this really not 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:25.520 this set thing. You know. Um, Like I said, you 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:27.080 can look at a puppy or a cat and it'll 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.120 change the way you're thinking and the way you're looking 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:31.640 at reality. You know, you can you have a cup 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.120 of coffee and your things are gonna sharpen or fade 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:36.720 in terms of your perception. The warmth from the cup 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.199 of coffee will inform your ideas about the person you're 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.040 talking to you right exactly, And according to Dr Katherine 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.720 McLean in this talk that I attended and you attended 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.680 in the form of an iPhone, I was inside really 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:51.800 tiny and um, if you feel in your head around 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.160 the sort of third eye area and sort of between 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.000 your between your eyes back behind in middle frontal part 0:11:57.000 --> 0:12:00.440 of the brandan midfrontal cortex just buried there in the 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:02.360 in the in the brain meat. Uh. There are two 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.160 structures to play a key ro in maintaining our sense 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:07.880 of self in time and space. I mean too vital 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:09.680 that like, those are the big ones, right in terms 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:13.240 of like how who I am and how I'm perceiving reality? 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:15.200 How old am I? Where? Where do I fit in 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:17.000 with time? Where do I fit in with space? I mean, 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.679 that's like the basic stuff right there. Well, remember that 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:24.040 was some of the meat of being a person when 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.840 we talked about personhood. Disability to imagine yourself in the past, 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.760 the present, in the future. Yea, So personhood itself you 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:33.600 can you can isolate to a certain part of the 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.680 brain that is susceptible to changes. Something to keep in 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:43.080 mind when we're talking about not only how hallucinations and 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:48.199 how psychedelics skew the experience of self and uh in 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:51.240 in the outside world, but also just how susceptible to 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.959 change are more or less default understanding of self in 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:59.280 the outside world is okay? So McClain also brings into question. 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.360 I think I mentioned before that consciousness may not be 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:06.520 as coherent as we think it is. So um what 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.560 she shared with everybody is that there's something that makes 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.120 us even more tricky, and that's the introduction of a 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:19.960 drug called salvia de norium and um. In an experiment 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:26.839 in they had volunteers take this drug, this hallucination, and 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.520 what they found is that all of these people, all 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:35.120 of them hallucinated that they had interactions with entities while 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:39.439 on salvia, little men, elves, that kind of thing we're 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:41.240 talking and I mean, we're really getting into the whole 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:46.199 territory of of of paranoral experience and in spirits and 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:49.800 and godlings and whatever else you might want to encounter 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:52.560 in the woods. Now, that's not that I mean, that's weird, right, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:57.760 just because people had, you know, hallucinations specifically about entities. 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:00.680 What's weird about this is that when they then had 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:06.560 subsequent trips on salvia, they revisited those scenarios and those 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:13.760 entities and other words, there's entities became somewhat of a 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:18.160 part of the continuum of consciousness. Yeah, turned to the 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:20.640 same I mean, I'm instantly reminded of dreams, of course, 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.120 because we're talking about how crazy that the idea of 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.440 encountering an entity is, and it's you know, and I 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:27.800 imagine a number of people's minds are going a little 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:30.840 wonky with just the idea of just who I'm They 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.080 someone took a substance and then they encountered this being 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.000 that wasn't real but seemed to have uh you know, 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.040 seemed to act of its own volition. Of course, we 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:41.680 were constantly having dreams at night in which we interact 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.560 with things and essentially entities. We've all interacted with unreal 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:47.080 people and unreal things and our dreams. But it is 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.880 always were very often difficult to return to a dream. 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.400 Whenever we have even just a motif returns and subsequent dream, 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.120 it's something that's noteworthy much less the encountered with an 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:01.080 exact same being or entity. So then that sort of 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:04.440 blurs the line again between what what is illusion was 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.240 reality and what we construct as reality. No, of course, 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:09.240 I'm not saying that everybody should go out there and 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:13.360 hallucinate and find an entity is and then have conversations 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:15.600 with it. I'm just saying that I think it's interesting 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:17.840 that it's now coated as a memory and it's part 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.320 of the continuum, right. And it's worth noting McLean's study 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:23.480 was it was a small number of people she said 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.640 for this, than which she had entities. And you do 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.440 encounter plenty of cases where people have claimed to have 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:33.680 taken uh salvia and they do not experience entities. So yeah. True. Yeah, 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:37.280 so this is not a guaranteed ticket to fairyhood, no no. 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:39.840 But of course our takeaway was, you know, hey, you 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:41.400 you find some sort of being and then you pick 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.120 up the conversation a couple of weeks later with that 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:46.840 person in your head. This is a vital part, of course, 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:49.600 of shamanistic experience. One is taking a substance for a 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:55.040 spiritual purpose. I mean, because the spiritual um, spiritual accounts, 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.280 mystical hands are full of people encountering unreal beings. So 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.800 we can see exactly where that fits in a shatanistic traditions. Well, 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.720 and like William William Burrows Burrows as Us spoke of 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:06.840 the half man, half Woman, I mean, there's all sorts 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.640 of encounters, of course. Um. But what I wanted to 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:13.840 talk about next is this idea of eyes wide shut 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:19.800 and particularly under the influence of ayahuasca. And I find 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.480 this interesting because in the talk they were talking about 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:27.080 how ayahuasca and visual processing get really wonky, because what 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.680 you're talking about here are the areas of the brain 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:35.600 associated with visual processing light. Um, and when you have 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.280 your eyes open, right you you can see the sort 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.480 of activity in your brain going on processing that what 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.880 they found. Um And this is again McClean talking about this, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.880 and the talk is that people who are on ayahuasca 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.520 with her eyes shut having hallucinations, we're having the same 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:56.720 level of activity in their brains um and visually processing 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.680 as they would in their waking hours and processing the data, 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.560 which is very different from how we normally processed data 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:06.760 when our eyes are closed. Yeah, we're not to that. 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:09.640 Not only was the activity in the brain identical two 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:12.720 eyes open there, it was identical to eyes open in 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:18.240 an outside environment, in a in a very stimulus filled environment. Uh, 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.879 they close their eyes and they're they're still encountering that 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:26.320 much stimuli. Yeah, Which then it sort of placed this idea, Um, 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.479 you know that you're the dream of your consciousness is 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:34.119 merging with what your brain is perceiving as reality. Yeah, 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:35.720 I mean she she laid out that a lot of 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:37.880 this does come down to this breakdown between the sense 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:39.919 of self and other, between the self sense of you 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.480 and the outside world and uh, um and and that's 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.280 part part of what's at play here now. She and 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:52.000 um and Rason talked about the dangers of ayahuasca. They 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:56.760 did talk about how this is not taken lightly, particularly 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:02.320 with this kind of psychoactive substance, because you apparently have 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.199 to prepare your body very well for this type of 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:08.800 hallucinogen um. And a lot of this has to do 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:10.480 with the amount of serotonin that you already have in 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.160 your brains. You don't want to mess with these levels. Um. 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:15.720 And I say that not because I don't I think 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.000 someone's going to do this, but um, this was something 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.159 that they stressed in their talk, is that this is 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.359 not stuff to play with. This is stuff that they 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.080 do in the labs, the stuff that they make sure 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.919 that people are mind and body prepared for. Because even 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:31.240 the amounts of cheese with triglycerides that you eat will 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:33.840 affect the amount of serotonin in your brain. And if 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.000 you were to then take Ayahuaska and you had a 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:38.679 lot of serotonin, you could be very dangerous, can actually 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:40.800 lead to death. Um, so you have to make sure 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:43.080 that all the levels are correct. Yeah, So, no matter 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:45.920 how much you might want to And Timothy Leary's where 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.480 it's going to billion your journey to God if you 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.160 have to give up cheese first, I mean, I don't know, 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:55.280 because cheese is great, gonna booyah. What was that part 0:18:55.280 --> 0:19:00.520 of the sentence a billion, your journey to billion said, buya, 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.720 your buya journey to guy. Yeah that works too. I 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:09.040 guess I think I'm hallucinating. Um alright, So there's again 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.919 this idea of hallucinations perhaps being a part of the machinery, 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.880 and particularly when you look at something like meditating monks, 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:21.880 to bent monks in particular, there have been accounts all 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:26.680 over the place about monks being able to meditate to 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:32.160 such a degree that they begin to hallucinate themselves. So 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.480 we talked about this before and um with hallucinations having 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.080 something in common with meditating in terms of quieting the 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:45.960 default mode network, this chattering part of your brain. Makes 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:50.639 you wonder if again, through meditation you can access the 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:55.719 same sort of hallucinatory experience, this realm of dreaming, of 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.199 lucid dreaming. Even well, it instantly reminds me of Mendala's 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.520 the idea that the bitten monkst especially will there's sort 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:04.280 of there's the outer Mendola. You know that you see 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.159 an art depictions, but these are kind of blueprints for 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:09.679 a really kind of a thought palace or kind of 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.600 a memory palace, this kind of mental space that they 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.400 put their minds in a place now. And I mean 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.560 that in terms of there's actually like a floor plant, 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.479 you know, um, and it's a way of containing some 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.760 very complex spiritual ideas and and so creating this crazy 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:29.879 structure in their head. It seems similar in many ways 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.960 to the kind of crazy structure one mind encounter, say 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.479 on D M T or you know, Awassa or one 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:37.720 of the one of these substances where one closes their 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:42.719 eyes and experiences some sort of amazing architecture or explosions 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.080 or what have you. Uh. The difference being, of course, 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:47.520 here that the monk is having to work really hard 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.560 to achieve this level of calm and concentration and uh 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.760 in meditative state, whereas the individual taking this substance, not 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:57.480 to say that it's easy, not to say that it's 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:03.200 a necessarily a shortcut, but there's less intense concentration involved 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:05.359 in reaching that state. I don't know if this relates 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:08.000 to it specifically in terms of hallucinations, but I do 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:13.080 know that there's one practice in meditation where you um, 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:19.040 you essentially try to imagine your own decomposition. And the 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:21.840 idea is not just to you know, get try to 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.119 figure out what your school would look like, but to 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:28.240 try to figure out, you know, how ephemeral life is 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:34.600 and how important the present is and um, apparently this 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.840 is something that is very disturbing because it can take 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.200 over the imagination parts of your brain, right and as 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.840 we had discussed and hallucinating color. Um, sometimes what you're 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:48.160 talking about here is just sort of making the inference 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.119 that this will happen in your mind, taking it and 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:52.560 running with it. Yeah, you see that that's actually a 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.280 motif and cool due to Bettan art and some of 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.080 the mandala and mandala a can uh creations where you 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:02.320 see like flate and bones and oceans of blood and 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.600 it's not like a morbid death metal celebration of that stuff. 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:08.879 But it's about the ephemeral nature of things and about 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:13.080 the the limits of physical existence, right and again trying 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:15.840 to get a better awareness of life and opening up 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:19.199 your mind a bit um. All right, So there's this 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:23.280 idea that this is, you know, speaking of ephemeral nature 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.600 may not be long lasting, but there's some evidence that 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:29.800 the drug use as well as the meditation could have 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:35.159 long term impact. Thinking about Roland Griffins, I believe it's 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:37.480