WEBVTT - The Scientist and the Shaman: Hallucination 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.920 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.000 My name is Robert Lamb. Julie Douglas is on vacation 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:20.239 this week, so we're taking the opportunity to re air 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.439 our Scientists and the Shaman pair of episodes. These deal 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:30.080 with psychedelics, the history of psychedelics, and also our ability 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.519 to turn to these substances to better understand how the 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:37.640 mind works and possibly create some ailments from a scientific standpoint. 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:40.559 So I hope you listen to part one. If not, 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:42.440 go back and listen to that one, then come back 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.560 to to this point in this podcast and enjoy Part two. 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:53.519 I just want to let everyone know off the top 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:55.280 of the podcast you didn't get it from the title 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:57.960 or the description. Yes, we're gonna be talking about psychedelic 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:00.880 substances in this episode, but we're gonna talking about them 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:03.880 largely from scientific standpoint, and from the standpoint is some 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.319 very exciting and very important research that continues to go 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:12.640 on right now into how these substances affect the human 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:16.560 mind and what those effects can actually reveal about the 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.880 inner workings of the human mind and potentially aid us 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.119 in dealing with some very real mental problems, mental ailments, 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.280 et cetera. And again this was borne out of the 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.080 exhibit for I Am the Black Jaguar, which is at 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:33.440 Emory University, and there was a talk there that you 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:38.520 attended with doctor Katherine McClain and doctor Charles Raison about 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.360 this very topic, Yes, fascinating topic. Doctor Katherine McClain involved 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:44.520 in a lot of this exciting research at John Hopkins 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.520 where they're they're taking individuals, they're exposing them to these 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:53.560 various psychedelic substances and then uh interacting with them, getting 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.440 their perspectives on on what they're feeling and what's happening, 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:01.040 looking at their brain, using radioactive tracers to observe exactly 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:04.240 how this is affecting their mind. Lots of fascinating research, 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:06.280 and as we discussed in the last podcast, we're in 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.920 at an interesting stage in the sort of ebb and 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.560 flow of psychedelic research. Psychedelic research. It makes it sound 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.080 kind of silly, but research into psychedelics and how they 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:17.160 affect the mind, because this is all this sort of 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.840 kicked off in the fifties, mid fifties, but by the 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:22.400 end of the sixties took a dive to basically nothing 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:27.040 because of the politics and the cultural backlash, backlash, and 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:29.160 he didn't really get picked didn't pick up again until 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.200 the nineties and finally achieving some level of of steam 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:35.239 again in at the dawn of the twenty one century. 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:38.119 But of course, a lot of these substances have been 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.480 in use for thousands of years through shamanic practices in 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:44.960 various parts of the world. What we're talking about here 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:51.720 are anthony ogenic substances, uh, psychoactive substances used in religious 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.600 or spiritual context. Yeah. To put it in a Simpsons standpoint, 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.120 Homer Simpson takes peyote and then he talks to a 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:02.960 space iote that talks to him and helps him deal 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:04.679 with his problems. That's kind of I mean, that's the 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.520 pop culture Simpsons simplified version of shamantic experience where some 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:12.920 wise person a holy man or woman in a traditional 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.800 setting that also you know, probably engages in various cultural 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:19.560 traditional medicines. They give you a magical substance one of these, 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.520 you know, the mushroom or the vine of iawassa, and 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.520 then you take it. The shaman probably takes it too, 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:30.399 probably in higher doses, and then guide you on the experience. Yeah, 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.440 and actually I had read that Shamans were sometimes picked 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:38.640 for their ability to bring on these states of these 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.720 altered states of consciousness, um by doing it actually just 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.080 on their very own and not necessarily using any sort 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:50.440 of substances. So, uh, they were definitely looking for people 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:54.480 who have this ability to expand their minds into access 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.120 a part of their minds that that that we don't 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:00.400 normally use during the day, right or through out the day, 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.920 I should say, So, here's this idea that comes online 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:09.839 that perhaps hallucinating is natural to humans, right, because you've 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.760 had it in these rituals for thousands of years, we've 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.200 had it in practice in this attempt to try to 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:19.280 get a better understanding of our place in the world. 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:23.040 But also you have something called d m T which 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:27.520 is naturally occurring in nature. Die methyl trip to me. Yeah, 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.200 and this was this was first synthesized by British chemists 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.800 in the nineties. It has a psychotropic properties that were 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:38.120 discovered twenty years later by Hungarian born chemist Stephen Sarah. 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:42.680 But then in two Nobel Laurea Julius axel Rod he 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:46.159 discovered d MT in human brain tissue. Okay, leading us 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.159 back to the idea, this isn't something you just synthesize, 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.400 this is something that is in the mind that exists already. 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:54.320 Uh So this led to speculation that the compound plays 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:58.480 a role in psychosis. People research that possibility and eventually 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.120 abandoned it again because of all the the backlash against 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.560 research into psychedelics. Anyway, but this was the beginning of 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.360 our understanding of what d m T is and what 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.920 role it plays in these experiences, the shamanistic experiences, because 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.000 it's always been a part of our brain and it's 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:16.360 present in plants such as the the iawassa. Yeah exactly, 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.039 And so when we talk about it being present in 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:21.200 the brain, we're talking about trace amounts of these d 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.880 MT molecules. So obviously it's not any sort of amount 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:29.359 that's going to, uh say, allow us to accidentally start 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.480 tripping because somehow there was some sort of trigger that occurred. 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:37.520 But it does lead people to question why d m 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:41.039 T is in the brain, what sort of role it's playing. 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.520 And it should be noted that d m T is 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:47.280 closely related to seratonin, which is the naturally occurring neurotransmitter 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:52.120 that psychedelics effect. So widely, and the pharmacology of d 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.320 m T is similar to that of other well known psychedelics, 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:59.919 so there's definitely a relationship going on there. It's just 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.920 a question of again, what sort of role might be 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.080 empty play in the mind. UM. There have been some 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.440 people who say that it's produced by the penny on gland, 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.680 but we don't know that for sure. Yes, don't go 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:16.360 stealing pennial glands thinking you anything. Yeah, that's true. That's 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:18.360 a good point. It leads us to this question about 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.240 whether or not hallucinations are something that are produced normally 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.880 in nature, and whether or not hallucination is something that 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.040 humans are supposed to do. UM. I bring this up 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:34.040 because there's a two thousand eleven study that whole university 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:40.600 in the uk UM which has to do with hallucinating colors. Now, UH, 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:43.760 scientists ask a group of pre screened people to look 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:46.719 at a set of gray patterns and try to visualize color. 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.080 Eleven members of the group have been identified as highly 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:54.120 susceptible to hypnosis UH, and then seven of these subjects 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.279 were not susceptible at all. The study found that all 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:00.760 subjects who were easily hypnotized reported being a range of 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.680 colors even while not under hypnosis. In other words, their 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.919 brain was hallucinating colors um and then m R I 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.520 scans corroborated this and showed that the parts of the 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.400 brain linked color perception lit up when they saw in 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:19.480 quotations imaginary hues of colors. So you have this idea 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:22.680 coming online that you know there are parts of the 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.400 brain that can work in conjunction to create the reality. 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.080 And we talked about this a thousand times that what 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:33.400 we construct is reality is uh, I should say, rather, 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.240 our perception really is an approximation of reality, and that 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.360 each of us is looking at the world in a 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.000 completely different way. We're just sort of all agreeing on 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.280 a couple of things to make sure we have some 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:48.360 continuity in life. Now, it's interesting you mentioned that because 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:50.640 on the subject of d MT, the subject of any 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:52.960 of these substances, one of the things that Dr Catherine 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:56.880 mcclaim brought up, specifically stressing the research environment that they 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.120 use at John Hopkins where they have they don't just 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:04.000 inject people with these psychedelic substances and then put them 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.160 into like a padded room or something tomorrow. Right, they 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.520 have a they have a really calming um space that 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.720 has some you know, abstract art, has some Buddhas has, 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.520 some other religious or spiritual iconographies, some comfy couches. And 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.360 they do a certain amount of priming too, because they 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:22.520 don't want to throw somebody into stance from a nightmare trip, 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:24.680 you know, they want to send them on a more 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.240 or less positive trip. They can't guarantee it, but they 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.880 did find that on I believe psilocybin, that outside of 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.680 a clinical environment, about thirty of the people would say 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.920 that they had a mystical experience inside of the experiment. 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:40.840 When when they were controlling the the environment in which 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:42.640 they were taking you know, and surrounding them with this 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.319 kind of mystical and calming stuff, they would see a 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:49.360 seventy of the test subjects reported having a mystical experience. 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:51.280 So what you're saying is again a lot of it 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.079 is suggestion, right, and yeah, and going into it with 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.000 with certain expectations as well. You kind of see that 0:08:58.040 --> 0:08:59.960 with the m T as well, because I was looking 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.200 some of these accounts of of what d MT is like, 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:06.840 and you know, a letter to Alan Ginsburg, William Burrows 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.360 described his own and it's of course important to know 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:12.240 that William Burrows did a lot of things. I did 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:13.800 a lot a lot of drugs. He did a lot 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.319 of drugs, So he's maybe not the you know, a 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:19.920 pure test subject. But he reported like the first time 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.439 he took it, it was he he felt himself turning 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.440 into a half man, half woman and that he was 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:30.839 space time traveling. Whereas your buddy John Horgan, author of 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:33.520 Rational Mysticism, he had a totally well not a totally 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.240 different experience, but he had a different take on the experience. Yeah, 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:40.120 he took some ayahuasca because he is very interested and 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.560 at the time of writing his book Rational Mysticism, was 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:44.600 trying to get to the bottom of what is a 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.640 spiritual experience? You know, what's going on in the brain, 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:49.640 what's going on with you know, scientist, what's going on 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.360 with shaman's and uh So he had the ayahuasca trip 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:57.319 and it was not um It was not probably pleasurable, 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.800 It did not seem like it was for him. But 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.920 was it mind altering? Did it open up his perception 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:06.240 that it seems to have done. Yeah, he said, quote 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:09.720 after I threw up, I had a cosmic panic attack 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:12.959 in which I was menaced by a malevolent day glow 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.880 hued polyhedra. I have no desire to repeat this experience. 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:19.560 So there we go. Kids. If you're thinking about doing 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.040 that ayahuasca. Um. But it is really important, And this 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.120 is what McClean says, particularly in her talk at Emery 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:29.240 when she was speaking about therapeutic effects of psilocybrin, which 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.719 is um if you think about it as shrooms. You 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:35.720 probably heard it on the street shrooms um. She was 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.920 saying that it is very important to try to guide 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:42.040 the person into having a sort of breakthrough with the 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:45.400 experience and having as pleasurable experience as they possibly can 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.920 aka not having a bad trip. Yeah. And that's a 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:50.920 part of the whole shamanistic deal too, is that the 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:54.959 idea that you had a guide, there's a certain desired experience. 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.479 That is then the attempt to create this experience via surroundings, 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:02.199 via priming, via a certain story or narrative or or 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:06.960 mythos surrounding that experience Versus somebody you know who just 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:09.280 I don't know. Is that a concert and somebody passes 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:12.880 them something and they take it totally different experiences. One 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:17.200 is steeped in expectations and priming, in the idea that 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:20.319 you're going on a journey. You're gonna attempting to get somewhere, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.640 perhaps change something about you, figure something out. And the 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:28.440 other is taking something and seeing what happens and watching fireworks. Right, 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.280 as we've been discussing in this episode, in the Other 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:36.120 Shaman and the Scientist episode, our consciousness is not this 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.120 really not the set thing. You know. Um, Like I said, 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:41.480 you can look at a puppy or a cat and 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:43.240 it'll change the way you're thinking and the way you're 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.080 looking at reality. You know, you can you have a 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:48.360 cup of coffee and your things are gonna sharpen or 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.160 fade in terms of your perception. The warmth from the 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:53.680 cup of coffee will inform your ideas about the person 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.200 you're talking to you right exactly, And according to Dr 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:58.920 Catherine McClean in this talk that I attended and you 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.920 attended in the form of an iPhone, I was inside 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:06.079 really tiny and um, if you feel in your head 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.800 around this sort of third eye area sort of between 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:11.640 your between your eyes back behind it, middle frontal part 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.960 of the brain, midfrontal cortex just buried back there in 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:16.840 the in the in the brain meat U there are 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:19.560 two structures to play a key ro and maintaining our 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:22.160 sense of self in time and space, I mean too 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.000 vital that Like, those are the big ones, right in 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.320 terms of like how who I am and how I'm 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.679 perceiving reality? How old am I? Where do I fit 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:31.400 in with time? Where do I fit in with space? 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.760 I mean, that's like the basic stuff right there. Well, 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.120 remember that was some of the meat of being a 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.920 person when we talked about personhood. Disability to imagine yourself 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.320 in the past, the present, in the future. Ye, so 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.880 personhood itself you can you can isolate to a certain 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.960 part of the brain that is susceptible to changes. Something 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:54.920 to keep in mind when we're talking about not only 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:01.440 how hallucinations and how psychedelics skew the experience of self 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.120 and uh in the outside world, but also just how 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:09.160 susceptible to change are more or less default understanding of 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.920 self in the outside world is okay. So mcclan also 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.520 brings into question. I think I mentioned this before, that 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.880 consciousness may not be as coherent as we think it is. 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:24.120 So um, what she shared with everybody is that there's 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.800 something that makes us even more tricky, and that's the 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:33.480 introduction of a drug called salvia and norium and um 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:39.520 in an experiment in they had volunteers take this drug, 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:43.679 this hallucination, and what they found is that all of 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:47.679 these people, all of them hallucinated that they had interactions 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:53.640 with entities while on salvia, little men, elves, that kind 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:55.480 of thing we're talking and I mean we're really getting 0:13:55.480 --> 0:14:00.080 into the whole territory of of paranormal experience here and 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:03.679 in spirits and and godlings and whatever else you might 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.160 want to encounter in the woods. Now, that's not that 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.480 I mean, that's weird, right, just because people had, you know, 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.920 halluscinations specifically about entities. What's weird about this is that 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:19.360 when they then had subsequent trips on salvia, they revisited 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:24.120 those scenarios, and those entities and other words, there's entities 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:31.400 became somewhat of a part of the continuum of consciousness. Yeah, 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:34.200 the people turned to the same I mean, I'm instantly 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:36.200 reminded of dreams, of course, because we're talking about how 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:39.040 crazy that the idea of encountering an entity is, and 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:41.360 it's you know, and imagine a number of people's minds 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.080 are going a little walky with just the idea of 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.680 just who I'm they someone took a substance and then 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.480 they encountered this being. It wasn't real, but seemed to have, uh, 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:52.920 you know, seemed to act of its own volition. Of course, 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:55.880 we were constantly having dreams at night in which we 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.800 interact with things and essentially entities. We've all interacted with 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.520 unreal people and unreal things in her dreams. But it 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:05.520 is always or very often difficult to return to a dream. 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:07.920 Whenever we have even just a m O'Keefe returns and 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:11.120 subsequent dream, it's something that's noteworthy, much less to be 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.240 encountered with an exact same being or entity. So then 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.040 that sort of blurs the line again between what what 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.480 is illusion was reality and what we construct as reality. No, 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:23.360 of course, I'm not saying that everybody should go out 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.280 there and hallucinate and find an entity and then have 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:29.840 conversations with it. I'm just saying that I think it's 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:32.240 interesting that it's now coated as a memory and it's 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.600 part of the continuum, right, And it's worth noting McLean's 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:37.840 study was it was a small number of people she 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.120 said for this, than which she had entities. And you 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.920 do encounter plenty of cases where people have claimed to 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:47.280 have taken uh salvia and they do not experience entities. 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:50.080 So yeah, true, So this is not a guaranteed ticket 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.520 to fairy hood, no no, But of course our takeaway was, 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:55.520 you know, hey, you you find some sort of being 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:57.200 and then you pick up the conversation a couple of 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:00.400 weeks later with that person in your head. This is 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:02.840 a vital part of course of shamanistic experience, and one 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.120 is taking a substance for a spiritual purpose. I mean, 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:10.520 because the spiritual um, spiritual accounts, mystical hants are full 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:14.080 of people encountering unreal beings. So we can see exactly 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:16.440 where that fits in in a Shutan mystic traditions. Well, 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.360 and like William William Burrows Burrows as Us spoke of 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:21.480 the half man half woman, I mean, there's all sorts 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.320 of encounters of course. All right, we're gonna take a 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:26.560 quick break and when we come back more of the 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:37.840 scientist and the shaman. What I wanted to talk about 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:43.640 next is this idea of eyes wide shut and particularly 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:48.240 under the influence of ayahuasca. And I find this interesting 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.239 because in the talk they were talking about how ayahuasca 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.360 and visual processing get really wonky because what you're talking 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.160 about here are the areas of the brain associated with 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:04.640 visual processing light. Um. And when you have your eyes open, right, 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:06.760 you you can see the sort of activity in your 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.720 brain going on processing that what they found. Um, And 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:12.879 this is again mc claim talking about this, and the 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.479 talk is that people who are on ayahuasca with her 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:20.960 eyeshut having hallucinations were having the same level of activity 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:25.919 in their brains um and visually processing as they would 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.919 when their waking hours and processing the data, which is 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:32.600 very different from how we normally processed data when our 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.560 eyes are closed. Yeah. To that, not only was the 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.359 activity in the brain identical two eyes open, they were 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.760 it was identical to eyes open in an outside environment, 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:46.200 in a in a very stimulus filled environment. Uh, they 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:51.120 close their eyes and they're they're still encountering that much stimuli. Yeah, 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.199 which then a sort of placed this idea, Um, you 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:57.800 know that you're the dream of your consciousness is merging 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:02.040 with what your brain is perceiving as reality. Yeah, I 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:03.600 mean she she laid out that a lot of this 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:05.760 stuffs come down to this breakdown between the sense of 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.000 self and other, between the sense of you and the 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.680 outside world. And uh, um and and that's part part 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:16.239 of what's a play here now. She and um and 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.200 Raison talked about the dangers of ayahuasca. They did talk 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:24.919 about how this is not taken lightly, particularly with this 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:30.639 kind of psychoactive substance, because you apparently have to prepare 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:35.240 your body very well for this type of hallucinogen um 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:36.760 and a lot of this has to do with the 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:38.600 amount of serotonin that you already have in your brains. 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:41.000 You don't want to mess with these levels. Um. And 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:43.840 I say that not because I don't I think someone's 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:45.879 going to do this, but um. This was something that 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.040 they stressed in their talk, is that this is not 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:50.199 stuff to play with. This is stuff that they do 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:51.800 in the lab. Is the stuff that they make sure 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.679 that people are mind and body prepared for. Because even 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:58.960 the amounts of cheese with triglycerides that you eat will 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.600 affect the amount of there tonating your brain. And if 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:03.800 you were to then take ayahuasca and you had a 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.399 lot of serotonin, you could be very dangerous, can actually 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.520 lead to death. Um, So you have to make sure 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:10.800 that all the levels are correct. Yeah, So, no matter 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.840 how much you might want to In Timothy Leary's word's 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.359 going a billion your journey to God if you have 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.920 to give up cheese first, I mean, I don't know, 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:22.960 because cheese is great. Gonna booyah? What was that part 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:29.840 of the sentence, A billion your journey to go said, booyah? 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:33.400 Journey to guy. Yeah, that works too. I guess nothing. 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.280 I'm hallucinating. Um, all right, So there's again this idea 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:42.280 of hallucinations perhaps being a part of the machinery, and 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:47.040 particularly when you look at something like meditating monks vent 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:49.919 monks in particular, there have been accounts all over the 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:54.840 place about months being able to meditate to such a 0:19:54.840 --> 0:20:00.640 degree that they begin to hallucinate themselves. So we talked 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:05.639 about this before, and um with hallucinations having something in 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:10.120 common with meditating in terms of quieting the default mode network, 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:15.560 this chattering part of your brain. Makes you wonder if again, 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:21.560 through meditation, you can access the same sort of hallucinatory experience, 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:25.399 this realm of dreaming, of lucid dreaming. Even well, it 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:28.000 instantly reminds me of Mendala's the idea that the bitten 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.360 amongst especially will there's sort of the is the outer Mendala. 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:33.480 You know that you see an art depictions, but these 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.199 are kind of blueprints for a really kind of a 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:38.880 thought palace or kind of a memory palace, this kind 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.600 of mental space that they put their minds in a 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.160 place now. And I mean that in terms of there's 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:47.919 actually like a floor plant, you know, and it's a 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:52.479 way of containing some very complex spiritual ideas and so 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:56.400 creating this crazy structure in their head. It seems similar 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:59.240 in many ways to the kind of crazy structure one 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:02.359 might encounter, say on D M T or you know, 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:04.439 I LOSSA or one of the one of these substances 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:07.680 where one closes their eyes and experiences some sort of 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.879 amazing architecture or explosions or what have you. Uh. The 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.080 difference being, of course, here that the monk is having 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.520 to work really hard to achieve this level of calm 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:22.680 and concentration and in meditative state, whereas the individual taking 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:24.720 the substance. Not to say that it's easy, not to 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.480 say that it's a necessarily a shortcut, but there's less 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:32.360 intense concentration involved in reaching that state. Now. I don't 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:35.440 know if this relates to it specifically in terms of hallucinations, 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:38.280 but I do know that there's one practice in meditation 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:45.919 where you um, you essentially try to imagine your own decomposition. 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:48.960 And the idea is not just to you know, get 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:51.119 try to figure out what your school would look like, 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:55.280 but to try to figure out, you know, how ephemeral 0:21:55.400 --> 0:22:01.480 life is and how important the present is. And um, 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.040 apparently this is something that is very disturbing because it 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:08.000 can take over the imagination parts of your brain. Right, 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:12.280 and as we had discussed and hallucinating color. Um, sometimes 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.120 what you're talking about here is just sort of making 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:17.600 the inference that this will happen in your mind, taking 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:19.760 it and running with it. Yeah, you see that. That's 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.760 actually a motif and cool dual of Tibetan art and 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:26.560 some of the Mandala and Mandala a can Uh creations 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:29.040 where you see like flight and men and bones and 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.520 oceans of blood. And it's not like a morbid death 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:35.080 metal celebration of that stuff. But it's about the ephemeral 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:40.119 nature of things and about the the limits of physical existence, right, 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:42.840 and again trying to get a better awareness of life 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:45.440 and opening up your mind a bit. All right, So 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:49.240 there's this idea that this is, you know, speaking of 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:52.640