Ayahuasca and Psychedelics as Potential Catalysts for Personal and Societal Evolution Transcript

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Ayahuasca and Psychedelics as Potential Catalysts for Personal and Societal Evolution Discussion

Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guests today are many. There are about five or six of us on this call. We’re gonna be talking about ayahuasca and psychedelics and the role they play or may play in exploring consciousness and facilitating awakening. I’ve already gotten some feedback from people asking me why I was even having this conversation, because some people consider this to be outside the realm of legitimate spiritual endeavor. But I must say that, you know, and I’ve considered, I thought that way for many years, myself having indulged in this in the late 60s, some of it. And then, you know, my experience was basically that LSD, knocked holes in the wall and showed me there was something outside of the house. But then I was left with a house with holes in the wall, and it took me years to repair those and, you know, get to use the doors and windows properly. But in listening to the folks that I’m going to be speaking with today, over the past week, watching Rak Razam’s movie, listening to Chris Bache’s, talk in a conference, and, and so on, I was so impressed with everyone’s eloquence and clarity and depth of sincerity and understanding that it really was a sort of a boundary breaker for me, and kind of helped me expand my understanding of or just legitimize the whole thing more deeply, but not without provisos and cautions, and so on, which we’ll be talking about. So first, I’d like to introduce all the people who are going to be participating in this. It’ll take me a couple of minutes to read a brief bio on each of them, and then we’ll get into it. So I think I’ll go from east to west. First, there’s Christopher Bache, PhD, who is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, where he taught for over 30 years in psychology of religion, transpersonal studies, Buddhism and world religions. He is also adjunct professor at the California Institute of integral studies in San Francisco, and for two years, was the director of transformative learning at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California, an award winning teacher and international speaker, whose work explores the philosophical implications of deep non ordinary states of consciousness, especially psychedelic states. He has written a pioneering book in psychedelic philosophy and collective consciousness, Dark Knight early dawn steps to a deep ecology of mind. In addition, he has written life cycles, reincarnation and the web of life, a comprehensive study of reincarnation, and karma, in light of new information emerging in contemporary consciousness research. In his book, The living classroom, Chris presents his revolutionary ideas concerning the transpersonal dimensions of teaching. In addition to working with sacred medicines, Chris has been a Buddhist practitioner for many years. So I just should have done this a second ago, but I just brought Chris’s image on the screen. See him. So welcome, Chris.

Chris Bache: Welcome Rick. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me. Nice to be here.

Rick Archer: Jeffrey and Cl Backstrom working to the west now there. They live about a block south of me in Fairfield, Iowa, and they’re among many people who make Fairfield an interesting place to live. They call their work stepping into freedom, explaining that quote, with each step we release or transcend old limiting patterns of being seeing acting and open to the beings our souls are calling us here to become. They offer shamanic healing work and deep practices to facilitate embodied awakening and opening to the soul’s calling. In the past several years, Jeffrey and Cl have studied with indigenous medicine workers and teachers in the Andes, and the Amazon Basin, who represent say ancient traditions grounded in the sacred feminine and Mother Earth. Since 2009. They’ve been welcoming their students to accompany them to experience these connections for themselves. These traditional practices include the use of sacred plants and healing divination and spiritual transformation. Till out Jonathan Phillips is co founder he’s in San Francisco working West is co founder of the cutting edge web magazine reality sandwich and the Evolver network is a well regarded life coach and bioenergy and energetic healer, who has been practiced thing for over a decade. his memoir, the electric Jesus, the healing journey of a contemporary gnostic, has become one of the must read books of the new consciousness movement for its honest portrayal of life on the emerging edge of the transformational culture. His creative the Ayahuasca monologues tales of the Spirit vine, religion blogger for The Huffington Post, a Reiki Master and bioenergetic healer, who does Skype sessions for clients around the world and in his San Francisco office. Finally, in on the east coast of Australia racker azem is the author of two books is a shamanic Odyssey, a travel memoir of his time with Shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, and a companion volume of interviews the Ayahuasca sessions published by Vichara. In 2006, he visited Peru on a feature magazine assignment to see what the almost mythical archetype of the Shaman was really like in the 21st century. Excerpts from is demonic shamanic Odyssey had been published in Australian penthouse High Times and filmmaker magazine online. It was also interviewed and appears in the CBC 2007 audio documentary in search of the Divine vegetal talking about his ayahuasca experiences, which have has been broadcast twice due to special demand to millions of people throughout North America, the founding editor of undergrowth, Australia’s leading counter culture, arts and literature magazine, was m is an experiential journalist who participates in the experiences he writes about giving his global audience an intimate familiarity with his subjects. Great. So that introduces all of you. Now, I realized, as I was preparing for this interview, that there was no way I was going to have a clear structure in mind of points that we would actually follow. But I have a feeling that once we get rolling, we’ll just roll and we’ll have no problem filling up a delightful two hours or so with this discussion. I just want to say that, you know, I don’t take this whole topic lightly, or trivially in any way, and I don’t think any of you have approached it that way. You know, in the, in the late 60s, people were just thrill seekers, 90% of them in the use of psychedelic drugs, and there were many casualties. And I’m afraid that today, this is also the case, and perhaps one of you can suggest what the percentages might be. But I really wonder, in addition to the direct casualties of people, in indulging in substances, which they probably don’t have the adequate preparation to, to use. There are there’s also a sort of a dark underbelly that’s developed in Peru, at least of people who have are in it for the money. And there have been instances of, you know, sexual abuse of people who are, who are down there high on ayahuasca, and all kinds of strange things. So I’m here in my town, there’s a young woman who took ayahuasca and has been in and out of mental hospitals ever since. So I don’t so I’m not doing this discussion, as a kind of a come one come all invitation and encouragement for anybody who has the slightest inclination to go ahead and experiment in whatever way presents itself to them. I would say from the outset that if one is going to explore this area, it should be done with the utmost seriousness under the guidance of someone who really knows what they’re doing. And if you’re not sure that those criteria have been met, don’t proceed until you are. So that’s my

Rak Razam: I’d like to jump in and maybe answer a bit of that question or comment on that. I use some of those terms myself. There’s this difference between seekers and thrill seekers. And some of the analogies you were saying to the 1960s, I think are very apt. But I think we need to be very careful about the language and how we frame this conversation. Because underneath this idea is still the seeking. And so whether people think they’re doing this recreationally or think they’re doing it for some type of thrill, what’s beneath that what we’re really what we’re really talking about here is the fact that usually Western people who have been very distanced from a spiritual reality, who have been taught, you know, over multiple generations, if not 10s, like 1000s of years now that there is nothing but a reductionist mechanical approach to what reality is, and to the fact that they have bodies the men that go you know, go through the education system, the white picket fence, reality be good kids Seamus and Shaw, they’re really distanced from this ability to connect to themselves, whatever modality that takes. But this idea of thrill seekers, I think, is a bit of a misnomer as well, because I think what’s really happening is that there is a really deep thirst and hunger in the human experience that these people have. And the only language we have for any consumer is best in culture is thrill seeking. It’s like this whole idea about escapism, if you look at the vast majority of the entertainment complex at the moment, it’s actually escapist, there’s like, there’s like 10s of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who stare at their screens, you know, for most of most of the day, and they they engage in a virtual world, which is sold to them by the, you know, the corporate establishment. But it’s this quest for something deeper that which people really want. So when I first went down to Peru in 2006, it was very obvious that there was a business of spirituality and a business of shamanism going on. And it’s all about the supply and demand that yes, many people on the ground there in Peru and in the West, are catering to this hunger, and this this thirst for connection to spirit. And, you know, do we call it there might be thrill seekers. But there’s also as you say, there’s a smaller majority of people within what we call thrill seekers who are seekers. One, one idea that I came to reconcile this disparity is this idea that there used to be in, I guess, Christian terminology, this idea of the pilgrim and many people going down to Peru, and going on this journey of the soul, we might call them recreational users, we might call them thrill seekers. But really, they’re going on a very, very deep journey, you know, they’re going away from their their native land, they’re going to this to the jungle into these foreign environments. And they undertaking a rigorous and very arduous experience. And so, you know, I don’t like to pigeonhole people. And I understand there’s lots of dynamics in the business of spirituality, embedded in that and there’s lots of issues around duty of care and the safeguards, that the industry of shamanism must be taking up to safeguard people who are participating. But just to the core of that question, this idea of thrill seekers or seekers and why people are doing this at all, I think it’s really because and I’ve spoken to many, many curanderos, the shamans of the Amazon, and they basically said at the outset that, you know, choosing these statistics pretty randomly, but there’s a certain segment of people who are very identifiably going down for healing and for the healing that not just Ayahuasca but the other day at her and the reconnection can bring, but the vast majority of people they said, weren’t sick in the traditional sense that their patients were that what they recognize whether there was a sickness, but it wasn’t perhaps a physical sickness, it was a malaise of the soul. It was this idea of disconnection from the spirit and from from connecting to nature, you know, how we connect to nature with the great spirit. And so these people were really the curanderos were understanding they were really, yes, a lot of them are in charge in search of the visions and the visionary component of ayahuasca, because you know, modern Western culture is very visually driven. But underneath all of that, what I really believe is happening is that there’s this western hunger for a reconnection to spirit and to an authenticity that these experiences can bring. So I think that’s really important to to reframe that question and look at it in those contexts.

Rick Archer: Good. I agree. And I didn’t, hopefully, in using the term thrill seeker, I didn’t mean to insult anyone. I’m just saying that this, this is something which shouldn’t be, in my opinion, this is this whole thing is something that shouldn’t be approached in any kind of trivial sense. There should be ideally, at least, there should be a deep sincerity and earnestness and you know, purposefulness, and the perhaps the more of that there is, the more profound the profundity you’re going to get out of it, and the more benefit you’re going to get out of it. I don’t know, there should probably also be, although it’s maybe naive to assume this is going to happen, but maybe it will in time, some sort of screening process, you know, so that people who both have curanderos and participants, so that firstly, you don’t get it bogus guys, you know, running, setting up workshops, or whatever they do, and, you know, actually harming people. And secondly, so that people who are on Prozac or, you know, have some kind of problem, which would really be counter indicated in terms of use of this aren’t just sort of rushing into it blindly and getting into trouble as a result.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

Rick, can I say something on this because you mentioned thrill seeking, and that’s a bit of my specialty. And I feel like you know, I’m a healer and one of the hugest therapeutic things I realized this year is fun and finding your edge and learning it and exploring it is one of the most powerful things you can You can do when you’re prepared in a safe way, like you’re talking for healing. If I look back growing up, the most spiritual experiences I had was skiing. I was in the elements, there was this element of adrenaline, there was tests, there was challenges, and there was a sense of freedom. And I feel like when you engage in certain psychedelic experiences, if you don’t engage with some sense of inner adventure and outer adventure, you may have a victim story that’s going to play out. And honestly, if we’re talking about trauma, which I think a lot of people are healing from abuses in the family line, sexual lines, the whole thing. You’re talking about adrenaline, because adrenaline comes in the system, and it overpowers the system. And then we have fight or flight modes, and people are stuck in these things. So I actually think a study of thrill seeking and the deeper seeking that rock was talking about is key for kind of reclaiming adrenaline, and letting it flow in healing the overall system. I’ve noticed it like I became obsessed with big wave surfers because they literally as an energy healer, they were riding giant waves of energy for massive adrenaline, kind of like rewards in it. And I think you have to be careful of that. I think there’s an addictive thrill seeking. But I do think being prepared and being a good psychedelic surfer is like key to going into this work. Because a sense of bravery. What I heard Roc talking about is almost like a hero’s journey. And if we’re going to overcome a lot of the personal societal issues that are kind of embedded in our psyches. I do think a sense of courage and humble humility combined, are key in accessing these more complex bio dynamic dimensions that can be opened up.

Rick Archer: Good. Let me Chris or one of the Backstrams. Would you like to respond to that?

Cielle Backstrom: Yeah, I would like to, unlike gone to the same topic. One of the times that Jeffrey and I took a group of people to Peru to the jungle to go to one of the retreat centers. And this particular center was established by a woman, an Australian woman who was an is an addiction counselor. She herself is an alcoholic, although she’s not currently drinking. And she found that with her clients that she felt like the talk therapy she was doing with them was bringing them to a state of sobriety but not very quickly and not very permanently. So she started bringing in iOS ska as another way another medicine that might be able to get to the deeper causes unroot the deeper causes of their addiction. She herself is not occurring Darrow and so she doesn’t lead the ceremonies, but she would bring her clients to other curanderos in South America and then she would then coach them throughout throughout the week of their of their Iosco ceremonies and things like that. Anyway, she’s set up herself a whole center herself. And a lot of the clients that come there have addictions. But when Jeff and I found her we didn’t go there because we had particular chemical addictions. But I just trusted that she was all about healing and the shamans she would work with her about healing. So one time when we went there with a group of people, and these were all people that were seeking awakening, I the first night and my first night of ceremony, a lot of difficult material came up for me physically and emotionally, such that the shaman who was also working with us, not just the medicine we drank, but was working through his sacred songs and other kinds of extraction processes he used. He worked with aroma therapies and light therapies as well as the songs. But the next time you said CL I don’t want you to drink tonight. I want you to come to ceremony. I want to do healing practices on you, but I don’t want you to drink. And then two nights later, he said CL great I want you to come to ceremony. I don’t want you to drink. And so of this trip, we went there are going to be five ceremonies and he did not have me drink Ayahuasca, three of those five ceremonies. He gave me some perfumed water to drink different people on the retreat came to me and said, Aren’t you disappointed? And I said, No, I did not come here for experiences. I came here for healing. And I’m trusting that this man is finding the best paths best path of healing for me that’s using other plants. He was doing other healing processes with me during the day as well. And so for me the whole idea of going to, to the jungle where this plant grows with people that who, who for has been part of their culture for a long, long, long time, where healing is more of their intention. And it’s not to say that there aren’t newer shamans down there that are out for money, but there are very many reliable healing centers and curanderos down there who really have it as their intention, a holistic healing for their clients. And it may or may not use it. Why Wasco may not know you, but the main ingredients of the healing that they’re invoking and people. So yes, I do like the fact that it’s important to be looking for the center and the iOS carers that you’re working with. But it isn’t all about experience. It’s more more. To me it’s more about healing, peeling, however, that comes with a whole bunch of different kinds of plants and healing techniques of which Ayahuasca was still his teacher that informed him how to work with me in a different way.

Rick Archer: Good.

Chris Bache: It’s very difficult to make generalizations In this situation, because there’s so many different types of sub psychoactive substances and so many different contexts and so many different healers at work in different ways. Fundamentally, and I understand the reservations that the spiritual community, particularly the temp contemplative community has, towards psychedelics, we have an old historical prohibitions against drugs, which called the mind and Buddhism and psychedelics have often been interpreted as drugs that fall into that category. To me, the critical difference whether there is a spiritual value, to working conscientiously with psychedelics is first, whether you’re working recreationally or working therapeutically. And I think we’re all on the same page that it’s therapeutic work, which is the important work. But then when you’re mean when you’re working, even therapeutically. The states that one enters into are temporary, that’s the nature of the beast, they’re temporary. So the critical condition, I think, is how you choose to work with these temporary conditions. And whether you’re trying to affect a fundamental shift in the baseline of consciousness, fundamental, a healing of the various pathologies of ordinary life, so that consciousness can become more pliant can become more open, relaxed, more sensitive to its own grounds of being. If that work is being done in that fashion, I think it can be very helpful and can be well integrated into contemplative practice. If it’s not being done in that way, if it’s not being used to confront the deepest hurts of the human spirit, then it’s probably a distraction in one way or another.

Rick Archer: I just want to say that I mean, effects of meditation are temporary too you know, it’s a non drug thing, but their cumulative, meditate every day, then there’s a cumulative influence over time. And obviously, the same would be true of drugs or producing a change in the brain or whatever. And I’m sort of curious about, I mean, I’m listening to some of your talks, Chris, you mentioned that at certain point, you decided to kind of ease off on the high dosage, LSD explore explorations, because it was taking a toll on your body, and perhaps, especially on your subtle body. And I just, I guess I have, you know, I’m just throwing up playing devil’s advocate here throwing out some of my doubts and questions, I wonder about the subtle influences of these things. I think rock said in his movie that Ayahuasca actually has a cleansing influence on the brain, or I read that someplace, it flushes the brain clean and improves receptor sites. So that’s interesting if it’s true. Sometimes you hear about the use of drugs causing receptor sites to be less receptive to the body’s own chemicals that it produces when it’s become dependent upon ingested chemicals. And particularly, I guess that’s true of the harmful ones like heroin, which I guess lowers your receptivity to natural serotonin or something, or so I’ve heard. So I’m just wondering, like people who have been some of these curanderos, who’ve been doing this since the age of 14. And now they’re maybe in their 30s 40s 50s? How did they strike you, as human beings? You know, we have a certain image in mind of Enlightenment and what that might be all of us from our various backgrounds have pretty clear conceptions about that. These fellows seem to be measuring up to that type of thing. I mean, rock said in his movie, that certainly, most of these people are still flawed human beings. And of course, the same could be said of most Eastern gurus. Various things that end up happening, but what is the long term influence? And as in the case of CLL, is there a certain point at which further ingestion of chemicals would be contraindicated because you don’t need them anymore? You’ve already achieved whatever it is they’re, they’re capable of providing? Or is it a never ending investigation?

Rak Razam: To give context, the the quote that you mentioned is in my film, Meyer awakenings is looking at the study that was done in early 1990s. by Charles Probert, I think and Dennis McKenna and a few other Western scientists and doctors who were studying members of church groups like you know, division tell us Um, for looking at looking at what regular iOS used into them on a physiological level, and they did, you know, double blind controlled test studies on them, and they found that basically Ayahuasca was working on the receptor sites of the brain, and it was basically flushing everything clean and almost like defragging, like on your computer. When you do regular maintenance, you know, it’s like it was linking everything back up. And so it had a very verifiable, scientifically proven, you know, healthy effect on the brain structure, as well as working as a as a productive and working to cleanse the body as well. What they also noted in that study, though, was that it was also the follow up, and not just the peak experience, but it was the follow up in the days and weeks around the Ayahuasca ceremonies, with groups like, you know, the vegetal, who were a community. And so it was that integration time, which was so important to the holistic nature of the experience and integrating into their lives, that I was gonna does have that effect as a, as a cleansing agent, as well as the psychic sort of effect that it has as well. And you were mentioning earlier as well, just the, the hardship, I think that all pathways were saying that, you know, meditation is temporary, and Ayahuasca is temporary, all these things are pathways which are available to us in the gamut of experience that nature has provided. And, you know, there has been, as you mentioned, as well, there has been a stigma associated with not just psychedelics, but psychedelics and magic and even Tantra, and what is often referred to, I guess, it’s the left hand pathways of the shortcuts, you know, it, I don’t think that there’s, there’s necessarily any with it that might get you get you to the point short in a shorter amount of time, but there’s no less depth to the experience, it’s just a matter of guidance and of context and of being able to integrate the experience. And I guess with a with a more picky experiencing, maybe that can be more of a challenge to integrate. But, you know, I think that the value that I was generally brings as a medicine, which is what it is called in Peru, and your people around the world who are taking it up understand it’s not a drug, it is a medicine. And we’re talking before about this, I guess it’s unproven spiritual belief that, you know, drugs can put holes in your aura or things like that, which makes a lot of sense, you know, when we’re talking about an energy body or an energy field, or light body, things, which often Marshal or the chain all the energy of the body into a peak experience may leave, you know, a deficit somewhere else, or may peak and may cause cause issues around that. But I think with Ayahuasca, no matter how rigorous it isn’t, it can be very, very hard on people, you can go through that dark night of the soul and and face your shadow. Biologically and neuro chemically, it is it is a medicine, because it can be hard, you know, things to swallow, figuratively and literally, but it is actually purging and is helping release and it’s helping bring to the surface, a lot of the shadow material. So I’m not really sure if it’s if it’s going to be damaging. And that same effect is some of the more somatic drugs, you know, the Western sort of drugs like heroin and cocaine and things like that might be doing that it is taxing and demanding as well, that genuinely whatever want to say about you know, I was, and I guess DMT, to some some levels as a separate adjunct as well, is that these things, what I feel as well as working on the body and working to cleanse on that level, is that they’re also helping to raise the vibration. So this idea about the energetic body and if it’s damaging it or not, and everything needs to be done in moderation. And there needs to be, you know, very much respect paid to the integration process and how this informs our our lives. But I think over time, cumulatively, what they are doing, as well as setting up new neural pathways, and as well as bringing the unconscious into the conscious for healing and working on the shadow material, I feel that what they’re doing is that they’re feeding that light body and they’re raising the vibrational nature of ourselves. And then it’s up to what we do with that in the world, how we retain that because what are the current areas say, it’s no point in having a peak experience with Ayahuasca, and then going straight back onto the coffee and salt and sugar and pork and alcohol and sex the next day or the next week, and not changing your behavior, not changing your patterns. So what the Ayahuasca Medicine can do is it can reveal your own patterns, and it can reveal your own nature to yourself, and it can help heal. I mean, you know, we ourselves are the one who do the healing, I believe in concert with the spirit of the plant. It’s not just the Ayahuasca neurochemically, which is healing, it’s what it’s revealing and our abilities within ourselves that really do the healing, that then that needs to be integrated into our lives. And if we do that, the curanderos say you retain the vibration that you’ve gained and cleansed on ayahuasca and you know, as opposed to many other drugs and even with psychedelics, I don’t know if you know neuro chemically. I know things like LSD can put a you know, toxic load on the body and into the liver and things like that, that I Alaska seems to be sort of unique amongst the gamut of plant planetary entheogens is it does, it does work as a healing agent, a cleansing agent, and it can help to raise the vibration if we participate in that integration process afterwards.

Rick Archer: So if the, if the vomiting or the purging that takes place is symptomatic of a purification of, you know, stuff from the, from the psyche, or from from deep in the body, do the most experienced users such as the curanderos themselves, still drink? Are they able to drink the stuff without vomiting because they’ve been purified? Everything that needs purifying?

Rak Razam: I mean, we’re generalizing again here because not everyone purges, you know, it’s like I I’ve experienced it, sometimes I don’t purge other people don’t purge, I do find that people who are more clean, you know, physically, if they’re maybe vegetarian, or maybe you know, they’re just not, they’re just not taking in the impurities or the processed foods, or the sugars and salts and things like that, if you have a more of a clean bioenergetic system to begin with, then you have the sensitivity that’s needed. So the curanderos, quite often might only have a sip of a cup, or maybe not a cup at all, usually, they will have at least a homeopathic dose just to be in the vibrational frequency and to touch base with that to then go into the realm and working in ceremony, they don’t, you know, traditionally want to have a big dose, they want to be able to navigate and be able to physically facilitate in ceremony that you know, the curanderos and even very sensitive people, sometimes you can drink a cup of ayahuasca and may come straight up again, or maybe you don’t even get to drink it at all. But if you’re so close to the vibrational frequency of it, sometimes that’s all that’s needed, you can tune into someone else’s journey, or you can tune into the subtle vibration. So you know, people who don’t vomit and aren’t clean, sometimes I find that they’ve got this real resistance. And there’s a there’s a, there’s a vibrational resistance to opening to the medicine, and the curanderos can sing an echo one of the magical songs or that that the invoke the vibration, and they can do it but an echo to make someone purge or to bring on the visions, or many, many other sort of facilities that they can do. But it’s really about the sensitivity of our energetic bodies, to the medicine and then to also the dimensional realms of the medicine opens up.

Rick Archer: Okay, good. Jeffrey, you haven’t had a chance to say anything yet. Would you like to chime in?

Jeffrey Backstrom: Well fall in on that, it wouldn’t be a bad time to, you know, try and tie in a couple of these threads, because we’ve sounded a little like, blind guys trying to describe the elephant. But, you know, they, the plant in the Amazon is sometimes referred to as our teacher, and sometimes as the doctor. So those are the two aspects that we refer to when we talk about healing and talking about purging, we talk about clearing and cleaning the body. And on the other hand, when we give attention to what are the visionary components of the experience, or what kind of things are revealed to us. I’ll just give you a another personal example. So one of the pieces that I worked on one time had to do with some really early childhood wounding, which of course, everybody in this day and age, thinks that’s what happened to them. And a lot of what happened to us is that, but the Ayahuasca then showed me where that came from, and even generally, generationally. And I had an experience and intimate experience of going to my, one of my parents in his childhood, and seeing that wound in his field and extracting it and then experiencing this great burden kind of lift off myself. Now, it wasn’t till a trip or two later that the Curandero I was working with, wanted to show me a bit how about how to do extractions, and he said, Watch for the red spot or red light in that person’s field, what the experience has been that I had, so there was some teaching going on and some healing. And I’m sure we’re going to hear from Chris particularly on the teaching side, because I’ve loved what he’s contributed, in terms of depth psychology in this kind of work from what’s a little bit more of a Western perspective. But there’s something I have to go back to, and that is the reference you made early on, Rick to a young woman who is now having a very hard time and clearly seems to be connected to an experience that she had. It’s really important to recognize the need for care And I guess I’d have to say even for some kind of regulation, things that are illegal, fall into the hands of criminals. In part because there’s no care taken by the broader culture, to assure that those substances are going to be pure. And then we’ve heard a lot of stories about people drinking Ayahuasca that had some other plants mixed in. Sometimes this is done to make the person more open to suggestion from ne’er do well, so called Shama, and as far as we know, it was probably what happened to the woman in our community. So, your concern about safety, I think, is a very important part of this whole discussion. But I don’t think it’s so much a part of the question of whether to hire Wasco properly prepared and working with someone who’s dedicated and have years of experience in a safe surrounding is a viable adjunct to our healing and awakening process. That safety piece is very much about how we, in Western culture, are going to come face to face with these whole other dimensions of these other kinds of medicine, and decide whether we’re really a free filter or not. And if we are, how to make it possible for people to have this kind of deep healing. And these profound awakenings without having to worry that they’re going to be taken advantage of. It’s kind of like if you, but while the Christian churches, we can’t regulate them. So we’re going to not going to worry if there’s some scoundrel who calls himself a preacher and spikes the communion, brewed with some sort of illicit chemical. It’s a political issue, and it’s one that needs to be addressed.

Rick Archer: Okay. Chris, Chris, or Jonathan, I haven’t heard from either of you in a while. Or you may feel moved to say something? Well,

Chris Bache: I guess Yeah. If you work with psychedelics, or you whether the organic or synthetic method, you’d have to pay a lot of attention and work very deeply with the energetic systems of the body. And it’s not just Ayahuasca that has the purgative effect. But when the system begins to open up into deeper states of consciousness definition, deeper states of consciousness or higher energetic states of consciousness, and so there is a cycle of purification that takes place whenever you’re opening into deeper states of consciousness, including using meditation as the driver for opening up into deeper states of consciousness. And there is a building up of energy and a catharsis, sometimes and a letting go of that energy and throwing up or purging, throwing out a lot of physical energy out of the body, throwing up a lot of emotional energy out of the emotional body, a lot of mental constructions out of the mental body. That’s just, that’s the nature of the game, I think, whatever type of substances you’re using, if you’re working therapeutically, to fundamentally increase awareness of those basic blocks or obstructions. But I’d like to sort of shift the conversation a little bit and take it out of the personal realm. Because so far, we’re talking about personal blocks, or ancestral blocks, with Jeffrey talking about his father, but you can open up into states of consciousness that are so profound, you start working with very, very large swaths of collective blocks. The energy involved in those collective blocks is many orders of magnitude more intense and higher than working with personal blocks often. And so I just, I’m gonna let go, but I just want to mention that since you mentioned something I had said that after working with psychedelics for many years, I wanted to step back because it was very demanding energetically, I just want to put that in context that that was after 20 years of work, and very long, sustained work working with very high doses of LSD. Even though I was working very conscientiously with a lot of attention to the physical body, a lot of attention to my energetic body, working with avantree on a practices before and after the psychedelic sessions itself. When you move into deep, deep, enormously expanded states of consciousness, you’re moving into profoundly different energetic realities. Those energetic realities are just an enormous exercise, a challenge of integration, or even just Managing the expansion and contraction process through repeatedly through the years. So I think when it’s done well, we don’t really have to worry about these substances causing cracks, fissures holes in the energetic body. Any more than I mean, I think we develop holes in our energetic body by going to see some of the crap movies that many people go to see. So I don’t think there are a singular cause of issues like that.

Rick Archer: So it feels Go ahead. Yeah.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

Yeah, Rick, I’d like to say thanks, Chris. I really love what you had to say there. In my journey, I was looking for what I call the Ayahuasca silver bullet, or the miracle cure. And I see a lot of people kind of fall I want to say fall victim to it, but put a little too much false hope into it. Oh, I have depression, I have anxiety, I have cancer. I’m going to go down and do a week or two, the eta in ayahuasca and come home healed. I did that twice. And it didn’t work. I’ve done over 100 ceremonies and it didn’t work. So and in my own journey, there was this whole quest. We’ve talked a lot about ayahuasca and I do want to just say is, you know, we have MDMA and how they’re treating Iraq war veterans, therapeutically with that now with PTSD. You know, people mentioned DMT, even ketamine, which I don’t trust at all has, some people have had really good experiences with that. Personally, my journey has been with cannabis. And I used to laugh at medical marijuana. I thought it was a joke. You know, like it was an excuse for people to smoke pot and eat Doritos and watch Cheech and Chong movies. But after being really disillusioned with ayahuasca and Sensodyne, they ceremonies 100 of them and also the other spiritual practices what I found was a fusion of them worked really well. We’ve been talking in either or language which I doesn’t resonate with me very well, serious spiritual practices, psychedelic practices. My whole practice is a fusion of these. It’s using cannabis for me cannabis slows things down enough and opens up the quantum field. To then do deep yoga work. Deep Tai Chi and Chi Gong work, energy healing. In fact, when I do energy healing work on people, I have a puke bucket, I smoke Santamaria, cannabis, sometimes on special sessions, and you go deep into those systems. So I think we need to start having these dialogues. Rick, this is why I’m glad we’re having this conversation. Because we can learn from each other and what I learned in the coming year I’m watching this whole cycle not training program, because I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the brain and energy fields, we need to get psychedelic people in their bodies more for having physical experiences, opening it up, you know, so that they can handle these intense states on their nervous system. So I’m interested in transformational programs. But Chris, I have seen to such a large degree, things that I never would have believed in the collective psyche, held in constricted in the human energetic body, especially around wars, World War Two, Holocaust, all of these things seem to be coming up a lot more in my healing practice. And man, people are hitting the puke bucket more and more and lifting these things. My hope is that both personally and collectively, we can kind of illuminate our collective shadows and usher in kind of a more higher vibrational reality, which RAC was kind of talking about the effects of Ayahuasca doing.

Chris Bache: Yeah, yeah, I think the collective psyche is being highly energized for a number of reasons now, and there is a tremendous purging this taking place, not only at individual levels, but at very deep collective levels. And it’s just, it’s coming out in all sorts of symptom clusters and all sorts of associated cleansing practices, that there’s an enormous kind of release, I think that we’re pushing towards as we come to this critical tipping point in history because we’re at a, we’re at a death and rebirth survival point. You know, we’re flirting with systemic species extinction. And that’s an enormous evolutionary driver. And that touches all of us individually, but it also touches the collective psyche of humanity collectively. And if you work spiritually if you’re working with contemplative practices or a psychedelic practices or body discipline practices, you’re working against on on the foundation of it a tremendous activation of the collective psyche that’s taking place.

Rick Archer: Raka dropped off the call. I’m trying to get him back but um, he mentioned in his movie, I believe it was the world patch Akuti a great change is now upon the world in which everything will be turned right side up and harmony in order will be restored.

Chris Bache: Yeah, I mean, you know, my book Dark naturally Dawn uses this theme of the dark night of the soul, but it’s really about the dark night of our collective soul. I think, you know, we are at this profound instability point, we’re approaching a bifurcation point where, you know, the physical and psychological consequences of 1000s 10s of 1000s of years of civilization based upon egoic consciousness, which is basically, you know, a fragmented consciousness that has produced a situation of a profoundly unstable and fractured and injured a world structure, and planetary ecological structure, we either shift to a different register of consciousness, we either heal the consequences of the egos 10,000 1000s of years history, 100,000 year history, or we perish, we have to take it to another level. And I think in all I think meditators encountered this, spiritually prayerful people can counter this and psychedelic can, you know, spiritual people encounter this

Rick Archer: interesting. Jeffrey and Cl. And I used to be students of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I remember him once saying, someone asked him, Well, what happens when you get rid of all the individual stress? You know, you’ve worked that all out. And he said, then you start working on cosmic stress. And he was always fascinated with collective consciousness and doing experiments in which you would take large groups of meditators and put them in a trouble spot such as Iran, I spent three months there just before the Shah left, and seeing what effect their their collective practice had on the measurable statistics, such as more deaths or crime rates or, you know, things like that. And the principle being that there is Jeffrey lent me a book by Stanislav Grof. And he had this little diagram, which showed like individual consciousnesses, these little tiny nubs. And then, you know, then it was almost like a fractal. And then and then bigger knobs, which would be like a family consciousness or a tribe consciousness and, you know, going down to the sort of a collective global consciousness and I imagine we could even go out and think of solar system galaxy clusters of galaxies, each having their own collective consciousness. Yeah. And, and there’s a reciprocal influence between these larger sort of collective consciousnesses. If that’s a plural, and individual we one can influence the other, back and forth.

Chris Bache: Yes, I think that is exactly what happens is that the large influences the small and the small can contribute to an influence at the level of the largest morphic field dynamics.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

I, Rick, I’ve gotten to a wild studied that just throwing me for a loop, which is connecting to archetypal realms to guides like multi dimensional reality, Muses and influences. I never believed in any of this stuff before. But now, I literally feel like there are spirits that come in, and help guide that. It’s almost like fractal upon fractal. And I’m starting to see maybe we are like little bits of a much larger organism. And there’s kind of an awakening to this deeper quantum reality that’s happening in for me, and what I’m hearing in a lot of psychedelic states, is it’s very quantum, it’s almost like sci fi stuff. But I do feel like there may be a great turning happening in psychedelics is one of the most powerful ways because if you’re stuck in a rut, sometimes you need a little push. For me it was I fought George Bush winning the second election and he was Yeah, buddy, but I fell into a total dark night of the soul. And then especially around the system, that systematic species extinction, three species and our dying on this planet, and yet we’re in this collective fog and sleep, where, you know, everyone’s still watching, you know, whatever the Kardashians are doing. And what I’m finding is like, for me, I had a girlfriend at the time, and she said, You’ve been stressed out about this stuff, you need to take some MDMA and get your blood on the dance floor. I did that on my 30th birthday, connected with community that was probably some of them were on psychedelic experiences, this energy started rising in me and then poof, I started seeking energy fields that made me start paying attention to religious systems across the planet. And they all seem to be saying the similar thing. If it weren’t for MDMA, kind of pure ecstasy. I would have never gone on a spiritual path. Perhaps I may have never become a healer and never learned to meditate. So these things sometimes can turn people on a dime. I kind of joke that I say that most atheists I know are one or two cups away of Ayahuasca away from a spiritual experience.

Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s a good point. And I mean, back in the 60s that definitely what got a lot you know, gave a lot of us our start. And I’m sure it’s happening today. I mean, that was a it was such an eye opener for me the first time it took LSD, it was like, Holy crap, this everything depends upon how you perceive the world that had never occurred to me, I always just assume that everybody perceives the world the same way. And so, you know, I am sure that, you know, some of us do need a good swift kick in the pants.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

I still do.

Rick Archer: Yeah. And incidentally, and Rak is back by the way, he dropped off the call for a bit. This thing you say about archetypal image or entities and so on the experiencing. All of you touched upon this in your various writings and works. And you know, Stanislav Grof, talks a lot about it in his book, but there are realms and realms and realms, subtle realms with all sorts of intelligent forms of life. And I have friends who perceive this, who’ve never taken a drug in their lives, who perceive these beings as routinely as you and I see people at the mall, you know, it’s just part of their everyday reality. But it’s, and, you know, some people say, well, that’s just a distraction, you really want to get down to the non dual essence of things. That’s, that’s where you should establish yourself. Yeah, but once that’s established, or perhaps even before that’s established, but especially once that’s established, okay, what next? What next is exploration of all the subtle realms of creation and discovering what’s there and what advantage can be had by by familiarity with those.

Chris Bache: Yeah, which, for me, that’s raises an issue of the relationship between working conscientiously therapeutically spiritually with psychedelics and Enlightenment, I know that I began my work, basically seeking Enlightenment and willing to confront the shadow more aggressively working with psychedelics in order to hasten the blossoming of Enlightenment. But over time, over the years, I began to realize that there was a lot going on in my work that really wasn’t concerned with Enlightenment at all. And conversely, you don’t need to engage the archetypal dimensions, you do not need to, you know, transcend time completely, you do not need to go into these radical expansions of consciousness in order to open to the transparent, non dual ground of reality. So I think it’s an ongoing question of what the shamanic and Neo shamanic path, the relationship of those journeys and dynamics is to Enlightenment itself. And again, I agree that these are, I think these are a synchronous phenomenon. And, you know, I, I’ve never been working only in one or the other. I’ve always been working in contemplative practices, householder practices of raising children, and, you know, teaching and whatnot, and psychedelic practices. So it’s not an either or for me. But it is an open question of, of, if the goal is Enlightenment, what’s the most effective way to work with psychedelics to facilitate that goal, but there are other goals other than Enlightenment that emerge, I think, in the psychedelic journey,

Rick Archer: just to throw in one quick comment, because I’ve been talking a bit more than I want to, because there’s so many of you, I want you to say more, but just to quote Maharishi again, since several of us have were his students, he often used the analogy of capture the fort. And what he meant by that was, that life is like a territory. And there’s a form that commands a territory, and that Ford is the transcendent the ultimate ground of being, and that you should strive to capture that first. Because if you go, exploring the territory without having captured it, exploring this diamond line, or this goal of mine or whatever, it’s not really your territory. And so you’re kind of on shaky ground. And also, your since you’re not in a position to command the whole territory, you’re just kind of grasping at straws, you’re getting this sort of piecemeal bit ex exploration without having discovered that which provides the benefit of all explorations, you know, the sort of source and goal of all of all creation. So what you said, Chris just reminded me of that analogy. It kind of, if one can do that, it sort of puts things in a proper perspective or orientation. And without having done that, it would seem to me that one could spend lifetimes exploring all sorts of subtle strata of creation without really ultimately knowing, you know, the, the ultimate reality.

Rak Razam: I think I think there’s some really good points here. I think, you know, we’re talking about the elephant in the room before it’s like, oh, you know, there are definitions for this. And I know a lot of your listeners are probably engaged with this in the meditative practices of what is Enlightenment. One thing that I think sort of catalyzes for me in this in this work With entheogens, like ayahuasca and even with it, there’s a whole, there’s a whole planetary smorgasbord of substances which the planet secretes. There’s a there’s a, Terence McKenna had this riff who’s a psychedelic philosopher, and he was actually quoting, another 1960s. Personality, bear Owsley, who both had these intuitions from psychedelics, that the entheogens specifically are secreted by the planets to connect with us, you know, they, they create pathways, they’re all over the planet. Each landscape has within it an energetic sort of vibration, and it produces a certain plant entheogen bear Owsley called these things, planetary x Oh, pheromones, he was saying that they’re produced by the planet who loves and nurtures us and wants to connect us to these substances. For a very specific role in our evolution. It’s like, you know, when you’re a teenager, and you go through puberty, is that these pheromones, coarser your body and and all these different catalyzing changes happen. And they happen at a certain stage in your evolution for a reason, because it’s built in. And so the planet doesn’t really make mistakes, it does evolutionary vectors where it tries out different species. But the thing we must remember, and one of the great things I’ve learned from my entheogenic and psychedelic experiences, is a real nonlinear perception of reality and how to basically rock or have a deeper appreciation for, you know, a nonlinear framework within everything into penetrates and effects and is in a causal relationship with everything else, like everything affects, we’re all connected. And so the planet in its connection to us, is producing these substances, which, you know, the Western War on Drugs started by Richard Nixon 971 is really, you know, commodifying into its agenda. But the planet is secreting these things, which has a direct effect with us. Medicine, people across the planet have retained this knowledge and retain these portals to these larger states of awareness. But are these states of awareness Enlightenment, not necessarily what they can open up a pathways for hybrid dimensionality pathways for an appreciation that the lifeforce permeates higher dimensions, we can see these entities we described before we can recognize and journey into dimensions, vast dimensions of energy and our being and realize there is basically what I call a galactic ecology, there is no life all around us in inner space, and an outer space. And some of these, these substances can bring us back to this awareness. So this idea of these substances as planetary, EXO pheromones, or, you know, I look at them as almost training wheels that at some stage in our evolutionary history, I think we’ve all had the sensitivity of vibrational sensitivity to engage with the larger dimensionality around us. But as we come into the last 6000 years of his story, of agriculture and of industrialization of cities of EMF, we’ve basically been eroding and declining from our our full energetic potential. So at this point, you know, nature’s giving us these some substances as reminders, and as healing agents to cleanse, to regain our own ability to know the Buddha lives within or to be enlightened or these types of phrases we might say. But is it really Enlightenment, I think it’s actually just remembering that these potentials exist. And then eventually, eventually, when we have regained this ability as a species, we don’t need that substances. These are stepping stones, these are training wheels, the planet is guiding us very carefully and gently to say, remember, remember, remember, you can do this yourself. And whether that means stepping up to, you know, the curanderos in Peru, so there’s all these hyper dimensions as these levels of the ayahuasca experiences you go deep into what I call the Godhead, you know, and that the Sufi mystics called the Godhead. But we can travel into these spaces, but you know, we can bring something back, whether that’s an entity a good or bad people, the knowledge of these these realms, and we can perhaps map these realms, and we can be explorers for our species. But ultimately, I think there’s going to be a tipping point where as a species, we regain the ability to navigate and to operate as galactic beings or hyperdimensional beings. And then we don’t need these plants, we basically have the ability within ourselves.

Rick Archer: Beautiful. Geoffrey’s yell you haven’t heard from you lately?

Cielle Backstrom: I just know this whole subject about ayahuasca and plant medicines, and awakening and Enlightenment. We had the great fortune in Peru to work with one young medicine who was negative for the Andes. And he also is experienced with some of that plant health was there, mostly with San Pedro cactus that grows in handy regions and a little bit of with Ayahuasca, who does not himself with Ayahuasca ceremonies, but kind of so here we come from this long term background in transcendental meditation, and this desire for Enlightenment And with him, it was curious. It took me so many times of being with this man to realize that we were ultimately talking about the same thing. He just didn’t call it awakening and Enlightenment, it wasn’t like an attainment for him. Because in that culture, it’s except being one with the Creator is just a given. You just expect that you’re one with the Creator, you know, what creation is all about? And you know what it is to be one with? I mean, Jeff and I were floored one time taking a walk with someone, we were actually kind of being babysat. Like, by someone like someone, someone who’s going through business with with business and sent her uncle, take them for a walk. And so we went on this walk. And we kept being asked again and again by this uncle, who didn’t speak almost any Spanish, even let alone English, would we like to dress we’d like to sit down and rest. And we kept saying no, like, yeah, we’re bringing us but we don’t need to rest when he’s walking. And finally, after about the fourth time, he said, the energy by this river is so good, we should sit and meditate to take in the energy of the river. He just was using the word left to rest. But what he had to explain to us that we didn’t know this, let’s connect to the energy that’s here that’s present, if we can pause and connect with him. So there are certain parts of their life about being one with creator being one the spirit, the one with the Pachamama, the basis of all of the world we live on, that is just part of their culture. So they don’t talk about awakening, or Enlightenment. Because it’s kind of like, it’s like talk about breathing, of course, we breathe. Of course, we’re awake to who we are, essentially. And of course, we have a connection to the divine. And so, you know, it took us a while to realize to find someone who spoke English long enough, and to listen to him deeply enough over an extended interviews and conversations to realize that a lot of this work with the plants is just about bringing more life to more and more life experience to us, and bring it being as all that you are, you’re just like, I think that analogy that we were making, Rick, of course, owning the territory, really owning it before we go and explore the different glories of your territory. Well, a lot of people that we’re meeting in three different eras are already owning the territory. So much, they don’t even talk about it. It’s a given. And they are exploring the territories using things like San Pedro, cactus using things like iOS, and other plants, and other forms of medication to explore all of the realms of creation that are available. So I know they don’t seem to separate the two. So part of them but they’re even separate them out to talk about them, because it’s just who they are.

Rick Archer: Cool. doesn’t worry about oh, Jeffrey, you have something?

Jeffrey Backstrom: Well, in the the other overlap is between healing and awakening your purification, and Enlightenment. There’s a sense in which the only thing that prevents us from recognizing our true nature is all of the and I guess I’ll say he goes structures, but they the kind of coping that we create, in response to trauma, whether it’s young in this lifetime, or whether it’s perinatal, or whether it’s collective unconscious. We are always fortifying ourselves against that. And this process of purification or cleansing or healing, just by allowing us to release those is really the same process of opening or coming into an enlightened or awakened state. There are really just two ways of looking at the same classes. So I happen to feel like for most folks, that’s what’s really showing up. And I don’t have any oral with the notion that some of us ought to be doing these explorations. And, in fact, I really think Yeah, that should be one of the occupations that we try to find more and more people to do. I also think that this shift in the collective consciousness gets supported by each individual who releases whatever holds him or her back steps into what is really that person’s soul’s calling and get grounded gets that connection with boldness or spirit in the process, once that old stuff is out of the way then, yeah, the the energy by that stream or the energy by the stream where we live suddenly shows up for us it was always there. We were always clouded by the old compensations that we’ve been making the pointing to.

Rick Archer: In Rocks movie, he quoted a Sufi saying that there are 50,000 veils of illusion between you and God, but none between God and you. So it’s all here, you know, it’s just a matter of removing the veils. Anyone,

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

I mean, I’d like to speak on this a little bit, Rick, because I feel like I’ve gone on a journey with this. As far as exploring these realms in the Enlightenment, I mean, personally, what we just heard about, like, defense systems for abuse or trauma growing up, I did that a lot I just withdrew is the bioenergetic defense, I did escape my body, not really being present in the world was very theoretical. For me. It was a concept, it was an idea. It wasn’t a living, breathing being. And through the work of ayahuasca and cannabis, and these things, I started understanding the chakra systems more and how, you know, each power center, whether you know, there’s different mobile modalities relates to a different element, you know, you have an earth element, you have a water element, you have a fire element. And these are all ways of existence, you know, an earthquake wave is very different than a water wave. And I just started really noticing the elemental journey, and interbeing of the elements and myself is having all the elements within me. And suddenly, through this process, the magic of the universe actually just started opening up, I saw life everywhere. You know, LeBron was talking about this galactic life perspective. But I don’t know I in some ways, I feel like we’re going through an initiatory process of the elements, like in a lot of Yogi’s think we’re kind of in this third chakra elements, which is a fire element, we’ve gone through earth and water, and it’s the elements of civilization. And I’m just kind of watching a world war two documentary, which I think is a huge collective demon for us. And it ushered in the atomic age. And a lot of Yogi’s now are like that disruptive power, you know, I was watching the mushroom bomb on this video hitting Hiroshima. And it first looked like a mushroom. And then I saw this giant, gorgeous, toxic, disgusting tree of life. And I was thinking of how that atomic power that third chakra, the fire center may be pushing us as I hear a lot of Yogi’s and spiritual people talking into this heart center, which then opens up the upper power centers to more of a spiritual reality. And then I suddenly started after atomic energy was studying the the unified field theories, theories of how there’s these energies, you were talking about God being out there, that we’re already connected with. And I personally think this might be one of the most revolutionary things that’s happening, if it is happening. It’s like discovering fire, that there’s this fire within us, this god power within and without it, it may totally revolutionize spirituality, the energy, how we collectively organize ourselves, finding our own autonomous sovereignty, and even kind of healing this disease of separation and scarcity that I think has caused so much grasping and suffering on the planet. I mean, it’s a little bit of a wild theory. But all of these things in this incredible journey through the elements is through psychedelics has brought me to some realizations and maybe most importantly, what it brought me to was just feeling more like an initiated man, instead of like a angry boy, child teenager, suddenly it’s it’s very exciting to be like a male human homosapien on this planet at this extraordinary time, realizing it’s all up for grabs, and everything dies and is reborn. So I don’t know. It’s weird by going so far out. I feel like I’m much more human and grounded than I’ve ever been before.

Rick Archer: Cool. Anyone? Okay, everybody’s good at the moment. Well, one thing we’ve been talking about, I think, you were off the line Rak when I read the word punch of cootie. From your movie, a great change is now upon the world in which everything will be turned right side up and harmony and order will be restored. I interviewed Llewellyn Vaughan Lee a few a couple months ago and he’s written a book which is a little pessimistic and he almost seems to feel that we’re not going to make it It’s, it’s called the darkening of the light or something like that I’ve got on the shelf back there. But my hope is that just as we have the notion of a tipping point and the climate change discussion, beyond which it will be impossible to reverse the, the runaway global warming, we may be on the brink of a tipping point in spiritual evolution for the world, which we can be very close to without even knowing it. Because generally, when phase transitions happen, they’re not evident until they have happened. Like even the boiling of water, you know, it can be almost 212 degrees Fahrenheit, but it doesn’t look any different than if it were, you know, 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But then as soon as it reaches the boiling point, it starts turning to steam. So, you know, Rock was talking about all the plants that are being like, offered by mother nature, Mother Earth, as methods of facilitating our evolution. It may be I’m hoping, and get your responses to this, that there’s that the response to environmental degradation and you know, mass extinction of species, which tail out talked about little earlier, is being met by the acceleration of human consciousness, the raising of consciousness, and that all sorts of unseen intelligence is facilitating this and promoting it, which is why from my perspective, as somebody who has interviewed a couple 100 people, their spiritual awakenings happening like popcorn all over the world with apparently greater and greater frequency. And we, you know, again, speaking of nuclear fusion, which, you know, till I just referred to, there’s a certain point at which it takes off and you have the the atomic explosion. Hopefully, there’s something akin to that happening with spiritual development on the planet.

Rak Razam: Well, I think so, to jump in. It’s really interesting, what you point out why, why does it seem to be you know, this is tipping point in spirituality and mass awakening, or at least hunger for Mass Awakening, with many, many people within not just the spiritual community. But as more and more people within the mainstream, through different modalities all encounter spirit in some form. I was talking right at the start, I guess, about this supply and demand. And this, this sort of denuding of our relationship with spirit in Western culture over the centuries. You know, you talked about the Patrick Rati. And his idea, many cultures have pretty much all indigenous cultures, tribal cultures, which have lived on the earth, and understand cycles and seasonal cycles and greater cycles. have, you know, different Callender recalls or different mythologies that point to the fact that there’s different world ages, in larger, larger blocks of time, there seems to be almost like cosmetic seasons that we go through with there’s different energies within those within those blocks of time. And so we’ve just come through a grand conclusion in the Mayan calendar back in 2012. And, you know, it wasn’t just that it was 2012. At that point, that one target window on December 21 2012, there was actually a grand cycle that came to one level of completion and a new cycle began. So you know, different cultures say it’s the Kali yuga, or it’s a new cycle of this or the new paradigms coming through that everyone seems to feel that, you know, we have been going through in his story, we have been going through this process of transformation in in, in history itself, and through global culture, metastatic sizing into global culture. And we can sort of see all these different streams or paralleling, and pulling together now at this point in time. Here we are on Google Hangouts all across the world, you know, all linked up in this is hive mind, and the ability for people at least in in Western countries who have the resources to connect has never been greater. So this idea of can we you know, is there is there an impetuous behind that is there some type of some type of energy which is building us to this point, I believe is true. And in my movie IR awakenings I quote some of the indigenous prophecies, and I see that this is reemergence of the shamanic paradigm and this really acquaintanceship with Nature herself with with Pachamama with Mother Nature herself, is all part and parcel of the process. And so as we as we are groomed back into this awareness of our own spirituality of our own energy bodies of how we connect to nature, and Energy in nature, we will be initially find those of us who have had contact experiences with Nature herself that it feels to me that there’s definitely an entity. Sometimes it’s loving, sometimes it’s harsh. I mean, you know, it’s a true parent, there’s a larger, there’s a larger intelligence, I feel whether we call that Matok Vyasa, no great spirit or Pachamama, or, you know, whatever label we give it, there is a larger intelligence from my experiences, that is behind all this planetary activity and behind the plants and behind us ourselves, as well. And so just, I mean, you know, just at the moment on the planet, I have so many people who have the ability to communicate their own experiences like we are now and to share and to pool their own experiences. And to remember that no one path is true for another person, that all of these experiences were describing, whether it’s Ayahuasca or psychedelics, or meditation, you know, or alien abduction, whatever is that all pathways are valid, no paths lead to God, whatever label you choose to give it, in the end, and that I feel we’re being nurtured. It’s like, when you pan for gold, in the old days, it’s like you have to sift through the sand, and you have to Gradiate to the soul, and eventually, the right vibrations reach and everyone finds their own right pathway, that there is a collective awakening happening as we come full circle, my shorthand for this is that we’ve basically been going through a long periods of history where it’s like when you’re on a mobile phone and you lose reception, you go down from a four bar signal to one or two bars, and it gets a bit fuzzy, it’s like we’ve been, we’ve not been receiving, you know, the right signal from source. And so my shorthand is, we’re getting four bars galactic signal, now we’re getting it’s coming through, because we’re crossing over into this new geophysical sort of pattern where we’re lining up in a different alignment with the center of the galaxy and the Milky Way and all of the, the astrophysics to it. But also, this is energy coming in animating things, and we’re getting more we’re getting a larger signal, and it’s animating. And it’s like when, when you’re out camping or something, and you know, the sun comes over the horizon, and the day starts and the animals wake, and then you feel that heat, and you can’t remain asleep any longer, because it’s getting hot, something is happening, and energy is coming in, and it’s activating. And so this is why I feel the plants are working for the planet, and they all have a plan. And it’s basically to find our own pathways to awareness, because this energy is coming in. And the more we can be cleansed through whatever modality you choose, the more signal we can receive. And the more signal we can receive collectively, we form a species circuit to hold that energy and to anchor it on Earth, and anchor it not just for our species, but in the web of life. You know, if you hear the insects in the morning, they they send off this cascading signal through the ecosystem where the insects will wake up, or they’ll they’ll switch on other insects, and then the frogs and amphibians and then the higher level of animals. And nature herself speaks through all the species at once, not just the humans. And so as his energy comes through and animates and, and sort of expresses itself, it cascades and it activates all the other species because collectively, we form an interspecies symbiosis and a group circuit to hold the energy coming down. And that awakening isn’t just that we’re, we’re, they’re awake, we’re going, what do we do next, we have a role to play, you know, on the planet, as the planet as the collective intelligence of the planet, to hold the energy coming in, you know, and then to express that, however that is, and that is the copying into the new paradigm, which will have to do it when it happens, and it’s happening.

Rick Archer: Beautiful, I can see why you’re a journalist, you’re so articulate with this stuff, it’s a joy to listen to.

Cielle Backstrom: Rick, I wanted to say a little bit about this country to deal with it youth throughout. And so touch it, and just the most simple definition of Koshas just time and space. And pootie is just a turning over. So again, it’s just a turning over of our time continuum, that people except for it’s a proven word, petrol word. And it’s this sort of people, especially the high Andes, in, in Peru, they’re they’re culturalist time them around the turn of the 20th century, was going to be the next country to be the next turning over. And one thing that they noticed in that turning over, they don’t necessarily know this, but what it’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing, but things are going to be turned over. And this particularly started noticing their glaciers melting at a place where they can be melting every year but there shouldn’t be continual receding year after year after year after year so that their glaciers are not because that’s what’s going to bring them their next harvest, you know, with the snow melt, and they started noticing them receding at an alarming rate. So without any TVs or any anyone telling them about global warming, they could see the effects are happening in the cloud. This is a sign of this. We need to do something so that this Change can be held by the collective in a way that would bring us all forward in life. And so one thing that they started doing amongst themselves talking was what can we send to the rest of the world? Like what can we, you know, I can have a gift to the rest of the world that can help the whole world through this change, and save the people from careless at least in the high Andes or Cusco. Put together with some help of some Westerners a series of initiations. To help each of us become more fully present to we are so for instance, at one of these initiations is to initiate healing for yourself and others, and others open up with the third eye. And especially that will the third eye and the part that kind of vision consider. Another one is to balance all of the chakra so there’s this the series of initiations, the combination one is what they call it, do the creator or the Spirit writes, again, to connect this to source, the thing of this thought is, you’re not going to very well connect to source unless there’s a lot of balance and empowerment within your physiology to begin with. So there’s a series of initiations. And this series though, these heart lies or empowerment, were freely given to the people not of South America to give to the people of the world. They’re kind of like rescue mission when there’s a big tsunami that hits someplace, we all rush in with medical supplies and fresh water, and healing, you know, hands medical hands, well, they were gonna rush to us, by training as many of us as possible to give these particular initiations and especially towards that healer, right into that, that creator, right spirit, right? To bring us all into harmony, with spirit with source. But we can ride this wave the complicated with awareness, integrity, I love that idea of these athletes, like the servers that are riding these waves for the power that it gives them, sure those waves are dangerous. But if we can ride them with sensitivity and awareness, we become empowered by their energy to the same way we can live this question by being very adept at Revit deployed integrative physiology and connected to source. So anyway, just it’s a very, it’s a word that you will hear there, it’s taken very seriously, this turning over, what did they don’t just aren’t pass it like, well, what are we going to do, life is turning over, no, let’s go connect to source and be as full as we can be, that we can offer collectively, why this way, for the power comes into us and not for the disruption.

Rick Archer: Interesting, I’ll just throw in one quick thing, and then let somebody else respond. But this is the image of riding the wave, you know, you can’t ride the wave unless you catch the wave, Beach Boys wrote a song called Catch a Wave. But if you don’t catch the wave, then I guess you can get clobbered by the next wave, or you have to wait for the next wave. But in the case of this metaphor, I wonder if there will be multiple waves which people can catch, or if there’s just basically one huge wave that, you know, we should attempt to catch, or else we’re going to get swept up in the undercurrent, some, some prophecies and so on, say that it’s not going to be a pretty picture for the vast majority of humanity, and only those who’ve prepared themselves adequately, will really flourish, and others will go through a real hard time of it. Anyone have any comments on that?

Chris Bache: I’ll throw in, I’m really comfortable with what CL has said and what rock has said and describing the dynamics that we’ve entered into and are entering into. And I’m, I think, if you work in any kind of self conscious spiritual practice, including psychedelics, one makes contact with the the fundamental intelligence and intelligences that are driving the evolutionary process so that this product crisis that we’ve entered into is being driven by cosmic intelligence. I personally don’t doubt. But it’s a very fierce intelligence. I mean, in the hint in the Upanishad scriptures, it says, She eats her children. Life eats to life. So the fact that it’s compassionate and the compassion of oneness and the fact that it’s intelligent, and the fact that it’s extending us countless invitations to learn and grow and become more fully what we already are, in essence, that doesn’t mean that we won’t go extinct in the process because, you know, we’re extinguishing life on this planet faster than any time since the, the the meteor that took out the dinosaurs hit. So we may not have the right to this planet if we’re willing to allow if not cause the extinction of life. So at the pace that we are, I mean, among my circle, and people who are very conscientious students of global patterns, I’d have to say that there’s a 5050, very educated 5050 assessment of whether humanity is going to go extinct in this process, I come down on the positive side, but it’s not because of the data. It’s really the only thing I rooted in ultimately, is my own visionary experience. But I think, I don’t think we’re going to change deeply enough at the soul and at the collective level, without an enormous amount of pain in the process. I mean, we’re going to many estimates are placing the carrying capacity of the planet of the New Earth, which means the Eco compromised Earth, at somewhere between 1,000,000,002 billion people, we’re going to hit 9 billion by 2025. So between one or 2 billion and 9 billion, that’s a die off of potentially 7 billion people. The ordeal that that’s mounting in the 21st century, the ordeal of loss of that many of our children is just going to be painful beyond our imagination right now. I think it’s my concern is not whether we make it I believe deeply, that we will make it my concern is more how many of our children are going to die before we make, before we wake up, the faster we wake up, the faster we cooperate with this process, the fewer of our children will have to die. And the strength the string, the stronger we will be as a species coming out of it. But we could cripple ourselves. Even if we make it we could cripple the species so badly. It could take us 500 years to recuperate and get our feet back underneath. So survival the bike underneath us

Rak Razam: to jump in there, I think that’s all very true. And one of the things that I see happening in a lot of the global movements at the moment is that even people who are embracing change and a wanting to get back to sustainability and lower emissions, everyone’s still trying to basically retrofit the existing paradigm and even talking about 9 billion people or 2 billion people, we’re all still on the same playing field there. And what I see happening is what I think Jonathan mentioned before is that this is basically an initiation. It’s a global initiation. It’s a planetary initiation, to cosmic initiation. And we must remember that, you know, whether we call it Patrick call it Pachamama, or Gaia, or planet Earth, whatever the intelligence of nature is, as you said, as well as it, she just call it and she, she, she can be ruthless. And she, she is so with the species and all the species are actually just close that she wears, you know, in some senses, it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter, that the form that we take is just the outside, you know, manifestation. It’s the it’s the level of the Soul vibration, or the intellectual, the intelligence, and how that inter interacts and interlocks with, with the need on the ground, that there’s a process underway when we’re talking about this world ages, and this crisis that we’re facing, is a process of transformation. And so I think, you know, the big call to action here is to go with the flow. You know, as the as the I think it’s the Hopi saying, it says the river is running very fast now, and don’t hold on, don’t try to hold on to the existing paradigm. Basically, they’re saying, Go with the flow and see where it takes you. And that may mean not just a, like a paradigm change in terms of how we operate as a civilization. But I would hope, how we operate as a species and on a, you know, on a cellular level, as we’ve seen through different scientific analysis of historical time, and they’ve done deep core analysis of the ice, and they’ve seen different cosmic ray bombardments and different isotypes in the ice and have been affected by that they can tell energetically what’s been happening over 10s of 1000s and hundreds of 1000s of years, we’re now being bombarded yet again, by intense cosmic ray activity from, you know, a solar system sort of level and a deep galactic and a universal level. And there’s, there’s cascading changes, which are meant to be happening on a on an evolutionary level, the whole wave of evolution is to change and to change not just to retrofit little bits here and there and have a 2 Billion Strong civilization that sort of the same on the other side. It’s to basically change on a spirit level. So your body might change the whole shape of your of your vehicle as you go through the world might change but it’s the soul which has to be strong to survive these coming times. And it needs us I believe that, that all of these mini initiations are happening, to gird ourselves and to strengthen our soul bodies to be able to intake the coming energy and to do whatever it’s naturally meant to happen. We know that our bodies are you know, 70 to 90% water and their electromagnetic vehicles. Energy is coming in and it’s meant to be activating the DNA the DNA is programmed by the light and by the energy coming in, and we have to trust in evolution but we also have to be strong enough to be these vehicles for evolution that is asking us to be Yeah,

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

I was, you know, I was, as I mentioned, I watched world war two movies, World War Two in color, which is amazing 13 Point documentary. And there’s this frustration when it starts if everyone’s waiting, the Nazis are building this is happening no one’s doing anything. And it’s appeasement, appeasement, appeasement, that the duck. And I just felt like, that’s us. We’re in this monochrome monoculture. And it feels like we’re all talking about civilization. You know, the first civilization Mesopotamia, totally collapsed, because they over they irrigated, they oversold the rivers. And I think we’re looking at a 10,000 year journey and civilization that looks like on the verge of collapse. And what really struck me is once they finally got the message, and it would have been a lot easier if they had acted a lot earlier, is the amount of alliances, innovation, creativity, diet dynamics, like they were trying to fight Hitler in this these kind of dark forces, you might say, with the old paradigm, World War One mentality. So you can’t fight a blitzkrieg this way. I think we’re looking at a planetary blitzkrieg. As far as economics and climate change the species it’s on. It’s not people aren’t getting it yet, maybe the Blitzkrieg has to get stronger. But what didn’t inspire me was how seemingly impossible forces could be overcome with collaborations with innovations with human ingenuity spirit. And you know, Winston Churchill, it’s weird. He became this weird kind of mentor for me in a way of how do you stand up to the darkness when it seems so hopeless? How do you have patience and firmness to have hope, knowing it could take years, this may take generations. But I kind of feel like everyone listening, let’s activate whatever, not to scramble not to struggle, I feel like we see a lot of scrambling going on in the news, a lot of trying quick fixes and things like that. But to step up and hear heed the call to a very deep journey. And what I feel is perhaps spiritual warriorship. I never thought my healings would be about hunting. But when I do energy, healings, it’s very much about being on the aggressive going in for the attack to meet the shadow and confront it to then help it transform. It’s kind of a journey of love. And it’s almost like a war of love and reunification. But I had a very kind of lazy universe heal me way. And I think it fits in with the surfing metaphor very well as you’ve got to get your board you got to learn, you got to train. If you want to ride these waves. And I feel like we all like the call is here for us to find our own power, find our power, find our gifts, get creative, and really collaborate with each other and create new systems of creativity and collaboration that value, innovation, individual and community spirit at the same time. I really think we need a miracle. And we have a very lazy idea of miracles. You know, you pray you do this. For me my miracle. My healing practice was like the John Elway touchdown drive in 1985 or whatever. Against the Cleveland Browns. It was like on the two line yard line working with a team step by step by step and then finally after years, punching it through the endzone and I kind of think that’s the kind of miracle we have to co manifest together.

Rick Archer: Oh, there is the David and Goliath story. And speaking of Winston Churchill, he said, America always does the right thing after trying every other alternative. So there’s hope. But this is fascinating stuff. And we we we can milk this for a bit more perhaps. I don’t think too many of my interviews have touched upon this theme as much as this one is just you know the fate of the earth and what’s going on and what higher energies there might be that are influencing it and and all it’s it’s essentially this conversation has morphed in that direction.

Chris Bache: May I make a suggestion? I think in some ways, it’s kind of one of the natural derivatives or consequences of working with this with sacred medicines because I mean, the contemplative practices do shift you into dramatically different states of consciousness, but they often work with within the kind of near at hand states of consciousness because of purpose. I think, as I might summarize it as quickly as you know, the clarification of consciousness until the very nature of awareness shines through unobstructed Sacred medicine shifts you is concerned with that as well. But they also shift you into very radically expanded states of consciousness in which one begins to experience not only larger fields of awareness, but drop into the evolutionary patterns that encode your life and hold your time in history, and hold in patterns of the evolutionary structure. So that individuals repeatedly working with sacred medicines learn that, you know, it’s not personal story. And you know, the story of Earth is not a personal story in the story of evolution, the story of Enlightenment and spiritual awakening is not a personal story. And right now, the that species of which we are apart, and the planet of which we are apart, is coming into this crisis time. It’s the very nature of psychedelics that dramatically and radically expands our frame of reference with it from within, we understand our own life process itself. There are some drawbacks of working with these dramatically expanded states. And there are some advantages, but one of the advantages, I think, is that it has sensitized many of us to an accelerated appreciation of the forces that are driving society and culture and history at this point in the 21st century.

Rick Archer: And as, I’m sorry, who is who’s about to speak,

Rak Razam: it’s gonna find that’s one of the reasons why they’re illegal, I think, you know, their consciousness expansion creates individuals who, you know, aware of awareness, let’s say, it’s likely becomes a lot harder to create sheeple. And people who are easily led into into the battery farm paradigm where we’re inhabiting in 21st century earth, when you do expand consciousness, and when you see outside the box, and you want to connect with others and be an evolutionary agent, so, yeah.

Chris Bache: Which then throws the question back in the direction of traditional practice, you know, what is the what is the purpose of traditional contemplative practice or practice which is focused on awakening in any kind of classical sense? I mean, the image of the Buddha at the Gas Pump? Well, we’re past peak oil now. It’s almost the images, contextualize. So what is the purpose? What’s the relationship of traditional spiritual practice? And the evolutionary crisis that we’re all part of, in this time in history?

Rak Razam: Such a good question, hey, I’ll just subscribe to that as well. You know, what, with some some of the things which deeply saddened me and I look at the news situation in places like Tibet, where there’s political oppression, and there’s very spiritual people in the meditative community, the monks and the Buddhist nuns of Tibet, who are basically, you know, self immolating themselves and setting themselves on fire, in protest, and in a cry to the world to say, things are that bad on the ground politically, and the oppression of their feeling, it’s a community that these people who have presumably vows of, you know, life affirming vows not to kill and things like that are actually taking their lives as a as a human sacrifice to publicize the events. And so you know, what you were saying, Chris, about what value can can these these established spiritual communities have? And how do we sort of counteract these, this is feeling I guess, of great oppression in the world, whether that’s from the banksters in the financial systems or government and you know, Talat Aryan regimes, spiritual practices alone can can raise our awareness and can open us up that then there needs to be more practical, on the ground solidarity between not just awakened people, but everyone who can hear the cry of people in need like that.

Chris Bache: And we see that in engaged Buddhism, you know, the whole movement within Buddhism. Buddhism isn’t simply about awakening in some psycho spiritual sense, but it’s an awakening within a social sense. It’s awakening within a larger contextual historical sense. And if that’s missing from it, then that’s basically that’s missing a fundamental theme of Enlightenment cultures. But I think also awakening has different connotations today than it did 2000 years ago. You know, the context is different. We truly need not only we need a green Buddha, we not only need a feminist Buddha, we need a we need a Buddha Gaya we need to sort of contextualize our practice whatever drivers we’re using in our practice, we need to contextualize it within our moment of history. This is our moment of history.

Rick Archer: One thing is that you know, it often seems that the politicians the corporation’s the bankers, and so on wield of power and spiritual people are relatively uninformed, essential. But if spiritual people are really learning to operate, subtle realms of creation, we know from, you know, the examples in physics that subtler realms are more powerful. And perhaps, you know, really, perhaps the spiritual folks are the ones who really have the ultimate leverage.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

Could I make a suggestion here too, are I there’s just a thought, because, you know, I brought up the surfing metaphor, especially big wave surfers. And it was a big deal when they, first of all the first person to discover a surfboard and figure out you could do this. That was, I think it was kind of an evolutionary force on the planet of like, oh, this is a way to integrate adrenaline and things into the human psyche, and spirit. And then they figured out they could surf, why it why it may, but then they were stuck. Because technology didn’t keep up until they figured out Wait a second, we can pull boards out on toes, and hit giant waves. And so in some ways, this kind of 10,000 year division between science and spirituality, like you guys are saying spirituality. It’s not resonating with me that well, because for me, spirituality is kind of up and out and not here. In that way. I’m very interested of like, how is the new consciousness. And you know, I think Chris was suggesting this, the technologies meeting each other. And I think we can amplify evolution through responsible use of technologies. I mean, I’m already seeing this in the economic models, I Airbnb, my apartment, I use Lyft taxi services, I have all these friends that were creating alternative economies through these things. And I really, I’m looking forward to when the medical institutions discover the energy fields. And then finally, we will have intuitives in scientists meeting because I really think like some of the parasitic quantum stuff, we could be reading it on frequency readers and things like that. And stuff that like, took, we thought was done curable depression, bipolar, schizophrenia can be illuminated through the field through consciousness, and the synthesis of consciousness and advanced technology. And what happens is, when you have people feeling better, they’re empowered, they have their gifts, they act totally differently with the world, they become instead of takers that aren’t like drowning person, they become enabled people that can help other people learn how to swim or grow things or nurture reality. And I think this fusion is going to be very important. We’ve seen very bad examples, I think a lot in the last century of how technologies can create separation and studying living systems and integrating that in with technology. And biomimicry, I think is going to be a huge field. In the coming century.

Rick Archer: I just had a circuit blow. That’s why I disappeared for a bit, we just had to restart the circuit. Anyway, glad we were able to carry on.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

Right, as we’re talking about technology, I

Rick Archer: was just just to finish the thought. As Chris was saying earlier, you know that we might go from eight or 9 billion down to billion could happen. But another way of looking at it is that seems like most of if not a great many of the things that people put their energies into the businesses, the industries, the things we consume, really don’t have any place in an enlightened world as most of it, most of us would conceive of it, you know. And if that is true, and if we are going to transition to a very different world, so called enlightened world, then probably all these things are going to have to crumble. And the crumbling process could be extremely traumatic for people who are invested literally and figuratively, in all those things.

Rak Razam: That’s the whole chestnut about attachment, isn’t it? That is the root of all suffering is like we’ve become very attached no to our to our way of living in, in 21st century Western culture. And the third world craves what we’ve got. And so there’s this trickle down effect and everyone is attached to this paradigm which is basically dying, and basically, you know, transforming at the same time, you know, they want more of that as it’s transforming. So, how do we how do we lose our attachments and the ego dissolving of the meditation or of psychedelics and substances like that can be a catalyst for you know, letting go of attachments, although it other times it can also exacerbate and strengthen some of those ego desires and attachments as well. So there’s there’s no easy pathways but that’s that’s the mission ahead. Yeah, you

Chris Bache: And Rick, I’d like to double back around to your observation of the power of spiritual persons or persons who do deep spiritual practice a different image. I mean, if you, you know, if you run your finger in the water, if you stick your finger in the river and ripples spread out from the dividing point of your fingers, just a finger, but it has a much broader effect, or an image that comes to mind frequently from working in deep states. It’s like, when you go deeper and deeper and deeper in, you know, into the structure of the collective psyche and into the deep constitutional patterns that hold humanity in certain dynamic configurations. If you can cause a small shift at the deep collective level, that can ripple out in time almost in an earthquake, like fashion, eventually in a large effect at a at the social or the collective level. So it’s to me a spiritual practitioners like the diamond bit, that’s drilling deep within the earth and deep within the collective psyche, it takes an extremely hard substance to crack these very, very deep levels. And if you read the biographies on the on the autobiographies of great saints that, you know, they knew these territories, they they were entering into collective hells, they were entering into terribly arduous processes, they were experienced enormous suffering. But they kept piling through and kept pushing through until eventually, the light that they were able to bring to focus was able to penetrate and have an effect on very, very deep collective shadows, those I think, can have a very profound radiating effect. And anyone is doing spiritual practice is kind of hardwired into other people who are doing spiritual practice, so that we are all sort of dropping shafts into these very deep collective shuttles.

Rick Archer: Beautiful. Another metaphor I find handy is if you think of a river, if you want to change the course of a river, if you try to do it at the mouth of the river, where it enters the ocean, it’s too late, the river has already run its course, if you go halfway upstream, you can change it quite a bit, at least half of it, maybe. But if you could get to the source of the river, then Metaphorically speaking, although you wouldn’t probably really do this, you can send it off in any direction, because you’re at the source from which it springs. So you know, spiritual practice can be seen as a way of swimming upstream, so to speak, in this river, getting back to the to the very source of everything. And then by effecting change, there just a slight, tiny shift can can bring the ultimate outcome in a completely different direction than it was otherwise going to go.

Rak Razam: So I just like to jump in, I think that’s really great. I think it’s absolutely true that basically, if I can use his term psychedelic activism is, is the next step forward for a collective response, not just an individual response, and things like with entheogens. With ayahuasca, there is a focus on healing and the right context to it. And many people are sort of still going through their individual journeys and individual healings. Some people I know in the psychedelic community are already exploring this sort of Avenue, this sort of collective work, I’ve, over the years sort of taken part in a few different rituals, where I feel that when people are on the same psychic morphic sort of resonant frequency, when they’re on the same journey together, some of the individual egos can be overcome and a gestalt can be created. And it’s that guest old type of consciousness, which can actually either go deeper to be more effective in the, in the astral or in the sort of psychedelic realms. And I think that it’s a very valuable tool that, you know, we that should be explored more as a community, this idea of group work, I know that even with saving the curanderos in Peru, quite often, and this is sort of a historical legacy thing that many of the curanderos drink on Tuesdays and Friday nights or they, they they find that when there’s more and more people on the astral all working with energy at the same time, it builds the energy and so it’s easier to work when there’s a collective out there on that same playing field. And I don’t see this happening that much in the the entheogenic community at the moment, but in the psychedelic community, and we’ll talking right at the start about the difference between thrill seekers and seek seekers, some some people who are working on this group sort of modality work doing it, you know, not for their own healing and not on an individual level, but on a group level. And I see this happening. There’s a there’s some DMT communities and there’s a well known website called DMT hyphen Nexus and it’s it’s a sort of a learning community and a it has a lot of different forums and things like that, that they previously done experiments with like a, a group DMT ritual and things. You know, if I look at the tribal level, I guess, you know, there were many, many indigenous tribes that would basically trip together or would take sacraments together and do it in a group scenario. And it’s something which is sort of overlooked in this first, this current way of Ayahuasca usage, that there’s something that not important about the bonding that happens to a group, which does enter altered spaces together. And then also, I think the guests and the creative potential that’s, that’s available. And you know, as Chris said, as well, I think that some of the best work that can be done is in the, the, the formative realms, because all of this manifestation in the world, as you were saying, as well, this is, you know, it’s almost too late, it’s already manifested, it’s already concrete. And it’s hard. And if you can, if you can work on the upper upper levels of vibration, and the slightest little tweaks, as you were saying, and especially if you can do it in a measurable way, if it’s not something as you know, all encompassing as world peace or whatever, but you could do psychedelic activism for really direct results, you know, on a very measurable way. I think that is a very, very powerful tool that we should be exploring as conscious communities.

Rick Archer: Interesting. So you’re saying that, for instance, go ahead, Jonathan.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

Well, I mean, rock this inspired me because I felt like I got a real treat in the sense of demais Ayahuasca Mystery Schools, because there’s not one shaman singing the Carrozza Healing Songs, which seem to their everyone does in their received channeled songs, people don’t just write these they come to them. And I think the act of singing in group is one of the most healing things we can do for the ego and letting go because we’re harmonizing, we’re coming into vibration. And you’ll see in these database ceremonies, it’s just like the finest line of beauty. And if you have someone singing too high, too low, making movements, it kills the wave. But when you all hit that sweet spot, you go on the most beautiful journeys together. And I really think a lot of the fighting We do, we’re just, we’re not in harmony with each other. It sounds silly, but I really think if we could get like politicians to sing, get communities to sing, we might start to set it whole different resonant level, we’re out of resonance right now, collectively, and I think that’s a huge issue. And the sounds also activate the energy centers. So you know, the vowels are just very sacred things, the consonants activate the vowels release. So I’m hoping there’s more medicine and just general healing work through song and vibration.

Rak Razam: If you guys think Terence McKenna commented on this, you know, back in the 90s, when he was, in some senses and mythologizing Ayahuasca use that as a as an Amazonian tribe, that would actually, I think it was, might have been the DMT snuff ritual, or it might have been I was that he was saying, collectively, if they’re on the same vibration on the same intense, and they would sort of, they would all see the same, same manifestation of this purple, viscous fluid, this super fluid, and with it, they could sculpt into existence objects, like or they could make things or they can sort of, you know, collectively work as a group, that this whole idea of a collective conceptual trip into the into a reality where you’re all seeing the same thing solidifies the truth of that, and also helps steer the group towards, you know, the ability to manifest and to set goals and to realize them, and, you know, part of the the origins of the psychedelic experience according to anthropologists and, and whatnot, saying that, you know, the tribe would often use it as a hunting mechanism or something where they would, you know, draw on the cave walls, the bison that they wanted to find, and then the next day, it would manifest and they’ll go out, and I’d see the bison and it would be there. And, you know, to really realize that psychedelics and entheogens can be very practical tools for a community and for a tribe to work with, and to manifest their immediate needs and to give back to the planet, as well as taking in the manifestation.

Rick Archer: Here in Fairfield, Iowa, there are a couple of large geodesic domes that have been here for about 30 years on the campus of the TMX group, university, marshy University. And every day, all throughout these 30 years, there have been anywhere from 1000 to during special courses, as many as 8000 people all meditating together at the same time for like, you know, at least four hours a day. And no, so it’s kind of just mentioning it, because it’s part of that principle that you’re mentioning, although it doesn’t involve psychedelics. But there does

Chris Bache: Anything important about psychedelics is unique to psychedelics, and it also will manifest in any other content in other practices as well. So the accumulation of effects that you’re pointing to is very powerful.

Rick Archer: And it’s measurable. You know, that you can measure various social indicators and see If they correlate with fluctuations in the numbers of people doing it, and they’ve done studies like that gotten published in peer reviewed journals, and just one thing to throw in with this whole point we’re making now is that in nature, there are a number of examples of where very small numbers of elements in a system govern the whole system or can influence the whole system. For instance, in the heart 1% of the cells are pacemaker cells, and they kind of regulate the beating of the whole heart, or in a laser, the square root of 1% of the photons if they line up coherently with one another, in induce the the other photons to become coherent, and the whole thing begin begins behaving as a single photon. So, you know, we don’t necessarily have to think in terms of x billion people, all participating in some sort of intense spiritual thing for huge social change to take place. Backstrom haven’t heard from you in a while everything saying all this.

Jeffrey Backstrom: There’s something coming up for me about this. Played a little bit with the distinction just touched on it between these oh, what somebody called up and out spirituality. Maybe more conventional kind of spiritual practices or more, I would think more post agricultural versus indigenous practices. And just this last piece, we were talking about this kind of speculation on my part, but my experience with the plants is that the awakening that’s engendered in those practices is much more embodied. The traditions, our traditions, that are still in a constant, daily inter woven contact with nature. And we’re using a plant spirit rather than a spiritual practice, which is thought of as kind of coming from the, what I’m going to call the masculine expression of the divine. Yeah, just so my sense that I’ve had and, as you mentioned, I was here in in Fairfield, since the 70s, as well, so a long time with more sort of rarefied kind of spiritual practice. And then, yeah, I have to confess, I felt it wasn’t really synchronizing very well with who I am, although I have recently started practicing DM again. But then over the years got more and more drawn to these practices that are kind of I don’t know, we’ve got this earth based wording, or they’re just tying me through the body into the feminine manifestation of the divine matter, the mother, that’s, it’s got a whole different feeling. And to me, it has a greater sense of promise and in terms of our as a species, being able to heal our relationship with the ecosystem, if you will, to kind of fit into that system in a way that’s more harmonious and not to detract from them from the 1000s in the dome, I mean, I just think, if we’re going to make it through this, we should try everything that’s available to us. And some kind of balance between these masculine and sometimes even hyper masculine spiritual paths. And what’s now, you know, we’re collectively becoming much more aware of the grounded, embodied, feminine path to awakening. I think it has a lot of promise for those reasons.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I wasn’t mentioning the dome thing as some kind of, you know, endorsement of it in an exclusive way. I’m just saying everybody’s doing their thing, you know, and I’m just I just use that as an example. Because of the way the other fellow was saying.

Jeffrey Backstrom: Yeah, I mean, I’m more drawing lines than you were acknowledged. And I’m just saying, I think the one is great. And I think we really need to be open to these different forms of spirituality that are being made available to us by our brothers and sisters who’ve been spending all this time on barefoot.

Rick Archer: Oh, yeah. You know, one thing I noticed is that Very often when people kind of stepped back from a path that they had been deeply engaged in for many years, very often they blossom, you know, some some profound awakening takes place, which is not to say that they should have been wasting their time in that thing, but somehow, it just, you know, they’ve hatched, it’s time to leave the incubator, and when they leave the incubator, then they can really begin to fly. So, yeah, kind of relates to what you’re saying, Just be open to whatever your your heart leads you to do.

Chris Bache: If I can throw in maybe an historical point, my, you know, as someone who teaches world religions are taught for most of his life. I think we, about 5000 years ago, when we began to break through and we began to develop the technology, the psycho technologies to go beyond individual consciousness and began to experience the mother universe, you know, the universe, which is the generative universe. I mean, when we begin to experience that reality, and that reality is so much more instantly gratifying and satisfying than time space reality in some ways. I mean, it led us to develop up and up cosmologies, and all the religions, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, all the religions are basically variations on up and up cosmologies, which make perfectly good sense, in the first phase of the discovery of that generating universe. So that profound mother the Buddha womb,

Rick Archer: and just explain what you mean by up and out, I know what you mean, but maybe some of the listeners won’t get it.

Chris Bache: Well, I mean, where the goal is to achieve some type of realization is some Enlightenment and then leave the system so that the first aware Hinduism is moksha. So you’ve achieved escape of Moksha escape from the planet who wants to be on the planet when you can be in heaven. So, so to achieve salvation, and salvation ultimately is realized in an off planet place or an off planet condition. And all of the religions basically sought that. But that, to me, is a symptom of the relative psychological or psycho spiritual, half maturity or immaturity of the human species at the time, because ultimately, all the up and up cosmologies leave on answering the question, what when God was existing, when the divine was existing in the pre manifest state? Why did God manifest the universe? Why did God Self manifest the universe itself? And now the more we understand the size of the universe, and the complexity universe, the inherent intelligence of the universe, it basically undercuts the logic of the Upanishad cosmologies. Because it leaves on answering the question, what’s the purpose of timespace existence? And I think the shift we’re going through is not only tied to specific practices like a psychedelic practice, but I think it’s a profound philosophical, psychological shift to recognizing that awakening to the mother universe awakening to transcendent realities is only the first step. It’s it is good to ground on that reality. It’s good to open to that reality. But ultimately, the evolutionary thrust is to connect that is to bring more of that reality into time and space. And in that process, I mean, this is Sri Aurobindo is fundamental insight, it’s an incarnational spirituality, in contrast to an up and out spiritualities, we will open the doors, open the channels, bring it in, and actualize it here. And I think as we do, we’re going to find that all sorts of limits that we thought were the limits of the human body are going to turn out to be the limits of the consciousness animating the human body so that we have much more open ended potential for sensory acuity for auditory acuity for physical sensation. And we really are limited by the quality of consciousness that has yet been able to animate this particular biomass that we are  the hub

Rick Archer: would you say rock said Amen. Oh, oh, great. Oh, well, I agree. It’s

Rak Razam: a very interesting question in this jump in this very briefly there. My film documents, some of my journeys on Ayahuasca as well, but we there’s a core part of the film where we were just lucky enough to have footage of a five Mao DMT experiments that we conducted in the jungles in Peru with a Western Curandero in a western scientists with some brainwave activity. And you know, the five Meo experience to shorthand it is a typically the white light title emerging with the Godhead type of mystic experience initiation. But it seems to me from my, my experiences in that realm is that yes, I totally agree with Chris. And it’s not just about the upper now, it’s about the fact that the the, the explicate or the world that we inhabit, which has been created from the implicate is manifesting, and it’s grounding. And you know, as much as we’re journeying up and out and and peering up above, you know, the the frequency crash that we’re in down here, we’re recognizing there’s a, there’s a interdimensional ecosystem, but it’s also it’s also at the same time feeding into our material plant, and it’s incarnating. And it’s anchoring. And so this idea of awakening and transcendence is a historical legacy from some of the world religions. But I feel on a natural system that what’s happening is, you know, the Godhead or the the whole, the whole engine of creation is such that it’s incarnated into this material plane, and it’s manifesting. And so, you know, there’s part of the world shift and all these things that are happening, the Divine is alive and well and is incarnated on the earth through us. And it wants to have more of that incarnation happening on the world, you know, the word is becoming flesh on planet Earth. Yeah,

Rick Archer: yeah. Well, this is wonderful stuff. CL we both say something.

Cielle Backstrom: Along the same subject of up and out spirituality, I was just even reflecting on even the word Ayahuasca which we haven’t really talked about that much. So last, but this means vine. The plant itself has a binding plant, and it has a couple of ways we might translate it. And one of the translations for is soul. And to me, it is a plant medicine that takes me deeply into my soul, perhaps connected to other souls as well. But again, it’s not to connect so much that iOS experienced is to connect me to my soul, it so it’s kind of a downward descent into the interior world of my soul. Other words that I am, is we might translate it in and I’m really convinced that if we really understood these languages, probably still or the other were deaf, neither one of them would probably be adequate for the actual indigenous experience, but again, deaf, it but it’s not a dark, it’s just like, again, it’s going beyond our personality. It’s into that the more subtle worlds where the personalities is dead, but you know, under deeply mystical place when the personality is left behind. But again, it’s just I’m gonna we’re talking about how when each of us individually can find our own souls and actually really befriend our own death that we can then create an orientation towards life that is much more universal and compassionate. And with that, interest in the collective that it is so, such an internal exploiting inward not an upward and out to reach some source with the downward to nature aspect of this particular path that might make it unique from working.

Rick Archer: Okay. Does anyone want to make any concluding remarks? Or was that a good concluding remark right there. That’s pretty good.

Talat Jonathan Phillips 

I feel like we went into really wild territory for a talk that was just about psychedelics. I I’ve, I feel really honored to have learned from all of you, and I hope your community does, too. Thanks so much, everybody.

Rick Archer: Yeah, well, I particularly feel honored. You know, I, I often feel like an amoeba doing this show. Because each week, I reach out and engulf a new person, you know, listen to all their stuff and read their book if I as much as I have time to do and, and each time it sort of nourishes me and expands my world. But you know, this week, the amoeba has really bitten off a big chunk. Interacting with all of you folks, and you know, getting familiar with with what you’re doing, I really feel nourished, enlivened, and more mature and my understanding of all of the whole spiritual landscape as a result of preparing for and doing this discussion. So I appreciate it. Thanks to all.

Rak Razam: Just like to put in comment, that you know, basically, as I said earlier, all paths lead to the same central source in mind understanding and what’s right for one person might not be right for another and so everyone should just trust the journey as it unfolds, while still diligently pushing their own envelopes, you know, and questing and asking questions themselves to be that seeker you know, on the path, and it is the journey, not the destination. So you know, trust the process that unfolds and you know, push yourself as much as you can. And, yeah, but let’s,

Rick Archer: yeah, there’s a verse in The Gita which says, one’s own Dharma, the lesser and merit is better than because one could perform it. One’s Own Dharma, the lesser and merit is better than the dharma of another better is death in one’s own Dharma, the dharma of another brings danger. So kind of relates to what you just said that basically, if we, if we’re, if we tune in and listen, we’re going to know what the next step is for us. And it’s not necessarily what your next step or your next step is, is what you know, one’s own next step is if you’re sensitive to it. Yeah. Good, well, let me make just a few concluding remarks. Well, while they’re reading all the names of the people we’ve been talking to, we’ve kind of done that in the beginning. And you familiar with it by now, if you’ve listened this far in the interview, I also won’t bother just reading all the different websites that everybody has, because that’d be hard to get down anyway. But if this, this whole discussion will be on a page on batgap.com. And if you go there, you will find short bios of each participant linking to their websites where you’ll find longer BIOS lists of their books, movies, whatever they’re involved in healing practices, counseling things. There’s a whole wealth of opportunity here. So just go to backup.com. And you’ll find that there also you’ll find a discussion group for each interview, and I suspect that the discussion on this one is going to be quite lively. There’s a Donate button, which I appreciate people clicking makes it possible for me to do this. There’s a place to sign up to be notified by email. Each time a new interview is posted. You’ll see that and there is both an alphabetical and a chronological list of all the interviews I’ve done. So and there’s also a link to the audio podcast. If you’d like to just listen to the audio of this on your iPad. You can sign up for that. So that about does it so thanks for listening or watching. See you next week. Next week is going to be Lama Surya Das. Thank you all. Thank you, everybody. Thank you