Turn On, Tune In, Rise Up: DMT, Globalization, and Radical Psychedelic Engagement (Boom 2014)
Presented by David Nickles at the Boom Festival in Portugal in 2014
Forty-three years after the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances imposed global prohibition on psychedelic compounds, demarcating governmental efforts to end the first psychedelic revolution, a second major psychedelic awakening is underway. Set amidst the landscape of late capitalism, this resurgence is unfolding in the forms of renewed focus on sanctioned psychedelic research, the emergence of significant underground psychedelic research, and the rhizomorphic spread of global festival cultures.
The role of DMT in this “archaic revival” is impossible to ignore. From Nick Sands’ discovery that DMT freebase could be smoked in the early 60’s, to Terence McKenna’s discussions of the vaporized DMT experience sowing seeds in countless imaginations during the 80’s and 90’s, to the rise of internet forums and the DMT-Nexus in the 21st century, distributing information rendering the molecule accessible worldwide, DMT has manifested itself into popular consciousness at a truly astonishing rate.
This presentation explores manners of engaging with entheogenic experiences as well as their possible implications. How can participation in the divine mystery inform our actions in waking life? What is “radical psychedelic engagement” and how can it affect political action? What can the life of a psychonaut and DMT traveler look like?
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:02] We all come to events like boom for our own reasons we all have our own needs wants and desires that draw us into these spaces what might it be to have what we seek from these experiences in these delineated spaces as part and parcel of our daily lives what changes would we have to realize in the world in order to provide ourselves perpetual access to these experiences rather than needing to seek them out in such delineated spaces where we can get away from the obligations and coercions of our daily lives given this question I'd kind of like to propose a hypothesis seeing that we're all here it's probably not going to be particularly earth-shattering but I'd like to use it as a jumping-off point psychedelics are catalysts for personal transformations but we must embody the understandings they facilitate I think that the reasons why people come to places like boom and the reasons people use psychedelics are very similar
[01:02] If not one and the same for me psychedelics have offered profound insight into myself and others and have raised innumerable questions about the world in which we live my first significant experience with mushrooms gifted me with what I consider to be my first radical synthesis or a state of understanding where a number of previously disconnected and disjointed understandings about the world came together in a way where they revealed themselves to not only be interconnected in a very seamless manner but to also point towards the root causes of a number of destructive processes and institutions I was 19 at the time of the experience at university and I had been staunchly anti-drug for a lot of my childhood until I tried cannabis and then realized that the drug propaganda was just propaganda so after doing several weeks of research on mushrooms deciding that that they looked to be fairly safe and something I wanted to experience I ate three and a half grams
[02:04] In my dorm room and headed off to the 90 plus acres on the edge of campus as the experience started to peak I found myself coming across a tree with this huge root mass that presented itself to the path and as I approached the tree I saw it was teeming with all sorts of insects that fungus was growing through the roots that lichen was growing on the tree and all of a sudden I felt this weird consciousness that felt somewhat familiar but very strongly other and I felt as though I'd been thrust into the center of a nature documentary and all of a sudden I was presented with understandings about life cycles and how all of these systems the insects the tree the fungi they're all interconnected in a way where they can't be pulled apart and cleanly stated that this starts at this place or time and this starts at the other place in time and as I was here in this really tiny patch of woods you know contemplating these interconnections I suddenly felt this deep
[03:05] Profound sadness that knowing that these interconnections exist in ecological systems all over the world and that these ecological systems are under attack that they're essentially being decimated by humans and as this profound sadness sort of enveloped me I realized that it wasn't just humans that it was humans organized into corporate hierarchies and that they were engaged in acts of for-profit insanity literally you know poisoning the water we drink the air we breathe the ground that we derive sustenance from and as I felt the weight of this understanding the first instinct I had was run unplug you know get out of this system and I immediately realized that there was nowhere for me to go especially in the u.s vagrancy and homelessness are criminalized land which had formerly been the global commons has been roped off and declared off limits by people with superior resources and so suddenly I found myself with a strong desire to remove myself from the system but realizing I didn't have an
[04:06] Option to as I sat with this I realized that that I was actually you know in school in order to obtain papers to function within this destructive society that I was here so that I could get a piece of paper that would allow for a career so that I could obtain food clothes and shelter within an industrial capitalist paradigm and as I grappled with what that meant and what my role was in this ecological destruction which you know to some extent has been going on since as far back as humans have existed as food clothes and shelter always incur an ecological cost but now in this structure we've raced so far beyond these necessities to the most absurd ends of mass-produced technological trinkets that I was stuck in this position of trying to on understand what it all meant and how it related and how I could function in a way and again I was hit by the fact that I couldn't unplug from this
[05:07] That this capitalism and how it intersects with industrial civilization is essentially a race to the bottom that seeks to enfold all sorts of enterprise into capitalist infrastructure and that ultimately the only way to escape from this the only way in which that you know I could wield power would be in the marketplace but as a consumer you know I have zero power my minuscule purchasing power is completely irrelevant and so you know people who like to talk with their about voting with your dollars frequently ignore the fact that that's for people who have dollars in the first place and they like to ignore the completely unequal global distribution of dollars the living legacy of colonialism and imperialism and you know they never talk about the fact that militaries and corporations are the largest consumer entities on the planet so again I find myself struggling with what it means to be encapsulated in the system unable to escape from it unable to run that everywhere I look it seems
[06:09] As though I'm trapped and as I realize what it means that that there is this ongoing race to the bottom and it's attached to the machinery of industrial civilization the sort of final realization about being trapped in the system was that there's nowhere that I can go there's nowhere where I can take myself or I can take people I care about or for any other life on this planet to go in the event that industrial civilization destroys the life support systems on spaceship earth so the conclusion that I was left with was to resist that I needed to find ways of engaging with the world that would not only create a world in which I wanted to be in but that would actively challenge the various systems that were cropping up as problematic during this experience and for me the experience left me with a very clear message that ecological integrity is perhaps sacrosanct and that given the situation of industrial capitalism you know this
[07:10] Destruction of ecosystems will be ongoing unless it's forcibly forestalled that is to say it's not profitable to stop destroying ecosystems within a capitalist framework and so we won't stop and ultimately for me this understanding was made that much more profound by the fact that I could see the connection between myself and the forest I could see plants breathing I could feel this deep intrinsic knowing that I was a part of all of this life and for me that represents this concept of experiential knowledge which is to my mind much deeper than mere intellectual knowing and the thing about experiential knowledge sort of its power and the threat that it presents to entrench systems of power is that it can't be taken from you that these are understandings you know whether we're talking about something like the intrinsic feeling of knowing that you know all life is connected for me mushrooms profound provided this profound and memorable experience at the same time mushrooms
[08:10] Changed a whole host of other components of my life the most initially pronounced was an unquenchable thirst for more information about psychedelics whether I was in class or at home I was non-stop researching the classical psychedelics dmt psilocybin lsd messelin and you know about a year into this I stumbled across a talk by terence mckenna presenting a whole host of his ideas and theories on non-social events and then eventually it moved into his thoughts on dmt and as I heard very little about dmt at this point I was completely fascinated and I figured it would probably be years if not decades until I stumbled across this molecule but about a year after that a friend called me up and said that a friend of his had some and did I want to come try it I said of course so I wound up at his house and there were about four people there I was offered this one hitter loaded with dmt and as I
[09:11] Exhaled the third hit I passed the one hitter to my right and instantly I knew I had died I was in front of my face my consciousness had exited my body and yet it felt completely normal it felt like one of the most comfortable experiences I've ever had and as reality twisted up into this tunnel and I found myself rocketing through it I came into a space that felt like home with a capital h and really all I could do was marvel that this had happened suddenly there's this beautiful fractal jeweled temple and it was astonishing in a very real sense but not just in how otherworldly it was in how much it resonated with me and felt like something that I'd known and so as the experience began to fade and as I began to sort of come down my eyes fluttered open and I mumbled it's so nice to know that this is always here sort of attempting to reflect on the fact that there felt like something was permanent about this place
[10:12] As though it existed outside of time and when I was finally all the way back the first thing I said was there's so much I've forgotten referencing the feeling of intimately knowing this place and all of the emotional states and knowledge and everything that had been presented in this experience for me I mean I was in complete awe and we left shortly thereafter but nothing would ever be the same I got home and instantly started researching extraction methodologies got all the equipment that I needed and you know two weeks later I was pulling pyrex dishes out of my freezer marveling at the white crystals present in them and feeling this was truly magical and you know over the next eight months or so I found myself smoking and vaporizing dmt nearly daily sometimes you know multiple times a day sometimes there would be periods of daily use and the experiences were were inevitable they really ranged all over the place
[11:13] And presented so many questions I mean there was there were never any answers that there were they were never unaccompanied by myriads of questions and so during the midst of all of these experiences I found myself looking for a way to sort of communicate about this because I didn't know anybody else that was having these sorts of experiences the few people I knew who had used dmt had used it maybe once and with I was after a particularly mystifying experience sort of trying to figure out a way to incorporate it trying to figure out a way to make some meaning of it and I never expected you know that that typing questions into google was going to yield any answers it was more of a way of getting things out of myself and yet when I typed in something like how is it possible to encounter disincarnate yet seemingly autonomous entities on dmt you know suddenly I found a forum that was actually discussing this in an insightful and skeptical and
[12:14] Meaningful way and I was floored I mean without even knowing that I've been looking for a support community I found one and over the next several months at the dmt nexus I found my interest my curiosity about dmt and other psychedelics really skyrocketing I felt renewed academic focus in entheogens in my university studies you know I felt profound impetus to eat well and take care of myself for me it really still stands out as one of the most actualized periods of my life and in the midst of all of these experiences I actually stumbled across a large amount of writings and talks by radical figures from the 60s and 70s up through the present and something that I was really astounded by was the degree to which the social concepts and political ideas that were being discussed by a lot of them really seemed to resonate with the psychedelic understandings that dmt and psilocybin and a whole
[13:17] Host of other anthogenic compounds had provided again the hypothesis was that psychedelics are catalysts for personal transformations and that we must embody the understandings that they facilitate psychedelics are incredibly effective at providing altered perceptual shifts and changes in perspective radical methods of engaging with the world are ways that focus on the root causes of the crises that we see in ourselves and the world at large one of the most beautiful to my mind abilities of psychedelics is their ability to sort of highlight personal and social patterns and identify things that are either out of order or that can use attention or that need changing for one reason or another the thing is that psychedelics can't put these understandings into action that requires focus and intention on the
[14:19] Pers on the part of the person who's gained psychedelic insight this is what I mean when I say that psychedelics are catalysts they can open the door but you must walk through so radical psychedelic engagement means using our psychedelic experiences to figure out ways of targeting these root causes for the issues that we see in ourselves in the world and what this looks like can and will vary from one person to the next depending on a whole host of personal life factors what sort of intersection and interaction they have with various social and cultural systems but one of the most sort of baseline from a personal standpoint is that these can include understandings about our own personal self-care and well-being so for me when I was in the course of my dmt honeymoon or what I call the first months of very frequent use I was presented almost non-stop with messages about taking care of myself in the world about how I was eating how I was exercising
[15:21] Needs to engage in open communication with friends families strangers what it meant to actually keep a neat household and all of these things you know to some degree sort of presented as though I was bettering myself to offer the best I had to these experiences and of course being a busy university student during the course of these experiences you know my ability to keep up with these message messages would fluctuate at times I would eat poorly or I wouldn't have time to you know exercise and study for class so I'd cut corners I'd you know forget things that I thought were important and regressed to less open ways of communicating with my family and friends and during these fluctuations I continued to have a number of really amazing experiences but as things got a little more unbalanced and started to get into the realm of ignoring a lot of these understandings I had the experience of
[16:22] Vaporizing dmt alone in my room and suddenly I heard this unintelligible alien language and I looked around trying to find the source and I saw that there was this blue male entity in the center of this swirling vortex speaking at me very sternly gesturing and all of a sudden I felt myself just completely awash in all of these things in my psyche choices I'd made that I wish that I hadn't compromises I knew I shouldn't have made various things in my life I was neglecting and as I felt myself getting lost in my head and trapped in these thought cycles I started to try to do some breathing exercises and humming in an attempt to center myself and come back into my body and as I looked at the entity again suddenly I had clarity about what he was saying and what he was saying was the things in your life that you're not happy with you have to change no one can make these changes for you and I know you know it seems like really obvious right but at the same time when he said that
[17:23] Suddenly I felt this profound weight of all the things in my life I was unhappy with everything that I could see needed attention and needed engagement and as I started to come down this feeling of being overwhelmed sort of gave way a little bit to a more ecstatic state as I began to realize that wait what I've been given is insight that the stuff that I have to do with life this is you know the task at hand is to live life to figure out ways of engaging with this endeavor that that make me feel happy to be alive and that perhaps position me to be a positive role in the lives of other people that I encounter for me this experience really illustrates the manner in which psychedelic understandings can inform insight into our personal lives however they can also present understandings and insight into broader social issues for me this is like the mushroom experience I mentioned at the beginning of the talk as well as a number of similar reinforcing
[18:24] Experiences since then historically we're standing on a precipice we're locked into increasing systems of austerity into increased subjugation to surveillance states and we're watching increased ecocide taking place all around us we don't have the option to unplug we don't have the option to drop out the only option that I see we have is to resist is to come up with ways of putting these understandings into the world that leverage them against the destructive institutions that already exist radical approaches and methods of targeting the root causes of these issues are things that I think psychedelic insight give us a tremendous bounty of understandings to grapple with so if we get the understanding that the interconnection of all life on this planet is sacrosanct then I think we have to find ways to act that oppose systems that would isolate
[19:24] Us by destroying these interconnections and instead find ways to nurture our own connections to the world around us and to other people or if we're given the understanding that environmental systems are sacred to all life on earth then we owe it to ourselves to oppose systems people institutions that would liquidate ecosystems in the name of profit and even if we come to the understanding of something like all there is is love then I think we have to find ways that we can oppose systems that tell us that we are incomplete and unlovable unless we buy stuff understanding naming systems of dominance and oppression allows us to grapple with them in ways that treating them as mere let's call the collective madness in the abstract does not so talking about systems like capitalism patriarchy white supremacy and a whole host of others
[20:25] These are concepts that apply to a whole host of processes and institutions that we frequently encounter on a day-to-day basis so for example if we understand ecological destruction not as the illogical and insane acts of people who just don't get it and maybe we could plead with them until they understand if instead we view this as the byproduct of capitalism a system in which everything profit trumps everything then we can begin to understand what motivates people and what ways of engaging with the problems we see might actually lead to productive change or in the example of say the criminalization of psychoactive substances if instead of viewing this as perhaps the overprotective but misplaced efforts of otherwise benign governments we instead you know understand how this is linked to the prison industrial complex which in the u.s is one of the most profitable industries in existence and also is a manner of controlling so-called surplus populations
[21:26] We can begin to get understanding on why we see the sort of illogical action and speeches from politicians who in turn use these substances while locking people up so ultimately by naming these systems and figuring out what structures are involved and how we can apply leverage against them as a result of our understandings we can gain greater insight on ways that make sense to act psychedelics are incredibly effective at cutting through some of the internalization of these components of dominant culture so with consumer culture one example that comes to mind would be the sort of perpetuated message that you're going to die so buy our stuff to distract yourself from that or buy our stuff to prolong the inevitable and I think that psychedelic experiences especially things like ego death can really you know present some of these marketing messages as humorous and not carrying much weight additionally these experiences can literally
[22:26] Transcend ideas of consumerism I mean you can't buy a plus four on the shulgin scale it just doesn't work that way so although these experiences and substances can cut through these institutionalized systems of understanding and being in the world these understandings are really sort of pointless if we can't find ways to actually apply them so for me I would say that psychedelic experiential knowledge is irrelevant unless we can translate it to action and unless we act and quite probably even if we do we stand to see the social and ecological fabric of our existence damaged beyond repair psychedelics offer a broad range of experiences that can catalyze action and empower us in ways that we may not have known possible I think that the categories that I've targeted as far as how we can empower that action all
[23:26] Stem from an underlying concept of boundary dissolution or the lines and barriers that we're accustomed to viewing as real in daily life perhaps seeming more illusory so first and perhaps most obvious is ego death for me as somebody who experienced life-threatening situations before and after experiencing ego death I felt much calmer encountering the possibility of dying after I had experienced ego death and I also find that I have prolonged periods of less mental chatter and perhaps greater inner peace following an ego death experience even if the experience itself isn't always the most pleasant additionally psychedelics can help us process trauma in unique and liberating ways most of us find that we're living in societies that are perpetually traumatizing we live with systems of patriarchy white supremacy imperialism colonialism capitalism industrialism just to name a few
[24:28] And you know at the same time many of us have encountered acutely traumatizing events such as war incarceration assault and at times it can be really hard to sort of figure out where the systemic traumas end in the acute traumas begin but psychedelics seem to prevent present understandings and altered perceptual shifts that allow for greater processing of trauma and in addition to the emotional and psychological components of this something I think is really interesting especially in the case of ayahuasca and dmt is this capacity for physical healing where it seems like under certain circumstances the body will release excess energy in the form of tremors convulsions and shakes and it really seems similar to what people are reporting through somatic experiencing therapy where following these physical symptoms they're the people who've experienced them are presenting that they have much less trauma related to the specific incident
[25:29] Or that they just feel calmer and more at peace in general there's a large and increasingly growing body of both anecdotal and academic literature to support this and similarly with psychedelics for processing addiction there's an ever-growing body of both anecdotal and academic study that show that these compounds offer us really unique tools for coping with addiction and finding ways to overcome that and then act with regards to addiction it's worth noting that we live in societies that that lead us to binging behavior that stress us in ways that then encourage us to engage in activities like you know non-stop drinking the rise of internet culture has presented binge tv watching not that it didn't exist before but it exists in a new methodology and similarly in the u.s we have for-profit
[26:31] Addiction clinics where people are given methadone and suboxone essentially perpetuating never-ending cycles of addiction a number of psychedelics including ibogaine and ayahuasca and mushrooms psilocybin-containing mushrooms have been shown to be effective at helping to cease addictive behaviors and it's not to my mind that these things are a panacea for addiction but that they present a really powerful tool for dealing with acute withdrawal effects and that they also give us unique insight to processing the social roles and the social goings-on that lead and play large parts usually in our addictive behaviors the last area that I think psychedelics bear examination for when looking to empower action is that they're able to facilitate ecstatic experiences and personally I think that there's it's worth differentiating between ecstatic states of catharsis and ecstatic states of joy which is to say that the feeling of moving through fear
[27:32] Is qualitatively different than the feeling of moving through happiness and the former is relevant to processing trauma plays a role in addiction treatment and the latter is important for figuring out what we find meaningful in the world and finding ways to act on that as well as having joyful experiences I mean if we're serious about the notion of building new word worlds then for me the idea of joy for joy's sake is important ultimately I think we need to find ways of interacting with the world that put our understandings into real world action and that are antagonistic to systems of dominance and oppression that we see in the world it's not sufficient for us to eke out a living on the margins of capitalism while this machinery continues to destroy the world around us a small example from my own life would be work that I do with a prison books project we send letters and books to prisoners in a number of u.s states we organize prison demonstrations and we
[28:33] Send letters to u.s political prisoners as well as working to find other ways of opposing the prison-industrial complex for me the notion of doing a prison demonstration really sort of presents psychedelic understandings reconstituted in the physical realm where banging on drums and yelling you know presents sound waves that pass through the walls of the prison and reach people on the inside sort of reconstituting some of this human connection that that's been stripped away by these institutions and we've gotten letters in return that have informed us how thankful people were to know that they weren't forgotten from some cases we've gotten letters that have let us know that groups that were already engaged in resistance and struggles on the inside took our presence to engage in you know more overt acts at the time but really I think what these projects could look like could range from you know things like ecological conservation and resistance to community health care community food providing like really anything that we can find ways to apply these insights and
[29:35] Manners that benefit us and our communities and one other project I'd like to throw out there as food for thought is that greater intercommunal engagement is needed or you know we need to find ways of reaching out to other groups for example where I'm from there's a large number of in the street activist types and psychedelic homesteaders and I think it would be really fascinating to see what would happen if psychedelically minded people who have homesteads who have you know acres of land could invite people who've been traumatized people who've been burned out into their land and engaged in perhaps skill shares and mutual aid between these groups I think that there's a lot of room for growth on both sides of the aisle and I think that that can also be true for any community in which we see this resonance so I mean this could really be its own hour-long talk and in the interest of moving on into some discussion I'd just like to close by saying I think we need to engage in the task of
[30:37] Building communities of resistance I think we need to work on creating modes of being in the world that empower us that bring us together in ways where we can figure out what we find meaningful and come together with people with similar ideas on how to resist I can't tell you what that looks like I don't know enough nor would I ever presume to be able to tell you what works best for your own lives but I think that as people come together if we're serious about this endeavor there will be new things that come to mind there will be ways of being that make sense to people as they come together I don't know what our new worlds will look like but I've seen glimpses of what is possible I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to bring them into being thank you [Applause] I've also been asked to mention that september 25th through 27th in ibiza
[31:39] Will be the world ayahuasca conference I'll be there as well [Applause] hello could I first just ask who you are on the nexus yeah I'm snarls nice to meet you likewise do you think that dmt and psychedelics in general have contributed to the advancement of human intelligence or at least an awareness of consciousness or greater consciousness I think you know the question of more or greater right it's one of it's an interesting way of putting it because we have this vast indigenous knowledge of you know these modes of being of consciousness as experienced in those states I mean if we take that in like an industrial context I think definitely I think we can look at like the computer and internet revolution you know this tech boom but at the same time that's one limited area right like as
[32:39] We've seen the explosions of this technology and understandings of ways to manipulate stuff in the world around us we've also increasingly been sort of out of touch within this globalized paradigm of you know all the minerals for all of these various you know the computer here the led here like this is all pulled from the earth somewhere at great cost to people who are living there who have to deal with them so I think that yes and no but I think that the questions that they present it's almost like an eternally sort of it's an eternal road for growth because there's never going to be an ultimate answer as far as I know yeah thank you so much speech personally I only had one experience with dmt which was more than enough to believe
[33:41] It now and but I had an encounter where I am I had done a lot of preparation for the experience and I hadn't encountered that when I reached the last element of my own ego of my human beingness and I sort of asked the non-human beings the light can I enter and the light said yes you prepared and because I I've done a lot of preparation before and I'm sharing it because I feel that personally that psychedelic experiences are visions as opposed to personal experiences and I wonder if you have anything to say about the sentence setting sure that we take it and also the setting that we are in as human beings when we take it totally I mean that it gives sort of like the standard line right sentence setting is one of the most important components when going into a psychedelic experience but I think you raise a really valid
[34:41] Point which is to say that you know as we live our lives so many of us find ourselves in situations where it almost never seems like it can be the right set and setting you know especially with all of these destructive institutions and processes in the world you know we find ourselves with so much that that sort of weighs on our shoulders on the day-to-day that at times it can be really hard to figure out what that looks like something that that I would say you know I've seen success with is sort of setting aside time for these experiences where you have no obligations where you can kind of prepare yourself going into it and sort of even though it's not being truly free from all of these notions of what you have to answer for in life it can help give a little insulation and perhaps minimize the sort of worry and fear that you're not going to be prepared and we've encountered a lot of people who've said you know I smoke dmt and it seems to be regardless of dose you know I took a 50 milligram dose and usually this would have been breakthrough you know out of
[35:42] My mind but you know I encountered just the chrysanthemum and it said I couldn't pass through things like this so it's interesting to see you know sort of how some of these compounds seem to self-regulate as well hi thanks for this great speech and for you being here I have a question you talk about this institutionalized world that there's also trying to demonize psychedelic use for their own profit and you could say an enslavement of people if you will what's your opinion on people using dmt on parties as a recreational drug and the image that arises from that and could it be a threat to more sustainable uses like the ayahuasca uses and so could your like could what happened in the 60s happen again well I mean I guess I'd say that I don't see a lot of threat as far as like to the availability of these things at least in the us and through much of the world these compounds are all
[36:43] Already illegal so in the u.s the way that the substance act is written controlled substance act is written any material that contains any quantity of a scheduled substance is illegal for you to possess if you know it contains that compound so you know the plants are still coming through people are still making use of them I don't think you know drug interdiction will never be able to keep up as far as the what it looks like for people to be smoking at parties or you know on the dance floor I can't really tell people what's best for them I know personally I don't find those to be the most conducive experiences and I think that like ultimately I would question you know why like what are we getting out of these experiences is it just to see some crazy stuff or is it to realize I mean because to me like there kind of is no tip of the iceberg because there's no telling how deep it goes it's all I mean it seems to be bottomless and so you know for people that that do use things recreationally I think
[37:43] Recreation is fine like I think like we need some enjoyment we need some engagement like recreation is a part of life but just like asking yourself what the intention is behind the use I think is perhaps the most productive way to go forward from there thank you david for in regards to the resistance piece and the political economy of industrialized societies piece I was wondering in terms of this we had a conversation about how it's not just the dmt it's not just these single molecules but sort of collectives of molecules bacteria microbes working together in order to interface with our own inner body ecology and as we're destroying this complexity and these networks that
[38:45] Have been around for billions of years how do you think that our own ability to access these spaces themselves is also being perhaps degraded question one and two vis-a-vis technology are you a luddite or what to suggest as a real sustainable way forward okay so the first question was was the destruction of everything and how that effect so personally like being having always been in a paradigm where this is going on I don't know like I can't draw a comparison right like with what it looked like before that that said you know there seemed to be relevant messages like and talking to other people seeing that eco like this message of ecocide seems to be you know not just me that's having this experience I think that perhaps there might be some sort of systemic reflection on these are things that are going on and
[39:46] Need to be stopped as far as if that's changed I don't know if that's changing this experience of the substance if that's changing the experience of the substance again like it seems to be somewhat in the unknowable realm of the experience as to the second question I'm not a luddite I believe in using technology in ways that like I think that the technology that exists in the world can be used to oppose these systems I think it will be necessary in order to like I couldn't I wouldn't be here right if not for the plane that took me here if not for the internet to spread all of these ideas and engage with like wonderful people that are on different continents but at the same time it's like this is the world that we were born into and now that we have these understandings about what's here I think again the question is how can we leverage the things that exist into you know sort of overturning what we find destructive and building a new world or new worlds and oh there was another part of that
[40:46] Yeah but ultimately like what a sustainable society looks like you know when people talk about alternative energies like wind and solar and all these things they're usually neglecting the fact you know you can't have wind without pulling rare earth minerals out of the ground and say china refining it shipping it around the world so I think ultimately like we'll have to look at I guess you could call it like a waste economy of like perpetual sort of upkeep of things that have you know at a certain point we're gonna have to stop production if we wanna you know continue to have some ecological beauty hey thanks for the speech and especially your experience sharing like when you talk about you met the aliens and the south like we've all been there so my question is do you think this experience actually comes from an external voice
[41:49] Or it's just within your consciousness or subconsciousness thank you so I think that there are levels I think that there are experiences that seem almost unquestionably to be subconscious that like reflect to ourselves and our own psyche our emotional states of being and I think that those are usually really easy to identify then there are experiences that at least for me are so sort of ontologically challenging and paradigm shattering that the notion that this is coming from somewhere else right like at the point where you're seeing incredibly complex machinery tesseracting in front of your eyes like you have that sense of I couldn't imagine this I didn't even know it was possible to see such things and so I mean maybe you know there's the possibility that perhaps there's some sort of mental architecture that that is generating this that these are processes that are running through the mind some people have suggested that
[42:50] It's just random neurons firing but these things always seem to be so coherent and so well put together you know dennis mckenna said at one point like if you're looking for an unambiguous message what could be more unambiguous like here you are presented with starships and aliens and this that and the other and technologies and you know I don't have any proof that it is or it isn't it's certainly something that that I'm open to the idea of just because the experiences seem to present such functionally autonomous realms and beings and things that you know I can't really account for it in any other rational way hello thank you for the speech I was wondering we have in the moment of birth and the moment of death and a surge of dmt in our brains right well that's actually it's pretty
[43:51] Speculative rick strassmann and stephen barker and those wonderful researchers have sort of hypothesized this and a lot of these hypotheses have kind of run a little rampant so like we don't have proof that dmt is produced in the pineal gland there's a methyl transferase that they haven't really shown to be present and functioning right now there's really good evidence that it's produced in the lungs we've shown our they've shown that there's the presence of dmt in the pineal but there's still questions about whether or not it's actively produced there the question would be if there is this search could dmt be actually the vessel of our soul like could this be the chemical compound to transport the soul into the physical body and out of there in the moment of death I mean I guess if you know anything's possible but there's just I mean I don't have or see evidence you know that would necessarily
[44:53] Lead me to that conclusion and personally I would be a little skeptical that a single molecule you know if there is this you know soul to be separated from the body right regardless of even if our experiences seem to inform some of this the notion that it's just tied to one molecule I don't know it's interesting but I don't know you know at this point for me I wouldn't find it to be a particularly compelling realm of thought david we only have time for one more would you be available to talk to the people in the hub yeah probably so one more sorry guys he was first hi thanks for agreeing I was wondering like I feel like one of the trickiest things is like integrating what I've learned in my experiences in the everyday life could you comment a little bit on like practical
[45:54] Advice just like before during or after like stuff like note-taking or whether it's dmt or maybe mushrooms and lizzie as well sure keeping like a an experienced journal or a trip journal or whatever is something that a lot of people swear by and certainly I've found at times to allow for a lot more memorable retention of these experiences I mean at times you come out of an experience and you just feel so floored that it's like you know how can I take time to write this but I have a friend who's a tattoo artist who basically says that you know integration is essentially the process of doing something with your experience so whether you make art with your experience or you bike ride your experience or you know sit and play music for your experience like really trying to figure out ways of sitting with what's happened and I find that at times you know just reflecting on it allowing for quiet times that I wouldn't necessarily call meditation because there's more active thought than that
[46:54] But just sort of sitting with the experience and you know sort of seeing what still resonates as far as is going into things I think and this goes back to some of the questions about the you know on the dance floor and the like I think the set can really and setting can really affect our ability for recall and our ability to take meaningful understandings from these experiences you know I've definitely had more than one time at which I've come back and basically just been like what the hell just happened either because there were two there was too much external stimuli or you know I hadn't really taken time to just prepare myself going in or the dose was too high but you know I think really giving ourselves the most opportunity to have space both going in and coming out to allow for this experience to occur and then really process reprocess try to find ways to work it into whatever we might be doing you know even if it's just like making dinner and sort of like as you're going through the same old repetitive motions just
[47:54] Sort of like reflecting especially like even on the somatic feelings of what it was you know especially if you had like an ecstatic a truly ecstatic or even maybe a discomforting experience you know what in you is it that that feels such joy or that feels such a discomfort and maybe that can inform some insight as to what's needed to engage with that in a more full manner so let's give a round of applause [Applause] [Music]
