Self-Worth with Jaclyn Steele

Psychedelic Ceremonial Ayahuasca with Dr. Keith Campbell

September 22, 2021 Jaclyn Steele Season 2 Episode 86
Self-Worth with Jaclyn Steele
Psychedelic Ceremonial Ayahuasca with Dr. Keith Campbell
Show Notes Transcript

Can psychedelics, and more specifically, ceremonial ayahuasca really spur lasting positive personality changes? Have psychedelics been wrongly vilified? I chat this and more with 2nd time Self Discovery guest and psychologist, Dr. W. Keith Campbell, as he shares the scientific research he and his team have done around shamanic based ayahuasca.

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Unknown:

The idea that the mystical experience this idea of sort of connecting with the divine or connecting with something greater than yourself, that's really hard to explain. It's part of the definition of mystical experiences. They're ineffable, you can't really just say, here's what it is and show it to somebody. But that experience can actually lead to this positive change in personality, whether you become more open, or you become less neurotic or less anxious, or less depressed or less fearful. But that missed mystical experience is the healing process.

Jaclyn Steele:

Hi, I am Jaclyn Steele. And welcome to self discovery. Howard Thurman so beautifully wrote, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive, coming alive. That my friends, is what self discovery is all? Where that man? All right, listeners today, we have back on the podcast, Dr. W. Keith Campbell. And today, we're gonna talk about io boska. And specifically ceremonial io oska. And I'm so pumped to talk about this with you, because you've been studying the research on this for how long now?

Unknown:

Well, I mean, it takes a long time to do this for search. So we've been working on it for years, it's maybe been four or five years to and this is my student, Brandon, who really spearheaded a lot of this, I'm not for my students, but it's a long time to do this kind of work.

Jaclyn Steele:

Well, thank you so much for your time, and for being here today. And for coming back on the podcast.

Unknown:

Oh, thanks for having me. It's great. Good, good.

Jaclyn Steele:

Okay. So the first question is, why the interest in ceremonial iosa?

Unknown:

So great question. And there's kind of two threads to that. Um, there has been a renaissance in work on psychedelics, so sort of serotonin based or serotonergic psychedelics, especially psilocybin, because that's really been used in the in the more recent research. And there's a paper that came out that looked at Iowa, or excuse me, looked at psilocybin mystical experience and a personality trait called openness to experience. The idea was that, you know, this is up at Hopkins, and the woman who did it was Catherine McLean is awesome. And she did a study where people took psilocybe and put on a face mask, listen to tunes for a while, you always have a therapist with your social worker or something. And many of these people had mystical experiences. And those who do experience a change in their personality, they became more open to experience, which is a term we use to describe sort of interest in art, creativity, philosophy, more intellectual pursuits. So it's a it's

Jaclyn Steele:

like coming online. It's a really good way. Well, yeah, yeah, that

Unknown:

is really good way to put it. And I've never thought about that way. But it's great. So what got me was, wow, first people are saying psychedelics again. That's cool. And the other thing that well, and they're finding mystical experience and is a sort of an academic descendant of William James, who wrote the varieties of religious experience, you know, 100 years ago, I'm like, a religious experience is fascinating. And then they found personality change and personality change is something we just don't see a lot in the world. You know, therapy can kind of change people make them less neurotic. But sort of this rapid sometimes people call quantum, you know, personality changes, just rare. So I'd looked at those things, right. This is fascinating. These psychedelics can change people's personality. That's really interesting. So that was the psychedelic side. And then the demonic side is just, you know, throughout my life, I've I like to do sort of, I guess you call expedition, fly fishing and surfing. And so I've hung out with a lot of indigenous groups. I've, you know, I've traveled to Mongolia, I've traveled in and, you know, Indonesia and the mental wise and your sipper route met the shaman there. I've been to Peru. So I've just met a lot of digitus people, I've done ceremonies, you know, not even psychedelic, but just generally, you know, Kava, coca, Juniper, whatever, whatever the substance is, and really been interested in that way of life and found it to be quite profound. I mean, especially my experiences Mongolia, you know, on horseback for a few weeks. But but other places you just as profound insight in the nature of life that we just don't have the idea that everything is connected, maybe a way to put it and probably as a young person, the first time I experienced that was I was in Kenya. And this is probably the 80s and I was riding on horseback with a messiah guide named Ken and Juhi I remember the whole thing was so profound riding through a herd of you know, zebras and giraffes and horseback now he's got a big gun, just in case but

Jaclyn Steele:

you in the 80s

Unknown:

it's just so but you see those places where the animals you just part of nature, and I've experienced you know, you can see this in some like tropic islands like in in Kira boss, which is you never go to clear boss unless you're, you know, fishing for bonefish or something. But if you go down to Christmas Island, you can go on these islands in the in the Pacific, where they don't have people and you can just walk with the birds and they're everywhere. They're not scared of you so you can have these experiences. So those were, I was sort of interested in, you know, shamanism, from that and interested in the psychedelics and then, you know, obviously, you put those two together and it's ceremonial iosa. So, which is Iosco is a very powerful psychedelic, I mean, includes this powerful psychedelic DMT. And it's used in ceremonial ways. So I was interested in that didn't know much about it, and then met a dude who's a shaman. And so we talked about it. Mike will tell me about this and he tells me about I go, Well, that sounds a little silly to me, but the psychedelic sound pretty powerful. Let's study this and see what happens. And as I you know, long story short, he says, I started studying, I'm like, Oh, this isn't silly at all, this is quite profound. I was kind of a knucklehead for dismissing it up at first. So anyway, that's how I got into it is both the interest in psychedelics and the interest in shamanism and their different things. And the psychedelic medicine that's going on now isn't the same as shamanic medicine. So anyway, but

Jaclyn Steele:

how cool to marry these two different worlds. And now, the way that I see it, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that these substances are being studied from an academic perspective to determine whether or not they have lasting effects on personality, which is so so so cool. Yet for centuries, these same substances, or the organic version of these substances, has been used in holy ceremonies to connect with the divine. And so you've got these two like lanes of study that, to me, I get chills just thinking about it. But what if anxiety really could be solved by this substance? And part of the reason the anxiety is solved is because there's this experience where you connect with what you feel like is a higher power that connects you to everybody else. I mean, it's what it's for anybody that has an experience in it's probably sounds insane. But it is such a profound journey.

Unknown:

Yeah, so I'm, what you're saying is what got me interested is the idea that the mystical experience this idea of sort of connecting with the divine or connecting with something greater than yourself, that's really hard to explain. It's part of the definition of mystical experiences that they're ineffable, you can't really just say, here's what it is and show it to somebody. But that experience can actually lead to this positive change in personality, whether you become more open, or you become less neurotic or less anxious, or less depressed or less fearful. But that missed mystical experience is the healing process. And that's something we don't use as much in psychology. But if you go back historically, back to the more psychoanalytic people, especially Carl Jung, he was doing this and so in the hip. So one example is the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. So in Alcoholics Anonymous was started by a guy named Bill W, who's an alcoholic, he couldn't break the cycle. He talked to call it young, he read William James, he tried to understand how to change he couldn't do it. Finally, he had a mystical experience. And that mystical experience is what allowed him to overcome his addiction. And young said, yeah, it's spirit versus spirit. The alcohol is a spirit you know the mystical is experience Him He said it in Latin because he's young and he's smarter than me asserting of spirit is a spirit to us or something. But But basically, the idea was you need this mystical experience to kind of get over yourself. And so bill w in a became a proponent of LSD, which is, people don't know but it's like he's like, well, this LSD magic, you know, can induce mystical experiences and people readily like, the people there the people, it's not so hard. But then other people like, Well, you can't cure people's addiction with another drug because that would be bad. And so there's a lot of debate but so people back in the psychoanalytic days were thinking about this, but modern psychology which is very behavioral and psychopharmacological, it's not really mental anymore, it's not deep. It's not like depth psychology anymore. they've forgotten a lot of that stuff. So it was around, but it's, it was forgotten. And now with the psychedelic Renaissance, it's starting to come back.

Jaclyn Steele:

Well, and when I think about again, in my limited study, what alcohol produces and people who use alcohol long term, and the results of that versus somebody like Rahm das, who was a professor of psychology at Harvard, did a lot of study on LSD and psilocybin and mushrooms, and then created a place like the Center for the dying in New Mexico, where he talks about we're all just walking each other home and I am loving awareness, like the results of that kind of substance versus something like alcohol, those are two wildly wildly different results,

Unknown:

wildly different results. In the demonic tradition, all substances I think in shipibo have one that is sort of doesn't have a dark side, the tree of light, but most of them they have the bright and dark side. So any substance you work with in these traditions, whether it's Iowa SCA or psilocybin or alcohol, there's probably a side that's beneficial. You know, like a rescue dog, a big dog comes with the thing of brandy and you're starving to the snow you're like, that's the best brand ever had this is really healing. But then these things easily become dark and alcohol is huge. I mean, I quit drinking when I was 20. I'll just because it is it is not my it's not my substance of choice, and I think it can be harmful. It can be wonderful to you know, but but and and psychedelics can knock people out and they can be very risky too, but, but they're very healing as well.

Jaclyn Steele:

Yeah, yeah. Okay, next question. psychedelics in general are getting a lot of press recently. From what I understand though there are two primary forms that are being studied laboratory based psychedelics like psilocybin and then shamanic based medicine, like Ayahuasca. Both forms are showing positive personality changes when dosed properly. But can you touch on the differences between silicides and iosa?

Unknown:

Yes, and I think what, they're very different, and I think people haven't really thought this through as much as they should. The substances themselves, you know, DMT and psilocybin are very similar. And I'm not, I'm not going to pretend to be a psychopharmacologist. So I'm not I'm not going to pretend to tell you what that little chain is that makes them different, it means that you can adjust, you know, you can adjust the mushrooms, you know, through your stomach, but but the iOS guy, you have to, you have to smoke it. I've seen me with the DMT, you have to smoke it unless they blend it with this other plant to make Iosco where you can drink it too. So the substances are similar. In a way I think DMT is probably a little more powerful. But the experience is very different. If you go into sort of psychedelic psychotherapy, you'll use synthetic silicides. And you're going to lie on a couch or on a comfortable chair, you put an eye mask on, listen to music, and that experience will happen to you. And the music guides it and you'll have a therapist there to kind of make sure you don't get off the track. And then you're done. When you do Iosco or other shamanic medicines because they all I mean, a lot of them seem to involve this there's a purge, meaning if you go into an Iowa it's a different thing. So the synth, and this is what people I haven't heard people mentioned this. with synthetic psilocybin, you don't get sick. It's Rog so it's pretty even keel. When you drink, let's say you'd go to an Iowa Oscar ceremony, the way it started. There's lots of different versions but sort of the shipibo version, which most people are familiar with in the US, you'll sit in a hot you know, around a fire around a center point a hot called the maloca. And you'll drink a cup of, of the Iosco, which to me tastes like kind of espresso and battery acid. And then you sit there I don't mind the espresso so much, but it's it's not great. And then you sit there and it just sits in your stomach for about 45 minutes. And usually in a you know, it'll be dark at about 45 minutes and they the shaman will start to sing. And that singing is you know, how the therapy that's how the therapy sort of start to the healing starts after a certain period of time, there's a purge. So your stomach feels gross, sick, whatever. Often people you'll sit there with a bucket so often people just puke. Throw up some nice diarrhea. Sometimes people just shake and sweat, but it's not pleasant at all. And that purge is interpreted as maybe you're getting out something negative, maybe you're overcoming something. And so the journey and an Iosco session will start is like, I'm here, and then I, I've kind of at one place, then I get really sick and I go into this darkness, and then I returned to the light, you know, I kind of I'm in if you think about that cleansing, yes, you think about that, from a journey perspective. It's, it has a narrative to it, it's like you go in there and you know, you start with an intention. You go through the suffering, you get something out, and and then you come back. And the iOS good journeys often have a lot of challenging aspects. So in our research, you know, Brandon found that, you know, people said he has very challenging people feel a lot of pain, it's very, it's dark stuff you

Jaclyn Steele:

run into? Well, I mean, the human experience can be dark. Exactly. You're right

Unknown:

in the thick of the whole thing. And so so that's one big difference is that purge aspect that it becomes a journey? Another aspect, I think that's interesting with shamanic medicine is that there's often a sacrifice involved, meaning you have to give something up to get something. And it might be, well, I have to do a diet. So before you if you're going to go and do Iosco, there's usually a few weeks or months of a diet diet, you sort of eat a certain diet, maybe you've saved from sex, maybe you don't eat certain high fat foods, or pork or other things like that. You don't take a bunch of drugs, you try to clean yourself out. So you're doing you're giving something now you're

Jaclyn Steele:

clearing the vessels so that their information can be downloaded. Yeah. I mean, it makes so much sense. Have you heard of quest physics? No. So this is not a terribly new concept. But the author Elizabeth Gilbert came up with this. And I'm going to read to you what she says about it. Because what came up for me while you're speaking is that it seems like this shamanic Iosco experience is like hyperspeed, of what quest physics in the regular three dimensional world is because we can go on a journey of healing. As humans, if we choose to do that we can get the therapy we need, we can find the healers that we need. Sometimes, though, that takes years and years and years of time, traveling books, money, a lot of stuff. And from the way that you're describing the ceremonial eye, Alaska experience, it's kind of like that process is distilled down. Exactly. And I think that's the magic of it. But this is what Elizabeth Gilbert says. She said, I've come to believe that there exists in the universe, something I call the physics of the quest, a force of nature, governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of quest physics maybe goes like this, if you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house, to your bitter old resentments, and set out on a truth seeking journey, either externally or internally. And if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue. And if you accept everyone you meet along the way, as a teacher, and if you are prepared, most of all, to face some really difficult realities about yourself, and forgive, then the truth will not be withheld from you. And I feel like the thing that excites me most about psychedelics and ceremonial iosa is that there is like a portal to the truth that opens up quickly rather than this decades long path of undoing you know what your parents did, or what culture did or a PTSD experience. It's like it is distilled down into a day or several hours of this holy and potentially extremely transformative experience, even if that requires you to enter through some darkness.

Unknown:

Yes. That makes a lot of sense. And if you elaborate on that a little Little bit. There's a because I think about this as some people will say that, that psychedelics or Iosco in particular is like doing 100 years of psychotherapy in a day. That's or 1000 years of therapy, or whatever the case is. And that makes a lot of sense to me having but I'm one of those people who's like, I've been through full couch psychoanalysis, you know, that takes, and you do that for a year and a half and had a mystical experience, you can have that same experience in a day with psychedelics, it ramps it up so quickly. I don't know, though, if you can skip all the work in between? That's my question. I don't know, if I could have reset my life and gone back to being 18 and gone and met it. I mean, I went to a lot of dead shows. It's not like I was mad. And I wonder if you can skip the hard work as much. And I just have no idea because there's a risk that happens where people will have religious or mystical experiences under these, you know, these conditions, and then they come back and go, I figured it out. I'm a legend. And you get this sort of spiritual expansion with people and they're like, I'm a guru, I was enlightened. I'm a guru. And like, dude, you just took a drug, you had a vision, but you're still the same person who walked into that, you know, maloca. So I worry sometimes that it's, it's almost too fast and too shy. Yeah, that's, but that's not 100%.

Jaclyn Steele:

But I would agree with you there, I don't think you can ever skip the inner work, ever. But I think the inner work and the level, at Well, the depths of which you are willing to enter, be when you are not on any kind of substance, to me, is kind of parallel to the depth or could be parallel to the depth of the experience you'll have on the substance. Does that make sense? Like the deeper you are and your daily life, and the more you're willing to address truths, and pain and sorrow, and also joy and vulnerability. I think then when you add that with a substance, like what we're talking about, the depth of your experience is so different.

Unknown:

You're kind of saying like you can only grow as tall as you put roots in the ground or something like that, that you've got to grow inside and outside. And and I think you're I wish we had science on this. We just don't and I wish we did. Because it makes a lot of sense. That the other things that will add the other thing I wanted to add, though, about the demonic medicine is that you're dealing with spirits. And when I say you're dealing with spirits, like their spirits, like legit like, here's the spirit is just right here talking to you. And the shaman are working with these spirits. And the only way I can really explain this psychologically is like young in psychology, it's like it's like they're working in the collective unconscious with these sort of become archetypal energies. And so you're working with these energies, but the shaman is also working with these energies. And so that's something that's really profound. I don't even know how you do that on your own. I mean, I don't even I mean, it, you know, you can read about, you know, Indian saints who do this stuff and spend, you know, three years in a cave and something happens. But it's very hard to get there without the container and without the medicine because it's not that much fun. Just like psychotherapy, if you say go sit and think Be honest with yourself. I mean, Keith, be honest with yourself, I'm going to be a little honest. But I'm going to get to some difficult stuff and I'm going to kind of back off. But if I've got a therapist with me that says, hey, let's just work into that, you know, I can do a better job and I think anyway, I think the shaman plays a really important role.

Jaclyn Steele:

Yeah, I can see how it would or he, he or she would. Today's episode of self discovery with Jaclyn Steele is supported by ritual. ritual creates, in my opinion, the best vitamins on the planet. They're traceable, meaning every ingredient is transparently traceable to where it was grown and harvested. They're non GMO, third party tested vegan, and they contain no artificial flavors are synthetic fillers. So guys, did you know that a lot of over the counter vitamins have fillers and synthetic dyes like dyes that make your urine yellow so you think the vitamin is actually working? When I found this out, I literally wanted to bomb Anyway, back to the awesomeness of ritual that doesn't do that to you. They have a multivitamin for women, including prenatal and postnatal multivitamins for men and a multi for children. Every ad in this podcast is hand chosen. by me, every single one, I reach out to these companies personally based on my experience with their products with ritual, that is the absolute truth as well. I have been taking their vitamins for about three years. And prior to finding ritual, I tried many multivitamins, all of which, and I don't know those of you can relate to me here, but I know there are some of you, but all of which made me nauseous and sometimes vomit, especially if I didn't take them with food. ritual is literally literally guys, the only vitamin I have ever been able to take on an empty stomach, and then not vomited. afterwards. I have no nausea, no ill symptoms whatsoever, even after taking it on an empty stomach. In addition, I can speak to their efficacy. Since being diagnosed with hashimotos. I've had numerous blood tests and normally, people in my position have low vitamin B 12. And my blood tests have shown that my B 12 levels are healthy. Yay. My husband also takes the men's multi we have been so happy with ritual, especially since the emergence of COVID. Our health is a priority and such an immense gift all the time, but especially during this time for 10% off your first three months go to ritual calm or click the link below and use code Jaclyn Steele again 10% off your first three months go to ritual calm and use the code, Jaclyn Steele all one word, and have your amazing ritual vitamins delivered right to your door. All the details and links are in the show notes below. Okay, by now you guys know that I love a sustainable brand. And today I am so proud to say that this episode is powered by packed their mission is to build Earth's favorite clothing company in addition to their mission which is reason enough itself to buy from packed here's why I love them so much. Everything they make it packed starts with Earth's favorite fiber. organic cotton. growing cotton organically saves vast amounts of water and uses no toxic chemicals. Packed also partners with Fairtrade certified factories, so they ensure care for both people and the planet. Thank you very much. Their organic cotton items are bomb you guys I love their socks and pennies. In fact, I'm wearing them right now. There's so so so comfortable and such a high quality. This is how I like my knickers made soft and sustainably sourced Thank you very much. They also offer the option to offset the carbon footprint of your shipment. And their range of goods is vast, organic sheets. Check organic t shirts, check organic undergarments for men and women check organic dresses, check organic yoga pants check and I feel like I'm just getting started. I have a bunch of their panties and socks and a tank top. And when I went to purchase their organic King sheets, they were sold out but fortunately for me I have been monitoring their website and I got my paws on their organic kingsize sheet I'm telling you these sheets are fantastic. Go to web pack.com and use code Jaclyn 24 20% off your first time purchases not including sale and cannot be combined with other offers. The link and code are in the show notes and you can also visit Jaclyn Steele comm slash pact to see some of my favorite packed pics. Now back to the episode. Okay, next question is, so walk us through what an Iosco ceremony is like? And you did that a little bit. But I haven't experienced one personally. So can you give us a little play by play?

Unknown:

Yeah, again, there's sort of different forms. So when I'm talking about is the tradition that comes out of the shipibo people in the Amazon, which is which is really what's more most common with Westerners. But there are, you know, churches, you know, in Brazil where you can go and do a Christian church ceremony and drink Iosco for four hours. And so there are different ways of doing this. But in the in the shipibo ceremonies, or the related ones, it's usually a group and doesn't have to be but I've, I'm a small group guy, but you know, they have groups up to 2030 people if you if you go down. And the there's a couple things that are key is one is setting an intention. So you have to have a question or a goal when you walk in there. It's not like you just walk in and see stuff. It's like, I want to feel more love. I want to come over this block. I want to understand this problem. There's something you're shooting because with any time you deal with psychedelics, it's setting setting, that's the term they use goes back to Larry but the idea that your mindset and your context are going to have a lot to do with the experience. So you're going there with the set and setting. And then they have to create a ritualistic container. Because what happens is you open up all these energies, and there's a lot of nasty stuff that could get involved. And so the way they set up the container is with cleansing ceremonies, you know, you know, the, whatever they what's the flow, I will end it, what do they call that? agua fresca, I can't even remember the name. That that, that plant water they use all through Latin America, I can, it's almost antiseptic, and I can't remember the name. Remember the smell. Um, so you're cleaning with that you're doing different cleanses, often they'll do tobacco. So maybe there's a tobacco cleanse, they use a jungle tobacco, it's kind of like what we have a little different, which is very powerful medicine. And then there's the ceremonial drankin everyone sits in the dark for you hear that the chat start. And that chat they call an Ico, which is the song and all the shaman have learned these icaros from the plants. So when you do your shamanic training, you'll go out and the jungle somewhere, you'll spend three weeks drinking nothing but Coke, or nicotine or whatever you're dieting. And those plants will teach you different things. And they teach you these songs. If you think about it's almost like a jazz club, or something they're like, it's like a dead show where that, you know, it's all it's sort of, there's a basis, but it's improvised. And that the ceremony will start. And you know, it just some people, it hits you right away. And some people, you know, they need another cup before it does something, some people, they'd never get an effect. It can differ for people. Once the ceremony goes, the shaman will often work to each person and try to heal their problems. So in our psychology, we might think of your problem as well, you're not aware of something, you're burying something, you're blocking something in the psychology realm. But they're not really focusing on psychology, they're focusing on the spiritual realm.

Jaclyn Steele:

And the universal intelligence. It's it? Well,

Unknown:

I, I don't know, here's how I, I'm going to just describe how I see it and translate it. But again, this is sort of outside of science at this point, because we don't really have good language in this. So what they'll say is that, well, you have this this sort of outer body, this soul, this, you know, spirit body, whatever you want to call it, trying to think of the Nanda, my coach, I kept forgetting the, the Indian, kind of the Vedic term for it. And that that body can be harmed because either there's sort of death, you've got these ghosts attached to you almost like bad energy death, things that you're supposed to let go of, it could be from this life, it could be trauma, it could be from a past life. I mean, it's karmic debt car, it's a lot of this stuff. And and, and so some of what they're doing is cleaning that out. So a lot of its cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, you know, got to be clean, got to be clean. And so they're they're cleaning off that sort of that soul space, whatever it is. Or sometimes it's soul retrieval, you're missing something in that soul. And they bring it back, you know that in a and they do that in different ways. But they're seeing stuff happening. They're seeing energies, they're seeing spirits, and they're calling on, you know, Iosco though, you know, we'll open this up, but they'll bring in other spirits as well to kind of help in the process. Now, when you go through whatever that is, that will spill back on your psychology. So you're doing the spiritual work with the shop, and you're getting rid of this, this dead thing that's been hanging around you, since you were a kid, you don't really have a label for it, you see it go, you're like, Oh, that is that will spill back and make you less anxious psychologically, if that makes sense. So it makes total sense, but they're not really working on psychology. It's not like hey, Kay, tell me about you know, why did you have that problem with your mom? And how does that influence your marriage and how you relate to your kids and let's really work this out with attachment theory, which is what I you know, would do or somebody would do is acknowledge the background and say, they're just not saying anything, they're singing the song. Giant Puma, eat your head and then you're like, I just threw up and I feel like a little bit lighter and I feel really good. So it's, it's very, it's just a different deal. It doesn't translate well into psychology. I other than I know, sort of this young in, you know, this more archetypal stuff. And that's why people who get into this like Stanislav grof, who had did the great work on LSD in the 50s and 60s, ended up kind of studying Vedic You know, he started following Shiva and stuff. So you get you end up. I mean, people end up in the psychedelic space and up either in a very Vedic or kind of yogic space because that's their shit. Right takes them or

Jaclyn Steele:

it that makes totally that makes total sense to me, it seems to me like traditional psychology is for the head. And then when you think about shamanic medicine, and psychedelics, that's for the heart, and I'm sure the experience like that shamanic experience, and being in a group like that, and having a guy like that, it, it takes away the block between the two. Yeah, so you're able to travel between the heart and the head more readily. Whereas in, in culture right now, people generally live in the headspace, and they're very unfamiliar with the heart space, and it feels scary, because they haven't really lived very much in the heart space.

Unknown:

I think you're completely right. And, and one thing I practice and I won't ever claim to be a great practitioner of anything, but it's always looping head and heart, you know, making that connection that they're these two things, because what happens is people like me will get in the psychedelic space, and they'll have a mystical experience, but they don't connect it to their heart, and then they become a guru and start sleeping with everybody they can in common wisdom, you know, that's just what happens to get you get really inflated by this, if you're not constantly cycling through the heart. The other thing I would suggest is that, that what you're saying the head there also have a third eye, you know, whenever you call that thing that's above the head. So that opens, and that's a different deal, that's very hard for me to explain is it's a call,

Jaclyn Steele:

it's a portal. Yeah, to me, the way that I see it, and I have a healer, who I have to introduce you to because you would love her. But she is an intuitive acupuncturist. So she literally opens up different parts of your body and can take away pain. But she's also spiritually intuitive. And what I hear you saying is, it opens up the portal of the third eye. And when I say universal intelligence, what I mean is the universal truths that are beyond our three dimensional realm. And to be able to tap into that area of knowledge as a human is a very spiritual mystical experience. But what you said about looping the head in the heart, it's so important because I can see how it would make somebody's ego go nuts going, I have this information. But when you truly have the information, you realize, I am one of every single possibility, and every single human on this planet has access to the same information. So I'm really not important at all. at all, I think that was my my experience was, how beautiful is this, that I get to be a part of this living organism that is the universe, and I get to be one small piece of it. And what I choose to do with that is my prerogative, but I want to choose to create positive impact, not ego based impact. Yes.

Unknown:

That makes sense. A lot of the research will show that that people with psychedelics feel like a deep connection with other people and with nature and being one, you know, one with the universe, but then kind of a legit way. So I think that's, I think that points really important. The other point you're say, is like a portal, I think is really interesting, and shows some of the limitations of modern psychology. So there's a paper done out of the Imperial College group that was really interesting looking at brainwaves on DMT. And again, DMT is the, you know, active or the main active ingredient in Ayahuasca. And what they found was you get these really interesting brain activation patterns. And they suggested perhaps that DMT is creating a new kind of dream state. A normal drain state, it's a new kind of dream state. Oh, that's pretty interesting, you know. And so I was talking to talking to a guy is kind of a psycho not about this. And I said, Well, how would you interpret this? He does. Exactly. The only thing is, we just look at the brain like it's a radio, you know, we're just connecting to something else. And that isn't a dream state. It's just opening up a radio channel to another dimension, the signal something. So they see the brain more is a receiver. And Iosco as you're saying is opening up a portal or opening up the channel so you can get these messages coming in. It's not that those messages are created from the cacophony of your own neurons acting and then they pop up and you're like, that's why I saw Puma and a snake. It's really those things are Coming somehow from the outside. And like, I mean, I'm a scientist, I, you know, I, we have no way of knowing which of these but I think it's important to think about, because the science now is so incredibly materialistic. I mean, it's starting at the level of the neuron and the rat and then trying to work up. And obviously, when you do that, you're not going to, not obviously, but if you're starting from the bottom up the things that maybe emerge like a soul, like the collective unconscious, you're not going to see those in the neurons. So you kind of you kind of limit your way of thinking about this issue, if you start from that place. Now, again, I mean, again, I nothing wrong with that. If I'm trying to sell psychedelics to the American people, I'm going to put stick people in MRIs and say, Look, their brain changed. Because people believe that it makes them seem more legitimate. But I think theoretically, it's a little bit impoverished, I think what we're going to find is that our understanding of the human condition is way, way less than it needs to be. And our psychology is kind of 50s and we're kind of doing 50s amateur hour in psychology. And it's driven by fear and blindness in large part and, you know, the medicalization of the field. And man, man, man, man, man,

Jaclyn Steele:

okay. What personality changes are occurring in your studies? Are there any common denominators that stick out like in general are a high number of participants eliminating their anxiety or depression or neuroticism? What are the results showing you?

Unknown:

Yeah. So when I started this, I was kind of alluding to this earlier, I was really interested in making people open. And I'm like, man, we can take a bunch of these uptight nerds and take them down to Peru, and they get open and they kind of chill out and they stop being such jerks. And maybe we have a bit of an interesting world because they're not so stuck, you know, stuck in their heads, they can go be creative and do some good stuff. What, what we found, what Brandon found is that Iosco isn't creating open people, it's selecting for open people. So if I say, Hey, who wants to come drink? I wasco. With me in Peru, the people that go you know, there are people yeah, already. They're already in there. Not so. So you get the I mean, so the Iowa oska is selecting for openness. So once you get these supernote open people, it's hard to change them to more open because they're already the people that were driving. You know, and they're 50 years old, should know better. So that was my initial idea. And what really seemed to happen is that there is this drop in neuroticism, and neuroticism is a personality trait. It's a very broad trait. It's one of the big five traits. And neuroticism contains things like anxiety, depression, you know, sad effect and hostility. And so when you lower neuroticism, what you're doing is treating it's almost like a broad spectrum treatment for anxiety disorders, depression, PTSD, every every other nd huge amount of disorders are based. I mean, probably the majority of psychological disorders are grounded in this trait of neuroticism. So it seems like in our research, Iosco is sort of dialing down this master switch on neuroticism, taking people are anxious, and you're saying, Yeah, you're kind of chill and it's doing it, you know, maybe two thirds of a standard deviation depending on how you want to look at which, that's nerd talk.

Jaclyn Steele:

But that's a lot.

Unknown:

That's a lot. Yeah. When when, when Brandon sent me the first day that my jaw just dropped because I am because this isn't a treatment group. This is you know, a lot of people will go and use Iosco for treatment. And one of the groups we're working with is that roller carts Foundation, which are special forces vets who have PTSD and and they can't get treated. And so it's so there are people that are really seeking this out for specific for help, you know, but a lot of people are just curious, and they're, I started doing planning, I was just like, well, if I'm gonna study this stuff, I may just I got a baby as a sham and I'm just gonna walk through all these ceremonies and just check them out. I just curious. And then I came out of it. Like I'm so much happier, but I wasn't intending to do that. It just you know, so I found the effects to be jaw dropping, like I said, but that's exciting. Oh, it's, it's cool people

Jaclyn Steele:

if people would be open to it, it is so exciting.

Unknown:

So here are my cautions that I always tell people because my first thought was man, we just sent everybody down. Just set up a maloca. And every good drink ours got theirs. challenges with this work. One thing I've talked about is sort of spiritual side effects. And maybe that's the wrong term. But I work with a lot of people who are atheists. I'm an academic I work with a lot of scientists and the majority of people are kind of hardcore atheists. And they're very happy being atheists, they're comfortable with dine, they're comfortable just being worm food, they're comfortable about, you know, that just I was like that I was very much an atheist, very comfortable that way. And when you start doing this work, and you start dealing with the spiritual entities, you start questioning that stuff.

Jaclyn Steele:

Yeah, rocks, people's worlds. They're very foundation.

Unknown:

So I am like, you know what, you might be happy, but it's going to be destabilize in perhaps. And so what happens when you go back to your you know, your husband, or your wife is the hardcore materialist? And you're like, Yeah, I just put these prayer flags up and started, you know, burning sage, just to keep the evil spirits out of the kitchen. And your husband's like, your freak it out, you know, it's a risk, right? So, I mean, I don't mean to be such a Debbie Downer. But that's what the shamanic medicine it invokes all that spiritual energy, and it really changes people. And when you look at, there's a wonderful book called antipathies of the mind, worse, I mean, it's a great title, but not if you want to sell a book on iOS, it should have been called like, you know, the study of it was done by a cognitive psychologist who spent decades just trying all the different iOS skin, he got fascinated by it. And he noticed that one of the profound changes that happened to people again, this is this is observational data. These aren't, you know, really good measures. But as it people's change in a philosophical way to what he called a dynamic man, a dynamic, something mon ism. Forgetting the one was such a wonderful phrase, but people's change philosophically and how they approach the world to see the world is connected, that they have so that things are part of a dynamic system. And it looks a lot like in his case, you know, a lot of people go into Vedic or so but we think of yogic or Indian philosophies, that's where they're drawn by this, this work. And there's a lot of similarity between the shipibo which would think and traditions, Mesoamerican traditions, and the and the, the traditions now and in the indo Tibetan traditions, there's, there's a lot of similarity. The indo Tibetan traditions all started shamanic tradition. So there's, you know, there's a reason for that. They're also drawn, he's to play platonism, you know, to Plato, to the idea of the soul and the eleusinian mysteries and Hare cleitus. And so there's this sort of classical Greek draw that he felt from it. So I think the risk is it changes not just your your well being, but it changes your outlook on life. So there's a risk again, I'm, you know, I think that's a pretty happy outlook for Yeah, I mean, it might be,

Jaclyn Steele:

it seems like, from my perspective, and again, my perspective is limited here. But it seems like the risk outweighs the cost. Because if you're ending this experience, with a much more hopeful outlook on life, isn't that worth settling for? Then? Isn't that better than settling for a life in which you feel like there's no connection between you and the rest of humanity in the universe?

Unknown:

It is for me. But here's the question, I think is, you could probably do one of these new psychedelic therapies once they're sort of legal, and they've they're done with the FDA nonsense after you know, after 10,000 years, they decide mushrooms are not that dangerous. We've only had 10,000 years of safety protocols and what they what you might find is this work with the more psychedelics that doesn't involve the shaman and the purge and all that might allow people to get some of the mental health benefits without going through the, you know, the more radical change in

Jaclyn Steele:

how their child transformations.

Unknown:

Yes, but looking at people into psychedelics, they all eventually end up looking like Russell Brand, kind of Yeah, it is kind of they start doing it and maybe it just happens anyway. But I try to be I try to be cautious. You know, I just caution people, you're grown up, you want to do this stuff. Fantastic. I would sign up tomorrow, but but there's, you know, it's it's pretty intense. And one way you can think about Iosco from from more of a spiritual Shimano perspective. It's an initiation, you know, it's an initiation in a different way of life. And you're like, well, I just wanted to feel better. I didn't know if I wanted to be initiate.

Jaclyn Steele:

Yeah, maybe Iosco is not step one for you. Well, yes.

Unknown:

I mean, that's and so and I mean, I'll just talk personally, when I was curious about this, the first, the first ceremony I did was combo of you know, combo at all. This is less, it's very, it's very less common. It's not a psychedelic, it's a fraud. Fraud toxin. I don't even know what's in it. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I always thought it was a neurotoxin, but then I read maybe it was a really profound opiate, I don't know. So what the way combo works, is they burn you, they'll put a you know, burn a hole with like a stick. That's like a, like a more we used to call them punks when we were kids for light and fireworks, but you know, kind of a burning stick, they burn a hole in your chest and your shoulder, wherever, then they scrape it off, and they rub the venom in. And they dose it by dots. So you might get three dots or two dots or whatever. And you sit there, I mean, I did this one time, I was just curious. I'm like, I could do this, no one's gonna fire me for taking a combo. And, and you sort of sit there for you know, with somebody, you know, there's the chanting and the ecos and the singing, and you sit there and you feel like your throats closing up, and you're gonna die in your heads pound. And then, you know, eventually just throw your guts out. These things never sound really good when you do. But I did this first ceremony and, and like three CT, and I do a lot of yoga. And so I can have like, my body's go with handling stress. And I mean, for this week, we do yoga to get better, but I was doing one of these things. And all of a sudden, I saw that this vision of the frog, I saw the frog. And I just started cracking up.

Jaclyn Steele:

I was like, What the hell is this?

Unknown:

And so I you know, afterwards I was talking to my shaman, I'm like, What the hell? And he goes for that to vision. Oh, what the hell is a vision? Well, it's like a kind of like an archetype like an energetic archetype. That was really weird. So you can have visionary medicines that aren't psychedelic. If you know, I'm saying you could have, but they're not sure they like and this is common with lots and lots of plants down there. They have different deities or spirits that go with the different plants and if you die at them, you'll see them or you know, 40% of people in the study saw the frog or felt connected to the spirit.

Jaclyn Steele:

Oh, my God.

Unknown:

Yeah, I. Well, I mean, my story was I was couple years later, I was like, I gotta get a picture of this frog for my altar. I couldn't find one. And I was walking down the street in the high road in Edinburgh, kind of that big tourist street on the castle. And I look over I'm like, Oh my God, that's the frog. I have it right here. I could show you and I ran over. I said, set a combo frog. And so in a woman last I started to more Thai in Spanish, so it's all kind of butchered, but she apparently saw a Polish shaman who gave her 11 or 14 dots across her heart of combo, which should have killed her. I mean, I don't know. I was just cracking she's like she had is this she had this profound vision and had drawn a picture of this frog. And so this after her near death experience, this is the image of the combo frog she saw and painted it so I just I just bought it. I'm like, I have to own this combo frog. She was selling it. But what what really kind of, I was like, Oh, that's pretty interested. So that's a very, very low level, kind of how this stuff can work. So is what I guess the combo is my first experience and then rather than doing Iosco, I worked with quite Houma or San Pedro. Which people aren't as they're not as familiar with, but it's in the high mountains of Peru and I think Bolivia, they, they have this cactus that's, you know, got mescaline in it. So it's very similar to pod using South West United States. Same. You know, that's mescaline based drug. So I did a ceremony with that. And that's much more gentle. Yeah, that puking and seeing stuff, but okay, it's not it's much more gentle. This is what Aldous Huxley is when he wrote doors. And it's it's, it's a more gentle medicine. And you don't get that profound ego death that really destabilizing ego doubt that you can sometimes get with the DMT and Iosco. So I did that. And that was really useful, both for getting me used to, you know, this sort of the psychedelic experience and the demonic setting, but also it it just got rid of a lot of magic and the therapy, I was just kind of curious, and I was in there, I'm like, Oh, my God, this is therapy time. And it felt a lot like that movie, Minority Report where he's kind of moving around the screen or Tom Cruise, it felt like that. It was unbelievable. I've just I mean, so I think this would probably be

Jaclyn Steele:

like the the pieces click into place in a way that makes you see them you from what they are.

Unknown:

And then and this is what's cool, you can move them. And this is this idea. So that so in the in the research, they talk about these as psycho psycho plastic surgeons psycho. Yeah, I get I sometimes add an extra syllable in there. But it's basically they make your blind plastic. And when we say plastic and in science, we mean it. It's changeable. So you're like the term neuroplasticity? Mm hmm. But what is Madison seem to do, and you can see this in the neuroscience work really clearly is they simply they they open up these these sort of channels and make your brain plastic so you can move stuff around. And you can do and this is where you can just do incredible work where you can see a cluster complex or trauma and you can just go knock it out. It's I'm I'm sorry, I'm so I get so excited, because this is amazing.

Jaclyn Steele:

But they're No, I don't even have words for it. It's so I mean, you think about how many people are suffering and pain daily, and sometimes for their entire lives. And if there is something like this, that can take away their pain or take away certain elements of their pain, or help it two thirds of the way, like two thirds improvement. I mean, that's that's life transformative.

Unknown:

Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean, like, again, these the vets are the ones you know, with the PTSD is see those huge improvements. So yeah, I mean, so that so the, so that the San Pedro were quite whom I terrible with my pronunciations, but they call it it's the word San Pedro means St. Peter, and St. Peter, the reason they call it St. Peter's because it opens to her pearly gates. So it says it's a heavenly plant. And when the you know, the Spanish came over and wiped out I mean, the culture, the wisdom, and you know, this sort of Mesoamerican, Latin American, whatever you want to call it, that culture is so profound, and it was just wiped out. But I think it's as profound as the indo Tibetan culture, it's incredible. They knew Yeah, and what they still know.

Jaclyn Steele:

I mean, if you go to Machu Picchu, it's undeniable. It's on deniable, you go there and you see what they built all those years ago, the irrigation systems how they figured out I mean, on believable,

Unknown:

unbelievable. I remember I, I have a guide I used down there and I was walking Machu Picchu with them. And he said, yeah, we I take people up here on Iosco. So we drink Iraq and walk out because there's no way he goes, they that's how they built this stuff. It was, I mean, I don't know if that's true. But that's Yeah, cuz the vision, you know, it's just that profound creativity and vision. So, anyway,

Jaclyn Steele:

sorry. Well, and I think of the people that I respect so much, you know, I read a lot. And somebody like ROM das, who was a very respected psychologist, and then wasn't after he was fired from Harvard, but you read a book, like be here now. And I'm reading his book right now called being ROM das, and the profound experiences he had, but then the conclusions that he came to, are so powerful and helpful to all of humanity. It wasn't an ego trip that he came back with, or at least it didn't appear that way to me and now the truth that he is able to impart or share with the rest of the world based on his experiences. I mean, it's just a gift that keeps on giving and giving.

Unknown:

Yeah, and his I really, I just watched a video of his from Aspen in 1972, a couple weeks ago. And his experiences that pattern where you know, he's a psychologist or psychologist, and Larry was a great I guess Larry's is sick. I'm missing him up, but they did very good work in psychology. You know, the circumflex was Larry's his great work. Got into LSD. started trying to understand that. And then when they went to India, in the case of ROM das, he's like, you guys have figured it out the LSD isn't enough. And he started studying with the Yogi's and going down on that, and really classic yoga guru, I mean, a guru path. I've never done that I don't, you know, it's just never been my thing. But you listen to the stories. I mean, he had a guru that was, it's amazing when his stuff is crazy. It's like, if you read The Autobiography of a Yogi, I mean, every Yogi,

Jaclyn Steele:

I have, and his experiences are so insane to

Unknown:

write. And so my challenge when talking about this stuff is saying, Yeah, this stuff happens. That's very, very, very hard to explain in any kind of language, or models we have. And, and the world is so much more complex and weird and interesting than people think. But it's very hard to talk about it. Because without if you just talk about it without having the language or the sort of the right, the right theory, you sound like you're just a flaky weirdo. But you just, you know, but we just don't really know how to talk about this stuff. And it's hard to explain to somebody as an experience, I don't know, when he talks about getting messages from his guru. I kind of get that, but I've never experienced it. So anyway, yes,

Jaclyn Steele:

it's, it is just, it's wild to think about, and it's so cool. For me, I think. And again, I am new to all of this, but I'm interested and I love to read. I loved the article that you sent me about the research that you and, and is it Richard or Robert Brandon, that you

Unknown:

saw in the paper, I just say Brandon was his dissertation. He's the grad student and stealing credit from grad students as well. It's just great, guys.

Jaclyn Steele:

I mean, it's so fascinating. And the message that I get from ROM das is this. The drugs are a way to accelerate this experience with universal intelligence or spirit, or whatever you want to call it. And language does limit us there. However, you don't have to do the drugs to have that experience there other ways of having it and it could be studying under a guru or what, you know, a bunch of

Unknown:

sweat law. Yeah, sweat lodge or going out, you know, in Tibet, you'll go spend a couple of years in a cave and study and meditate. There's different ways you can get there in different traditions. My sense? I haven't done all the traditions, I probably haven't done half but my sense is the Iosco is probably the most powerful elevator to the in that journey that you could find because it is I mean, it is radically some of the visions are radically different than what you can know. It can be it can be very profound stuff. I mean, if you look at if you look at something like again, antipathies the mind, talking is a is a psychologist, and what you see with the visions is pretty basic. You see a lot of snakes, you see some Pumas, you know, these are things that people you know, there's sort of these recurring images people see. And,

Jaclyn Steele:

but it does have spiritual significance to Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If you start to look into like, animal visions and spiritual significance of certain animals, it's wild.

Unknown:

Yeah, no, this stuff is it's very powerful. And if you know the kind of that cosmology that the idea that there's three worlds and there's there's the kind of the air world but the con door, the eagle, and then there's the ground world with the Puma, or in the water, maybe the Anaconda and then there's this subterranean world with maybe the black Caiman is is one of the members. And the way what the shaman will do is there's the World Tree or the axis Mundi, or whatever that goes between the worlds and they're able to travel up and down these worlds, and they can relate to these spirit energies in the different words and then use them to kind of amplify them to heal you. And that's what they do. I can't explain. Cool, explain it.

Jaclyn Steele:

Maybe it's not meant to be explained because it is a spiritual experience. It's meant to be experienced.

Unknown:

I agree with you, that you it's you should experience it, but I'm just I just am this weird case where I also when I was, you know, I read a lot have young and I read, you know, early on and I read these, you know, these early work when I was in graduate school and read a lot about this sort of demonic philosophy, which really was the world belief system before we kind of chopped it up and cartilage and everything. I think there's something pretty powerful there that we could really understand if we wanted to, but it's been, it's been kind of smothered. And we we live in a very, very, very, very materialistic age. I mean, the only place more materialistic than the US, I mean, Europe, maybe or China, but we're very materialistic. And I think there's a lot of things we could see if we were looking.

Jaclyn Steele:

Oh, I totally agree. And I think what you hit on right there is because we live in such a materialistic world, where we to accept the truths of these experiences with iosa, or psilocybin or whatever, it would rock the very foundation of what our American culture values. And so I'm sure there's so much pushback in everywhere. I mean, obviously, from the people, but also from government systems, corporations, etc. Because when you have these types of experiences, materials just become so insignificant.

Unknown:

Yeah. And people are very hard to control when they're not scared of death. I mean, they're just, Ah, no, it's just, it's just harder to control people like that. So that's why I don't understand how they open this stuff up. I don't know how they let it go. I just I was so shocked that the government would let I think they missed the ball because it This stuff is so powerful, and that's and they shut it down in the 60s obviously, because, you know, people got scared it got out of hand. But people have been religious experiences all the time. That's why I have such great music all this 60s music was music. Yeah. And you don't think about his praise music, but that's kind of what a lot of it was so connective. Yeah. And it's actually like my advisor, my my postdoc advisor, Roy Baumeister actually did research and you know, psychedelic music way back when and it captures a lot of this you know, loss of ego and transcendence and broader connection with people and everything else. So it's very powerful stuff.

Jaclyn Steele:

Anyway, it's just so fascinating. This episode of self discovery is supported by Parker clay. Parker clay creates premium leather bags and goods that provides stable and dignified work for at risk women in Ethiopia. Every item on their site shows how many hours of empowerment your purchase will create freakin love this company as evidenced by all the items I have from them, which I'm going to share right now. I own the Mercado signature tote the Miramar backpack the Eden carry out the squares, wallet cord tacos for organizing the Toba mini bucket bag the Abby drawstring backpack the ring con tote the podar oh and my friends The list goes on. I've also purchased many gifts from their site for my friends and family. My husband wears the a zash bandana and mask combo which has been great during this pandemic. And he loves it because it's stylish and also provides protection. Every single thing I have from them I'm impressed by you know the quality as soon as you touch the leather it's so buttery soft and thick and gorgeous. I wear my Parker clay pieces with pride knowing they are stylish and providing dignified employment for some incredible and deserving people in Ethiopia. And as a side note, these items just get better with time because of the way that they are made. Visit Parker clay calm to purchase your next favorite bag. I'm telling you you'll be hooked and use code PC dash Jaclyn s 24 20% off your order again that's PC dash Jaclyn s 24 20% off your order. You can find the link in the details in the show notes below. This episode is supported by rise superfood mushroom coffee, loaded with adaptogenic mushrooms rise coffee blend delivers calmer energy, sharper focus and immune support for a balanced body and clear mind. The taste is smooth, creamy and earthy. All with less than half the caffeine of normal coffee so you don't get the jitters or that inevitable post caffeine high crash. It has cortis apps for stamina and increased oxygenation Lion's Mane for focus concentration and neuron growth reshi for stress and restful sleep. Turkey tail for gut health chronic fatigue and cancer fighting properties should talkie for immunity and bone density, King trumpet for inflammation, antioxidants and heart attack and stroke fighting properties. Yes, yes, yes. I have been drinking this coffee personally. Now for months. I mix it into my regular coffee. For a superfood boost and then I add my collagen powder and a little creamer or I drink it on its own for a little bit of extra energy when I need it. This is what I call a conscious company and one that genuinely cares about its customers head on over to rise superfoods calm that spelled RYZE su perfods.com to grab a bag now and enter code Jaclyn j, c li n at checkout for 15% off. Now back to the episode. Okay, so this is an audience question. And this person asked when I first experienced I Alaska and meditated into the deep state accompanied by the medicine, I felt more at home than I have ever felt in my life. Like this profound state I was experiencing was my home, where I was from, it was more of a felt experience than I could put into words. What could possibly explain this felt experience I had? Is it even explainable?

Unknown:

Yeah, well, I that brings to mind two things. One is that a very common experience with with Iosco is that it feels more real than real, this sort of noetic like the knowledge is just this is real, and everything else is kind of fake and silly when you get out of it. So the experience itself people feel like this is it this is, this is why people don't feel like you know, you do psychedelics, it's like, it wasn't like I was hallucinating. I was like, No, this was the real thing. And the rest of the life is the hallucination. Yeah, I mean, so you go back to Plato's cave, you know, Plato, like you're in the cave, and you're watching the shadows, but all those shadows are some guy back moving puppets in front of in front of a fire, and you can't see that. But Plato is talking about the same thing. I mean, he's the eleusinian mysteries, doing sort of old Greek variant of LSD and had the same vision and what you realize is the material world is kind of the Faker one and this other worlds seems Now again, scientists, what the hell do I know? It could just be a faulty vision and the brain chip? I don't know, the experience. That's

Jaclyn Steele:

a common experience. How could that be? Yeah,

Unknown:

I don't know. I just, you know, I don't I, it seems very, very real. And one way to think about it, when I sort of tried to, I tried to chase this idea around a little bit, but in my very limited time. And how maybe, to think about it metaphorically, and the way platonists, if I'm even pronouncing this to the post union Greek writer who wrote a lot about the soul. He said, The problem is we think of the material world is the base and you move up like the chakras, you know, in yoga, you kind of move from this material to the more spiritual the heart, and then it kind of opens up and you go, Well, maybe if I get past the material, I can get to this ethereal, spiritual place. But primarily, I'm just stuck in this material world. And it's very hard for me to get out there. You said, What if you thought about it this way? What if you thought about the world as a giant ocean of consciousness that's just beautiful in there. And it's, you know, it's magic. That's the world. And when you bounce up to the shore, you hit that little bit of sand and dirt on the shore, and there's a couple bugs, that's you. You're, you're, you're like the little, you're like the little muskrat on the shore of the great ocean of wisdom. And you think you think you're the center projecting the wisdom out, but really, you have the entire thing inverted, and you're the kind of you're the place for the wisdom kind of broke down and got solid, you're kind of turned into material reality, but you're kind of the fringe, you're just that you're the therapist of what should be the nature of life, which is this vast, spiritual ocean. And so, you know, you can think that maybe we got everything backwards, and maybe we should be thinking about the spiritual is primary in the material is sort

Jaclyn Steele:

of okay. I could not i

Unknown:

and this is something you see in the, in the Vedic literature, you know, this is how this ideas throughout a lot of that and of course, the, you know, the non dual literature, it's there. But in our world, it's just not there, because we've become so medicalized. I mean, our psychologist is basically behaviorist and our project in psychology, I always call it is recreating Frankenstein. We're just trying to say, hey, if we just take these basic prop POS, these basic principles that we observe in rodents and rats, and we can do our rat research, can we build a human from that? And then what would be even better Then building human from that is building a computer that looks like a human. And then we're gonna have an interface, then we're going to take Keith and transform onto a chip. And How awesome would that be Keith? Because then you could live forever. I mean, that's the I mean, legit that singularity. Keith, we're gonna you know, you don't want to die because that's the worst thing ever. We're going to take yourself, upload it through neural link onto a chip, and then we'll send it to Mars you can live for Yeah,

Jaclyn Steele:

and then you're stuck. But what if that is actually the best thing ever? And then that's out. Yeah, that's

Unknown:

the that's the materialistic goal. It's, it's Frankenstein. It's like we're gonna build Frankenstein it's sort of a model of a human. And the the view that would come more from the Iosco side is like the spirit stuffs real the human form is kind of not as important as spiritual form. And all of these ideas you have research secondary to that spiritual existence. So don't spend so much time thinking about I'm so focused more about being alive, being in connection with nature, being connected with other people having a lot of love and joy in your life. The other stuff will just take care of itself. So those I think, exclusive bought, and I just think the problem is our our world is just kind of way in a in a sort of medicalized bottom up and there's a lot of reasons very,

Jaclyn Steele:

very three dimensional, heavy, leanness,

Unknown:

very, very boring world. But on the other side, the people that are out there saying, hey, come to my spiritual, they're often a bunch of flaky, corrupt, narcissistic. And so it's not like, you know, yes. Yeah. Oh, I don't I mean, so. And this is the problem in the spiritual world is you get a bunch of people, like I said, they have one spiritual breakthrough. They're enlightened for five minutes. And they're like, Okay, I got it. I'm gonna go become a guru. And, and it's like, now I trust the scientists over you. You know, Mr. Beckham, you know, I like your yoga, but you seem like cuz, yeah, he would. Maybe you didn't let go enough? Yeah, there's a lot of people like that. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of ego. So I don't know where the role models are for the religious life that people are, you know, the spiritual life that people are going for either because?

Jaclyn Steele:

Well, ego is always present in every human. And I think we're all fallible. But I think when you look at the fruit of somebody's life, that's kind of what I base my own judgment on when it comes to spiritual teachers is like, what is the fruit of what they're doing? And are people being changed for the better? Or are they becoming more greedy? Or, you know, what, what's going on here from a holistic perspective?

Unknown:

So I agree with you 100%.

Jaclyn Steele:

So for people who are interested, or my listeners who are interested in trying iosa, like, how do you do that? How do you go about participating in one of our ceremonies?

Unknown:

Well, the first thing I would say quickly, is do not go by iOS, go on the internet and cook it. Drink it, because I know people people do that because they want to try it. And psychedelic drugs psychedelic medicines don't really have specific outcomes. They sometimes people call them non specific cognitive amplifier. Sometimes people say, well, they just kind of loosen up all your chakras. Some people say they open up channels or portals. But they by themselves, what they do is open you up. But that means you could be put in danger. Because you're up and you're in if you're in the context, and you're not safe, it can be really risky. So and you can scare the hell out of yourself. But

Jaclyn Steele:

I can imagine, I can imagine I mean,

Unknown:

um, and so my advice is first do it with somebody who knows what they're doing. And then the question is, how do you do that? And some people go, Well, you got to prove and find a gun straight. You're saying kind of drink Ayahuasca. The problem is there's a lot of people like that. And people who are strong and have very intense training, they'll diet they'll go like I said, they'll spend weeks with these substances and by themselves are months and get to know them very well. That's how they learn how the things work. And so how do you find a good shaman? Well, there's centers down there that that will hire people they bring people in that are legitimate, they know each other. The one in Peru that we've used is kind of salt Terra soltera I see me in Costa Rica. I said I met Okay, guys, so So what happened is there's their centers in Peru. our call center is one that we didn't research off the good people. I know that people down there that are good. But there's but there's others. Some Westerners don't want to go all the way to a ketose or go down to Peru because it's a long way. So they're centers now in Costa Rica. The one soltera is very well known. And they've been very helpful to us in our research. And they, and that's pretty easy. It just cost more, but you roll into I think it's in the Iberian Peninsula, I could be wrong. But it's a much easier flight, it's a little more high level place. It's not, you know, the weather's a little better. But they'll bring the shaman up. So I would find one of those centers, there's usually an intake interview before you do it, they screen things like schizophrenia, and more extreme bipolar disorder. That's when things go really wrong, people that can break with delusional breaks. You just want to avoid that. And so you can you go through some sort of screening, and then you'll go through some sort of preparation, often it will be a diet, so you'll change your diet ahead of time, do the cleansing, also start working on your intention. So you start thinking about what you want to get out of it. When you go down that the kind of the standard package, there's different versions and everyone, this stuff has always been made up and they're trying to get it to work because I should say that the way they would if you're in the shipibo community and you go to a shop and you don't go drink Iosco with a shaman, you sit there and kind of a fetal position, the shaman drinks, the Iwas skin heals you. But when the Westerners hippies went down there, they're not like, they went down there to drink Ayahuasca. And, and, and Westerners want to know what's going on with their medicine. They're like, I want to watch too. I'm not gonna sit here passively. I need so that you tricked I was gonna watch that. So you go down there you do your preparation. And then often they you know, there have workbooks that this the most common thing I've seen is a is like a week or so with three ceremonies. So you'll do three Iosco ceremonies in a week. Sometimes they'll do combo three Iosco ceremonies, maybe a San Pedro ceremony. And some places are doing what they call SAP or Bufo, which is really the direct, you know, smoked DMT. You know, we smoke it. And I've never tried this before, I'd be very curious. But so they're kind of mixing stuff up. It's, it's very intense, but, and then there's a group component to, so you're with a group of people. Everyone's working together, you're kind of in this ceremony and groups, you're talking about it in groups. So there's a bit of a

Jaclyn Steele:

group a safe environment,

Unknown:

that's the idea is you go down, you're not thinking about anything else, you've got a journal, you got a clean place to sleep, you don't have to cook your food, you're eating stuff that's going to be healthy. And then you do the ceremonies which are very, you know, they're taxing, you're kind of sure up for the day puking your guts out. And you're doing three of those. So they try to make everything safe. And there's some integration, and then afterwards, there's integration. So after the ceremonies, integration, and then there's usually a follow up session, you know, with your SRA man or with

Jaclyn Steele:

the integration aspect.

Unknown:

Yeah. So it's really cool. It's really important because you have to integrate people. And so they're in a good, like you said, you got to be the vessels got to be ready. And then when you're done, you've sort of rewired stuff, and you want to put it back together to go back to the world. And so you make so you make this dip, you know, like the hero's journey in a way but you dip down and come up so there's they're in a good in a good place as well have a focus on integration afterwards. You could go, you could go down to you know, Cusco and meet a dude on the street and go out and drink I was asked and you could see God could be awesome. So I'm not saying you know, fire 18 I probably have done that too. But if you're a grown up and you've got some money and some time I'd really find a good center down there and talk to some people and just make it make it a 10 day experience and and and just really get into it and enjoy and enjoy right and and yet Take care of yourself that this stuff is I mean, I don't mean to make everything sound I don't know when I got like this old scared guy, you know, I mean, like But the truth is, this is your kind of your getting into your mind in a very, very powerful way. So just be careful, know what you want to do. It's very, very profound, very profound.

Jaclyn Steele:

Dr. Campos, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thanks

Unknown:

for having me. I appreciate it.

Jaclyn Steele:

This is just so cool. I feel like this is a conversation that is going to scare a lot of people but also make people really, really excited about the possibilities. I,

Unknown:

at my age has been in this business of science and psychology for so long. I don't waste time with stuff that isn't really interesting. And this is really staying evolutionary. It's exciting for sure.

Jaclyn Steele:

Well, thank you so much for being here.