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Cleaned, timing improved and
There is a story in the Bible
about God providing Manna from heaven.
Food to sustain the Israelites,
while they're
wandering in the wilderness.
But it never said
specifically what it was.
What was this Manna from heaven?
When I asked that question
I had no idea how much
my life was about to change.
The first miracle that
Jesus was reported to have done
was turning water
into wine at a wedding.
The story goes
that they ran out of wine
and Jesus put a
portion of the Manna
into the water that they boiled as tea.
He told the waiters to pass it out as wine.
So I call up Deepak and
I said Deepak I gotta talk to you,
I found some stuff in the
Bible that is not making any sense.
I think I found some psychedelics in there,
I think there is meditation..
like.. wha ...what do you think.
He's quiet on the phone, and I was like
"Deepak are you there?", and he's like
"Yeah he said uh where'd you
where'd you find this exactly?"
like "send me what you're talking to me about."
What do you want to do Deepak,
what should we do about this?
You want to write something up?
And Deepak was like, "This is too important".
He's like "Why don't
we have a conversation about this?"
Could part of the religious experience
have to do with plant sacraments?
In Deepak's tradition the mystery plant,
Soma was used to bring
people to communion with God.
Could have been that
the hymns of the Rigveda
were actually sung to
this plant which had no seeds,
that had no flowers, that was really mushrooms.
There's a scene in the movie Noah,
starring Russell Crowe
where he has a dream
that he is underwater
with animals floating past,
he wakes up knowing that
God wants him to do something,
but he doesn't know what.
He goes and sits with the wise man in the cave
played by Anthony Hopkins
who gives him some psychedelic tea.
He drinks it and has a detailed
vision of exactly what God wants him to do.
First of all, that's a possibility.
Yup.
Secondly, why does our
brain have receptors to these things.
Well because we are part of the same nature.
You know we are not separate from nature.
Science is based
on a subject-object split
on the separation that is artificial,
me and the universe when in fact
I am also part of the universe.
So the same electrical storms
that create thunder and lightning in the sky
creates synaptic firings
in my brain, which creates thought.
We are part of a wholeness.
And what the religious experience
is to experience that wholeness.
What is enlightenment
of being one with the source.
So whilst they give people what
I wouldn't even call
altered state of consciousness,
I wouldn't call then hallucinations.
They help people break
out of the everyday hallucination
of separation and to the reality of truth
and whether they did it through
wine or manna or soma who cares.
It doesn't make any sense.
How can these ancient plants that
connect you to God be somehow taken out.
Could these plants be the ancient wisdom
that we need for our modern problems?
What we call today, everyday
reality which we take for normal,
okay, there is war there's
terrorism, there's global warming,
there's social injustice.
50% of the world lives on less than $2 a day.
The environment is totally
screwed up and we say this is normal.
Its psychotic.
Right? And its psychotic
because we have created it.
What do you think it would take to break
through that boundary at this point?
- I mean, here we are in this 21st century.
- Let's have a party.
Let's have a party.
We'll bring everybody down
to Peru and enlighten them.
And put some in the pot and let's drink it.
I'm in
I'm in.
Did Deepak Chopra just tell
me to go down to Peru
and drink Ayahuasca tea, one of the most
powerful psychedelics known to man?
Still dazed by what Deepak had recommended,
I bumped into our friend Gerry
who had generously loaned
us his beach house for the interview.
I was curious what he thought
about what Deepak said.
I didn't realize at the time
but Gerry's world
was spinning out of control.
Despite having sold his
company for almost 100 million dollars,
Gerry was abusing drugs,
drinking a lot of alcohol,
his family was in shambles
and he was basically
trying to kill himself slowly.
More than I realized Deepak's
words were really sinking in.
At this point you're probably
wondering who this Zappy guy is.
Lemme tell you a little bit about myself.
I'd done everything society told me to do:
go to school, get a job,
make a bunch of money,
fall in love, start a family.
I was living the American dream.
I bought beer.com for $80,000.
A few months later I sold it for $7 Million dollars.
Here I am starring in my own super bowl ad.
Life was becoming very surreal.
Even though I had it all,
my conversation with Deepak
made it clear that there were
other experiences that I needed to have.
The value that I place on the
experience is more important to me.
So I always felt like I'd rather have
a passport full of stamps
than a house of a certain type.
It occurred to me that like most people
I'd been searching for
happiness outside of myself.
And I was having the realization that
I might never be truly happy unless
I went inside my own
mind to look for some answers.
Albert Einstein famously said,
"you can't fix a problem
with the same consciousness"
or thinking that got you into this situation.
What this meant to me was that if
I wanted to solve a
problem in my life,
or if we as a society
wanted to solve big problems
we have like violence,
eco destruction, addiction, depression.
We needed to change
our collective consciousness.
Could society use some of these
ancient techniques for its modern problems?
I was inspired by the
people who came before me,
that seemingly had it all,
but chose to take the
risk of going inside their own minds.
These people were what
I would call psychonauts: sailors of the mind.
And I saw that these people were going
inside their minds
and exploring inside their minds
as part of what they wound up doing
and I thought wow I have to do that.
I figured before I got too
extreme and sat with a shaman,
I should go out and talk to some of
Deepak's friends about our so called reality.
If you only identify with
the realm of 3 dimensions...
if you only identify with the realm of the body,
if you only identify
with the mortal circumstance
and the mortal experience then to that extent
you are at the effect of those circumstances.
Faith is standing on the conviction,
standing on the knowledge on the conviction.
There is something way bigger going on here.
What we see is only a
small portion of the total reality.
See... we have three states making,
dreaming and sleeping.
But beyond that there
is a state that it's neither
of the three, but there is a restful
alertness that dances deep within.
There is nowhere, where we escape from
being energy, so we're always energy.
What we see as it looks physical material
is actually the reflection
of light photons of light
that hit our energy and bounce back
so we're reflecting light but...
We're reflecting it as a force field,
a tornado of energy.
If we can stand within the unreal world,
the ultimate unreal that
appears real that seems limited
by the laws of time
and space and yet have faith
in the realm beyond that literally
invokes that realm into being.
It seemed like what everyone
was saying is reality is just a concept.
I needed to have the direct
experience of going inside.
Could ancient wisdom have
included plants and meditation.
I was excited to learn that a lot of celebrities,
people like Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Scorsese
were doing this meditation for a long time
and recently people like Oprah
Winfrey and Dr. Oz and Katy Perry
had taken up the meditation and
it seemed to be making them even more creative.
I wanted to see if some of this ancient wisdom
could help me to tap into my creativity.
In the 1960's a funny little man
named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
came out of the Himalayas to the United States
and he wound up teaching
his transcendental meditation technique
to the Beatles and the rest is history.
Today there are more
than 7 million people worldwide
doing transcendental meditation.
What I like about a T-M technique
is that there is no dogma attached to it.
It's really just a simple technique
of silently repeating a mantra to yourself
which causes you to
transcend into your quieted mind
to subtler and subtler states
of consciousness until a point
that you reach a place
called universal consciousness.
An endless field of energy
that connects all of us where all knowledge
is contained and where
everything is manifested from.
When the Maharishi passed away in
2007, he put John Hagelin in charge.
As a quantum physicist and a meditator,
he had successfully used quantum theory to support
Maharishi's model of creative
intelligence being at the center of all creation.
Waking conscious is all
about being aware of something...
this... that... this concept... that person.
Transcending is leaving all that behind,
to isolate an experience the self, itself.
It's blissful. It's not the end of the story,
10, 20, minutes of that is enough.
The idea is to come back into activity
and increasingly integrate
and stabilize the experience of inner reality,
inner silence along without a reality.
And that's when life really
gets to be interesting and fun.
The mind has two aspects to it,
it's the brain, which is
very concrete you can measure
it and you can touch it but it's interacting
with this field of consciousness.
And when they come together
it's our individual self,
our individual personality.
And that's what most people think they are.
I'm 5'11, I have this education,
I'm this part in society
I have this amount of money
but it's not fundamentally who you are.
And to know that you need
to have the experience of that.
And that's where meditation
experience comes in.
It was found that square foot of one percent
in some cities here and there...
and there and it does create
positivity in the atmosphere,
in the tendencies of the people.
What excited me about this was that
if we wanted to change global consciousness
we only needed a
critical mass of people tapped in.
What I found in the bible verses
that said "Be still and know that I'm God",
the kingdom of heaven is within."
That's what the meditators are saying.
It's so obvious, it's right there.
The bible is saying... meditate!
These day's religious affiliation is shrinking.
I needed to go speak
to some of the religious leaders
and top scholars of our
time about whether meditation
was once part of religion.
When it comes to religious leaders
there's no one more
high profile than Joel Osteen.
I wanted to ask Joel what
he thought the manna from heaven was.
It kind of was always
talked about like it was a bread,
you know like a mushroom
or something that's what I heard.
That's what I heard. Yeah.
I'd like, I'd like it if it was mushrooms.
Sustain them and...
Wow,
I did not expect that.
Bible descriptions from Moses
and Jesus sound more like mushrooms than bread.
In fact, every other
miracle that Jesus has reported
to have done was after
they drank mushroom tea.
St Mark's Basilica in Venice Italy...
here's all the disciples, here's Jesus,
and giant mushrooms behind him.
"Oh very cool, yeah."
So I got Jesus over here with
these giant mushrooms behind him.
"Let me see."
Here's Jesus with these
giant mushrooms behind him.
I wanted to talk to some people
who had been there, done that.
I've probably have had as
much psychedelics as anyone alive.
When you fall away for a minute,
something happens.
That's actually the beginning
and now you have to relearn
the world just like you were a baby.
What I found uh makes Ayahuasca
very special, number one
is it's the only
mind altering substance
that needs more than one substance.
And the other fact that's interesting
is that both these substances the MAO,
which is Hamelin or
Tetra HeLa Hamelo, or the DMT.
Both of these
substances are produced
in every mammalian nervous system.
So they are substances
that our body produces.
Filmmaker Foster Gamble's
documentary Thrive
shattered many of the myths that
we've been presented
by regular society
that keep us slaves
to our so called reality.
So it seems to be
a natural inclination to alter
our consciousness somewhat
and I think one of the reasons for that
is when we alter our consciousness
we can see our daily consciousness
in a new way and
it shifts and tends to raise
and expand our
daily consciousness.
And to me that's the point
and if we can use substances
whether it's 'broccoli or ayahuasca
or uh you know C-sharp major.'
Ha, to give us a glimpse of what's possible for
human beings and specifically what's next for me.
What am I ready for?
When my consciousness
separated from my body
it changed the paradigm entirely.
I realized ah-ha
there's something more
than this meat
vehicle that we have
and that one realization
set me off writing all night furiously,
haha, until the dawn and it
just re-evaluated my whole philosophy
and from that point on I've been
on a journey of experiential spirituality,
finding the answers myself
and the plants have been
the greatest teachers in that quest.
Many times there is a
huge benefit with one experience
because it gets to the
core of what's been happening,
so it's almost like you know
10 years of therapy in 7 hours.
Kundalini Yoga Icon
Gurmukh teaches many celebrities
how to journey inside
using the Kundalini technique.
She had her own experience
with mind altering energies.
I do not regret anything I've ever done.
You know people say "I did drugs".
I said "So what? It got you here. Forget it!"
I've met other people
that I wished they had
because I feel they
can't go through the barrier.
They can't go into that sixth dimension.
However you want to look at it,
it's going to be the unknown.
And you have a choice: fear or faith.
You know faith that
you're going to come out alright,
that the lessons
are going to be valuable
and that the medicine will guide you
or fear. Fear that
something else is going to happen.
It's going to be the unknown
either way, so might as well choose faith.
There are times in life,
where through different means
and God works in mysterious ways.
We're shown the mountain top,
it's like through grace.
It's like the hand of God lifts us up,
and just shows us the mountain.
I owe, um, a definite debt of gratitude
to um my experience with various substances.
I can't endorse it,
unless you're at a certain space
in a certain environment with certain true healers
because it can run havoc just like LSD did.
They are a powerful,
transformational tools
that have to be respected
and if you approach them
with enough humility and respect
I tend to believe
you'll be fine with them.
People are afraid
that when they go down
there and do these medicines they're going to lose
the things that they love most about themselves
and that's just this common fear.
You know, you get someone
who loves their career,
"What if I go down and it tells me
I want to be a yoga instructor?"
I'm like it's not
going to do that man
and if it does you're going
to be even happier about the fact that it did.
There's an opportunity
to use psychotropic drugs,
which will open up that mind
and show you my god who you really are.
I am fascinated by it.
Uh, uh, I'm interested in it.
I believe it will have
real utility somewhere.
I just, it's too soon for me,
as somebody that's
uh trained a certain way.
Do no harm, help, you know, really,
really be clear
about what you're doing.
We're not clear yet.
Whatever it takes
whether you the drugs or wether you do
the meditation exercises
whatever way
I don't really care.
There's no doubt in my mind
that he first indication
of formal use of hallucinogen
will be at the end of life.
Because it's clear what I am reading,
and seeing in the research is that it improves
our ability to be connected with something
and feel ok about the dying process.
And God knows we need help
with that in this country.
The traditional psychological model, the
traditional medical model, it usually takes years,
and years, and years of therapy,
and years of intervention,
in working with a
team of experts to get even
just a little progress
in someone's life.
What I've seen,
and the analogy
I give is it's 10-20 years
of psychotherapy often
in one to two plant medicine sessions.
There's a relation to plant medicine
when it is entered through the door
of the traditions
that brings more
to a sacred recognition,
of their life,
their path
I think the
word drug is really
has a lot of negative connotations.
I can't think of, you know, maybe...
If some drug actually
cures someone, it's medicine.
See I haven't heard
people going off the rails,
I've seen people go off the rails.
Before I took the final leap,
I needed to hear it
from a psychedelic badass.
That person is Ram Dass.
His real name was Richard Alpert
born to an affluent New England family.
He attended Harvard
and after graduation began
as a researcher at the University.
It was the 1960's
and LSD had just been discovered.
The government
was studying its effect
on individuals
and enemy combatants.
While a researcher at Harvard, Alpert
and professor Timothy Leary
started to run experiments
on students with
psilocybin mushrooms
and LSD both of
which were legal at the time.
The results were
nothing short of miraculous.
Users were reporting that
they were having life changing experiences,
including a study that showed that 60% of alcoholics
that were given one
dose of psilocybin mushrooms
in the right set and setting
were never alcoholics again.
How could everybody not know
about this? Discouraged with the west,
he headed to India.
His guru named him Ram Dass.
And when he came back to
the United States and published his book,
"Be Here Now" he was followed
around by massive groups of young people.
If anybody has the right intent
to wanted to go
to their own spiritual uhh,
insides, the psychedelics
are wonderful for them. Wonderful.
Would you recommend
that somebody looking...
Yes, Yes.
So seekers should
go find a shaman...
Sure.
- Go down and...
- Sure, sure.
That was it, I was going
to gather up a group of friends
who wanted to take the risk and go
as deep into our minds as humanly possible.
Things are just,
seem to just be falling in place.
You know, uh,
feels like it's guided,
feels like it's meant to be.
So for me
I'm just letting it go,
you know I just assume every miracle
that is going to
happen is about to happen
and I should just kind of
enjoy it and uh let it happen.
I have chosen to work with the mesa,
which is a medicine bundle,
meditations,
rituals, um counseling
and working with ancestral medicines
such as Watchuma or San Pedro.
Which are ancestral medicines
that have been used for over 5000 years
in the Andes of Peru
by pre-Incan cultures
who were masters of accessing
dimensions of consciousness
that are so deep that
we often don't access.
You know, I feel like it doesn't matter
where in the world you go, it's like,
you'll always find you know, your kind.
And um when it comes to spirituality.
I respect anything that or anyone
who kind of walks respecting the planet,
loving nature and opening their heart to...
you know the universe and love itself.
As long as that's the main
priority behind your religion or you
you know your ceremonial
spiritual belief then you know.
I'm down with you.
I've got a few intents,
some are very personal,
which I'm going to try and
bring back to my family and loved ones.
Um and try and take some of that knowledge
or the glimpse of the
other dimensions that are out there,
which I've been trying to do
kind of in artificial ways.
I mean sometimes with
my artwork and my creativity
but in other ways
with less natural things
and sometimes
that's an anesthetic of pain
or your day-to-day
life that gets you down.
But, um yeah this is something
that's been calling me for a while
to come and do this, but it
hasn't been the right moment in my life
and so it all seemed
to just fall into place naturally.
I'm here to have sorta like a rebirth.
Um to you know tap into
a place that I guess I've never gone.
I don't know where that is, I don't know
what that is, but hopefully it's a good thing
and I'll be able to get through it.
When you drink the medicine,
50% of the medicine's responsibility
is to do all the healing, all the cleansing,
all the awakening,
all the clearing,
all the harmonizing that it needs
to do but the other 50% of taking it further,
taking it deeper is always yours.
Part of my, my uh work in this is
to make the most gentle transition possible.
From being very sleepy
to being fully awake. Haha.
Really looking
forward to uh tapping
into some of those guys stuff upstairs.
The san pedro trip was, was gnarly.
Um.. it was really insane because Fredy Puma,
you know the shaman that introduced us
to the catalyst
to the spiritual journey um
you know which was the San Pedro, the drink.
He uh, so in tune that guy
and I recall you know being at the...
at the top of the mountain
you know at this plateau
where we all you know we're
just so tired from this massive,
you know high altitude trek
and were finally you know,
getting some air and you're,
you're looking off at these amazing clouds
that are flying right at you
and you're at the precipice of this mountain top
and you know you see
hundreds of feet below you and
I got this enormous
sorrow that I can't...
I was just overwhelmed
with and this sorrow
that consumed me was something
that I've been carrying for many years.
Kind of like a little
rebellious anger or like
"why am I here?"
like you know like dad you know
I didn't knock on your balls
to come out into this you know universe
kind of anger
that I've been holding
since I was a teenager,
you know what I mean.
Why you stay in the chaos?
Why suffer? Why struggle?
When you can liberate all of that
and be of higher service,
while being gentle on yourself.
I know that you need
your ups and downs
so you can be human
and enjoy life,
um and transition cause
it's part of the beauty of existence
is to be sad and enjoy happiness
you need to know both sides
but this overwhelming
sadness wasn't mine.
It didn't belong to me.
Ever since I was a little kid,
didn't belong to me.
It's not mine.
I'm a passenger,
like Iggy Pop says you know what I mean.
I'm here to ride this,
you know, in a respectful way,
respect everything that I come across and you know,
walk my path with love and
you know say goodbye after my journey's done.
And he came out and he just...
I felt this warm energy behind me
and there he was while
I was on the rock overlooking the, the,
the clouds that are flying towards me.
I was just crying you know,
and he touched my shoulder
and he said it's not yours, let it go.
1, 2, 3 and go.
If my trip ended today, I've had,
you know 20 years of heavy pain
lifted off of my shoulders
and I'd be a happy camper
without doing the Ayahuasca.
So, I'm a feeling really really
really really light on my feet, happy, appreciative,
and receptive. Very feminine,
you know ha ha.
Im such a tomboy,
it's kinda about time
I step into my femininity.
My full intent coming down here,
my macro intent was to
try to share with everybody
in the world for
that matter, um, the fact
that there's different
ways to see reality.
And that we, sort of
in this moment of chaos
need to take a step back everybody
and you know just try
to see things a little differently.
The only way that you're supposed
to fulfill your role is by being yourself.
That is the heightened you.
You attract more love
and you attract more energy.
One of my intentions,
one of the things I asked for,
was was to face my fears
and I realized that no
I don't need to face my fears,
my fears are not going to go away.
First I have to accept myself with my fears.
Each person has a pattern.
And that pattern
is 50% woven by the person,
and 50% by the divine.
Ayahuasca is capable
of changing that whole pattern.
From being one person one day,
the next day you're
completely another person.
I'm open to light, and love and just good vibes and
anything that isn't on that vibration or frequency,
I'm just like, I don't
even see you, you don't exist.
So that's how I'm walking
into this Ayahuasca trip.
I'm just in a very receptive place.
I just, you know,
I know what I'm about,
I know what I stand for and
I know what I resonate with,
and you know I just
just hope to walk that path,
and you know whoever
is walking along that path,
you know hope to meet
you and we can join hands
and you know take
this trip together, you know.
It happened for me
in my Ayahuasca experience
when I was sitting there and I
had realized that I had just died.
As I was looking at death
and experiencing death,
I saw how dynamic it was and how much was going on.
And I realized that I never
needed to fear death again.
It was totally liberating and as
I spend time in this ayahuasca experience
I realized that I was sitting in a
place where I could ask any question.
I could go into the future
I could go into the past,
whatever I wanted to know.
I'm going to ask a big question
so I decided to ask,
"why do bad things happen?"
And immediately upon asking that
I was whipped out into
the edge of space back to
where when you were a kid you go,
"Yeah, but what's past space?"
And people go "Oh more space".
And what's past that? "More space".
I was out there on the
edge looking at everything
in the universe basically contained.
Like God would look at.
And as I'm looking at it spirit said to me,
"you see that?"
It's totally balanced. It's perfect.
And I looked at it and I was like "Wow, that's
true. It's totally balanced. Its perfect."
"If something happens over here
it'll just be made up over here."
And as soon as I had that realization,
I was sucked right back in.
I was sitting in the room again.
And as I was coming out
I just started to laugh,
I was laughing and I realized that
I had just gotten the entire human cosmic joke.
Here we are with God, the man with the white beard,
Buddha, Mohammad, and Jesus,
all these men and I was with God and it was a woman.
That has stuck with me every day
since my Ayahuasca experience.
Well... for me...
ingesting the
medicine was uh,
a destruction of everything
I've ever known, everything I've
ever believed in,
everything I've ever thought was true.
I tried to reason it,
for a while, for two days,
um after, tried to reason the idea that,
"It's a hallucinogenic drug Michelle"
it just you know
it takes things from your
subconscious and projects them.
You know, there's absolutely no way
that there's any truth in what you envisioned.
Um... that it's just a trip.
You know you read tons of books on alchemy,
you know you have tons of you know,
information about symbolism and religion
deep embedded into your
brain since you're a little kid.
But I know in my heart of hearts, it's not true.
And that everything that I have ever known
could quite probably be bullshit
and uh it makes me happy.
I felt a peace and calm that
I've never experienced in my life.
An overwhelming feeling that I could relax
instead of constantly macheting
my way through life, my urban armor on.
It stripped everything away
and put me in contact with something
that was a benevolent higher power as the only way
I can really describe it.
I had such a hard time.
In the middle of it.
Like a surge of...
and I felt my wounds,
my wounds just opened up.
And I was feeling pain and then uh like
I grew up and I was able to um..
love myself a little bit more.
Once I got through that hard part
or the part that I needed to get out
it was just definitely
the best life changing experience
that I have ever been through.
When people access these medicines
they need to access
with full love, with full willpower.
Otherwise they need to find other ways.
People will transcend anyways,
Now is the time and these
medicines are major assistance,
major helpers, major masters
you know assisting this process
of transition for humanity
from one level of consciousness
to a higher level of consciousness.
I've lost a lot of anger,
a lot of hatred
and a lot of you know what
if you're an asshole, be an asshole.
It's your fate, you know what
I mean like I'm easy now like
I'm not angry anymore at
all the mean people in the world,
you know cause
I accept that they're part of it.
And it's all good, you know what
I mean. It's not my walk,
but you know, do your thing
and I respect your path.
But don't come near
me with your evil energy
cause I'll knock
you the fuck out. Hahahahaha.
It all comes down to intent for me.
If your intent is right, it's going to work,
it's going to be better than you thought
and you're going to have a lot less chaos.
It seemed to me that nature
recognizes that people are highly stressed.
And that people need healing medicines
for the problems of addiction and depression.
I kept looking for ways
to transcend on a daily basis
and I was introduced to Sri Sri Ravi Shrankar
and his breathing technique
called Sudarshan Kriya.
The technique is being done
by millions of people including prisoners
and inner city youth
who have been trained by Sri Sri
use the technique to overcome
their physical environment
and give themselves internal strength.
Sri Sri's logic goes
that when we're born
we draw in our first
breath and when we die
we let out our final breath.
But most people think
nothing of it in between,
when in fact breathing may be
our most valuable capability.
It is an important tool, you know.
For every emotion there
is a particular rythm the breath.
And if we attend to the breath
by manipulating your own breath.
You can slip into the altered
state of consciousness, At will. Haha.
I learned the kriya breathing which blew my mind.
The fact that
I was able to put myself
into a psychedelic state with just my breath.
Lightning bolts were
shooting out of my hands and feet.
Time stood still.
I continued to get together with my friends
to talk about our experience and how
we were integrating our
psychonaut training into our lives.
There is a whole group of scientists, very few,
but enough, who are saying
maybe brain doesn't produce consciousness,
- maybe brain filters consciousness.
- You're saying we're transmitters?
- We are transmitters.
- Ha, cool!
And what your transmitters are,
it's that infinite
potential that you spoke of.
That field of possibilities.
And so when when you
start to break down the boundaries,
then all that's left is the infinite.
So the boundaries
are like your prejudices.
- They're all concepts.
- Things you know that you've accumulated throughout
life that you either
repel or are attracted to.
Yes, every boundary is
a conceptual boundary in consciousness.
This is an earth rover, this gives
an opportunity to come to this planet,
step into this suit,
have these life experiences, be creative.
And, and, and marvel at this
planet that that we come to
and it's so funny because
A.) I started this
whole thing not spiritual.
B.) Once I saw the nature of
the cell membrane, the cell receptors.
I said oh my god instantaneously
I had to recognize
if you buy the science then it's
not is there or is there not there is a spirit.
So it really helped me
to bring my scientific mind
and my kind of spiritual
experience in together
and they're not different at all.
We're just discovering through
all these pathways how all that is one.
After I started to really journey with the plants
was when things sort of changed.
When that older boyfriend of mine,
I was like 24 at the time and
he told me I was an idiot.
And he said you need, you you are very passionate
but you have nothing to, to backup.
How you feel about the world.
You've got, you don't read,
you don't have, you know... you read one book
and you can get 20 years
worth of research, in one book!
And he kind of like opened up
my mind and to do research
and to fill my mind.
Now when I see the world I do a psychedelic,
I think metaphorically
I think in so many different layers, you know,
and of course
I enjoyed the moment too.
I can chase sensations
like any of them. You know,
I love to feel good and have fun
and interact with people but,
you know information is so beautiful
and if we could just tap
into the reservoirs
and fountains of the people before us.
You know, you never know
where it could take you.
When I lost Paul, I was like,
I went through about a year
of just being like an animal.
Like what could I do physically
to just get my mind off of existentialism,
get my mind off of how transient life
is and how we just come here
and can disappear at any moment.
Um, how could I get my mind off that, so I just
went whhhaaa, summer, crazy, nuts... haha berserker.
Like I did everything I
could possibly do to hide from myself.
And uhh, I'll tell you that my Ayahuasca trip
made me sad that he left me here.
It wasn't a sadness that
he's gone it was more like a jealousy
that he's there first. It's fucked up, but yeah.
I think it was affirmed
to me in the ayahuasca experience
and some other trips I've had in my life,
where what was happening is,
when I took the medicine,
or I meditated and I went inside,
that there basically,
I was taking filters off is
what was happening so all this bullshit...
Reticular activation system,
it's like doors of perception
when you popped it... Yeah.
...he felt like that
filtration mechanism that we create
by the age of seven was just lifted off.
You know how, like you receive so much information
in your in your visual cortex but your brain
only accepts a certain amount,
so that you're not overwhelmed.
That's your reticular activation system deciding
according to your wants, likes,
and, and and fight or flight, deciding
what information you're going to take in.
Each time I got together
with my fellow psychonauts
we felt stronger and stronger about the need
to get the information out
so we could help others to access
some of these ancient techniques
that had been so profound in our lives.
We should just, with the True Reality Society,
should set up a place like in Costa Rica.
Like a haven for people who think the same way.
- Put them all around the world.
- I like that.
In the consciousness of it its like...
I'm In!
- Woo!
- I'm In!
All right! Everything is rolling along,
things are falling into place
and you know like everything in life you,
you want validation,
you want to know that it's having
some kind of an effect. Beyond just
"hey, I'm having a good time."
I'm learning a lot I'm having
all these cool experiences, but
you know, am I really,
is something really happening.
And I was looking for
some kind of sign that you know,
it was making a difference because
I couldn't see what the difference was.
And other than my own friends
and people around me so I was kinda thinking,
God... give me a sign here,
that you know this is, is making a difference,
that there is something to it.
And then the phone call came
from Gerry who I hadn't seen
since we shot with Deepak
in his apartment years earlier.
Unbeknownst to me, Gerry
had taken Deepak's advice as well
and he went down to Costa Rica
to do a plant medicine called Iboga,
that comes from an African root.
It's the strongest psychedelic known to man
and Gerry was taking it to see
if he could break his addiction.
The full moon came to Gerry and asked him
if he wanted to see why he was so messed up.
You know because of my life
I had addiction issues, tons of women issues,
ego issues out the gazoo, smoking, drinking.
You name it I was a fan, right?
So uh... I said what's wrong with me,
and so what happened then
is that my body went to a
house that I hadn't seen in 48 years.
It was my grandfather's
house in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
And at the front of the house,
like 3 year old me is going like this to me.
He's like waving me in
and I'm looking at the floor,
and as a kid I knocked
over cranberry juice or grape juice
and it hit the wall and
that stain was on the wall.
This is how perfect detail and
then next thing you know the kid opened the door
and like went like this
to me go look at it
and my grandfather was sexually
molesting me and I was three.
The moon told Gerry
to go see his dead grandfather
and have him explain why
he'd done it and give him an apology.
Gerry went to see his grandfather,
who denied it ever
happened and sent him away.
She told him to get his father
to help him to get an apology from his grandfather.
And he said that he was sorry
and I told him I forgave him.
And uh even though he
wouldn't do anything for me
and then the guy,
the shaman goes hey go to the moon,
so I went to the moon, back to the moon and uh and
I said uh Mrs. Moon what can you do for me?
And she said open your chest,
and I went like this and my heart was in there.
And the moon took my heart out and washed it.
And she, and I said what,
the shaman is saying what is she doing?
And I said she's washing it like
this like she has hands right, crazy!
But truth. She's washing it and
I said what should I do with it,
to the shaman he said have
her put it in your left hand.
I said Mrs. Moon would you put it in my
left hand and she put it in my left hand.
And he goes, what do you
want me to do with it,
and he goes put it in your chest.
And I went to put it in my chest
and I got here and it was black again.
So it only stayed pink for like,
I don't know, 5 seconds.
And I said I'm not putting
this thing in me because it's shit.
You know, it's terrible, and uh...
he said ask her for a new one. So I said Mrs. Moon
can I please have
a new heart,
you know and she said yeah
and then she gave me this new heart
and then I put it, and then
I said what do you want me to do with it.
She said put it in your left hand,
put it in your chest and uh, then the next day,
I was a different guy.
He hasn't touched drugs since,
and he's able to have a drink
socially without needing to get drunk.
He's reunited with his family
and for the first time he's in a real relationship.
The first time I was
invited to do plant medicine
I thought the person was crazy.
I was like you're going
to take a drug to get spiritual?
I don't think so, and
I wanted nothing to do with it
and it freaked me out.
You know my mom is a meth
addict and I was a meditator.
And, uh finally this woman
who's like just a love in my life
invites me to go and I couldn't say no,
so I went and that night, um... she told me to set
some intentions of what
you want to see and I said okay
I want to see why I keep attracting
the same psycho guy over and over and over
with a different face sucking the light out of me
and the second thing that
I wanted to see was umm
what was I here to do.
And so that night was just
one of the most amazing nights of my life.
Um..I was shown exactly who I am,
what I'm here to do and exactly
why I kept attracting that same psycho guy over,
over and over again.
It's just amazing cause Gerry
and I wake up every day like
wow is this our life like
we just feel so blessed to be
in love with our best friend.
To be doing what we love.
Immediately when
I came back and my kids saw me,
they knew I was a different guy
and they knew something changed.
As soon as he walked through the door
I can like visibly see a difference,
let alone when I was actually talking with him.
I was like shocked, you know,
I was like well I gotta give
this thing a whirl if it turn,
if it could turn, him around 180,
what could it do to me?
The first time I saw Gerard
after he did plant medicine,
he didn't even have to speak or say one word to me.
I could tell as I walked up to him,
about 15 feet away,
I knew he was a changed person.
The chances of someone coming out of that severe
of a lifestyle case is very rare.
I didn't want to drink anymore.
I was smoking
two packs of cigarettes a day.
I went from that to nothing immediately.
I can't even think about doing drugs.
Like I can't even, wouldn't
even have the thought to go do some drugs.
He's like Zappy,
not only did I take plant medicine
and break my addiction in one session
but I've actually opened
up a center for people to come
and expand their consciousness.
Heal themselves, break addiction and it exists.
And I was like Oh My God!
It manifested
from that conversation
with Deepak that day
where he said stir it
up in the pot and drink it.
The moon told me,
and this sounds so ridiculously crazy,
but told me to go buy a center
and to make it a plant based center,
told me what building to buy,
told me what to pay for it,
uh... told me how to treat my girlfriend,
told me how to treat my children,
told me that,
that everything will be okay.
His place is called
Rythmia and where is it?
We can set up a place in Costa Rica.
This was the miracle I needed.
This place had manifested
out of that single conversation
and the desire to help people break the wire.
The first ever clinic where people can go
to expand their consciousness and heal themselves.
While you're at Rythmia you can receive
counseling and spiritual development,
including a program developed specifically
for Rythmia by Reverend Michael Beckwith,
called The Answer is You.
It's a consciousness, e
xpanding program, that allows people to
1.) take 100% responsibility
for their own life,
come out of the shame
and blame game, blaming others
2.) It moves you through
a period of forgiving yourself,
forgiving all others
so you can be clean inside
3.) You begin to embrace
the vibration of intentionality
of having the intention or
direction of how you want your life to be.
You have to choose this.
If we don't choose it then the undertow
of the human society is choosing for you.
Going to a place
like what is being created
at Rythmia is a
place where you can literally
just come back to life's rhythm.
The miracle that you're going to get
is that you're going to get is
the real truth and the truth is that,
that we are all, all of us
connected from the same thing.
Uh... and that love is
the thing that holds us all together.
And, when you get
to that truth that's,
that's the whole thing that
you've been running from your whole life
is that one truth and then
you come and you come to a place like this
and you get to see that that's
the truth, then there's the miracle.
And then you can walk away going, you know what you
know I lost everything this weekend or this week,
but I gained my life and what
more could you ask for in a vacation.
Everything I've gone
through has truly been worth it.
Because even before
this movie is finished,
it's already changed the world,
because this place exists.
Every act that comes
from purpose is supported by nature
and has the potential to change things
in ways you could have never dreamed of.
How do I channel all
of this connection into being
an efficient human being in society,
into giving back because
for me love is everything.
But you have to almost have
a way to re-enter the Ayahuasca experience
almost on a daily basis
to stay tapped into it
and that has to be through meditation
or through something that would deliver
you back there if only for a moment.
All of us had life changing experiences
so the question is how
could these incredible plant energies
be illegal today to consume or even to study?
It turns out that the answer
to that question maybe
even more sinister than the
reason they've been taken out of religion.
Money.
The pharmaceutical
companies are only interested
in selling their patented
petroleum based medications
that people need to take
for the rest of their lives.
These drugs do not cure,
but only mask the symptoms
and have significant
negative side effects.
Here I am living
my entire life sustained by plants.
I'm eating vegetarian and my day job
is bringing out a plant based formula
to help people with addiction.
I owe everything to these ancient tools.
Plant medicine, meditation, breathing,
these are some of the tools that were once
part of the religious tradition.
It's time to bring them back.
We started the true reality society
to create a peace army
to counteract mass violence in the world
and to bring together people who believe
in the importance of
going inside their minds.
Breathe in
slowly, and then breathe out slowly...
On the in breath perhaps
having the thought "peace".
And on the out breath the thought "joy".
"Peace" on the in breath
and "joy" on the out breath.
And bring your awareness
into your heart now
and remember a great experience of love.
Remember a great
experience of compassion.
A great experience of joy.
A great experience of equanimity.
The peace that
passes understanding.
And now bring awareness
back into your whole body,
and allow the boundaries
of your body to slowly dissolve
and merge with your surroundings.
Recognize that every
boundary is conceptual.
There's no boundaries,
there are no national boundaries,
no tribal boundaries, no ethnic boundaries,
no racial boundaries,
no religious boundaries.
They're all imagination.
And they have limited our potential.
We are the stars and we are the sky and
we are the moon and we are the galaxies.
We are the
cosmic horizon.
We are the big bang.
We are the laws of nature.
We are plank-scale-space-time-geometry
where everything dissolves
into all possibilities.
Where platonic values like
truth, goodness, beauty, harmony,
evolution are embedded as
the essential raw material
of the universe
where there is mathematical
truth but also musical truth.
Whether it is the
poetry of the universe
and the dance of the universe and we are that dance.
As Sufi Podrumi says, look at
these worlds spinning out of nothingness,
this is within your power.
We come spinning out of
nothingness scattering stars like dust.
Out beyond all ideas of right
doing and wrong doing there's a field,
I'll meet you there.
So remember the field that you went to,
it was beyond right
doing and wrong doing,
it was the field that
we come and which we long for.
I'll let Roberto finish
his Peruvian shamanic song.