0:00:11.532,0:00:23.065
After 6 million years of boredom,

0:00:23.065,0:00:27.704
the evolutionary ascent of our species

0:00:27.704,0:00:30.774
from the last common ancestor with the chimpanzee,

0:00:30.774,0:00:34.502
something extraordinary happened to us less than 100.000 years ago,

0:00:34.502,0:00:38.196
which by the way, is long after we've become anatomically modern.

0:00:38.888,0:00:42.627
It was a kind of emergence into consciousness

0:00:42.627,0:00:46.727
less than 100.000 years ago, really less than 40.000 years ago,

0:00:46.834,0:00:49.825
when we became fully symbolic creatures.

0:00:50.532,0:00:53.703
And this great change has been defined as

0:00:53.703,0:00:56.943
the single most important step forward in the evolution of human behavior,

0:00:57.143,0:01:01.183
is intimately associated with the emergence of the great and transcendant

0:01:01.183,0:01:05.202
rock and cave art all around the world.

0:01:05.848,0:01:10.664
And over the last 30 years researchers led by prof. David Louis Williams,

0:01:10.664,0:01:14.743
at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, and many others,

0:01:14.743,0:01:18.300
have suggested an intriguing and radical possibility

0:01:18.623,0:01:22.729
which is that this emergence into consciousness was triggered by

0:01:22.852,0:01:26.525
our ancestors encounters with visionary plants

0:01:26.679,0:01:29.066
and the beginning of Shamanism.

0:01:29.958,0:01:33.907
If you analyze the cave art - there's no time to go into the details here, but there are

0:01:33.907,0:01:38.487
so many details that make it clear that this was an art of altered states of consciousness,

0:01:38.487,0:01:40.223
of visions

0:01:40.223,0:01:47.984
and that plants like the Amanita muscaria mushroom, or Psilocybin mushrooms,

0:01:47.984,0:01:54.583
appear to have been directly connected with this sudden and radical change.

0:01:54.583,0:01:58.943
So to investigate this possibility when I got interested in this mistery,

0:01:58.943,0:02:04.935
I went down to the Amazon, where there are still surviving shamanistic cultures today,

0:02:05.412,0:02:09.742
and where they drink the powerful visionary brew Ayahuasca,

0:02:09.742,0:02:13.654
of which the active ingredient is Dimethyltryptamine, DMT,

0:02:13.654,0:02:18.348
which is actually closelly related at the molecular level to Psilocybin.

0:02:18.440,0:02:25.507
Now normally DMT cannot be activated orally when we encountered it in the West,

0:02:25.507,0:02:27.532
where it is generally smoked.

0:02:27.532,0:02:31.462
There's an enzyme in our stomachs called monoaminoxidaze

0:02:31.477,0:02:35.465
which switches off DMT on contact.

0:02:36.003,0:02:38.787
But in the Amazon they've got round this problem.

0:02:38.911,0:02:42.505
And they say it was the spirits that taught them how to do it.

0:02:42.567,0:02:45.746
The DMT in the Ayahuasca brew is contained in these leaves

0:02:45.746,0:02:49.145
from a plant that they call Chacruna in the Amazon.

0:02:49.145,0:02:52.551
And there they mix it together with this vine,

0:02:52.551,0:02:56.464
and out of the 150.000 different species of plants and trees in the Amazon

0:02:56.464,0:03:00.744
this is the one that contains a monoaminoxidaze inhibitor,

0:03:00.744,0:03:04.743
which switches off that enzyme in our stomachs

0:03:04.743,0:03:08.905
and allows the DMT in the leaves when the two are maried together and cooked in water

0:03:08.905,0:03:14.468
to be absorbed orally, and takes us on a 4 hour journey

0:03:14.468,0:03:17.261
into extraordinary realms.

0:03:17.261,0:03:21.304
Now it's no joke to drink Ayahuasca.

0:03:21.719,0:03:26.873
The Ayahuasca brew has a foul taste.

0:03:26.873,0:03:29.582
Really, really hideous and a dreadful, dreadful smell.

0:03:30.689,0:03:34.625
And after you've drunk your cup, you'll find within 45 minutes or so

0:03:34.625,0:03:37.622
that your sweating, that you're feeling nauseous.

0:03:37.622,0:03:40.423
Pretty soon you may well be vomiting, you may well having diarrhea.

0:03:40.423,0:03:44.170
So, nobody is doing this for recreation.

0:03:45.247,0:03:50.501
And I'd like to add that I don't think any of the psychedelics should be used for recreation.

0:03:50.501,0:03:56.173
They have much more serious and important mission with humanity.

0:03:56.450,0:04:00.583
So we're not doing this for fun. But what draws people to Ayahuasca again and again

0:04:00.583,0:04:03.869
to brace themselves for this experience - and you do have to brace yourself -

0:04:03.869,0:04:07.263
is its extraordinary effects at the level of consciousness.

0:04:07.263,0:04:10.415
And one of those effects has to do with creativity.

0:04:10.415,0:04:14.784
And we can see the creative cosmogenic impulse of Ayahuasca in the paintings

0:04:14.784,0:04:19.344
of Ayahuasca Shamans from Peru, like the paintings of Pablo Amaringo here -

0:04:19.344,0:04:24.347
those richly saturated colors, the amazing visions that they reproduce -

0:04:24.347,0:04:29.868
and this creative impulse has also spread to western artists.

0:04:29.868,0:04:33.672
Many western artists now have been deeply influenced by Ayahuasca

0:04:33.749,0:04:36.464
and are also painting their visions.

0:04:36.464,0:04:40.782
And as these paintings show, another universal experience of Ayahuasca

0:04:40.782,0:04:47.264
is the encounter with seemingly intelligent entities which communicate with us telepathically,

0:04:47.264,0:04:51.902
and I am making no claim one way or another as to the reality status of these entities we encounter.

0:04:51.902,0:04:56.504
Simply that phenomenologically, in the Ayahuasca experience they are encountered

0:04:56.504,0:04:59.351
by people all over the world, and most frequently of all,

0:04:59.351,0:05:06.922
the spirit of Ayahuasca herself - Mother Ayahuasca - who is a healer

0:05:06.922,0:05:10.583
and although she is kind of the mother goddess of the planet

0:05:10.583,0:05:15.023
she seems to take a direct personal interest in us as individuals,

0:05:15.023,0:05:19.703
to heal our ills, to want us to be the best that we can possibly be,

0:05:19.703,0:05:25.467
to correct errors and mistakes in our behavior that may be leading us down the wrong path.

0:05:25.467,0:05:30.382
And this is perhaps why, and it's an untold story, really -

0:05:30.382,0:05:37.305
Ayahuasca has been fantastically successful in getting people off harmful addictions to hard drugs

0:05:37.305,0:05:43.103
such as heroine and cocaine. Jacques Mabit at the Takiwasi clinic in Peru,

0:05:43.103,0:05:46.090
brings heroine and cocaine addicts out there for a month,

0:05:46.090,0:05:50.037
gives them 12 Ayahuasca sessions and they have encounters with Mother Ayahuasca

0:05:50.037,0:05:55.223
during those sessions that lead them not to wish to take heroine and cocaine any more,

0:05:55.223,0:05:58.063
and more than half leave completely free of their addiction,

0:05:58.063,0:06:01.341
never return to it and don't even have withdrawal symptoms.

0:06:01.341,0:06:05.592
The same incredible healing work has been done in Canada by doctor Gabor Mate

0:06:05.592,0:06:09.822
until the Canadian Government interviened and stopped his healing practice

0:06:09.822,0:06:14.106
on the grounds that Ayahuasca itself was an illegal drug.

0:06:15.121,0:06:20.583
Now I have some personal experience of this. I have not been addicted to heroine or cocaine,

0:06:20.583,0:06:24.151
but I had a 24 years non-stop cannabis habit.

0:06:24.151,0:06:30.646
This started off smoking the herb and laterally vaporizing it,

0:06:30.646,0:06:36.541
but the basic truth is that for 24 years I was pretty much permanently stoned.

0:06:36.541,0:06:44.945
And I enjoyed it, being stoned and I felt that it helped me with my work as a writter and

0:06:44.945,0:06:48.704
perhaps at some point it did, but when I first encountered Ayahuasca

0:06:48.704,0:06:52.302
I had already been smoking cannabis for 16 years and almost immediatelly

0:06:52.302,0:06:57.567
Ayahuasca started giving me messages that this was no longer serving me,

0:06:57.567,0:07:02.383
that it was leading me to behave in negative and unhelpful ways towards others,

0:07:02.383,0:07:05.664
and of course I ignored those messages for years and years

0:07:05.664,0:07:09.425
and went back to being stoned 16 hours a day.

0:07:09.425,0:07:15.829
But that negative behavior that Ayahuasca was pointing out did actually get worse and worse.

0:07:15.829,0:07:19.402
I don't want to put down cannabis and I believe it's the sovereign right of every adult

0:07:19.402,0:07:21.983
to choose to smoke cannabis if they wish to do so,

0:07:21.983,0:07:26.465
but I think I was overusing it, I think I was abusing it, not using it responsibly.

0:07:26.465,0:07:31.584
And I became more and more paranoid, jealous, possessive, suspicious,

0:07:31.584,0:07:36.504
I was subject to irrational rages, I often made the life of my beloved partner, Santha,

0:07:36.504,0:07:41.583
a misery, and when I went down for my regular encounter with Ayahuasca,

0:07:41.583,0:07:48.523
in October 2011, I was given the most unbelievable kicking by Mother Ayahuasca.

0:07:48.523,0:07:54.663
And I was put through an ordeal. It was a kind of life review

0:07:54.663,0:07:59.603
and it's not an accident that Ayahuasca is the vine of the dead.

0:07:59.603,0:08:04.556
I was shown my death, and I was shown that if I came to death

0:08:04.556,0:08:09.423
and what awaits us after death without having corrected the mistakes that I was making

0:08:09.423,0:08:14.064
in my life, that it would be a very bad thing for me, and actually

0:08:14.064,0:08:17.695
Mother Ayahuasca literally took me to hell.

0:08:17.695,0:08:22.952
And that hell was a little like this "Hell" painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

0:08:22.952,0:08:26.822
A truly horrible place. And a little like the place that

0:08:26.822,0:08:30.063
the ancient Egyptians called the Judgement Hall of Osiris,

0:08:30.063,0:08:33.890
where our souls are weighed in the scale in the presence of the Gods

0:08:33.890,0:08:38.224
against the feather of truth, of justice, of cosmic harmony.

0:08:38.224,0:08:41.184
And I was shown that the path I was walking,

0:08:41.184,0:08:45.743
my abuse of Cannabis and the behavior associated with it

0:08:45.743,0:08:49.765
was going to lead me to be found "wanting" in the judgement

0:08:49.765,0:08:54.026
and that I might face annihilation in the world beyond death,

0:08:54.026,0:08:58.144
so perhaps not surprising, but when I came back to England,

0:08:58.144,0:09:01.831
later in October 2011, I gave up Cannabis

0:09:01.831,0:09:05.100
and I've never smoked it again since then.

0:09:05.100,0:09:08.467
And actually and again I'm speaking only personally with no comment on

0:09:08.467,0:09:13.063
other uses of Cannabis. It's as though a monkey has been lifted off my back.

0:09:13.063,0:09:17.616
I'm liberated in incredible ways. Far from my creativity being inhibited,

0:09:17.616,0:09:21.384
I find myself writing much more productively, much more creatively,

0:09:21.384,0:09:26.303
much more focused and much more efficiently as well,

0:09:26.303,0:09:29.536
and I began to be able to address those negative aspects of my behavior

0:09:29.536,0:09:32.824
which Cannabis had revealed and hopefully to make myself slowly -

0:09:32.824,0:09:37.454
it's a long progress - into a more nurturing, more loving, more positive person

0:09:37.454,0:09:42.621
and this whole transformation - it really has been a personal transformation for me -

0:09:42.621,0:09:47.457
was made possible by this encounter with Death that Mother Ayahuasca gave me.

0:09:47.457,0:09:50.745
And you know, that leads me to ask what is Death?

0:09:50.745,0:09:54.125
Our materialist science reduces everything to matter,

0:09:54.125,0:09:57.752
and materialist science in the West says we are just meat, we are just our bodies,

0:09:57.752,0:10:00.903
so when the brain is dead that's the end of consciousness,

0:10:00.903,0:10:02.823
there is no life after death, there is no soul,

0:10:02.823,0:10:05.827
we just rot and are gone.

0:10:06.027,0:10:09.890
But actually many honest scientists should admit

0:10:09.982,0:10:12.778
that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science

0:10:13.039,0:10:15.543
and that we don't know exactly how it works.

0:10:15.543,0:10:17.343
The brain is involved in it in some way,

0:10:17.343,0:10:21.322
but we're not sure how. Could be that the brain generates consciousness

0:10:21.522,0:10:24.891
the way a generator makes electricity, if you hold to that paradigm,

0:10:24.983,0:10:27.018
then of course you can't believe in life after death.

0:10:27.018,0:10:29.184
When the generator is broken consciousness is gone,

0:10:29.184,0:10:30.904
but it's equally possible that the relationship -

0:10:30.904,0:10:32.931
and nothing in neuro-science rules it out -

0:10:32.931,0:10:36.955
that the relationship is more like a relationship of the TV signal to the TV set.

0:10:36.955,0:10:41.794
And in that case, when the TV set is broken, of course the TV signal continues.

0:10:41.794,0:10:45.686
And this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions,

0:10:45.686,0:10:50.184
that we are immortal souls, temporarily incarnated in these physical forms,

0:10:50.184,0:10:53.624
to learn and to grow and to develop.

0:10:53.624,0:10:56.183
And really if we want to know about this mystery

0:10:56.183,0:10:59.184
the last people we should ask are materialist - reductionist scientists.

0:10:59.184,0:11:01.264
They have nothing to say on the matter at all.

0:11:01.264,0:11:04.823
Let's go rather to the ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work

0:11:04.823,0:11:06.742
for 3000 years on the problem of death,

0:11:06.742,0:11:10.464
and on the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare

0:11:10.464,0:11:12.693
for what we will confront after death.

0:11:12.693,0:11:18.023
And the ancient Egyptians expressed their ideas in transcendent art

0:11:18.023,0:11:20.527
which still touches us emotionally today

0:11:20.527,0:11:23.146
and they came to certain very specific conclusions,

0:11:23.146,0:11:26.985
that the soul does survive death, and that we will be held accountable for

0:11:26.985,0:11:32.196
every thought, every action, every deed that we have lived through in our lives,

0:11:32.196,0:11:35.862
so we better take this precious opportunity - to be born in a human body -

0:11:35.862,0:11:38.506
seriously and make the most of it.

0:11:38.506,0:11:41.143
And in these inquiries into the mystery of death

0:11:41.143,0:11:44.113
the ancient Egyptians weren't just exercising their imagination.

0:11:44.113,0:11:49.945
They highly valued dream states, and it's now known that they used visionary plants -

0:11:49.945,0:11:53.623
like the hallucinogenic blue Water lily,

0:11:53.623,0:11:56.824
and it's interesting that the ancient Egyptian tree of life

0:11:56.824,0:12:00.384
has recently been identified as the Acacia nilotica,

0:12:00.384,0:12:05.422
which contains high quantities of DMT - Dimethyltryptamine

0:12:05.422,0:12:09.024
the same active ingredient that we find in Ayahuasca.

0:12:09.024,0:12:12.584
Now it's difficult to imagine a society more different from

0:12:12.584,0:12:15.223
the society of ancient Egypt than our society today.

0:12:15.223,0:12:17.463
We hate visionary states in this society.

0:12:17.463,0:12:21.744
In our society, if we want to insult somebody, we call them a dreamer.

0:12:21.744,0:12:23.706
In ancient societies that was praise.

0:12:23.706,0:12:28.142
And we have erected huge apparatuses of armed burocracies

0:12:28.142,0:12:30.902
who will invade our privacy, who will break down our doors,

0:12:30.902,0:12:34.263
who will arrest us, who will send us to prison, sometimes for years,

0:12:34.263,0:12:39.223
for possessing even small quantities of Psilocybin or substances like DMT,

0:12:39.223,0:12:42.916
whether in its smokable form or in the Ayahuasca brew

0:12:42.916,0:12:46.664
and yet ironically DMT is - we now know - a natural brain hormone.

0:12:46.664,0:12:49.785
We all have it in our bodies and it's just that its function

0:12:49.785,0:12:52.347
remains unknown for lack of research.

0:12:52.347,0:12:56.584
And it's not as though our society is opposed in principle to altered states of consciousness.

0:12:56.584,0:13:04.109
I mean billions are being made by the unholy alliance of psychiatrists and big pharma

0:13:04.109,0:13:09.864
in over prescribing drugs to control so called syndromes like depression,

0:13:09.864,0:13:13.704
or attention deficit disorder in teenagers.

0:13:13.704,0:13:18.365
And we have a love affair in our society with alcohol.

0:13:18.365,0:13:24.910
We glorify this most boring of drugs at the spite that there are terrible consequences

0:13:24.910,0:13:26.580
that it often has.

0:13:26.580,0:13:30.705
And of course we love our stimulants: our tea, our coffee, our energy drinks, our sugar,

0:13:30.705,0:13:35.767
and huge industries are built around these substances,

0:13:35.767,0:13:38.863
which are valued because of the way they alter consciousness.

0:13:38.863,0:13:42.787
But what all these approved altered states of consciousness have in common

0:13:42.787,0:13:47.769
is that none of them contradict or conflict with the basic state of consciousness valued by our society,

0:13:47.769,0:13:50.445
which I would call "the alert problem solving state of consciousness",

0:13:50.445,0:13:53.822
which is good for the more mundane aspects of science.

0:13:53.822,0:13:57.865
It's good for the prosecution of warfare, it's good for commerce, it's good for politics,

0:13:57.865,0:14:03.824
but I think everybody realizes that the promise of a society over monopolistically based

0:14:03.824,0:14:06.985
upon of this state of consciousness has proved hollow.

0:14:06.985,0:14:10.757
And that this model is no longer working.

0:14:10.879,0:14:14.325
That it's broken in every possible sense that a model can be broken.

0:14:14.372,0:14:18.343
And urgently we need to find something to replace it:

0:14:18.343,0:14:25.059
the vast problems of global pollution that have resulted from the single minded pursuit of profit,

0:14:25.059,0:14:29.182
the horrors of a nuclear proliferation,

0:14:29.567,0:14:32.428
the specter of hunger

0:14:32.428,0:14:34.903
that millions every night go to bed starving.

0:14:34.980,0:14:37.282
And we can't even solve this problem

0:14:37.282,0:14:40.138
despite our alert problem solving state of consciousness.

0:14:40.138,0:14:45.899
And look what's happening in the Amazon - the lungs of our planet, this precious home of biodiversity -

0:14:45.899,0:14:51.253
the old growth rainforest being cut down and replaced with soya bean farms

0:14:51.253,0:14:54.736
so we can feed cattles so that we can all eat hamburgers.

0:14:54.736,0:15:01.933
Only a truly insane global state of consciousness could allow such an abomination to occur.

0:15:01.933,0:15:06.622
And I did a back of an envelope calculation during the Irak war.

0:15:06.622,0:15:10.179
It seems to me that 6 months expenditure on the Irak war

0:15:10.179,0:15:13.018
would have solved the problem of the Amazon forever.

0:15:13.018,0:15:16.270
Would be sufficient to compensate the peoples of the Amazon so that

0:15:16.270,0:15:19.491
no single tree ever needed to be cut down again,

0:15:19.522,0:15:22.011
to garden and look after that amazing resource.

0:15:22.011,0:15:25.955
But we can't make that decision as a global community.

0:15:25.955,0:15:28.715
We can spend countless billions on warfare,

0:15:28.715,0:15:31.509
on hatred, on fear, on suspicion, on division,

0:15:31.509,0:15:36.780
but we can't get together the collective effort to save the lungs of our planet.

0:15:36.780,0:15:38.818
And this is perhaps why

0:15:38.818,0:15:43.658
Shamans from the Amazon are now mounting a kind of reverse missionary activity.

0:15:43.658,0:15:47.941
When I've asked Shamans about the sickness of the West they say it's quite simple:

0:15:47.941,0:15:51.785
"You guys have severed your connection with spirit.

0:15:51.785,0:15:58.218
Unless you reconnect with spirit and do so soon, you're going to bring the whole house of cards

0:15:58.218,0:16:00.697
down around your heads and ours."

0:16:00.697,0:16:05.538
And rightly or wrongly they believe that Ayahuasca is the remedy for that sickness.

0:16:05.538,0:16:08.977
And many now are being called to the Amazon to drink Ayahuasca

0:16:08.977,0:16:11.461
and Ayahuasca Shamans are traveling throughout the West,

0:16:11.461,0:16:14.898
offering the brew, often under the radar, often at personal risk

0:16:14.898,0:16:17.620
to bring about consciousness change.

0:16:17.620,0:16:20.326
And it's true that the message of Ayahuasca, the universal message,

0:16:20.326,0:16:26.279
is about the sacred, magical, enchanted, infinitely precious, nature of life on Earth,

0:16:26.279,0:16:29.155
and the interdependence of material and spiritual realms.

0:16:29.155,0:16:31.339
And it's impossible to work with Ayahuasca for long,

0:16:31.339,0:16:35.103
without being deeply and profoundly affected by this message.

0:16:35.103,0:16:38.218
And lets not forget that Ayahuasca is not alone.

0:16:38.218,0:16:44.136
That it's part of an ancient worldwide system of the targeted, careful, responsible

0:16:44.136,0:16:45.737
alteration of consciousness.

0:16:45.737,0:16:51.137
It's recently been shown by scholars that the Kykeon used in the Eleusinian mysteries

0:16:51.137,0:16:54.575
in ancient Greece was almost certainly a psychedelic brew

0:16:54.575,0:17:00.061
that the Soma of the Vedas may well of been a brew based upon the Amanita muscaria mushroom.

0:17:00.061,0:17:04.774
We have the DMT in the ancient Egyptian tree of life,

0:17:04.774,0:17:08.742
we have the whole global cultures of surviving shamanism.

0:17:08.742,0:17:10.987
And what it's all about is a state of consciousness

0:17:10.987,0:17:13.297
that's designed to help us find balanced harmony.

0:17:13.297,0:17:16.900
The ancient Egyptians would have called it Maât with the Universe,

0:17:16.900,0:17:20.186
and to remain mindful that what we're here to undertake on Earth,

0:17:20.186,0:17:23.740
while immersed in matter, is fundamentally a spiritual journey

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aimed at the growth and perfection of the soul,

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a journey that may go back to the very origins of what made us human in the first place.

0:17:30.859,0:17:35.747
And I stand here invoking the hard one right of freedom of speech

0:17:35.854,0:17:40.160
to call for and demand another right to be recognized,

0:17:40.160,0:17:42.943
and that is the right of adult sovereignty over consciousness.

0:17:42.943,0:17:46.344
There's a war on consciousness in our society

0:17:46.344,0:17:49.271
and if we, as adults, are not allowed to make sovereign decisions

0:17:49.271,0:17:53.377
about what to experience with our own consciousness while doing no harm to others,

0:17:53.377,0:17:58.524
including the decision to use responsibly ancient and sacred visionary plants,

0:17:58.524,0:18:00.940
then we cannot claim to be free in any way.

0:18:00.940,0:18:05.700
And it's useless for our society to go around the world imposing our form of democracy on others

0:18:05.700,0:18:08.740
while we nourish this rot at the heart of society

0:18:08.740,0:18:12.057
and we do not allow individual freedom over the consciousness.

0:18:12.057,0:18:17.865
It may even be that we are denying ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution

0:18:17.865,0:18:20.629
by allowing the state of affairs to continue,

0:18:20.890,0:18:24.818
and who knows, perhaps our immortal destiny as well.

0:18:25.125,0:18:28.114
Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

0:18:28.468,0:18:30.407
Thank you.

0:18:30.576,0:18:36.151
Thank you.