Welcome to the Free Cities podcast. My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast
of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this episode number 154 of the Free Cities podcast,
brought to you by our wonderful sponsors of the show, Veritas Villages.
Veritas Villages are freedom-oriented energy, self-sufficient communities in Latin America
designed for people who want to enjoy peace of mind and real freedom in these uncertain times.
You can buy your property in a Veritas Village with Bitcoin and all communities use Bitcoin.
More info here, of course, www.veritasvillages.com forward slash free cities.
Everything you need to know in the show notes.
Now, you're either currently at the Free Cities Conference listening to this or more likely you're back home reminiscing about everything you did
at the world's biggest and best gathering of free city folk either way hello from me i hope you're
having a wonderful time i'm almost certain i had a wonderful time or am having a wonderful time
which brings me on to the subject of today's episode kind of not a great segue but today's
episode is a two-parter that i've been deliberately saving for this particular moment in time and
there's a strategic reason for that. Firstly, it's three and a half hours long, so it's perfect
to split into two chunks. Secondly, more importantly, conference weekend is by far the
busiest week in my calendar in the year, and as such, I have little or no time to edit podcasts.
So by splitting this one into two, I've decreased my workload considerably, and as you probably know,
I run this podcast kind of part-time I'd like to be full-time I think that's coming
but currently it's part-time and I have to balance up my other life and my other work
with being able to edit these episodes so what I've done is I've prepared part one quite easily
without a video release this week I will be releasing the video of this episode in its
entirety next week so this week you've just got an audio one and this introduction that's the only
real work I have to do so that gives me all the time in the world to completely immerse myself
in the Free Cities conference where believe it or not over the days of the conference I'm recording
four interviews a day imagine that's like eight hours of talking I will almost certainly have a
croaky voice by the end of it. Anyway, there is a third reason for splitting this into two,
and that is that I'll be recording some pretty hardcore Free Cities content in Prague. So the
next few months of content will reflect that, and I think this episode could be considered a kind of
antidote to that. It's one of the more weirder ones. Today I'm speaking with Swedish doctor
Yoni Appleberg. This is a very long conversation about health, spirituality and technology and
how to find freedom in each of these domains. I'm going to let the AI explain both parts
so you can prepare yourself. This of course is part one. In this episode we explore the
intersection of health, technology and spirituality. We discuss the evolution of medicine
from survival to longevity science, focusing on biogerontology's aim to treat aging itself
as the root of modern disease. Yoni talks about his philosophy in abundance through scarcity,
arguing that Bitcoin's provable scarcity underpins civilization's ability to build lasting abundance.
The conversation then widens into transhumanism, AI and the search for meaning, questioning whether technological progress truly enhances human happiness.
yoni shares his personal journey through ayahuasca peyote and bufo alvaria ceremonies
describing transformative experiences of death emptiness and rebirth that deepen his understanding
of the body mind spirit connection and the importance of living fully in the present
so it's one of those episodes we dive deep part two which you'll be able to listen to next week
will be somewhat more grounded as we explore the intersection of medicine consciousness and
civilization he shares how he integrates body mind awareness relaxation and holistic approaches
into his medical practice helping patients address depression ptsd and chronic pain
when traditional medicine falls short we discuss the therapeutic use of psychedelics
emphasizing intention, environment and physiological balance through lifestyle changes.
Yoni connects these healing philosophies to broader societal issues,
arguing that the fiat monetary system drives civilizational decline through short-term thinking and moral decay,
eroding culture, education and health.
we discuss immigration population collapse and the loss of cultural wisdom framing bitcoin as
a potential antidote of course a tool for restoring long-term thinking and stability
we reflect on the kardashef scale technologies role in human evolution and the timeless need
to rediscover presence meaning and authentic human connection i told you it was a big one
most definitely better to split it into two parts part one does start a bit slowly to say the least
we do meander a little in the beginning and that's really because the subject is vast that we're
speaking about anyway i'm going to be brief this week because i'm getting ready for prague packing
my stuff thank you to all our subscribers on fountain subs get all the bonus episodes as you
know and if you like extremely long form conversation like this one well there's three
and a half hours with gg the bitcoin og there's three and a half hours with jake hamilton he's an
erbit and bitcoin dev and the latest one was an interview with jack mozuko right time to get into
it you'll need to adopt a very comfortable meditative posture for this one really then
And as you do so, just sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Yoni Appleberg.
It's not like I drink a lot out of water bottles.
We have our own spring at home.
I live on a kind of farm.
Congratulations.
I mean, drinking out of a plastic bottle, the reason we do it is for convenience.
And I mean, convenience always comes at a cost.
But it is one of the low-hanging fruits if you really want to be eliminating microplastics.
But you don't reckon they're such a big deal then?
It could be.
We don't know yet.
That's the only thing we can say.
But I mean, you could say that you're arguing from first principles when you say that introducing foreign objects into the body and you find them in all kinds of tissues.
Like just recently, there was a study that came out about finding excessive amounts of microplastics in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
Small study, but it still had power.
It still had statistical significance.
But correlation does not equal causation.
There's a lot of smoke, not a lot of fire.
And so far, we have absolutely no evidence that microplastics is damaging the human physiology.
We can only see correlates, but no evidence of anything yet.
Still, it makes sense if it's not too cumbersome to just eliminate a lot of it.
The primary sources through which we absorb microplastics are actually not water bottles I think they come in second or third place
I think the first one is just being a human being in a modern society.
Really?
Yes.
Like from where though?
Where are microplastics hanging around?
I know chopping boards, but that seems like a pretty brutal example.
Yeah.
The honest answer is we don't know.
They are everywhere.
forever chemicals and microplastics are so abundant and so ubiquitous that it's like the
air we breathe now. We just cannot escape them. So that's the primary source just everywhere,
essentially, but that's not saying anything. So if we disregard that source, we are left with
clothes and water bottles as our primary sources. And those are pretty low-hanging fruits if you
just want to get rid of some microplastics. Just say bye-bye to cheap plastic clothes and water
bottles. Then the occasional use, I'm sure, is fine. I don't think this is something that we need
to worry about. There's a lot of things we can do to improve our health that doesn't involve
going the extra mile with stuff that you enjoy. If you live a life where drinking out of a water
bottle is part of your daily routine because it suits your life, your routines, I am absolutely
not going to judge you on that. And I don't think you need to worry too much about that. There's
a lot of other things that can go wrong. And we also have to remember that right now we live in
what I call the second medical paradigm.
This is actually part of my talk, my longevity talk.
So we advanced from, we have advanced from the first medical paradigm.
The first medical paradigm, this was the vast majority of human history, 99.99% of our history.
You mean, I mean, there's quite a big difference between, you know,
Stubbing your, breaking your leg as a Neanderthal and breaking your leg now.
Yes, yes, exactly.
But you call that the same paradigm?
No, no, that's a different paradigm.
Oh, right, okay.
So in the first medical paradigm, I call that survival medicine.
We had four horsemen back then, four big killers.
They were starvation, trauma, infection, and childbirth complications.
then we discovered antibiotics anesthesia we had we discovered germs germ theory and we had some
economic development and some modern sanitation this essentially addressed the root causes of
the big killers of the era of survival medicine. And that launched us in the 20th century into the
second medical paradigm where we are now. And I call this paradigm management medicine.
So with each paradigm shift in medicine, you address the root causes of the previous
horsemen, the previous big killers. And then you face new challenges.
So what we're facing now instead are things like cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, mostly Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, cancer and metabolic disorders like type 2 diabetes.
Are you saying cancer is a modern occurrence or just that we're living so long now that it shows up?
So these four horsemen, these four big killers in aggregate account for 90% of all deaths and 90% of all healthcare costs.
And cancer is a group of about 200 different illnesses that essentially have nothing in common with one another.
So when we say find a cure for cancer, that's just...
It's nonsense.
Yeah, it's nonsense.
There are about 200 different diseases.
We group them together because they look similar under the microscope, essentially.
It's about cells mutating and running amok.
The cellular internal apparatus, the cellular society is collapsing,
losing the restrictions on how the cell divides.
So it divides like fiat money, just indefinitely and uncontrollably.
That's why the cancer metaphor is such a great metaphor for the fiat system.
Anyway, so even if we were to address, let's say that we were to cure all cancers, if we were to cure all cardiovascular disease, if we were to cure all metabolic disorders,
we are still going to die from something like an infection when we reach biological
when we when we go deep into old age when we reach biological
um when we get really old and we have become fragile we don't have the resources to combat
these diseases. And if we cure Alzheimer's, well, then you're going to die of a heart attack instead.
If we cure cardiovascular disease, then you're going to die of a neurodegenerative disease.
If we cure that, you're going to die of cancer. And all of these diseases, they are
inevitable biological consequences of aging. Everybody's going to have all of these diseases,
these four horsemen of this era if they just live long enough it's an inevitable consequence
of biological aging and that's why we're now again for the second time in human history
moving into another medical paradigm and i got goosebumps just thinking about this
because now we have finally arrived at a technological state of society
where we can actually conduct research into the biology of aging,
and we can address the root cause of these four horsemen,
which is the aging cell.
So now we have a new and emerging field in medicine.
which is called biogerontology longevity medicine so what did you say bio bio gerontology bio
gerontology geron as in geriatric yes exactly gerontology i've never heard that word before
that's the that's the real term for longevity medicine and it's a new and emerging field that
is just upending an entire paradigm of modern medicine of medicine period because what we're
doing now is that we are finally addressing the root causes of the four big killers we have today,
neurodegenerative disease, cancer, metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular disease. But by
tackling the root cause, which is the aging cell, we are tackling aging itself. And here's, Tim,
here's something very, very crucial that for some reason triggers a lot of people.
Like what we're doing now, the next paradigm of medicine is about treating aging itself.
And people are countering this with like, this is going to create ageism.
And there's nothing wrong with aging.
Aging is natural.
Yeah, fair.
Aging is absolutely natural.
So is having heart attacks, cancer, and Alzheimer's and diabetes.
In fact, you are going to have all of those if you just live long enough.
It's an inevitable consequence of biological aging.
They are as natural as becoming old and frail.
Or rather, becoming old and frail is as natural as those diseases.
And what we call a disease is entirely arbitrary.
A disease is a human invention.
not the phenomenon but what we call a disease is a human invention
it wasn't until just a few decades ago that both alzheimer's and osteoporosis
were not diseases they were natural aging
but it's important to put the label disease on something that we want to treat because that
allows us to actually fund research and produce the technology that we need to treat those conditions And they basically getting old is basically aging cells That essentially it And Alzheimer is aging of the cells in your brain maybe
I don't know.
Yes, yes.
Something like that.
Yes, yes, yes.
So here's a radical notion.
Cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes,
these are not diseases.
They are symptoms of the same underlying condition.
which is the aging cell.
And the aging cell is a consequence
of about nine different diseases at the cellular level.
So now we are increasing granularity.
We are understanding the cell better.
So the human story can in a way be told
through the journey of how we understand the cell.
First, for many, many, many generations,
we did not know that we were made of cells.
Then we discovered the cell.
We realized that we were made of tiny structures called the cell.
Then we learned that they operate like societies,
that they are alive in themselves,
and they don't know about us.
and we discovered that we are vastly more of something other than ourselves
in terms of the amount of biomass that we have in our bodies.
You can look at yourself as a composite of a variety of different systems.
You have all of your bacteria, for example,
that is absolutely crucial to you being alive.
Then you have your immune system,
which is like an entirely different being than you.
It's like an entirely different being living inside of you.
It has to learn to recognize you as you.
It has to undergo a process that is done in early age in the thymus,
which is an organ just behind your chest bone.
where they learn about something called the missing self.
So any structure, any protein in the body,
any structure that has entered the body
and doesn't contain certain proteins that say,
this is the human being, this is the organism that we're protecting.
It's going to attack that.
So the immune system lives within us
and it is an entity of its own that has to learn what you are.
And then protect itself, protect the organism, and attack everything else.
Then we have the nervous system, which is maybe what we associate with the most.
But that's an entirely different being as well.
So we consist of these systems, and we have this illusion of being a coherent being.
We have this illusion of having a coherent story.
and one of the most frightening things that you can do as a person is to shatter that belief
there are there are a variety of ways of doing so i know this is a tangent on a tangent
this is this is what happens when we don't have a framework i have a proper framework
i've got an idea for a proper framework um yeah i think i'd like to hear before we go any further
I'd like to hear your personal story, which is that you're a doctor.
Yes.
You're a practicing doctor.
Yes.
What would you, we would call like a GP, a general practitioner.
Yes, yes.
I'm a GP.
It's a very unfortunate name, and this warrants some clarification
of what it means to be a GP.
A lot of people think that being a GP is something
that you become straight out of med school.
It is not.
med school is five and a half years where I study. Then you do rotations for about two years,
where you do three months of medicine, three months of surgery, three months of psychiatry,
and about half a year of primary care. Then after that, you start to specialize. And that's five
years, regardless of what you do, whether you do surgery, whether you do pediatrics, whether you do
um primary care and i went into primary care and being a specialist in primary care is a much better
term than a gp we have our primary care give me an example what primary care is so we do essentially
everything i'm trying to narrow it down okay you do everything yeah we do essentially everything
We do eyes, we do ears, nose, throat, we do neurology, we do internal medicine, we do surgery, we do psychiatry, we do pediatrics, we do geriatrics, we do gynecology.
We do essentially everything, but we do the most, like the surface level things.
Right, diagnosing and...
Diagnosing and treating. So we do the common stuff and our job is to take care of all the common stuff.
We can do quite a lot until we have to send you to an organ specialist.
So like when I send somebody to a psychiatrist, for example, it's not because that person is necessarily too challenging.
It's because we treat different diagnoses.
Most of the diagnoses in psychiatry that we treat, they don't even see.
We take care of most depression.
We take care of most PTSD.
We take care of most anxiety.
We diagnose and treat some psychosis.
Then there's some conditions that we don't treat.
We don't do OCD, for example.
We don't do severe psychosis.
We don't do therapy-resistant depression.
and we don't do the social cases that require a lot of interprofessional engagement.
And so those are the reasons where we send them off to an organ specialist,
like conditions that we just don't treat because the condition is too dangerous to be,
you need to up the level of care.
Or just stuff where it's too cumbersome, like we can't tie all the threads together.
but other than that we do most things yeah yeah but the reason that you and me are talking now is
because you also you're a bitcoiner and you wrote a book about about bitcoin i would say
yeah i haven't i honestly haven't read it myself but just from the title
it's called abundance through scarcity abundance through scarcity i'm very proud of the title
yeah it's a good title i mean can you can you first of all um because i i i straddled a two
worlds for quite a long time i think it's fair to say the world of um filmmaking and bitcoin
and i discovered it was quite difficult to keep a foot in both because one of them started meaning
less and less than less to me as i got further and further further into the other one you by the
sounds of it have straddled these two worlds let's say bitcoin and health but you appear to
have found a way to bridge the two and um i i'm quite interested to hear how that is i honestly
don't know what the thread is but i hope you're going to tell me maybe you give us a bit quick
thesis on the book first might help us understand yeah so it is it is challenging to juggle
I work like I don't know 150% as a doctor I work at two different clinics and then I'm writing and
I'm active in the big community as a speaker I'm working on a second book and all of this is
completely manageable if you just focus on staying single and having regular panic attacks
and you don't even treat panic attacks in your practice
no so the um i mean the essentially what like what i'm so proud about when it comes to abundance
through scarcity is that it manages to do a lot of things it lays out a thesis on
on how we are in a civilizational decline and going towards collapse and how bitcoin is a shield
against that and it it lays out the thesis on how we achieve abundance through scarcity
and also packed within that book there's also a lot of like cool sci-fi gems and a lot of thought
experiments about bitcoin like big picture stuff the the kind of big picture ideas about bitcoin
um that just blow my mind just philosophical aspects so if if you really want to understand Bitcoin from a fundamental perspective i suggest you don go into just the economics and the technology you need to understand the
philosophy of bitcoin to understand what this what the implications are for humanity and society
and civilization long term and that's what my bitcoin that that's what my book does in a very
accessible way so you know in a in a in a very crude way i'm just dissecting the title here
are you saying that the scarcity is bitcoin and the abundance is achieved through
integrating with bitcoin in in many levels yeah yeah so when something is provably
provably scarce uh that creates the properties to um to allow that thing to store and transmit
value reliably across time and space and it is it is a prerequisite for building value it is a
precondition for for abundance because the opposite when we have a currency abundance
we get economic scarcity
because we are diluting value.
And for this thesis to make sense
you have to understand what money is.
And money is, all forms of money
is a ledger.
It is a ledger which is a...
Who owes what to who.
Yes, exactly.
It is a collective memory system of past economic events.
So I like to look at any ledger as an abacus.
The ledger is the actual framework and then the tokens within the monetary system, those are the beads.
And that's essentially what money is.
And what money allows us to do is to coordinate the workforce, coordinate our resources.
it allows us to store and safeguard the value of our labor in a token that we can move in time and
space it is a technology that lets us cooperate across continents and generations so people who
have never met will never meet don't speak the same language come from vastly different cultures
and ideologies can work on the same project under the same collective hallucination that
money is something that works to do this. So that's why it's money is the, it is the,
it is the engine behind the evolution of culture and technology. And if we have broken money,
we're going to have broken societies, broken people. If we have sound money, we're going to
have we will be able to we have no idea how far humanity can go I suspect we can go a lot farther
than we think I think we're gonna become a card of type 3 civilization if we can prove that
um traversing space is actually possible that's essentially the only missing piece from our
physics you better explain what I think there's a lot to unpack here we were just quickly quickly
type 3 civilization
what is it what is a kardeshad
okay so is it kardeshad yeah
kardeshev kardeshev yeah so
nikolai kardeshev he was a
soviet astrophysicist that in
1964 or 68 i think
came up with the
kardeshev scale which
is a
cosmologist framework on
how to
look at other look at
a civilization how technologically
advanced they are
so and he made this a three-tiered system the the first a type one civilization it
burns plants and animals for energy um or sorry a type zero civilization burns plants and animals
for for uh their energy they take what's immediately in front of them essentially
a type one civilization that's a civilization that controls the weather controls the plate
tectonics control their planet's orbit they have access to every watt of energy that is accessible
on their on their planet so we're not even type one yeah absolutely not oh right that's a big jump
from yeah yeah yes yes yes so our type one civilization is vastly more superior than us
technologically and this is a so we are about 0.6 maybe 0.7 and you would say okay that's not a very
big leap to a type one civilization. But yeah, it's actually a logarithmic scale. So that would
mean that we would have to increase our energy output by 10,000 fold to become a type one
civilization. So not just doubling our energy production and consumption, not triple it,
not quadruple it. We have to increase it 10,000 fold to become a carter's type one civilization.
It's interesting that he invented a scale which goes a long way up.
Normally when you would create a scale, you would put human civilization at probably halfway up.
He's not.
He's putting it right down there, isn't he?
The rest of the scale goes up to here.
He's got a big mind, a big, beautiful mind.
So, okay.
A type 2 civilization is a civilization that controls all of the energy accessible in their solar system.
So they're a stellar civilization, and the Type 3 civilization controls the entire galaxy.
So they roam the galactic space lanes.
They have colonized several solar systems.
So yeah, they control an incredible amount of energy.
And it's even...
We can't even speculate what these separate beings would be.
But what would you do with that much energy?
You would create black holes.
You would possibly fight intergalactic wars with things like black hole generators and producing nebulas.
I mean, you would possibly even code different universes.
Right.
Yeah.
It makes me wonder, without jumping too far into the future, what's the point of it all?
I mean, this is a very small tangent.
I don't intend to go in here for very long, but whenever I have that conversation about the future, I have it a lot these days with kind of transhumanism and that future.
The question always is, but why?
Like, are you happy in your garden digging the ground?
And are you happy?
Are you content?
So why do you need to create?
This is such a fantastic question.
I hope you appreciate the depth of this question.
Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. Put it that way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that where we are right now, I think we are in one of the worst periods of human history.
I wouldn't want to live like 50,000 years ago. I wouldn't. I would prefer to live now because I am a coward.
I enjoy having modern medicine. I love having security. I love having being clean, being able to take a hot shower and, you know, all of these things that we have access to today.
but I'm not happier for it.
I think we were a lot happier as hunter-gatherers.
I think that when we became domesticized
by corn and grain and animals,
we were not the ones that domesticized them.
They domesticized us.
And that introduced a lot of illness and unhappiness.
And the only reason I think...
And you may counter and say, like, okay, well, as a hunter-gatherer, living in deep connection with nature, cosmos, each other, and self, and God, you didn't have...
Is that worth the cost of not having medicine, being ill and die, losing your children, and having to suffer everything that was essentially what we had in the first medical paradigm, the survival medicine paradigm?
trauma would kill you, infection would kill you, you break a leg, okay, you're done for,
you would lose your children, you would starve, your partner would have a child and she would die
in the process. Horrible, horrible things. But life is what we make of it. It is all about framing.
If you live in connection with nature and God, you have a very different relationship with death and trauma and suffering and pain.
In a way that has become, this has actually become a pathology in modern society, our relationship with death, our relationship with disease.
It has become the defining factor of how we live.
lead our lives. We are all scared. And we're scared to a degree that we are forgetting what
it even means to be human. The only reason that I still find it very valuable being on this
technological journey that we are on now is that I believe that we are going to land someplace that
is going to be truly beautiful someday in the future i believe that we're gonna build the solar
punk society where we can again be connected with god nature self other and reap the benefits
of technology that we've built to complement us rather than exploit us i'm gonna i'm gonna push
back on that in the sense that what about the idea that you you've just described a kind of
utopia that exists let's call it heaven i think many people would say that heaven is here now
i know we're jumping straight in feet first here but whatever fuck it heaven is here right now yes
yes yes right if if you're not living in heaven um it's not through want of trying because you have
access to it right now yes and if you place heaven in a future utopia you're actually locking yourself
out yes 100 right so how does that fit in with what you're saying now then i don't think that
that they are mutually exclusive i think that we can still work towards creating a better world for
for humanity and building a better society because the only constant is is change there's
never been when people talk about things being normal there is no such thing as more normal that
has never been a normal the only possibly normal state of humanity is being a hunter-gatherer
because that's what we were the longest but now being the sex organs of technology as we are
We are entering an age where things are changing so much faster because technology is now, for the first time in history, evolving past us in a sense.
We are now living in a pivotal time when technology is no longer simply an extension of who we are.
The fork is an extension of our hands.
Glasses is an extension of our eyes.
headphones microphones computer all extensions of us but now we have things like ai and a lot of
people are relying more and more on their ais to make decisions they are they are outsourcing
their cognition in a way that is not necessarily very healthy we're losing
cognitive autonomy to the robots.
We are becoming less inclined
to make our own decisions.
So we are now an extension of technology
rather than the opposite.
Or isn't AI an extension of the brain?
You were talking about glasses,
extension of the eye.
It is an extension of the brain,
but since we are now making decisions
based on what the AI is saying,
we are we are become an extension of the technology have you ever read that book um
what technology wants uh i've seen a youtube video on it i haven't read the actual book yeah
he he's you're describing something that he wrote a book around he called it the technium
the technium was the technium is the technological realm and um it's a life form
and it basically requires us to create it and um so if you track technology and i'm talking about
even sticks and you know fashioning sticks into spears one of the most important technologies
ever part of the technium right up to computers and lights and all this stuff this is all
the technium and i can't remember whether he said this in the book or not because i read it a long
time ago but since then i i think i thought these thoughts myself but who bloody knows these days
but it became apparent to me that what was actually going on was we as humans were creating
a replica of our insides on the outside and in the for it by for example the technium
is evolved into what we see now you would call it like the the brain of the planet we're all
connected we're basically creating something that is us in in our outside world and and um it seems
like it really is happening i mean people's been speaking about these kind of things for a while
that you know google was i thought it would be google you know google's taking all this data
in real time of what everyone's thinking,
typing in their searches and creating this kind of,
this being which understands us way better
than we understand ourselves.
But that was a very crude version of it
when you think about it.
And we haven't even got to the point
where technology is really embedded in us.
Right.
The transhuman aspect.
Right.
It's almost certainly, it is ahead of us.
There are no question about it.
Now, at that point, you've created the myths of most religions, which is that we are all connected and that we are all one and that we are.
But we actually are.
And this myth has come, you know, we've projected this myth out into the real world with actual real life, touchable, physical things.
I mean, like I say, I'm not sure that happens in the book.
It's just something that seems really obvious and apparent that that is what we're creating.
We are creating like God or whatever.
Like, I mean, it's a very broad word, God.
I don't really know whether.
God is a perfectly usable term.
I use it for a lot of things.
Yeah, but you don't know what I'm using it for.
That's the problem.
It's hard to communicate the word.
You have to be specific with what you mean when you use the word God.
Yeah, but we're going to go all over the place if we're not careful here.
Can we go back to, can we go back to, um, I like the, I like the transhuman story because it's an inevitable. And then also you're a, you're a doctor. So you, you probably know a lot more about it than me because you see it happening. Like you say, at the moment, glasses are a form of transhumanism. They're just sitting on your nose. I've actually had my eyes done and I've had, you know, people have plastic lenses put in their eyes.
this is a bit more down that route you know the things we have put inside us but we're the place
we're going to is for me at least is a i'm quite in two minds as to whether um it comes back to
that question again but why like sure if i want to compete with everyone else in this world i might
have to be transhuman but wait a minute what why am i can but what am i getting like what what what
drives my life am i happy to just be very simple and if that's the case there's no need for me to
to compete with everyone else to try and achieve xyz you know yeah you have to ask what what you
as an individual want what we want as as a species what our genes want what society wants
you are perfectly right in pushing back on this by asking why because we can't think that
happiness lies on the other side of an achievement it doesn't there is no happiness when you have
money there's no happiness because you get the girl there's no happiness because you get to
travel the world. There's no happiness because you get that apartment that you want. The illusion
is incredibly powerful. It's incredibly powerful. It can convince you time and time again, even if
you have proven to yourself time and time again, that no, happiness does not exist on the opposite
of an achievement, on the other side of an achievement. It just does not. And that's a
feature not a bug it's a feature not a bug because that's what dopamine is is evolutionarily designed
to do if you were perfectly content after having eaten a meal and that contentment was lasting you
would never eat again if you were perfectly content with having sex one time you were you
were happy you you found peace after you had sex and it's and it's gonna last then then our species
would die happiness is fleeting on and that's by design and when i say mean design i don't mean
intelligent design i mean design as in evolution designed it it is purposeful in the sense that it is how our species survives and the illusion that we gonna have happiness and peace on the other side of that thing that we want
it is incredibly powerful because we really want to go there that's what dopamine is do you know
what though just made me think that this all the all this modern medicine and longevity stuff it's
all about hack hacking you right and if you understand that about dopamine that it's just
there as a as a driver to get you to do stuff you can hack that away can't you really because
you know you and i know that it's an it's you could say it's unnecessary because if you are
the kind of person that doesn't really care to push boundaries do better do whatever if you
then you could just hack it hack your life and say right it's not going to have an effect on me
or I'm literally going to take a pill to suppress dopamine.
I don't know, whatever.
I think the best hack is actually a spiritual one.
And that is to realize that heaven is here right now, just as you said.
It is to realize that you are not your thoughts.
You are not your emotions.
You are not your body.
You are merely the observer.
You are the observer that watches the movie that goes on before your eyes.
You are the observer of the emotions that comes and goes as waves through your bodies.
That's your body talking to you, by the way.
Learn the language of the body.
Don't just put words on it.
Learn the language of the body.
That is one thing I encourage everybody to do.
And you are the silent observer of your thoughts, emotions, and the life that happens.
And you are not your body.
what body gives you i've radically changed my relationship with my body after an ayahuasca
experience so i had an ayahuasca people have
this tim this is incredible i i i radically changed my relationship with the body i'm not
even calling it the body anymore or my body i'm calling body i've radically changed my relationship
with body after an ayahuasca experience how long ago one just one four how long ago was that uh
december oh recently uh yeah is that the first time you've done it uh um no i've done i've done
two sessions right but i mean that but the first time that you've had it's not like you did you've
done ayahuasca for 10 years on and off and suddenly this big thing happened it was like
this was this was the big time yes i have been living with this body for this lifetime now and
i have been in disagreement with it a few times in what sense i have been mad at it angry with it
for not being able to perform as i wanted to perform in the gym for not being taller for not
being younger for not being more handsome for not being stronger and then i got my butt kicked
in a ceremony where i am okay so i might just uh tell you the story fair enough i love a good
ayahuasca story yes yes yes so my kids do as well they're really young whenever we ended up the
other day talking at the dinner table about dmt and i pulled out rick straussman's book i've got
do you know that of course the spirit molecule yes yes and i said no i'm just going to read you
some of because it's full of people's accounts of of what happens to them in a trip and because
the interesting thing is they all met different entities and stuff which is just fascinating no
matter whether they were a doctor or a hippie or a teacher or whatever everyone i think he said it
It was over 90 something percent of people came back having met an entity.
And my kids were fascinated by that.
And I could already see my middle daughter.
My eldest daughter is too scared to take psychedelics.
Fair enough.
I mean, they're 12.
I'm not saying they're going to do it now,
but I could predict from what I know about my experiences that when she's older,
she might be a bit scared.
Quite rightly so.
I think I'm probably in that point now.
I think I'm scared to take psychedelics now.
whereas my middle daughter she her eyes prick up she wants to know all about that she's very
analytical as well which doesn't normally help in those scenarios but she wants to know but wait
what you know she's like and i can see when she's older she's definitely gonna dip her toes in that
water because she's an absolute she's a traveler she's an explorer do you know what i mean yes yes
so yeah i love i do love a good a good who lose legitimate story don't don't hold back thank you
so much there there are okay so your daughter she sounds like yeah like a like a traveler as opposed
to a tourist uh at these um retreats there are always some tourists that don't know why did you
do it uh i did in sweden and um i'm not going to disclose the exact location but it was this
picture a 19th century building, like a 19th century library.
Just fantastic architecture.
And we had this huge fireplace made of stone.
I just love the environment so much.
Was it out in the countryside?
Yes, yes, yes.
Not in a nice place.
so we were about 10 12 people one shaman and three facilitators and then then the group
and we had a theme we had a theme which was healing through light and this makes much more
sense if you know what the metaphors stand for so there are two paths you can heal either either
either through darkness or through light both are equally valid and most people will choose the
path of darkness which is yeah yeah and it's perfectly fine it sounds like this game no it's
fine no it's it's actually the the the common one it's uh going to therapy taking your meds
seeing your friends going to the gym eating healthy getting sleep doing all these things
Just holding the line against psychological illness or whatever it is you're struggling with.
Just holding the line, doing what you're supposed to do.
Takes time, works, if you do it right.
Can I ask you before you go on?
What was your intention when you went there?
You were saying that you had a relationship with your body.
Presumably, you didn't know that.
No, I had no idea.
I came in with the intention to find courage to go on a path of radical self-alignment.
That's what I thought I was doing there.
Radical self-alignment.
You better even explain what that means.
So that just means choosing a life that is authentic to your deepest values.
Intentional.
Yes.
And that is super scary.
It is, if you are awake to what it means, it is one of the scariest things you can do.
that is about leaving it that is about actually breaking generational trauma it is about leaving
generations that have chosen security over over a life of excitement and doing something that
feels more authentic to you authenticity is one of the highest energies at which you can vibrate
Did you by any chance get into medicine for someone else's reasons?
Parents, you know, society, you know what I mean?
No, not necessarily.
I was nudged or rather somebody opened my eyes to it.
And I, I, but I went into it for the wrong reasons.
I went into it for status, money, all of these things.
But then I discovered that this is actually a pretty cool profession.
you get to have real conversations with people conversations uh from the get-go you get to have
real conversations with people and that's an incredible privilege you get to talk about things
that really matter matter to people you get to connect with people for real and you get to help
them and when you see the value in that that's what makes the the the whole profession uh and
And so I see a lot of colleagues, especially younger ones, who treat patients like they're just something in their calendar that they need to get out of the way.
I was there as well.
Everybody is at some point.
But I had to radically shift my relationship to my patients.
So now, whenever I have someone in front of me, I see my 10-year-old self, or I see my sister, or I see my brother, I see my mother.
and they're ailing.
And I love them for being a fellow human being And I connect with them because this is my 10 self How would I treat my 10 self And I do my best connect connect with them because this is my 10 year old self how would i treat my 10 year old self and i do my best to connect with them at a deep level is this on
account of the hosker or was that happening before no this is something i've learned through the
profession uh over time to actually make it worthwhile to survive essentially so that that
just developed organically over time. But I wasn't going into the ayahuasca ceremony because
I was on a path of radical self-alignment. I still am, and it's still scary. What that means
for me is that I believe that my primary archetype is not necessarily to be a healer,
not to be a medicine man, but it is to be a philosopher, which means I believe that I can
do more benefit for the world through writing and arranging retreats and stuff like this.
But to do that, I have to break something that's been hard-coded into me through generations,
which is to choose a life of comfort and security. And this is the job of your subconscious mind.
your subconscious mind does not want you to achieve it doesn't want you to explore it doesn't
want you to succeed it wants you to stay where you are because it recognizes that this place where
you are now even if you have anxiety even if you're depressed it wants you to stay here because
right now we are alive and that's the only thing that counts is that though your subconscious or
everyone's subconscious is i've never thought i've always felt my own subconscious is quite
positive and actually not not like that i mean we all have different algorithms we're all governed
by different algorithms and we inherit most of them and so yeah there's certainly uh an aspect
where we can say that uh our subconscious that uh that tries to put us in place is something that
comes from everybody and it's certainly a treat um a trait of our species that we want to stay put
where we are because this is where we survive and you have to overcome that and that has i know at
least in my family has been hard-coded to stay in place and don't succeed because survival and i've
also inherited uh defective monetary scripts like i have the idea that there can never be enough
money and a lot of people have that one yeah it's a common one it's the most common defective
monetary script but it's still a defective one so so yeah um radical self-alignment i thought i was
going in with this but this was not the case and i got to learn that throughout the ceremony so this
was a four-day four-day retreat where we do a lot of exercises where we um try to heal through light
rather than darkness and darkness that was this you know the common path lightness is essentially
just being or just jumping into a pool of love essentially letting god's love wash over you
and you you heal like that just instantly it's like shining a light on a shadow the shadow just
goes away immediately but but you thought you thought this was going to happen before the
experience or that's what happened no that's uh i i had no idea what we were doing in the in the
they said that this is the path we're going down no they showed us they didn't tell us they told
us that afterward that that's what we did we get we got to experience it first all right you did
yeah so we did a lot of good description of it yes it was a terrific yeah no but i mean that kind
of yes it happened like that really yeah it happened like that and it happened like that
several times. That's the power of it as well. So we did a lot of exercises and we used medicine
to facilitate the exercises. Like we used peyote, for example, which, so there are four classic
psychedelics. There's LSD, DMT, psilocybin, and mescaline. And what makes them the classic
psychedelics is that they're all agonists on the 5-HT2A receptor, a subgroup of the serotonin
receptor. So they have a mechanism of action in common. But what happens after they bind to the
receptor, agonist being that they bind to the receptor and they activate it. What happens after
that is just a biological cascade and we have no idea what happens. It's magic for all we know.
And they do it very differently because the effects of these medicines are very, very different.
so we used peyote for a few exercises this is mescaline the cactus uh cactus um by the way
one of the most the hardest uh medicines to consume i've ever encountered it's it really
does not want to be digested it makes you want to throw it goes into your mouth and it grows and
whenever it approaches approaches your esophagus it just crawls out again it does not want to go
down your belly so that was fun that may be an evolutionary adaptation to only the special only
people who really want to take it should take it something like that something like that and it it
has a very masculine energy this one uh peyote masculine it is very guiding it's it holds you
and it guides you so that was good for a few exercises um and then we did how long does peyote
last when you take it uh very very long yeah it's an entire night yeah so and then we did um
i think it was on the third day so so when you do ayahuasca you do it several days in a row
because ayahuasca is um it is a brew made of uh capi banisteriopsis which is a vine and then
the succotria viridis, which is the leaf, chacruna it's also called.
And you mix these two.
So you get a DMT component and a MAOI, a monoamino oxidase inhibitor.
And the MAO enzyme, it breaks down the DMT.
So you need the inhibitor and you build up the concentrator of that inhibitor
so you don't break down the DMT.
And DMT, there's no tolerance, and you just build up the levels over the days.
So you're working up to something, so you just have to trust the process.
And I think it was on the third day where I had one of the strangest experiences of my life.
There was four of us.
we we were going to do bufo what's that bufo alvarios is the sonoran desert toad oh you have
to lick the back if you're a homer simpson you might do that right in real life what you do is
scrape it off you crystallize it put it in a pipe
and so so this is the this is the strongest psychedelic known to science really yes stronger
than dmt then much much much stronger really yeah so it is exactly is it even possible so
it is the dmt molecule it's called 5 me o dmt what that means is that you take the dmt molecule
and you add a methyl group on carbon number five.
So for anybody who knows any bit of organic chemistry,
you have a benzene ring in the DMT molecule.
And on carbon number five, you add a methyl group, CH3,
and that makes it much more fat-soluble,
which means it goes through the blood-brain barrier
and binds to the receptor.
The brain is fat-soluble much faster.
And does it last only a few minutes like DMT?
yeah but that doesn't matter yeah in the experience could be years yeah yeah it's forever
time disappears so uh but in in in our time about 15 minutes or so um but that doesn't matter so a
good analogy between what ayahuasca and and and bufo is is that like in ayahuasca you you drink
the brew and on the final light uh when you're reaching the highest concentrations you go down
to you go towards a cliff and you peer into the abyss of your subconscious mind you peer into it
you peek over the cliff and then you back off that's that's what ayahuasca lets you do
bufo to chuck you over it kicks you in the back when you're on the edge and you have no way
you have no say dmt's a bit like that right yeah and this there's just no uh yeah you can't uh
You can't resist. There's just no way of resisting.
So what you do is you take this pipe and they help you.
They help you So you have the meditation round you have some lectures before you do some exercises so you get into the right set You have the set and setting
And this is one of the most important lessons from the 60s, those set and setting, to prevent
challenging trips.
You need to have the proper setting.
You need to be in a comfortable place with the right people and have the right lights
and be comfortable in your body.
Then you have to have the right set, the right mindset and the right intention going in.
You have to know why you're doing this.
And then you have to have the right dose and the right administration form.
And that is smoking.
And I mean, I trust them with the dose, of course.
So what you do is they come up to you.
You do one person at a time, essentially.
Or rather, you start one person at a time.
So they come up to you with the glass pipe.
They light it with like a blowtorch.
And they hold it to your lips.
And then they tell you to inhale.
and you inhale for 13 seconds.
After three seconds,
it's the most intense psychedelic experience
you've ever had.
After about seven seconds,
you're in an entirely different dimension.
And then you still have another six seconds to go
if you can even do it.
And they help you.
Well, holding it in.
Well, they like encourage you.
They tell you to keep breathing.
You still like perceive what they're saying.
And they tell you to keep inhaling, keep inhaling, just keeping you in that flow of inhaling.
And then they help you lie down.
So when it comes on very quickly, so I lie down and I just feel the world disappearing.
I can no longer see anything.
I close my eyes and there's just an explosion in my vision.
And I feel that I'm diving at the speed of light through fractals.
And this is the transportation.
And what can happen with ayahuasca is that you end up in what's called the waiting room,
where you get stuck between this world and the next.
And that can be a very uncomfortable experience.
There's none of that with Bufo.
You just go straight.
You catapult your soul into the center of the universe or something like this.
and um yeah so i'm lying there and i'm feeling my body dissolve my body's just evaporating it just
goes away and i can't move anymore and i feel like and then my memories start fading and i
no longer i don't remember my name i can still think i can still use language and i can think
coherently which is kind of weird to me i'm lying there and like i'm having thoughts but i don't have
a body. I don't have vision anymore. I don't really know who I am or what I am. I used to be
like something. I remembered that I thought that I used to be a human being, but I'm not really
sure what that is anymore. So it was a complete dissociation from everything known. And I was just
in this state of just awareness, essentially. And it was quite terrifying. It was beautiful and
terrifying at the same time.
And I was actually convinced I was dying at one point.
I was dying.
I was convinced of it.
I knew I was dying.
I felt I was dying.
And I said to myself, okay, I don't even know what I took there.
This might have all been a suicide cult for all I know.
So fine.
I'm just going to relax.
I don't want to have panic.
Have you got a family?
I do have a family.
You do?
well i don't know where you were yes they do i don't have kids on my own but i have brothers and
sisters i'm two no you don't have your own kids i don't have my own kids okay that would that would
be there would be tension inside yes yes yes yes yes but i i just thought that ah okay so i'm dying
i've had a good life if this is the end so be it i'm not gonna have a panic i want a beautiful death
i'm just gonna follow i'm just gonna relax into this there's nothing i can do anyway so i made my
peace with death at that very moment at the moment of death and then I died and
that was that was it that was it it was just nothingness and everything at once
it was just no time and all time at the same time and then I was in in something
else that I have very, I don't have the language for it. I don't even know what to say. I don't
know how to describe it. I can't describe it visually because there wasn't really anything
visually. I can't describe a sensation because there weren't really any sensations. I can't
describe an emotion. I can't really describe a state of mind either because everything was
independent. Everything that went on in that place was independent of time, place, and body.
And I think that was source. I think that is where we all come from and where we're going back to.
And I don't care if that's true or not, really. It doesn't change how I live my life.
and i i know that there is no scientific instrument to peer beyond the veil of reality
that would get us closer to what that thing is
but it keeps my life i like to have that framework that we are sort of i like gun to my head i don't
believe this. I'm trained differently. I am a human being here. But I do entertain the idea
that we are spirits that have come here. I don't know if it's by our own volition,
or if we're just something that happens in the evolution of the spirit world. It's just,
we go here sometimes to learn lessons or whatever, if this is an experiment or... I don't know what
this is, but I'm fairly certain that I am you and you are me. We are all the exact same. We are
waves of the same ocean. We are probabilistic creatures that have spontaneously come about
in a very slow process that works on a timescale that is vastly different from the fluctuations of
the quantum field that lets particles arise and disappear out of the universe.
We have sort of spontaneously come about in this field of reality in much the same way
that particles arise spontaneously out of the quantum field, but on a much, much longer
timescale to us.
It's all relative.
so yeah that that was my boof experience that that did not change my relationship with body
body was a different experience i was going to say that would i know i hear what you're saying about
you you know you don't even know whether it's real or not i've had a lot of experiences i've
had a lot of experiences with hallucinogens and psychedelics but i've also had a lot of
experiences with i lived in indonesia for nearly two years with a teacher who taught meditation and
i had more weirder and wacky experiences there than than i did with with psychedelics because
they're more obvious with psychedelics that they don't seem as real almost and they're also
i i didn't do them in those kind of scenarios as much when you do if you work with a teacher you
of a spiritual teacher you're you're very much in the zone of okay this is something i'm doing it's
not like you're taking some acid or doing this or the other or and you have a different experience
um and i can understand because i haven't done anything like that for a number of years now
and when i look back it could all have been neurons firing off in my brain for all i know
i don't really know in retrospect it could seem like it but i've got no way of proving or
disproving it right what i do know is though for example i've had a death experience i've died
i've actually died without any drugs or anything i died lying on my bed at home once and it was
that what i i've told i'm pretty sure i've told this experience once on this podcast before but
long and short of it was i was ill when i was younger not that young i was in my 20s and i
didn't even really have a bad illness I was very hot and obviously I was hallucinating quite a bit
and you know I was just lying on bed on my own and I started to as you described I just started to die
and I knew I was dying I just knew it it wasn't something that there wasn't anything to point at
it was just oh
is familiar this is me dying and as i started dying it was very natural and i thought and i
just went with it lying on my bed and then at one point my my mind kicked in and said you can't die
your mother is downstairs she's going to walk into a bedroom and find a dead son on the bed this is
ridiculous and it kind of snapped me out of it but in the meantime i'd already had the experience
and the experience taught me that death wasn't anything number one to be scared of death was
actually the same as birth right there was no difference between them it was a movement it's a
movement right okay next chapter right but but but a death from this life is a birth is a but is it
the same time it's a birth into something else so yes they're the same thing and that has i have
carried with me that that's always been around i'm i've ever since i've been much more content with
the idea that one day i may need to leave my children for example on this planet on their own
without me and that's that's cool because i i death is there's this is a process and and um but
as far as all the other stuff you know i've had a lot of crazy weird meeting beings and all this
kind of stuff without this is without a listener gems that stuff when i look back would be very
easy to say yeah it's not really real you wanted to hit you wanted to experience that you wanted to
know that they were like you know so you had a good story to tell or something so
and in a way it wasn't as profound on my life other than this the one thing which
really taught me that that death is a very normal process that's very familiar and that's absolutely
fine so you see the pathology of modern society our relationship to death is a pathology well we
we we're trying to put it off continuously for sure yes tim are you are you afraid of that
i don't think so but you'd have to put me in front of i'm almost certain that if i was
at the face of death i'd have absolutely no problem at all right what i'm what i might be
afraid of is pain right and and and leaving my children which are when you have children you
realize that there would be nothing more emotionally painful than having to say goodbye
to your own children really i i can't put any more gravitas on any pain emotional pain either them
dying or you dying but in a way you dying is even worse especially when they're young as they get
older it might be different but when they're young there is no higher in my estimation there's no
higher duty in my life than providing and protecting and guiding them so leaving them
would be horrendous and and and i would know that they would they would hate that as well
you know like when you're older you can you can think about death and you can when you're like
you know there's no kid in the history of the world at 12 whose father died said oh well he had
a good life they're not they just want their dad back and knowing that is excruciating pain if
you're if you're a grown up but then when your mother dies at age 85 or whatever you're like
she had a brilliant life i can't fault her it's sad that she's gone but she had an amazing life
stuff like that so so i'm not afraid of dying but i am afraid of what might have some experiences
around it i think because my wife currently she she she spent a bit of time as a nurse for a while
uh currently she's not but but back in her history she was for a few years she was a nurse and
she may she was the one that brought to my attention that most people die in pain
most people i actually when you look at the grand scheme of things if you die peacefully in your bed
you're you're you're you're kind of like you're lucky and i'd never thought that before i'd always
imagined that my passing will be a monumental experience of goodbye everyone it's been nice
yeah it can be but but you can orchestrate that yeah it can be yeah i mean i think you can you
can even take hallucinogens to try and do it absolutely so so the question about if you're
afraid of death it should add that's actually several questions and you nail it because it's
it's a part it's about it's about the process of dying which I think can be associated with a lot
of pain and anxiety then there's the moment of death where we actually face death and I think
that's a beautiful moment and then there's the full mo of missing saying goodbye to body saying
goodbye to family, saying goodbye to human life, to the human experience. We have, as a primary
care physician, I do a lot of palliative care as well. So I see quite a lot of deaths. And just
before this conference, I had a guy born in 92, so a young guy with a brain tumor. And
And it's just a horrible, horrible, tragic story.
Had a big family.
And we have very good technology to deal with pain,
with constipation, with retention of fluids,
with breathing, and even anxiety.
but we don't use technology for the existential crisis or questions what does it mean to leave
body what does it mean to leave the human experience we have the technology and it's
called psilocybin but we're not using it right now but we are about to we are that that's part
of the third paradigm of medicine.
Introducing these ancient medicines
and going back to that
is going to radically transform palliative care.
Can I ask you a quick question?
As a doctor,
and I think you're probably going to know the answer to this.
This is just one of those things I've known for a long time,
but I don't think I've ever checked
to see whether it's true or not.
Maybe you would know.
Is it true that when you die, your body is flooded with DMT naturally from your own brain or whatever?
Yes, yes, yes.
Flooded would maybe paint the wrong picture.
But yes, you will have a fairly large dose of DMT from your lungs and brains.
Same as when you're born as well, is it?
or is it yeah uh there are um it comes when you're born and when you die because that makes
i mean without sounding too crass that seems completely obvious that that is how that's the
vehicle that that carries you from one place to the other i mean it's a circular composition i
mean it doesn't but but that seems too obvious well it's also can it really be that that there's
this drug that you can take in real life you can smoke it and it projects you off to another
dimension and then that same drug created in your own body twice when you're born and when you die
which is the time when you travel from here to there or whatever you know yeah it's it's uh it's
almost poetic it's not even poetic it's too obvious it should be more it should be more
esoteric than that shouldn't it really isn't death mysterious and stuff it's like no there's
this drug and you inject it and it takes you to the next place that you need to go it's like
getting on a bus we don't know the purpose of it like physiologically why why that is um we can we
can of course argue that there are spiritual reasons for this happening but why we know that
the birth is also associated with the highest level of adrenaline that you'll experience
in your entire life you'll never never or the baby the baby is that right yeah you will never
have more adrenaline in your body than when you're being born i've watched all my kids come out and
they do look pretty mental and they come out and they're like,
Oh my God,
what the hell's going on?
It was really nice.
You're coming into the world.
Yeah.
Not a nice,
I never,
they don't come in with a big smile on their face.
And if they do,
they get a smack immediately from the nurse.
Exactly.
Scream and cry.
Yeah.
So,
um,
yeah,
but the,
the,
uh,
can I tell you about the ayahuasca experience?
Yeah.
I thought,
I thought that was it.
But so you did,
You did peyote, then bufo.
Yes.
And now you're moving on to ayahuasca, which is a strange order to do.
Oh, you do that as well?
You do ayahuasca every day.
They really wanted to fry your mind, didn't they?
At that particular point, there's no holding back.
You are preparing body and mind for the real experience.
You're working up to stuff.
So they would consider that the ayahuasca is the big one?
Well, it's not really about the medicine.
It's about the experiences you create with the medicine.
I also did you po I think it called which is a you have like a long pipe that they put to your nostril We have a high dose of Exactly It blows it They blow into your Yeah they essentially blow hell into your brain
Yeah.
And everything goes on fire and then you're just relaxed.
I got...
There's DMT in that and there's tobacco
and probably a few other things for a good measure.
And what that did was,
it sort of like downloaded the language of ayahuasca so i knew what i was looking for in the
actual experience later so when people do ayahuasca straight to ayahuasca do you think that they're
missing a trick not necessarily depends on the dose uh if you work with lower doses you are going
to be the one who has to do the work but you might need to understand the language of ayahuasca
to actually tap into the experience what is the language of ayahuasca exactly who knows
what i mean what i mean by that is it's like with any any uh like we call it drugs that's very
offensive to uh to a shaman or curandero because these things uh like peyote is it's a holy like
aspirin is a drug peyote is sacred so when you use these medicines uh or when you use i don't know
weed, for example, when it's the first time, you might not know what the experience is supposed to
be. So you don't really know what to even look for. So if you have a fairly small dose, but clearly
effective, even to somebody who has tolerance, you might be so oblivious to the experience because
you don't have the language of what the experience is. But once you have had it a few times, you know
exactly what to expect and you go there immediately it must be quite subtle at that point though i mean
all hallucinogens i've ever taken it was indisputable that something was happening
yeah exactly and if you add on top of that uh like the language of the experience you know you know
how to you know what to look for you know what you're going into you know the space you're
entering and that sort of aids you through the it helps you through the process so you don't have
to discover it it's kind of like you're taking a math test are you gonna have to are you gonna
try to figure out all the equations before you write the test or are you gonna know them
beforehand it just helps you with the experience um so yeah so on on my final this was on my final
night the fourth night you must have been absolutely wrecked i had no sleep for for a week
Just imagine it.
What were these four people?
How many was it?
Four of you?
Just walking around like zombies around this house.
We were 12 people doing the retreat.
We were four people doing the bufo.
So some of them didn't do the full show?
No, no, everybody didn't.
There were a few things that I didn't do as well.
Really?
There was more?
Yeah, there were more.
How many more allusogenic drugs exist?
I keep forgetting what it's called.
It's this chemical burn you do on your shoulder.
It leaves a scar.
and you just i've i've in africa once but it wasn't for that purpose i i had my skin burnt
with a with a plant but it was it was for a tattoo the tattoo lasted about six months
but it didn't give me a this gives you three dots and it's it's it's it's gonna stay with you
and the dots or the the experience did the dots probably experience as well
so you get a full-on experience with it you get a full-on experience it's mostly it's very somatic
it's very bodily you you throw up a lot you start shaking you start crying you start screaming
did no no no what's it called i can't remember what it's called whatever so yeah on on the fourth
night we had we had the fire going we had the facilitators uh playing rhythmic instruments
and music it was just a beautiful experience and I just are a very different energy coming into that
experience than I had from the other ones I felt intensely present and just talking about this right
now makes me enter that space I feel very present with you now Tim I'm it's almost like a light
psychedelic psychedelic experience I'm having right now and it's it's a wonderful sensation
these lights don't help but i mean just um off the record thank you for this experience i'm having
such a wonderful time connecting with another human being a great awake human being this uh
this means a lot to me and i love you for it uh this is a this is a beautiful beautiful moment
and I'm very appreciative of what you are creating right here yeah so the that ayahuasca experience
on the fourth night I I'm I'm closest to the fire and I'm just relying on it for rhythm and I'm
listening to their rhythm and then we and this um woman comes up to me it's it's my turn and
And she offers me the cup and I drink.
And we're doing a double dose on the fourth night.
Or I'm doing the double dose.
And I lie down.
And it takes some time to come on.
But you're still lingering from all the other stuff you've been doing.
It still lingers in your system.
So I lie down.
I put on my eye mask and just lie in the darkness,
and it just feels so expansive.
Expansive is the best word I can find for it.
It feels like you're not really in your body.
There is no pain anywhere.
Your body is just with you somehow.
But it's not like governing the experience
as it tends to do in our day-to-day life.
and here you feel like you're in this cosmos and you just have pulses through it which is
the i i feel like i felt like my my skin was the edges of the universe and there was an entire
universe inside of me and then i had everything outside of me a completely different universe
that was poking into mine and they were interacting and i was just looking at this
with the vertigo feeling just the immensity of of space and time
and and then my body dissolved and my body a body was this is this membrane between two infinities
you have an infinity going inwards there's an infinity out in space space just goes on forever
we don't know what happens it just seems to go on forever for all we know space is eternal it's
infinite in space something the human mind can't comprehend it can just be baffled by it by it
there's an equal equally big infinity inwards and your body stands in the center of that
as a membrane and that's that's a scary place to be separating these two infinities
and so when that infinity that when that membrane starts to dissolve and these two infinities merge
that's like that's like jumping out of a cliff or something um but but i i at this point i was in the
in the presence of the spirit of ayahuasca a very feminine energy you can almost call it like a woman
um and it's just pure love and you feel safe you feel taken care of
so uh when i'm in her presence i ask her what are we doing today and she says nothing i was like oh
okay do i have anything more to purge because the purging in ayahuasca for those who don't know it's
it's a very it's a very important part of the actual ceremony where you where you vomit it's
it's an anchor to the physical world and to body,
where you anchor the sensation of cleansing your body,
your mind, your soul,
and you anchor that cleansing part
by getting rid of something from your body.
It's not that the actual just puking cleans your body.
It doesn't in that case.
You're not carrying poisons
within your gastrointestinal tract.
That's not what's happening.
But what's happening is that you're anchoring a spiritual experience of cleansing with a physical one.
So it's just an anchor.
And it's an important one.
But she said, no, there's nothing to purge now.
Okay, so what are we working on?
And she said, nothing.
You've done enough.
What you need to do is just you don need to do anything We can just be here and relax and appreciate what we have the time we have together And that when the tears started coming
because I realized that this is,
I'm not going to see her for a while.
And for a lack of a better word,
she's a God and she's my best friend.
And she's everything I've missed in life.
She's the love I never had.
She is the lack of pain in my chest.
She is the comfort I never thought I could have.
And she's about to go.
So we're floating together in eternity and infinity.
And then she starts fading.
and I realized that I'm coming back to a life
that I don't even know what it is anymore.
Well, and yeah, and about body in this experience
when we talked about purging and so on,
that's when she showed me that
there's no there's no reason to punish body and that is not going to make anything better
in fact body gives you the human experience it gives you the human experience there's no
greater gift you can possibly receive and body gives me the human experience
and I've been mad at it for not being taller.
What the shit is that?
That's insane.
Body gives me the human experience
and I'm angry with it
for not being able to lift heavier in the gym.
Why?
It makes no sense.
So after that, I have incorporated
not just like a routine,
but more like a relationship with body
change my relationship with body where i talk to body where i take care of it where i caress it
and i listen to it first and first of all i i've learned i'm trying to learn the language of body
and much deeper than i ever have before so what we modern human beings do we live in our heads
we think. But body doesn't talk with thoughts. It talks with emotions. And body speaks much slower
than cognition. So the interface we have between head and body is not optimal because we have
ruined it as modern human beings, because we have moved into our heads and away from body.
so i try to spend as much time in body as possible and just see the emotions what we do today is that
we put words on the emotions to intellectualize them and that helps uh in a way because you can
sort of increase the panorama um or the spectrum of emotions that you understand cognitively
intellectually and life is not about just having uh great experiences and good feelings
a rich life is one that is has a breath and depth you want as much as many emotions and
experiences as possible and you want to have them as deeply as possible
panic attacks and anxiety fucking sucks and i've had my fair share of it
and but i'm grateful for it because there are lessons in it and they have made my life richer
I don't want a monoculture of just happiness and joy or love or peace.
I want an entire spectrum.
And I love the entire spectrum of the human experience after I changed my relationship with body.
Because it's all about the body conversing with you.
It's all about messages.
So I invite every emotion in.
I sit with it, I listen to it, and I respond to it in the way that I feel that my soul and body
deserves and needs. I'm not intellectualizing it anymore, and I'm not punishing it. I'm staying
with it. So whenever body feels panic or anxiety, I tell my body emotionally and intellectually
and with my voice, I'm with you, I'm staying with you. I'm not going to flee into my head like I
always had. I'm not going to bury myself in productivity or work. I'm with you. We take the
time that we need. We are safe and I'm going to show it to you. Here, have some calories. Let's
move. I know you like that. Let's do this on your terms. I'm with you. We are healing together.
We're just thawing the traumas that we have stored in our nervous system.
and having this relationship with body
has just radically transformed who I am as a human being
how I do life
it makes me a man that is comfortable in his own skin
it has made me into a person who knows where he's going with clarity
and has fun going there
instead of being a person that is anxious for not achieving the goals
he thought would make him happy.
That is just an illusion anyway.
It's interesting because something I spoke about earlier,
which was my experiences in Indonesia when I used to live there,
I lived with, for want of a better word, a Buddhist teacher,
and we meditated every day for over a year and a half.
And I can recount the same experiences as you,
even the what you called the um ayahuasca in java she's called nyaloro kidul and she's the
queen of the south seas and i said farewell to her one night with tears streaming down my my face
and um his we took for one and a half years he taught me to be in my body that was that was the
whole point of the whole thing we we meditated we would let go of of everything really and
the way you did that was through your body and the my biggest takeaway from that whole period
of my life which i still do now is whenever i actually remember because often the modern world
keeps you locked in here yes so much but whenever i remember or whenever it just comes naturally
all i have to do is fill my body and i'm cool everything's cool i'm relaxed it's the part of
the relaxation process but i find it very interesting that you you mentioned the you
mentioned it like that because it was all it's all the same stuff this is the opposite side of
the world this is southeast asia yes yes this is someone this was in the 1990s it's ancient
for sure yeah but but even the fact that there was a like a a lady and when she said goodbye
I had that experience when I was leaving after a year and a half.
And I knew that I wasn't going to meet her again.
And the way that he, the teacher I was with, he'd read a lot of sort of Western literature and stuff.
And the way he described this place, which is so perfect, was The Midsummer Night's Dream.
Have you, do you know The Midsummer Night's Dream?
I do not.
The book, the Shakespeare book.
Oh, the Shakespeare book.
Okay.
If you can imagine this scenario of the Midsummer Night's Dream, this place, which is very magical, the deepest part of summer, the most carefree point.
It's most Shakespearean.
Right. It was kind of one of, he said when he read about this place, he used to think of like in what you were describing as your body being the border of two infinities.
In the Javanese tradition, the South Seas are the seas to the south of Java.
And the queen of the South Seas is this lady, Nyayla Rukidul.
And the town in which I lived, which is called Surakarta, the king of Surakarta, this is ancient Javanese spiritual tradition.
He, for one either week or month each year, he used to disappear from the real world and go and live with Nyayana Rukidul in the South Sea.
That was part of his duty as the physical king of Surakarta, central Java.
And you know at the time I remember thinking all this stuff it like well I learned about it from a book first but then when i experienced it i suddenly understood a shitload of stuff about what can propel people through life on a day
basis in this kind of mythologic in this mythological realm which i know what the ayahuasca
experience is probably i think there's a difference between not using drugs and using drugs i think
in the drug experience the mythology is is less important because i think in the in the spiritual
version you use the mythology to help you travel to these places with the in the in the drug side
you just smoke the dmt and you're projected like a cannonball into this world or stuff
um but but but that it was very interesting to just make that connection there because
it made me i always thought that that experience was very localized down there but the way you've
just described it and all the things that you learned were all about exactly the same thing and
it and i've you know i've spoken to a lot of people before about even meditation and
there's different forms of the way that people choose to meditate and things like that
um but this was so obviously about bringing yourself back into the body and this is the
the the practice of our age really because all the problems reside in our body and and not in
here and we're trying to analyze them from here and trying to work with but actually um the the
issues that most people have reside in their body and the only way to address them is to for want of
a better word make friends with them which would mean feeling them feeling those things and even a
physical ailment literally a stiff neck or this or that but on the whole most people for most people
it's some form of emotional um experience held in their body that they absolutely do not want to feel
and they will do anything to not feel it the trick is when you realize what's going on all you have to
do is feel it because when you feel it it you're you're you allow it to move yes and it's and
everything changes and then it's it's really quite simple and we live in an age we live in an age of
this pandemic of people living up here yes and and as a result you've got all this drama happening
in bodies and in subconsciouses and subconsciousness and all this kind of stuff i think a
lot of people today are i i think there are quite a few people today who are ready to wake up
and break the generational trauma that has been stored in their bodies but we need courageous
people to feel that pain pain will know will not go away until it's felt correct yeah that's been my
30 years of life experience from where i've been old enough to get but it's a life hack once you
understand it it's a very simple life and that and the most important part of it is understanding
that everything passes everything passes yeah and and then it's not such a big big deal anyway but
you do have to feel it yeah and when you and feeling it is it yeah if you were if you had some
very serious childhood trauma those feelings are as real then as they will be now yes but but in
order for them to leave to move and to leave your i suppose not even it's almost like maybe not even
move it's more about accept well there is movement in the flow of different energies
throughout your body it's a perfect metaphor um it doesn't vibe with how we understand physiology
but it vibe with how we um with how we look at the body spiritually and both perspective are
equally valid they're just not very compatible all the time and same with relativity and quantum
mechanics uh both are described the universe quite well they're still not compatible because
we don't understand everything about it we don't understand how how spirituality and physiology
unify yet we might someday have you spoken to tour de mister by the way because he's he's been
through a similar journey he did it with ibogaine yeah but he had some feelings that he could not get
to the bottom of and they were they were literally he uh you know i remember i called that episode
when we spoke something like letting go of your shackles which was basically exactly what it was
it was like most people in the modern world now i don't know this most but a lot of people
have all this stuff going on inside their body which they are disconnected from
but which is driving them down a particular timeline yes and they don't know it all they
know is they just don't want to go there because it's so painful and as a result there's a lot of
chaos in the world and there's a lot and these things drive you to quite chaotic experiences
it's going to stay in your body and you're going to look away from it instead of dealing with it
yeah it's the same thing we're doing with the fiat system nobody wants to take care of it but
because it's going to be so so painful but there i think it's upon these generations that we have
now like millennials and and gen z and alpha and so on to feel a lot of that pain and hopefully
break a lot of patterns that is my hope i haven't spoken to tour the master yet uh we uh it's on
my agenda at least listen to he's done a few i think he spoke to peter mcormack about it i think
that's possibly no i heard about it so yeah but me and him we had a pretty chaotic conversation
because you know i a bit like when we started this conversation sometimes you never know where
to jump into this world and when you do it's all over the place because you're looking for a thread
You're looking for the correct thread.
This is the stable one that I can actually now climb up, you know.
And I only spoke with him for an hour or so.
But he had a very specific thing in mind when he took Ibogaine.
And, you know, Ibogaine is like the arsehole of all drugs.
It doesn't like you.
And when you hear his experience, it's the one that people that take those kind of drugs say,
yeah don't don't do it you're gonna have a bad trip you're gonna have a bad time and therefore
he did he had a 24 hours of hell where he thought that he was being you know controlled by by aliens
and stuff or whatever but the point was by the he did it twice and by the second time he had
pinpointed the feeling and he had found it and he realized what it was and that's all that that
whole experience was about was putting you back in touch with your body which is what people
doing like i i know this from i'm climb mountains especially when i was younger i used to do a lot
when you study the kind of people that solo up ridiculous mountaintops you realize they're doing
it to access emotions there's that that but it has to be such a rare this it's so difficult for
them to get to that place in their body they have to do these incredible tasks and journeys to to
to be in this position where they can actually access this,
this stuff.
And some people use drugs and some people use just life or whatever,
but really they're all about accessing things in your body.
I think at least,
you know,
and also we,
we go to these places to,
to remove blockages so that these feelings can start moving again.
Yes.
Because they tend to,
you feel it.
A lot of people who have been censored, quieted, beaten, they can have a blockage in their throat.
People who have been betrayed or abandoned can feel it in their heart.
And when we move through life, when we just walk down the street, we're going to pass signs, we're going to pass stores, we're going to pass people.
and we'll let that information just flow through us.
But some things get stuck in us as a memory, as an emotion, as a feeling,
as something that feels like it's tight in your chest or tight in your belly or tight in your throat.
And to get that energy moving again, you might sometime need a medicine or an experience.
And I found that ayahuasca did that for me.
It removed the stone that I had carried in my chest for many years.
And now my chest is free, I can breathe again.