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>> Every night when we lay down our day and exit the familiar
world of waking consciousness, we set sail for the other
shore.
The dream world comes alive.
How did our ancient ancestors view this space?
Considered to be the oldest continuous culture
on the planet, the Aboriginals of what is now
called Australia believed that all creation was birthed
from what the West termed as the Dreaming, the creation
of the world, the origins of knowledge.
The indigenous tribes of Australia
would use shamanic ceremonies and miming
dances to enter this space, in which
all ancestors and all information was attainable.
The Westerners, who attempted to translate
the meaning of this space, called it Dream Time.
Even in the Americas, accessing the dreaming realm
was a known phenomenon among the indigenous.
>> Indigenous people of this continent are all from the same
DNA lineage.
It varies, of course.
But there is a common DNA thread of all the indigenous people.
Basically, they're all related.
And all of them had access to what we call Dream Time.
Now, Dream Time is where the humans
have access to information that exists
in interdimensional spheres.
And the way this was utilized in pre-American times
and pre-Hispanic times, before the colonization,
and the Christianization, and all
this, where they viewed this as diabolical or useless,
was that they would find individuals
that had this ability to remember their dreams
and to be aware in their dreams.
And they would group them into dreamer societies.
And they would forge a physical unity through certain dances,
through certain songs, through drumming practices.
And then they would go into the Dream Time, where
they could access visions of the future, visions of the past,
visions of other places.
>> One anomaly of the dream world is the ability
of the dreamer to engage with their own subconscious mind.
The indigenous didn't use psychological terminology.
So, they spoke not of the subconscious,
but of ancestors, animal guides, and spirits.
Psychedelic plants have been known
in shamanic cultures for thousands of years
to elicit the same effect.
However, these effects happen not within times of slumber.
Rather, the dream state enters this world of waking life.
Yet, in both methods, a great deal of therapeutic healing
may occur, if the journeyer understands
how to engage the dream, like the world
of the psychedelic trip.
Out of 30 million psychedelic-using Americans,
how many truly understand that not only can one
actively guide their own experience,
but speak with their own subconscious,
ask questions directly to it, and begin
a process of self-discovery that is
at the core of all psychological wellness?
Our dreams are known to be easily influenced
by the events that happen just beforehand, just
like psychedelic journeys.
This led to the conversation of set and setting to emerge.
In the pre-prohibition psychedelic studies,
the unpredictable nature of their effects on each person
baffled them.
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>> What's happening?
>> What-- I couldn't.
I couldn't possibly tell you.
It's here.
Can't you feel it?
This whole room, it's-- it's--
everything is in color.
And-- and I can feel the air.
>> Anthropologist and psychedelic researcher Michael
Winkelman has studied the peculiar ability
of psychedelics to amplify the expectations of not only
the volunteer, but also the researcher.
>> One of the interesting things that emerged in the early
psychiatric research on psychedelics was that very
different kinds of effects could be elicited depending upon
the orientation of the researcher.
So, in the beginning, it looked like psychedelics
produced various kinds of psychotic breakdowns.
And researchers, who looked at psychotics
with this point of view, got their participants
to have psychotic breakdowns.
Later, people started to recognize
that some people had these transcendent experiences,
mystical experiences.
And the researchers that used these substances
with that point of view had many of their participants
have various kinds of mystical unfoldings.
So, what this led to is a recognition
that there were very important set and setting
influences in the unfolding of the biological or
pharmacological effects.
>> How could set and setting influence the outcome
of scientific studies to this extent?
The phrase "set and setting" was created by Timothy Leary
during the pre-prohibition studies.
He noticed the stark contrast between psychedelic sessions
in sterile or clinical environments
and compared the results to those done in safe surroundings
with the right people.
This accounts for the setting.
The other component is the set or mindset of the individual
about to have the experience.
Those in safer and warmer feeling environments
reflected that quality in the unfolding of their journey.
Others, that were without that comfort,
typically in interrogation-style rooms,
across from analytical witnesses writing notes and remaining
emotionally detached, experienced more anxiety
and overall difficulty.
As these plants are far older than the '60s, and their use
can be traced back to 40,000-year-old cave paintings,
how were our shamanic ancestors dealing with set and setting
in their psychedelic experiences?
>> When you're dealing with a powerful psychedelic,
there are a number of elements at play.
One of them is your own internal state,
your own mental state at the time you take the psychedelic.
Another is the psychedelic itself
and how it acts on your brain.
But much more important, in a way,
is your intention when you go into that ceremony
and the setting that surrounds you, that context.
And what shamanism done properly does,
is it pays great attention to the setting in which
the psychedelic experience unfolds, to make sure
that that setting is one that will allow the experience
to emerge freely and of itself, rather than being
purely a result of the setting.
And as to set, it's very important
with shamanistic work.
And I believe it's very important--
I mean, I suppose I've drunk ayahuasca approaching 70--
60 or 70 times over the last dozen years or so.
It's very important, as well, what your own intention is
when you go into that ceremony.
It's not a good idea to just go into it as a blank slate
and say, throw me whatever you've got to throw at me.
It's a good idea to have an intention.
So, that is part of the set that you have.
Now, it doesn't mean that you'll get what you intended.
It's rightly said that what the psychedelics ultimately
give you is what you need, not what you want.
But it's a good idea to start out
with a clear plan, that I'm undertaking a journey,
and this is my purpose in this journey.
>> Just like entering the unpredictable landscape
of a dream, the psychedelic state is a journey
into the unknown.
And purpose or intention may guide or direct
what could be an extremely intense experience.
Astronauts, enduring the physical and mental training
before journeying into worlds unknown,
were also clear about why they were
going into such unpredictable territory.
Having such an intention makes the intensity of the unknown
seem purposeful and worth the risk.
However, ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna
adds a caveat to having an intention.
>> People say you should have an intent.
You should have an intent when you take psychedelics.
I think that you can have one.
If there's a specific reason why you are doing it,
then an intention is good.
But it's also perfectly legitimate
to say my intention is open.
My intention is to let the medicine teach me
what it wants me to see.
That's an intent too.
There is no right way to do it.
The right way to do it is develop
a system that works for you, that optimizes the experience
and doesn't get in the way of it, I would say.
>> The value of an intention is to give a guiding force
and a vessel for consciousness to perform within.
Not having an intention on the surface
doesn't mean that the ingestion of a psychedelic plant,
and the initiation of a mind-bending journey,
isn't directed by some inner question or purpose.
Just the decision to venture into the unknown
comes from a place deeper than the level
we make day-to-day decisions from.
It is likely that the quickest and most reliable way
to know what those drivers are is to take the leap
and enter into the mystery of our own mind.
Whether through psychedelics, shamanic rituals, or dreams,
the experiences can range from brilliant and beautiful,
to dark and frightening.
>> When many people enter into a psychedelic experience,
it's not just pretty colors and exciting feelings.
It can also be at times very difficult.
And I think that this is in large part due to the fact
that the psychedelics release the unconscious.
And they seem to force us towards an engagement
with the conflicts that we have in our life
and the repressed memories that we have about trauma.
And so, psychedelics can often bring up
a variety of different kinds of material
that's very difficult for people to accept and to figure out
how to move forward with.
But that's also the gift of the psychedelics,
is that they force us to deal with these issues
that we were otherwise able to bury into our unconscious.
>> As the psychedelic plant begins shifting
the neurochemicals in the brain and influencing the hormonal
balance of the body, transforming the perspective
of the mind and entering you into a realm of unknowns
and unpredictability, it becomes increasingly important to know
how to intelligently navigate these spaces.
>> We have grown a lot in the last 50, 60 years.
And I realize that set and setting had an almost dogmatic
energy to it.
That was all there is.
And set and setting is not enough.
That we have to incorporate skillful use of these medicines
to really achieve what we want to do with them.
And so, I like to think of set and setting
as, like, somebody has a strong intention and desire
to be an artist.
They have a beautiful canvas, perfect brushes, and paints.
But they don't know how to paint.
And so, something is missing.
And certain skill sets, like the ability to focus,
the ability to allow and surrender,
the ability to perceive inner states,
the ability to navigate these inner states,
the ability to heal from particular traumas
or explore particular concepts or problems,
these are all things that aren't static.
That they can be developed over time, using mindfulness,
using psychological skill sets.
And then also, in the experience themselves,
when you know how to use them.
In the psychedelic community, it's one of the one communities
that doesn't acknowledge this need for skill explicitly.
So, what happens is people take a passive role
in the experience.
>> A passive role is typically what most people take towards
their initial psychedelic journeys.
And the same is seen for the set and setting
that most have before sleep.
So even our dreams are guided by our passive mindset
and environmental settings.
Those new to psychedelic experiences
typically must acclimate to the new environment
and deal with their own fears and desires first.
However, once this space is not so new and overwhelming,
it must be navigated actively and intentionally.
Otherwise, the visions and the entities
encountered therein begin to steer the experience
in their own direction.
The implications of how deep these experiences can go,
how endless the psychedelic universe is,
and how intense it can be to relive forgotten moments,
are mindboggling and not quite accepted
by conventional science or medicine.
Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof
discovered that volunteers using psychedelics, or even breathing
exercises, were entering memories that go as far
back as the womb and beyond.
>> And I don't understand why, for example,
the fact that birth is such a significant trauma,
cycle trauma, doesn't get through.
I read it the other day that it was 50 years ago
when I first talked about it in an LSD conference in Amsterdam.
And I created the four stages, the four Perinatal Matrices,
as I call it, the experiences that people have
when they relive these consecutive stages of birth.
And it didn't make a dent in the official thinking.
I now have the feeling that science,
current materialistic science, no matter how sophisticated,
is naive if it does not include these hidden dimensions
of reality.
The psyche is much, much larger than the model,
the current model, of mainstream psychiatry,
which is limited to post-natal biography.
There's no recognition that the hours of birth
are a psychotrauma.
It's bizarre thinking, if you imagine.
Because we now have a lot of research
showing that prenatal experiences are very important.
So, actually we have many people who
have done psychedelics, reliving birth, having
prenatal experiences, past life experiences,
archetypal experiences.
And I became very fascinated by how much you
can do with such simple means.
>> Trauma is defined as injury or stress to someone's physical
tissues or psychological balance.
PTSD in veterans is one example of a drastic rise
in reported psychological trauma,
that psychedelic plants, with proper set and setting,
can help with.
Imagine how many cases go unreported
in people who will never know that one of the latest
treatment discoveries in science is also
one of the oldest psychological medicines known to culture.
>> I never really understood why I suffered from PTSD.
And it's only been discovered the past year or two.
Prior to that, I'd gone the Western medicine route,
and gone to psychotherapists, and done a Western medicine
model of taking a lot of synthetic drugs.
And I was on opiates for pain for about five years.
And it's really controversial.
And I don't condone this for anybody.
But it was my way to quit cold turkey.
I started with mushrooms.
The cannabis use helped.
I think that psychedelics are going
to help with all these issues going forward.
My heart just goes out to all these veterans.
That some of them, their only resource is to go to the VA.
And these doctors are just prescribing them,
like big bottles of pills.
And it used to be 32 guys a day killing themselves.
Now, it's like 52.
And, like, it kills my soul because these are my brothers.
There is a better way.
And you don't have to use synthetic drugs.
And if it helps just five guys out of those 52 not
kill themselves, please consider that.
Because you're talking to a guy who--
I lived it.
And, I mean, I did everything they said to the letter.
And it drove me in a negative feedback cycle,
where I'm lucky to be sitting here with my life.
>> Psychedelics allow us to stay with those memories,
with the physical sensations, without being fully overwhelmed
by them.
And it allows us to process deep traumas
that we wouldn't otherwise have access
to because we wouldn't be able to remember them
in a normal waking state.
>> Like remembering a dream, the insights of psychedelic
journeys can be fleeting.
And the moments when traumas resurface
are opportunities to heal and process the unique gift
and lesson that every hardship has inherent within it.
If there is no room for engagement,
the whole event would be more like a dream,
in which any decisions that are made are subconsciously driven.
Actively engaging with a psychedelic experience
is turning the dreamlike state into a lucid dream,
in which an aspect of the awakened mind
gets to make decisions and play with the new rules
in this flexible territory.
Psychedelic researcher and author David Jay Brown
wrote the book, "Dreaming Wide Awake,"
where he compares and unites the psychedelic experience
with lucid dreams.
>> Lucid dreaming is very much associated with psychedelics
because people often have lucid dreams spontaneously,
right after doing a psychedelic.
And there's a lot of similarity between lucid dreaming states
and psychedelics.
I think that I started having the lucid dreams because
of my experience with ayahuasca.
What was probably most interesting about doing
the ayahuasca and doing the lucid dreaming
was the ability to communicate with this higher intelligence
or higher part of myself.
>> Ayahuasca isn't the only plant medicine acclaimed
for its abilities to induce lucid dreaming.
Psychedelic researcher and author Chris Bennett
has found particular methods for inducing lucid dreams
using cannabis.
>> You know, one of the things that a lot of regular smokers
of cannabis, what they call chronic smokers,
report is they don't dream very much.
They have a real-- and this is, like, widely known.
And scientists trying to explain this phenomena
have suggested that this may be due to a spike in melatonin,
which is suggested by some reports
to spike as much as 4,000 times the amount of normal waking
melatonin levels.
Now, using the imperial method, just
testing substances on yourself, I've
noticed, if I wake up at about 4:00 in the morning
and smoke some cannabis and go back to bed,
I have the most intense dreams.
They're super vivid, lucid dreams.
And I attribute this to this same spike in melatonin.
I'm already into that deeper levels of sleep.
Because I've been asleep for a few hours
and just getting up for a few minutes.
Go back to sleep.
And bam, I have the most intense lucid dreams.
The type of dreams where you wake up and then
go back to sleep.
And you go back into the same dream, continuous, very vivid.
>> Most people don't realize that in a lucid dream,
you could ignore all the characters in the dream,
ignore the environment, and simply talk to the dream
itself.
You just raise your head to the sky, ask the dream questions.
And it will respond to you.
It responds to you in English.
Or it'll change the environment in some kind of way
or show you some kind of answer to your question.
And remarkably, it knows you better than you know yourself.
It really shows you amazing things.
So, that was one of the major similarities
I saw in working with these two spirits, the ayahuasca
spirit and the lucid dream spirit,
is these two spirits knew me better than I knew myself.
And I can ask them any question I want.
And they would have answers.
It was like dealing with an oracle.
>> An oracle, from antiquity, is typically a person to whom
the commoners would travel, in order to ask questions about
their future.
Just like ancient shamans, the oracle
would do the work for the commoners.
Shamans would imbibe the psychedelic plant and journey
into the next world, seeking remedies and answers
for the tribe.
Similarly, the oracle would often
inhale vapor that would alter their perception,
or throw tea leaves, or stare into a polished crystal
in order to see the coming events.
Nowadays, the trend is turning towards interdependence,
in which the commoners are taking
the shamanic quest themselves.
They imbibe their own plant medicine.
They use their own oracle decks or scrying bowls
and translate the messages themselves.
And this fits well with the similarities of psychedelics
and lucid dreams.
If you can ask your own subconscious
mind questions in the midst of a deep sleep,
who or what is the one responding?
Is it possible that psychedelics, oracles,
meditation, and all other modalities of self-development
are merely tools to engage the self that we do know of,
with the parts of ourselves we've never
been able to imagine?
>> So, the subconscious mind, when it trusts and it feels
safe, can open up big.
It can open up childhood trauma because this is
the place where it can happen.
This whole psychedelic structure that you may see,
and the colors, it seems like the neurons of the universe,
they are outside, the same as inside.
And you feel it.
You feel connected.
It's allowing.
And it's opening up.
And that's what makes it so deep.
And then at a certain moment you realize, this is all me.
It's just myself.
So, in this connection of reality that is universe,
it's me.
It's you.
It's there.
There's no judgment.
So, you're confronted with what you're doing,
with what you didn't do, with what you could have done.
And you come more and more to yourself.
>> What exactly is the self?
How would it show itself in psychedelic journeys or dreams?
And how does it communicate?
Religious, philosophical, and even scientific circles
have been attempting to explain this concept
since time immemorial.
Many of them seem convinced that their way is the one and only.
But is it possible to catch a glimpse of the self
through each of these methods, and realize
that all roads lead not to Rome, but home,
the home of the true self?
One of the benefits of psychedelic experiences
is in how they cause, for moments of humility,
a re-evaluation of the choices and actions that
led us to our traumas or illness in the first place.
But a look into our past is not the only thing that comes about
from these mind-bending plants.
There are accounts from the Old World of psychedelic journeys,
rendering people comatose or perceivably dead.
And upon returning, visions of hellish or heavenly dimensions
were recounted, even visions of the future.
>> And a large amount of the ancient world references are
involved in ingested amounts of cannabis,
which were potent enough to knock over a couple of days.
So, you would appear comatose to anybody that observed you.
But at the same time, there's obviously
a lot of mental stimulation going on from the substance
as well because the people that returned
after such experiences gave their reports of where they'd
been.
And in the Zoroastrian religion, a large part
of the religious cosmology is derived
from people ingesting bonga, a potent cannabis extract,
infused into wine.
And we see this in the stories of both Arda Wiraz
and a king known as Vishtaspa.
In Arda Wiraz's case, he drinks the seven cups
of the cannabis-infused wine.
And then he lies down.
And he comes back.
And he said that he had been to see both heaven and hell.
And Arda Wiraz's visions, these Zoroastrian visions
of heaven and hell, that's where we get the concepts of heaven
and hell from.
There was no heaven and hell in Judaism.
In the Old Testament, Samuel is raised by the Witch of Endor
from the pit of Sheol.
It's kind of a land of shadows.
So, this is like a direct experience this guy had,
ingesting the substances, went to see
the lands of the dead, where the evil were persecuted
and the righteous were rewarded.
In Vishtaspa's experience, he saw the end of time.
And the Oracle of Hystaspes, which
is a Greek version of the name Vishtaspa,
was the prototype of what became the Book of Revelation, written
along the same sort of lines, predicting
the downfall of Rome, and these types of things.
So, here we see people using very, very potent cannabis
things, with lasting visions that effected history
from ever since they happened.
>> The expanded states of consciousness brought
on by these few plants might seem exciting when the focus
remains on the visionary, creative,
and maybe even the prophetic qualities that they produce.
But it should be remembered that to reach
these states, large amounts of these substances are consumed,
which increase the intensity and unpredictability
of the journey.
Few seekers are equipped to take on such experiences
without trauma.
In fact, many psychonauts express their reservations on
whether or not just anyone should
be using these substances.
>> There's also a lot of people that these psychedelic things
were probably not appropriate for them.
And even Terence McKenna said, most people
are better off just leaving all this alone.
It's not for everybody.
People need to work on themselves.
It's not a substitute for therapy,
or family counseling, or Feng Shuiing your house,
or finding a right livelihood.
All those things are important too.
>> And this isn't for everyone.
These experiences are very powerful, very transformative.
And they stretch your consciousness.
And they're an initiation.
But without the cultural container
of how we hold people before, during,
and after these experiences, people
aren't getting the most from it.
And they've not having a long-term transformational
change.
>> The cultural container is more than just
the environmental setting, more than the mindset going
into the experience.
It's even more than having the skill sets to navigate
these deeply unfamiliar spaces.
At the heart of community-based healing,
through generations of plant medicine work, is the shaman.
This role is dedicated to those who
have had significant amount of experience with the medicine
and is familiar with how to handle crises.
Similar roles to the shaman are now
being identified for various purposes, as the guide, sitter,
or facilitator.
In the Johns Hopkins psilocybin studies,
Mary Cosimano holds specific guidelines for her role
in facilitating other people's psychedelic therapy sessions.
>> The guide's responsibility is to have a relationship with
the participant, with a volunteer.
It's really about them feeling safe, and comfortable,
and not judged.
And just being able to allow whatever experiences,
whatever comes up, whatever feelings, to express them
and to allow them.
>> This type of role responsibility is not new.
From shamans, to guides, to facilitators,
the overarching theme is that unnecessary interference
in the psychedelic journey of another
may complicate the intelligent nature
of the psychedelic experience.
The guide must keep quiet.
And only interject for safety or logistical reasons,
to allow for the journeyer to listen
to the message of the subconscious mind.
>> And it seems to be a better approach,
from both learning from studying shamans and from
the psychotherapy approach that people have been studying,
to just let the person kind of have their own experience.
And be there with them, be there in case they need you.
Be there for support, if they want to hold your hand,
if they have an experience they want to share with you.
But don't try to guide the trip.
Don't try to navigate for them.
Let them navigate themselves has been the more common wisdom
that's emerged from MAPS, and from some
of the other psychedelic schools of thought.
>> The emergence of new psychedelic research groups,
like MAPS, ICEERS, Heffter, Beckley, and more,
are focused on the approach of empowering the individual
having the experience with the skills and tools and knowledge
of how to use them in order to have a meaningful and safe
journey.
This empowerment is leading many aspirants
to realize that psychedelic plants, lucid dreaming,
meditation, dance, and many other modalities
are merely tools to access the deeper layers of reality that
lie beyond form and appearance, and contain
all the events in the past, present, and even future.
This is considered to be possible in the same way
the Aboriginals of Australia believe
the realm of the dreaming to exist beyond time and space.
So, no event, whether in the distant past or far-off future,
is truly inaccessible.
The Aboriginals believed in continuity, rather than
progress.
They believed in the way that relationships integrate
into a greater whole, rather than
isolated roles and functions.
They also believed that the land is not
to be owned because the land is what connects us all.
It is the reason we are all able to travel and explore,
to nest and find shelter, and to enjoy life's gifts.
This very land is also home to the numerous creatures
we live amongst, as well as the abundance of plant life.
And among these plants live a specific variety
that usher in visions of animal guides, ancestors,
other worldly beings, and a glimpse at the future
we are creating right now on this planet.
What can we learn from these visions that
emerge from the subconscious mind,
from the space beyond space and the time beyond time?
What can we learn from the shamanic traditions
of antiquity, and their modern revisions today?
What skills can we learn by entering
these deep layers of the self and navigating with intention?
And what lessons can we bring back to this world,
to balance the unsustainable changes happening here?
Perhaps with the support of highly informed communities,
with the highest intentions, we can
empower the masses to take responsibility
for their own healing, their own transformation, and once
and for all engage the dream.
Up next, join us as we explore the importance
and art of integrating psychedelic experiences.
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