Dr. Neal Goldsmith is a psychotherapist and author specializing in psychospiritual development. Neal Goldsmith is a popular speaker on drug policy reform and spiritual maturation, and has founded and hosted innovative workshops, salons, and conferences on psychedelic therapy, integral philosophy, governance, media, postmodern science, healing, innovation and change, and the post-modern future of society. He has curated dozens of successful conferences and cross-disciplinary “meetings of minds” for corporations as well as the psychedelic community, including the Horizons and MAPS Psychedelic Science conferences.
His book, Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development, describes the influence of psychedelics on the development of his personality theory and clinical practice.
Neal speaks with us at length on psychedelic therapy, government policy, the shift of normative thinking, and the path of human civilization. May this be the start of a mind-awakening experience. For this interview, we are joined by previous guest Evan Fowler as co-host.
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Right now. So are you hearing me OK. Yeah it sounds pretty good actually kind of a confession. So there’s always a little bit of hesitation with most interviews that we conduct anyway but like I feel like after like brushing up on some of the material I thought it was almost like this fear of actual meeting a counsellor or something like that that you know like therapy. Yeah yeah well I get that a lot. Well it’s funny because you know it’s weird because in my private life you know with friends and whatnot I’m very sort of the same in either side. So with with President we think I’m very analytical and kind of like getting into the you know concepts of things in the you know especially the big picture I’ve always been a guy who likes to think about you know the future or you know big implications for social right. Yeah it’s terrible really but they played it. I call them clients my patients because I really don’t take a clinical approach that people come to me psychologist I don’t do is like as having a medical problem or a disease that needs to be cured. It’s more like you know for me it’s more just developmental stuff like you know your childhood or whatever well that’s not that’s not that’s not our genes given disease it’s just that you know you’ve got something that you have to sort of begin to think about you know see more clearly with love or what have you. So for me it’s not political but with my clients are very much myself. I don’t use technique I don’t use method you know I’m not sitting there saying well I wonder about this and if I do I share it with them. So I like to be myself you know no matter where I am and I think anything is wrong with both groups really but I you know I don’t I’m certainly not sitting there analyzing people all time that’s that’s for sure and yours that’s your specialization that you prefer and that you lecture on is primarily the use of psychedelics in therapy and in spirit. No means right. Yeah absolutely. That’s right. I find that really interesting and I’ve had a lot of experiences with psychedelics and I’m always do YOU ARE we were doing it right now. We’re not we’re not doing an intern. OK yeah no I’m just I’m curious about you know in America you know my most of my hallucinogenic experiences have all been you know standard concert base or out of boredom. What a lot of watching movies and you know completely the opposite of the way that you suggest using them do you think that that’s like a harmful thing or that it’s just kind of misguided. Neither really I mean you know like we’ve all got different levels you know we’ve got our bodies you know we’ve got the fact that you know we live and we die and we shit and you know all that stuff and then we’ve got you know our personalities and our friendships and that level that we’ve got our intellect we’ve got a spiritual reality whatever the hell that really means. So there’s all these different levels and you know I hate when people walk around in a way you know a robe and call themselves gurus and things like that. It’s like so divorced from the real world it’s like you know like you know that’s what I’d like to make first by the way in this park of places. Exactly so don’t you want to fuck don’t you want to you know have a body you know your shit stinks just like everybody else but we want to get rid of your body and be a spirit. I mean that’s ridiculous it’s like how could that be healthy really is also creating a harem for themselves the same time well like the nothing it’s spiritual I would but why I don’t have trying to make it an anything’s projects or in the first well but you know I am human like everybody else but it’s like all different levels from a healthy mature happy has to have all those different levels kind of like developed and healthy and functioning all the same time so just like the gurus you know who put themselves up above you and teach me. Even techniques and interest in doing so it’s inherently egotistical or is this love. Likewise people who just all they do is you know fun and games and you know body and sex and stuff. Those guys you know they are really I think tapping the whole person so no I don’t think it’s harmful at all to do that stuff. Recreational is great but I mean there’s so many more levels you know like signal levels like people say when one group of Masters in Houston two gave four levels of the psychedelic experience. So there was like the sensory visual sexual colorful side of things music concerts and then there’s the psychodynamics stuff where you know you go to a concert with three friends and you’re all tripping and everybody’s looking in opposite states feeling great looking and then you look over at your friend he’s crying or something and it’s like my mother. So you know this is like the logical like creeps and you don’t want to and then the third level would be like ecological you know the planetary holistic integrated integral all that sort of stuff and then the fourth one would be white like you know somebody’s experience where you just have any of that and lose touch with your body altogether. So you know there’s all these different levels and those who kind of stay at the sensory visual sexual colorful side. It’s almost like a child who’s trying to walk through a doorway or crawl through a doorway and sees the bottles and beaded you know beaded curtain and get it all enticed with the colors of the curtains and the crystals and doesn’t really realize there’s a whole room after that. That’s all of course but you know there’s more to it than just that I think well does that lead to like do people to misdirect along this path like what you think is coloring their perception are personal not wanting that past fear usually I guess you know I mean the process psychedelics to me are like a miner’s helmet you know with that best flashlight in the forehead and ever you look it’s a luminary So you know I think that we as a species just the species. The whole life on the earth on planet on the planet have made in a way to a devil’s bargain that in order to survive better in order to live longer and live longer to procreate to have that power you know you’ve got to develop this this this frontal lobes you know the brain so that you can you know be more successful and safe but you know there’s more to it than that. Like I say so I really do like that idea of what consciousness is a thousand gift. Well yeah so that if you want to let the tribal peoples You know they all had everyone every culture other than Western civilization has incorporated visionary plants into their cosmologist in their spiritual practices and for me the reason why is because you know if you really want to live a fully healthy life it’s not just about like nuts and bolts and building buildings and having what we now end up with this perfect storm of global warming and soil depletion water depletion and overpopulation and all that crap. We see where we see where you know the frontal lobes get you if it’s on this connected to you know foundational spiritual you know the whole the bigger picture. So the tribal peoples use these plants not just for rites of passage but to reconnect to the deeper deepest deepest part of us as as life on Earth and if you don’t do that then I think you get sort of just murder on my word whatever the word is from from from the grounding the deepest part of the ground of our being and that really makes it much healthier so you can you know have the ability to you know build and construct and yet it’s grounded in a bigger sense of being integrated into something you know sweeter and holer and more more more fundamental. It’s it seems a bit you know and more when I when I reflect back on it a little you know by no means completely retired from mine exploration but you know kind of having into it that I look back on and kind of think. You’re in such a almost suggestible condition you you know pick up vibes of rooms very well and you can kind of sense people’s emotions pretty well. You’re in such a suggestible state that I mean the you know Manson used illusions to help brainwash people and you think that’s kind of what I meant by that. Do you think it’s dangerous people just kind of tossing hallucinogens in their brains without a real understanding of what it does and also like do you think. Like do you hold the surging acid and soul sithen apart from things like research chemicals or you know and I guess yeah like research chemicals are like dextromethorphan like different kinds of urgency. I guess we’re very question. Well look the Manson thing is certainly possible so I need to be given a broader sense danger. Yes You know the suggestibility point is absolute true because they some people call these things suggested germs and you know that you know if you become more malleable and you know we all know about the M.K. ultra project of the CIA in the one nine hundred fifty S. right now I want to trip what this century of when you know it’s funny because like the early work like you know after L.S.D. was discovered or created by Sandoz and then in the early forty’s they started sending it out you know to psychiatrists they call this a crack in the Vatican. Some it would mimic psychosis so you can get insight into your you know crazy patients and it would just last eight hours or so you know then. So they are suggestible their suggestibility there and the CIA wanted to explore whether they could use it as a weapon like you know spray the the enemy and then they just all like to be looking at their fingers or something and you know you have to fight so it is there is that tension danger and so use outside of a cultural context like in the tribal peoples You know they have this sort of deeply. Embedded set of ideas or curves or guidelines we call ritual and so you know that was you know and now in western civilization we really were just more and we don’t really have that deeper context to keep us in you know with safe use and actually for the master whom the Christians aren’t giving each other answered I think. Well let’s not Jews. You know religion and spirituality which to me are exact opposites. And you know religion to me is an arm of the state. It’s meant to control people’s people for the for the leaders you know so that you’re fighting their wars and pay their taxes and don’t worry about it because you get rewarded you know after that. That’s the opposite of spirituality which is the direct experience you take the plan so you know in religion you know used to be then the shaman would just take the planet and you know not that not everybody and then after a while it was like well you know maybe you shouldn’t have plenty that there’s a way for it’s kind of like a plant you know here you know so I think that there’s been this you know over time it’s moving away from the direct experience and into a thing you know control we call religion. I mean I think of it like this war lord you know you know coming up on one is horses you know into a village and finding the Shaman you know saying hey listen you know I’ve got this thing going here you know I’ll give you rubies and gold and stained glass and satin and all this great stuff and all you to do is tell these people to follow me and pay taxes and don’t worry about fighting my wars and the guy’s crazy you know I take psychedelics you can’t you can’t be certain of that so that you look at the you know this just been shot and this is what will you say you know in the gold in rupees or up with said Scherzer of you go through these the sweat. So is this co-opting of this incredible power not just of stuff like dogs but a spiritual itself you know in service of the state and to me that’s probably bogus and of religion I think it’s it’s the opposite of spirituality. What do you think that. For From your perspective would be to open let’s say are closely connected to realize the same prescription drug on the psychiatric migrant Singh was that was an intention of some of those early researchers write like they wanted to pursue bribe people L.S.D. and small minute amount would take like Prozac. Well I think they were sort of I mean what happened was the comes to discover the state is famous for saying that he took my producers of L.S.D. every day of his life for the last few decades and he lived to be over a hundred and my protesting is amazing in fact. Mike who doesn’t is something that I’m engaged in I’m a fan of. It’s funny it’s kind of like the effect of psychedelics without the you know the ordeal of psychedelics if you will because you know it takes a delicate have this magnificent trip and it’s very trying and very tiring and you know worth of course but then a day or two later you’re you’re you’re feeling I don’t know you writing in your diary or you’re in the park and so you’re feeling the good effects the refreshing clarity of psychedelics without actually you know several days later you’re not actually in the psychedelic experience. So so my production is kind of like that where you know you have that clarity and that peace of mind without you know experiencing the psychedelic trip itself as remarkable really how powerful the effect of my protesting is if you minute amounts of something that would be like say I mean if you can think of maybe two or three Dr grams as a typical or three or four Dr grams as a typical dose of mushrooms and think about taking something like one twenty fifth of that something like maybe an eight or sixteen of a gram and still having remarkable profound effects in your life after all these these drugs interact with you know many neurotransmitters but predominately serotonin which is the you know kind of like the the one that gives you sense of peace or insight. Or you know the sense of Iverson’s about her and raises your creativity and makes you feel more and you know that sense when you’re coming up on L.S.D. or really anything you know you just kind of have a heightened sense of what’s going on around you. Your ideas are more clear and in focus and then you click over that level and launch up into the universe but it didn’t really have staying in that place I like that idea. If you’re relaxed and you get clarity but before you know so much fear involved with specially in the society you know people don’t really want to see so much they’re scared to see you know it’s not integrated into society it’s outre it’s illegal you know it’s licit and considered spooky scary you know that sort of thing. So but I think once you get used to the materials after having used them for a while if you can you know breathe in the experience and understand come to trust the experience that it is an illuminating clarifying a more real in a way that in the real world if you will quote unquote real world then if you can relax into it then you want to follow all the new opens and you can see them and to the ground of your being down below the psychology down to the person you were when you were born you know before we parents are that you and created the neurotic defense mechanism we call to now it looks like a choir. It’s extra knowledge strategic really it’s an effort to get a lot of from parents and it’s compromise and it’s certainly not the truest self psychedelics what I said the tribal peoples they all had in their in their personality and religious practices accept us and look where it’s gotten us so that these things are being reintroduced through research and not just research for through spiritual things like the i Watch because our bodies that are so popular I was skipping this next year from the Amazon that contains And the truth. D.M.T. which took billions only which is not overly active years smoking or injected but if you include a beta Carli another plant that has a bit of Hartland chemical it is the better Carlene inactivates the stomach enzymes that normally breaks down the D.M.T. and make it not active orally so it becomes active orally and so interesting when you when you say to the natives I can’t remember who it was who wrote or said it was German army said it best the natives. Well how the hell did you figure out. And of all the thousands hundreds of thousands of plants in the in the Amazonian you know Parkland pharmacopoeia and all the millions of company Tauriel you know of combinations of how you can burn or scrape or boil or whatever the roots are the leaves or the flowers and how that how did you know that these two things and put them together to make sure I was experienced and I said well the mushrooms told us but they really don’t. If you take these two routes of reintroducing psychedelics to society one being the medical school research that’s being done beautifully really on post-traumatic stress disorder and using psychedelics to ease the end of my things I’ve seen people with with terminal cancer was the one route and the other being the i Watch the star monies which are spiritual sweet and religious and safe you know and you take this too. And they’ve both been incredibly fast in the research aroud is like extraordinary like this that uses M.D.M.A. you know ecstasy or Molly but pure and you may of course with the posttraumatic stress disorders people you know women who are raped by their uncle when they were two and have been to the house for twenty five years and you find you know I don’t use the word you find a cure. Yeah well then I’m sorry. Sorry go ahead. You’re breaking up on my headphones all the time interrupting you meant I’m sorry but that isn’t that it was and then originally M.D.M.A.. Purpose for her kindness to take with their patients to help them both empathize and I think I’m pretty sure I read that well or something like that so quickly so much I mean taking with your patients I guess it’s really good to empathize more in general but I leery Timothy Leary at Harvard was when he was before he was introduced to L.S.D. when he was still doing serious research and with cells. So Simon the active ingredient in magic mushrooms that he encountered in the summer before he came to Harvard when he was still doing that sort of research he did dos and the researchers did dose with they did a study at the Concord prison near Cambridge Mass and they took it with the prisoners and they would gain you know intimacy and that’s funny it wasn’t like they could be deadly thing to do like Larry in the fifty’s was a serious social sciences and so he it was part of the the the theories like Error Berne games people will play and you know the different types of you know mommy parent child you know self the different levels that people haven’t been this to these before the sixty’s really there was a lot of you know precursor thinking and kind of really very heavy I thinking before there were any hippies and Lee was part of that and what of it. One part of it was to break down the the hierarchical structure between guru or doctor or researcher and patient or client. So what he did you know ten years later we’re in the mid sixty’s early sixty’s when he was taking in a show siding with his with his with these prisoners was came out of that but I don’t really remember any research you made but I can imagine they certainly would have done it. But M.D.M.A. regionally was couples work hard work. When they made M.D.M.A. illegal in one nine hundred eighty four when when it started getting out of you know coming to the attention of the drug authorities and they have it easy clampdown and emergency schedule that schedule one of the tightest gradually where there’s no medical value. They were inundated with letters from Tampa saying you cannot take this tool away from us we are with couples you know it dissolves resentment enables them to see why they fell in love in the first place. So if you don’t want to hear. Well you know the thing about I want to make a point about Molly and ecstasy. So when I first came to call the dealers used ecstasy is the sort of trick name and you know not too bad of a description actually. And whether ecstasy got a bad rap because you may is rather difficult to make and expensive so people with you know cut it with various things like you could make you know like a small dose of L.S.D. and a small Doesn’t that I mean might fool the uninitiated into thinking they were taking you know and the makers of the maze of the facts related in that I mean which this isn’t so speedy LOL a little speedy but you know. Instead it means in large doses tend to be some agenda so you know so and so ecstasy got a bad a bad reputation after a while for being impure. So they changed and they said all right look we’re going to call it mowing now and it’s a white powder. So it’s straight from the lab you know it’s pure which is so ridiculous of course because white powder is even easier to adulterate with anything you want like wow or something so you know that I’m Ali Jalali in it and ecstasy are both supposed to be M.D.M.A. there and you know it’s nothing but that is supposed to be M.D.M.A. and it ain’t so but purity of is used clinically. So you know those two routes are different from the sixty is coming into the medical schools where they’re using with the dying or M.D.M.A. for P.T.S.D. or through the sweet and kind you know I was sick of ceremony is very very different in the sixty’s when the hippies had the acid test and they would those people if you know if it was very very oppositional between the hippies and the counterculture and so it was almost as society got dosed and so. Really freaked out and society said no no no I’ll never do it again if you can’t either. So another overtreated attack another cave in the never open up to that thing again. Yeah but after that over the decades you know the the possible researchers and you know saying all right society you know calm down take a look at this book is Take a look at this research a trueness a bad one and you try again and of course society is now trying again and it’s not so oppositional. You know the research is going incredibly well not just the P.T.S.D. work that’s what I would call it. Sure M.D.M.A. assisted secretary not M.D.M.A. itself and then all of the work with the dying which shows them God the universe you know their silly mistakes they have reproached with their strange brother and you know living their lives for the last six months of their life instead of living the deaths and it’s out of the bag. The cat is out of the bag now there’s no going back. With the Internet and all the published data psychedelics have now been reintroduced into western civilization and they will be rescheduled by the way from Schedule one where there’s no you know medical value and are addictive and all that stuff down to something else that will be prescription oriented you know to be control old kind of like oh I don’t know like I don’t know cocaine schedule two I think uses for these things but they are tightly regulated still won’t be able to are you lobbying for the source material. So I say we’re getting a little bit of a signal mess up through the internet unfortunately but I was asking you if you or your friends personally lobbying for the rescheduling efforts. Absolutely in fact the best place to read about the research and the policy change efforts is maps Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and they start to work and that organization has been raised. You know that in one nine hundred ninety the government decided they were going to allow psychedelics research again and it was a big change. But they haven’t decided to fund it again. So maps and another organization called after H E F F T E R a research organization are now raising funds from wealthy aging hit peas and rock stars and things like that and you know others the Rockefeller zero mile the power brothers is incredible have funded a lot of the psychedelics research and so are they like I mean are they alternative kind of people like going to people are they just spiral not alternative lifestyle No of course but I really do not think that means but you know I mean I was I went to a feller home in I think it’s like fifty seventh Street in Madison Avenue or something around there in New York City. It’s this huge double brownstone spectacular wealthy amazing place and I walked in the door for a meeting with one of them and it was like a business consulting firm you know magine you know lawyers and meeting rooms and stuff like that and they were working on and public good it was like no leisure of leisure and in fact yes they were working on funding and promoting psychedelics research so they are what I would call you know really enlightened people and that’s a that’s a really positive story in there are just none about rich people these days you know every time I think of these specially families like the Rockefeller’s and some of them are like croaking for ever and I think the Bush family is just this you know this long generational history of everything. Nightmarish behavior but I mean you know even that’ll really Randi you know and I think about one Ironman was very cool. I mean like this the original book Prescott Bush and all those guys were incredibly corrupt and I don’t really know the history very well so I shouldn’t align our family but you know in water in more recent you know the two Presidents Bush the Lesser in Bush the greater you know like the father you know wasn’t really so tired was a public servant I don’t know I mean he I don’t want to. Everything he did but. You know certainly Bush Jr You know I can certainly have done without in the face of the planet. Well you know Cameron about how government rights there’s a lot of there’s a lot of different ways but the conspiracy to go I wouldn’t defend everything at all but I wouldn’t at the same token you know malign everything some public servants you know just have twisted a little bit and it takes maybe a couple generations to wake up and get religion so to speak. So do you think let’s say let’s say drug enforcement and police policy. Is that what’s not doing to us as a culture especially as it relates to access to this kind of material. It’s interesting because you know the research started under Bush the first and you continued through even through Bush you know Bush the Lesser you know his administration and they kind of shut it down like twenty years ago when it was still nascent and wasn’t you know all that. There weren’t that many results yet. They could’ve said no it’s terrible it’s dangerous you know we’re going to executive order we’re going to show that they never did. So whether there’s some you know Illuminati you know cabal that decides psychedelics is a good thing or not I you know I mean I’m not sure why but nonetheless the research can change and it does kind of you know it might be you know just kind of selective thinking I don’t know but it does kind of seem odd that all of the drugs that might open your mind and give you a perspective on the lives that were constantly fed are horribly illegal. I mean when you know most drugs are illegal so it makes perfect sense though that you know why would you as a culture allow a substance that you know is basically subversive that you know breaks down the mortar between the bricks that enables people to think for themselves. You know if you’re a chicken troll why would you ever really make that available less you could maybe I don’t know. Maybe they I don’t know exactly so it will be some new wife allowed now. I don’t know I think we’re coming full circle in a way if you think of us being in a tribal setting as being at the bottom of the spiral and then you come halfway around the spiral one hundred eighty degrees you know in opposition to industrial society where you know in tribal societies you know you’re an integrated into nature but you die at thirty five from an infection and you come half way around one hundred eighty and then you’re like in industrial society you lived to be eighty seven but you totally alienated from nature. And so some people like bin Laden and Kaczynski the Unabomber would have had a school back down the spiral to a more pastoral you know older primitive existence but I think what’s happening should do is power through the alley nation and come back around full circle to the tribal you know place but one level up with our eyes open Buddhist style this time into a neo pastoralists and that’s healthy you know where you can be integrated into nature and live to be eighty five or live to be seventy five but say because you give up some of industrial medicine but you know how important that Americans in particular but people on this earth in general just learn to better discern truth from lies and to be able to accept as a dence as as it’s presented to them because it seems at this point self-deception is the cruelest and most widespread you know addiction in America at least I don’t clued sports in the religion thing you know I think that that’s just as much of a controlling too and I don’t honestly think of people who are tripping on a regular basis they wouldn’t even want sports or go to church or men brothers like I say Write that down and send it to me and I think that’s really rough. I think if anything that’s obsessive in your folks even you know relationship I’ve been getting in personally and with my clients about the idea of you know everybody is so incredibly focused on relationship and being you know happy and being in love and working on your relationship and you know there’s a great book called working on your relationship doesn’t work and it’s. So true. Because if you want things to work go look inside and take a psychedelic and go inside and coming to visual come to see and come to relaxed peace with who you are and shine like a star from the very bottom of your being a view to that from the core of you shine it out and be yourself and that everything will work. You’ll start meditating you start eating properly your relationship will improve. Not because you’re focused on the damn relationship and try to fix it which is a recipe for disaster. But because you’re focused on you and you become mature and awake and relaxed and you know clarity of vision and then you make right choices about focusing on relationships so many people do that. It’s such a mistake to if you want to good relationship focus on your individuality Yeah it’s true. And you might realize that you should’ve been in the relationship in the first place because the only reason with your luck is your money your freakin mama about it back to me that was what happened you know I was buried for more years than I really want to admit until I finally started taking psychedelics again and you know about ten years later I was getting out of my relationship and it was just you know it is such a fantastic I tell people I’m divorced and they kind of don’t know what to say you know gee I’m sorry but frankly it’s like Louis C.K. says it he says you know being of course the best thing that will ever happen to you is I don’t tell you not to get married but if you do get married do it to get divorced because like you know I did love that segment where he was saying that every year of my marriage got worse every year. Metaphors keeps getting better. If that were so so incredibly well because I think to get divorced you have to be you know wanting to see yourself clearly you have to be waking up to you know like you said your mommy issues you know projecting your childhood unresolved issues onto your poor partner you know and having them projected on you found a fourth and you got dogs sniffing and two dogs sniffing their tails in a big you know sort of challenge each other’s nature which is why I actually I have seen people who actually work. Or together in order to build a better facade for each other right. So they have a wonderful ivory tower of what their lives look like to everyone while they can have their own private and I know plenty of nice Southern Baptists. Absolutely right now there’s a way to harness that process though for help there’s a orientation I’m not a methodology if they don’t use technique you know I’ve stuck to my clients almost identically to the way of talking to you guys right now so there’s really no method but one method I do use is Imago relationship therapy itself. I know and that’s a process of with your partner coming to recognize how much you’re projecting and when you do you know it’s like they say well you know what part of say to the other in session when you do this and you do that instead of the patient the other clients or the other partner saying well I only do that because you do this the other partner like mirrors it back you know. So you as if I guess you’re right you know like you’re saying they’re doing this and the first one to feel heard is as yeah as a matter of fact you always do and goes deeper and then you know the partners are back and then the first partner says yeah I was just like my mother I don’t want to be ocean moments because once you are safe to say your stuff because your partner is not are you if you are just mirroring you then you go deeper and you finally realize and when you realize you stop pointing the finger at your partner and your partner stuff feel defensive and says Oh shit you know how can I help you. So it’s a way of gaining as that be for each other and stopping projecting and start living a mature love rather than you know an infatuation or a power struggle. You can come to a mature love relationship and I do believe that’s a wonderful technique and one a big part of that’s gonna be everybody. We all need to kind of be more honest about sexuality and you know there’s that we have these very outmoded ideas about you know you get married and you’re in love that’s the person you’re in love with and their attraction ends in many many men I know and I have done in the past as well where you you just you know you just sort of protests. He’s the only person to track give to you and you know you can play that game with her and it’s a cruel game really you know and certainly in the end you know you know always figured you know I’m sure they always figured that that was probably talking up a little bit. But that’s going to be horrific really disappointing and you know it’s there but it’s it’s life it’s human beings how we owe our oh shit you know you raise in this very challenging because you know it’s sort of like a philosophical debate between the theory that says that you don’t know when you’re young and lusty you know you just fuck off. But then later on you have a larger bigger you know relationship connections and yes you may be quite distracted it’s true but you love this person in a deeper deeper way and it’s more mature and you know you can go hand in hand you know to him to death with the same person versus you know sex at all. Do you know the books except on perhaps your book it is basically the pensive of non monogamy and polyamory and it looks through all the tribal research of the anthropologists from like the nation century and says Man they were being completely skewed by religious you know bias as in the truth is if you look unbiased at the at the cultural research even if you look at well you know we should do a logical research you’ll find that monogamy is rare as well as hen’s teeth. You know even in a species that are supposed to be monogamous like swans or something like that if you check the eggs for genetics you find out that they were you know sneaking in some genetic diversity and they were not monogamous just going to get rewarded by get bored writing about or no you know I was subject to the same fantasy I would love to think that you could be one person who’s going to love you like mommy should have loved you you know forever. But I’m afraid that intellectually I do believe in polyamory in I think monogamy is is the exception is a natural actually for it. Well I agree with the it’s just so hard to get past the jealousy stage like that’s going to be the biggest challenge to polyamory because you know like I I would say that I would be in polyamorous probably So I was being honest about my sexuality with the person I was with. But you know I’m not sure. Africa. You’re right point but instead of Ellis I mean what is jealousy really wanting to possess Ollie and be you want to be loved exclusively and with that you know unconditionally the only one who ever did that in your life if your mother were sure but yeah. And even that’s not you know the part of him you know becoming an adult and getting rid of your neurosis is coming to recognise that money was a property either and then you have to love yourself. So you know it’s jealousy thing is I think well like I said before it’s not focusing on the relationship it’s from focusing on yourself and getting rid of you know growing up basically the task of adulthood actually just is to go take a look recognize what happened when you were a baby how you were parent it and you know release it release that and take on that responsibility yourself if your parent didn’t instill good self-esteem into you by giving you the propre of love is unconditional positive regard. Do it yourself and you know develop it yourself when you do when you when you have self-esteem when you have you know when you love yourself really and then it’s more relaxed and you don’t have to have your partner you know. Basically they’re like mommy all the time you have to you know object constancy where you can let go of it and still recognize that there’s love there from your partner or inside you know for yourself you know so what do our psyches need to develop in the same way our brain hardware does mechanically. Are we all in common infancy of relationships as we try to understand how the world can stay put for help and you know I think there’s a natural template for years for development. Maturation I think that you know it’s helped by good parenting. You know when your child but if not then you have to face like this. I mean it’s like a stairway. You know you walk along the horizontal part and you hit a wall. And at first you say you know this goes on forever I’ll never get up on to the next level. But then you know you keep beating your head against the wall and you know then surely you find yourself through some miracle of of sophistication or or complexity at the next level and when you’re up on that next horizontal level looking down and what was blocking you at the lower level fell that’s obvious. So you know develop in a step wise like Piaget said you deal with developmental tasks and like math or talk about developmental psychology and Erickson to that there’s you know steps and levels that you move up to peak experience to peak awareness through you know through to maturation. So it’s difficult though I mean especially again in this culture in this society which is so I don’t know so well mechanistic and competitive and user is really you know the pope came out with this statement against a cap unbridled capitalism that capitalism itself but unbridled unrestricted. I think that that Pope you know man I wish you’d run with Bernie Sanders. He’s really went you know even with the hope so for the pope it’s it’s He’s probably the most the most populous poke their own popular pope among atheists. Like ever. If you’re really going to mar loves the pope than the guys do things well are you are just like is my brother of a different mother. You know I want to put it to you Do you believe in multiple lines like. Is that part of your. Well ideas are or I mean you know want to take you out of the ether if you don’t want to go there. We can take me anywhere I don’t know about that you know it’s hard for me to say never to anything really I mean I I am a skeptic I not really you know my logic tells me that that’s not the way it works. But you know I don’t know five hundred million Hindus going to Iraq. Yes they can but yeah I that’s sure but I believe in that it doesn’t seem to me to be consonant with my own you know cosmology and logic of the way things work. My gut logic my experience what makes sense to me but you know I’ll never say never but I’ll say around here are saying there are no I wasn’t ever but I really I don’t believe it’s true and I think there’s a lots of people who who latch on to things like channeling who is the one who had ramped up you know that was this person who told you so on so we have Brown have the normal name go on I think right. So we are as you know there’s lots of people like that and to me I think look at worst it’s incredible embarrassing scalable and best itself delusion or self-hypnosis. So but you know it’s the wisdom comes out through the writing and I turn a blind eye squint a little bit and I left the enthusiastic read it if you know because it helps them. It helps guide them into you know fickle living great like you said before about psychedelics they can be used for mind control like like Manson for example and so you know this whole idea of being of having power of being above someone else of being the teacher who grew and you know controlling people’s minds or influencing them you know why would you want to do that anyway. I mean to give people to two is well great but still the idea of having a good marriage or followers is to me and them or to help the you know relaxed you know living so as far as. You know prior life times and stuff it doesn’t really fit with my cosmetology But you know if I die and there is a heaven I do it. I’ll be if God if there was a got just as well and God says to me you fool. You know there’s of course this prior lifetimes I will humbly say sorry you know I was wrong but right now my best judgment is that that’s just like I said. Worst user is best self delusion. Not really understood the concept of going through life and trying to get through all of your problems and then shooting right back to the Kinny you kidding in the home of the same issues. Well this is really set theory about in Buddhism object you have the idea of of bardos is really kind of cool is a metaphor. So this is like you know the part of this is period where you know you can go down in an adventure you go down into a new life like going down chutes and ladders. So here’s the idea like let’s say this is a big hall way like in the Marx Brothers movie The speak or wait with doors on either side and so you know you walking down the hallway after death you know and one doorway opens up and there’s this like you know monster and it you know like you know it’s going to eat you and but you know you mellow you call you realize that there’s no monsters or that monsters are from within or whatever and you smile lovingly at the monster and so you don’t go down that should because you’ve already dealt with that shit. So the door is closed you keep walking up the pathway and then you know another story about this beautiful girl shaking your heads and you know and you say you know I got that too you know I want to more mature relationship I’ve learned that in this life no sweat. So then you keep going with something else happens like money is shown to you or something and he said yeah yeah give me that money you know. So you shoot down and have another life time where you deal with that issue. So what’s left to be developed by the time you have to many lifetimes when you finally grapple with all of these issues then you you know enter into you know God’s word in your life did you live forever I mean it’s a metaphor it’s kind of yeah. So you know it’s not out of our evolution. MARTIN The thing after that revolution goes one way or the other Muslim evolution work in reverse like those who can best take advantage of what fucking as often as possible them progeny through them. Well you know it is the devil’s bargain it got us there is this a finger like finger or frontal lobe complex those three things that Russell over the eyes of the fingers that enable you to manipulate the world and create what you think is going to be safe and so we’ve created everything a roof over my head of electricity and heat. You know wow I can live you know like I said before I can live a long life but you know it’s it is the devil’s bargain and I think the truth is to recognize that beneath the evolution there’s a core and not just for us as individuals because in fact you know if you look at the reality quote unquote the physical world if you think about even in Western science like physics quantum mechanics the time and space are really applicable in the quantum world there’s you know that wonderful experiment where they split a particle it goes up in different directions and then they have an A light a mirror at forty five degrees and the one particle bends in a ninety degree angle and the other one with no mirror event at the same moment because they’re in Tangled and like you know distance and time aren’t really factor at that level. To me that’s the underlying world of the spiritual world the one that we evolved out of well I mean we see again taking psychedelics and that is required to you know it’s more real like ground but the point being that underlying you know quantum world out of which the real world precipitates like a raindrop or two precipitate out of a class or that persist but a world which seems so real isn’t as real as the quantum world out of which you know underlying everything. Well do you see research scientist. Kind of finding tunnel vision and perspective on things around them. So repeat that question think. Well it’s like even when you’re even let’s say one theoretical physicists or astronomers or whatnot are interacting with quantum physics or these faster than light situations that you would think would create a perception that goes beyond the firm rules. Right. Like do you see them investigating further into the possibilities to psychedelic treatment or do you think that they find reinforcement along just another structure. No I see them as looking to psychedelics and spirituality very much so. Like if you think about the quantum physicists they named a lot of their particles in there and I’m an after Eastern philosophy terms and even Einstein you know was very much about you know very spiritual man and he made some wonderful statements about you know peace and love and integration and transcendence and God and religion. So you know I think that you know when you go from from primitivism or tribalism or you know the mechanistic world view into something you know more like mechanistic industrial and you know control the world hold and control everything and extract out its most active ingredients but you come full circle I think to a transcendent point of view I think that I think we’re entering into it I mean we’ve been it since the turn for the last hundred years or so we’ve been seeing and trying to integrate this extraordinary vision of the way science actually works. There’s nothing mechanistic but the deeper holistic kind of way that science works by quantum mechanics and I see lots of scientists and then of people like Francis Crick for example the co-discoverer of the structure of D.N.A. the double helix along with Watson you know famously haven’t used L.S.D.. Too well he never actually acknowledged I think or admitted that L.S.D. helped him get you know the structure of the helix but he was using Apparently L.S.D. at that period in his life and also people like processing the famous scientist was a huge advocate of marijuana so no I think that is hidden. It’s you know it’s illegal and so I think less and also you know artists and stuff they don’t want to knowledge that psychedelics contributed to their creations and they want to you know save it for their own. Well I think I’m so true that you know psychedelics aren’t this like you know weird kind of like I don’t know like a powerful weapon that you can use secretly to accomplish these goals. Psychedelics are integrated society to society. They’re about the deepest part of us. They open up a beautiful sense of whole ism and relaxed breathing and trust and love in ourselves and and you know beautiful sense of compassion and you know what could be you know wrong about that and so I think you know when you get into that sense of things I think you can’t help but you know you can’t help but influence your art and your science your relationship. That’s why the tribal peoples have them and that’s why we’re really introducing psychedelics now into western civilization. One plus you know when artists use L.S.D. in particular but I guess really any kind of I was doing create something that is you know that that isn’t lasting you know that has value I guess I’m just thinking specifically of Kim T.-Z. writing the first hundred pages of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest on L.S.D. and it’s some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read like it’s it’s so precise and so descriptive and it’s imaginative kind of explosion in these real business. Settings and you know it it feels like it’s easy being the most to keep. He was capable of being writing very good. Yeah you know I this I was like I’m just I’m just talking about T.C. You know back in like I said when Senator started sending out these drugs to every second Tristen when the CIA was doing the research they funded the research through front organizations like the Just side of Macy foundation was a funding agency for science that was fun a front for CIA money so they would do you know these these trips I may see funded scientists will do the research like at the V.A. hospital and so they do you know early primitive Roosters where they didn’t have the beautiful scent setting but they would strap you down to a psychiatric bed and inject you with L.S.D. and say we’ll see in six hours you know and lots of people had horrific experiences but lots of people had blissful ones like Allen Ginsberg the poet and Ken Casey as well and that’s when Can Casey had access to L.S.D. to write One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest because he took a job at a V.A. hospital as a nice orderly and had access to the safe that where they kept the L.S.D. and he you know introduced it to his group the pranksters who had this this spread in in the forest outside of San Francisco and a funny story is that when they decided they were going to go visit you know Leary on the East Coast nine hundred sixty four when the world was fair was in New York and so they tripped out their bus with colors and speakers and all that stuff and they started heading east and they would occasionally get stopped by a police officer and the cops had no sense there was no hippies yet they didn’t really understand what the hell was going on so they say well you know you’re a loud you’re weird and you’re all these colors and oh yeah you must be circus spoke to her that that was the way they can text to us that oh you know I love that. So now the lead story to do and I think it’s probably in that same story about when the merry pranks. When obviously Timothy Leary and when they finally got to his compound. Like you know they’re you know trying their high as hard as they can only call Larry’s people to make it this very demure and very clinical very spiritual place up and more like building their brands really you know you can stay but they can’t go on here. They’re so right and they wouldn’t see a leader we would not see Casey you know if you can you know it went down from his meditations so that was always saying originally about mind body spirit you know you know you have a body you have an intellect and you have some sort of sense of ground of integration into the larger deeper world and all those things need to be operative. And you know leery of that whole boy was getting so full of themselves this messianic you know persona. Well you know there is a funny case because obviously he was kind of out of control but that’s a good thing when you have a very controlled society. You need somebody to sacrifice themselves on the altar of of you know who is the president all the stuff for his beliefs. So I admire him in that way although certainly you know I don’t know and you know one could argue that had he stayed with the research method and stayed with the sell side in research for that matter that things might have gone very differently. There might not have been you know the counter culture wars on the surface things were good or not because you know now it’s a generation or two later and the people who were like in the dormitories the straight people who weren’t smoking and were tripping and went on to become the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration for example you know those people nonetheless had a roommate or some guy down the hall who’s tripping his brains out and is now a physician or their own attorney and you know didn’t kill them it wasn’t a devil. And that’s why the research which continues through the Bush administrations because I think the regulators it was like the regulators in the fifty’s whose basic model was the devil. People you know had it. Different model they were a little bit like nerd too. They recognize that it was going to kill you and it wasn’t a devil. And although maybe was wildly approved. Well you know it’s the data show that you know if the research is good then let it happen. You know I just want to go through this is the same as like a cultural consciousness of our presidents now using drugs and sort of being absolute models of rigidity. Yeah and I do think so and that’s a good thing I mean like things are coming full circle. You have these substances being reintroduced in society like they should have stayed all along. Maybe we need it you know. You know two thousand years of Descartes of quotation duality split between my good body so that we could get a handle on survival and be able to you know live longer I guess or what have you but you know you don’t want to harness nature you don’t want to you know you want to live in it and so I think we are coming full circle from a tribal view to an industrial view back again to a neo pastoral or a neo tribal and it’s to the benefit of the long term. After this I think that all of the stuff like global warming and starvation but I think there’s going to be human die back. I think the billions of people you know three or four or five billion people will die in the coming few decades you know twenty thirty forty years of it’s going to be a massive extinction or not extinction but die back that will be more powerful in our collective imaginations than the Black Plague is to our to us now. So the question becomes will we learn from it and will we just start to build strip malls against you know two hundred years when we start to recover or will we finally realize that growth has to be sustainable or life itself has to be sustainable to growth and development are a terrible model for how to live you know in harmony with nature and to live long and healthy lives and human being. It seems it seems like human beings need to be periodically reminded. Sarah frailty and kill ability that without direct like immediate memories of some sort of tragedy that affects them in a very personal way than I am speaking about I really don’t know if you read that article that freaked everybody out in The New Yorker I think about it but the fall line in California about how bad like a real big one would be all the way out of eastern seaboard and you know it like I mean eighty percent of the buildings there are the Western Seaboard are not ready for that at all and you know it would take generations to rebuild and get everybody back in but nobody you know we can’t deal with anything that far in the future or anything unknown at all it’s got to be tomorrow one hundred thousand or nothing. Well what do you what do you think it is as a population the scale needs of Agriculture the general violence of the scale that we can accomplish at this level like. Yeah I mean this whole idea of having massive populations on the planet. You know why do we need billions of people it’s ridiculous. Some some smaller amount everybody would live like kings you know if we only had you know one hundred million people on the planet only you know I mean a lot of nations like seeing declines in population. Let’s do it I actually had a kid at the first second I was stuffed according to like America you see the class that absolutely in Japan but I don’t think that’s from spiritual mindfulness for when they are feeling it when a decline in population in the U.S. or from birth rates that link. Yeah well let Leslie higher than it was I think one thing is that you know you don’t get into the especially in the developed nations. So so to speak developed nations you know there’s a slowing down or actually flattening or declining population which is kind of weird because if you look at the less developed nations there’s no fucking like bunnies and creating you know you know I don’t know poorer and less well educated people because. Me Education is the key to everything. The teaching people look that’s why we have culture that’s why we have rituals where we have you know books for God’s sake. You know is the hallmark of maturity to look to the bigger picture to not talking just about me me me but my family or my community or my nation or my planet my universe to take the biggest perspective to take that you know ever decreasing egocentrism and to apply it through education really inculturation to the way we steward the planet as a whole. And like I say I’m an optimist long term I think that we will eventually get that you know nail that sucker I think we will figure out how to do that and we will have a wonderful you know planetary culture that will be sustainable and I don’t know but we’re going to have dive back first you know with the care of that when the wolves are on an island and you take away the wolves the caribou are fat and happy for several generations until they you know multiply big enough to occupy the whole island and then overnight literally you know within a week all the food’s gone and then they die. So you need this you know balanced growth something not even growth you need to stay in ability and so we’ll get that message eventually and I’m confident psychedelics will help because in fact that’s what’s happening right now in some ways it’s a race between the reintroduction of psychedelics and you know global die back and global warming and things like that you know I don’t know anyone who has psychedelics a fast. They can change the diety and how much damage there will be how many more species will be gone and the science making you know unable in us to live better science that sucks in the sixty’s they had what they called the Green Revolution where they introduced you know various forms of fertilizers and stuff and in the idea that they were going to save the third world from starvation. Well all that did was unable and a generation or two to infest the world even greater even larger population. So the ultimate die back will be bigger and greater and will lose more species from the weave of life on the planet. So you know I don’t think science is the technical fix. If there was some way to develop like I did on limited energy or source of food source that was real I don’t think that would help us at all I think that would be like making so much worse because the unit will humans to infest the planet and and to you know devour resources and everything else and kill species exterminate species for another generation or two. Why is that a benefit. I think we need to. Now listen I’m not a Luddite by any stretch of science in fact my specialty work and I was a corporate work course planning was this technology and you know change management and innovation. So I’m very much interested in that process and in technology but as a fix for you know this you know the perfect storm of resource depletion and overpopulation global growth that’s not the answer. To make it easier for us to continue running things. I actually have one or two more questions. Unfortunately Evan has to get out of here right now. I haven’t I haven’t stand up comedian. They know that it’s OK to talk. I really wish I could talk to you more there because this is an extremely fascinating and all these subjects that are very very close to my heart and very interesting. Thank you so much for talking to us. Yeah my pleasure. This is man are you ready for the US in the audience you know if you want to get a hold of me. You can google me you’ll find me out there or you know my e-mail addresses goals with that Neil and L. E. mail dot com You can find my web site and your goals with dot com You know you’ll find me if you look for me. My book by the way is called Psychedelic healing the promise of in the regions for psychotherapy and spirit which will develop it and so I encourage you all to you to dip in and I’ve done a lot of public speaking a lot of it’s on the web and just you know anything you want to talk about I love to chat with with folks so I mean yeah yeah I’ll definitely seek you out. How mentally with Max you know that you actually we can sign off. Thank you so much in general and like I hope we can check in again and hopefully keep the conversation going. Yeah I would love to again this is a great pleasure I really enjoyed the conversation you guys are brilliant and so you know I love the conversation any any time you call me. Fantastic and thank you so much again and we will be back in touch and we’re already published and it’s been a blast man says as to when that when when things will be up in what I think we do have a calendar with a project or a look at up and I can email you soon as we get out of here. OK All right thank you for it. Thanks very much. It’s nice to meet you played here by you guys.
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