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[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> The mind, it's our link to consciousness, our thoughts,

and as a byproduct, the expression of our soul--

that free and unfettered aspect of being human that no one else

has jurisdiction over.

But as easily as the mind expresses the depths within,

it remains easily lured into a false reality where thoughts

become the object of attention, and the source

becomes forgotten.

It is here where some scientists and philosophers believe

we have lost the true reality and, in turn,

become products of our environment and culture.

And it wasn't until scientific study partnered

with ancient rituals that they discovered

that there might be a way to reconnect the soul and the mind

more quickly and intimately.

But are these just escapist tools?

Or could they actually be a cure for the common human issue

on this planet--

the sleeping mind?

>> I don't know which half is trying to get into the other

half.

But somehow or other, I seem to be going like that.

>> Certainly you notice that there aren't these separations,

that we are not on a separate island shouting across

to somebody else and trying to hear what they're saying

and misunderstanding them.

Well, I mean that there are the colors

and the beauties-- the designs, the beautiful way

things appear.

[STATIC]

>> When it comes to drugs, please--

for yourselves, for your families,

for your future and your country--

just say no.

[APPLAUSE]

>> But what are these substances that have such a negative

social view, and how did they come into the limelight?

One specific drug that captured the hearts and minds

of scientists and young adults started

a particular investigation of the inner workings of the mind.

As World War II was ending, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman

was investigating a migraine medicine

and pulled an old vial off his shelf of LSD 25.

His accidental dosage opened his eyes to a new experience

that he wanted to share with the world,

as he believed that this substance elicited

a form of psychic loosening or opening.

Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof

believed that the psychic opening allowed experiences

to resurface that go all the way back to birth

and even pre-birth trauma.

So he was willingly among the first to experiment with LSD

to investigate what it does to the mind.

>> Then I met Robert Hoffman quite a few times.

He loved nature.

He was taking small dosages of LSD in his garden

until his death.

And he said, I see the hand of God there.

And if anybody thinks that the atoms can do it

all by themselves, they just don't know

what they are talking about.

I was trained in Czechoslovakia when we had a Marxist regime.

So I got the purest mentalistic doctrine you can imagine.

And it was clear for me during graduation that, you know,

the consciousness is the product of the neurophysiological

processes in the brain.

And when the body goes, the brain goes,

and there goes the consciousness.

And it was as simple as that.

Now, I see it very differently.

I realize we have absolutely no proof that consciousness

is generated in the brain.

Very few people realize this, including scientists.

So those are tremendous contributions

that psychedelics can bring.

>> But the psychedelic experience wasn't something new

when LSD hit the scene.

Since the late 1800s, experiments

were already being conducted on the psychedelic plants

containing mescaline and psilocybin.

Mescaline comes from the peyote and Wachuma cactus

and is used in many Native American rituals.

The Huichol mothers of Jalisco, Mexico

would introduce peyote through breast milk

and by chewing off bits and feeding them to their children.

Even the Spanish chronicler Fray Bernardino de Sahagun reports

that among the Chichimeca and Toltec peyote

was being used at least 2,000 years

before the European explorers arrived.

Archaeological artifacts were found

in a cave near the lower Pecos River region in Texas

dating back to 3700 BC.

In South America, in prehistory, the Chavin

were using the Wachuma cactus in their own religious ceremonies.

Wachuma has many different psychoactive compounds

than peyote.

So the experience is said to be slightly different.

But the sacramental use of each were both used

to connect with the Divine.

These cacti species are native to the Americas.

Psilocybin is from a class of mushrooms

and used by indigenous from nearly every continent.

In Central and North America, we see mushroom imagery

in many indigenous artifacts, such as the mushroom stones

found in Highland Guatemala, which

were used to grind mushrooms before their use.

Some images refer to the Amanita muscaria mushroom,

which isn't a classical psychedelic--

as it works on different neurotransmitter pathways--

but still is a psychoactive.

The Olmec, Toltec, and Aztec imagery

shows that the Americas once had a rich history of mushroom

appreciation before the European settlers and missionaries

resisted their use.

Imagery in Siberia among the Chukotka

appears in rock carvings.

In Hindu imagery-- such as Lakshmi holding what

appears to be mushrooms-- some have debated these images

as misidentified everyday objects.

But believers of the deep psychedelic and shamanic roots

of almost every ancient culture and religion

say that you'll even find references in the Bible.

The King James Version of Exodus 16:14

gives a description of manna that

seems very similar to mushrooms in shape and location

and even the time of day that they appear.

Even a modern look at the witch hunts

and trials shows a deep appreciation

for psychedelic and psychoactive plants

that account for their tales of flying on broomsticks

and shapeshifting into animals.

There are too many to deny that psychedelic mushroom and cactus

use were integral to many cultures worldwide.

Whatever the conquistadors of the New World were so afraid of

seems to still be present as we fast forward

to the end of the 1960s.

The revival of psychedelic appreciation among young adults

began affecting the national narrative,

and anti-drug propaganda was beginning

to lose its effectiveness.

How would the world deal with this new problem--

people attempting to dissolve the reality

constructs of culture?

What would this mean for the rest of society?

>> Psychedelics are the antidote to propaganda in some ways.

They help you develop a mindset that sees through all that.

That's the real reason they're considered dangerous, you know.

As Terence said, psychedelics make you have funny ideas.

But funny ideas are dangerous ideas, you know.

So that's the reason psychedelics

are prohibited, because they encourage

you to think for yourself.

>> You know, so the nation states act as though it's kind

of normal to have wars.

You know, go drop bombs on people, send in the troops--

it's kind of a normal thing to do.

It's not a normal thing to do at all.

It's a completely abnormal, aberrant, psychopathic thing

to do.

We shouldn't be going out there and killing other people

for some sort of weird national goal.

It's a terrible, terrible mistake that we're making.

And now, the toys of war have become so big and so huge

that they actually pose a threat to the whole future of--

to the whole future of humanity.

>> The power of psychedelic plants for perceiving higher

patterns and seeing through rhetoric led to a desperate

reaction by superpowers, shutting down the collective

memory of traditional indigenous practices and cutting off

the public from legal use.

Quickly, independent chemists were

making slightly altered compounds which

were technically not illegal.

To combat this backdoor approach,

the Analogue Act was passed, and the DEA

was granted emergency scheduling power in which they

could declare any substance illegal

and may take up to a year to decide

what schedule to class it as.

Psychedelic plants and synthesized versions

were put into Schedule I. This category proclaims

the substance is highly addictive

and has no medicinal value.

Was there any evidence for this claim, or was it a fear move?

>> The classic psychedelics have been used for millennia really,

if you think of mushrooms and peyote--

no evidence of toxicity.

If you took heroic doses, I suppose you'd

see increased blood pressure.

But in the normal doses in the studies,

you really don't see that happening.

>> There is no craving to take them.

As a matter of fact, they're anti-addictive,

you know, in the sense that you often

have to kind of screw your courage up to take them.

>> The addictive qualities of psychedelics are non-existent.

In fact, many of the psychedelic plants

are used to quit highly addictive drugs like opiates.

Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson reportedly

used LSD to quit drinking in the 1950s

at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles.

>> Classic psychedelics-- like psilocybin, LSD, mescaline--

they're not addictive.

Because they don't activate-- actually,

the reward pathways in the brain involve dopamine.

>> Psychedelic plants mimic the neurotransmitter serotonin,

and tolerance builds quickly at these receptor sites.

Even those plants that don't build tolerance still

eliminate themselves quickly and leave

behind virtually no toxicity.

They're also being shown to treat addiction rather than add

to them.

There are so many benefits coming

to light from these substances that groups

such as MAPS, Heffter, Beckley, and many others

are organizing a science-based campaign to reverse

the prohibition.

Because the evidence is clear--

they are not addictive, and they have remarkable medicinal

and therapeutic value.

So the question remains--

why are highly addictive and toxic substances in Schedule II

with widespread medicinal use, while these age-old plants--

with a safe and ceremonial history

going back many thousands of years and no evidence

to prove physiological harm--

are in Schedule I lockdown?

Is it a war on drugs or a war on the mind?

Why haven't the institutions that

make these suggestions turned back

to the original use of psychedelics, a return

to Mother Earth for answers?

>> The position that modern societies have taken

on psychedelics-- we've demonized these substances.

We've made them illegal.

We've subjected people to harsh prison

sentences if they are found and in possession of psychedelics.

This is a terrible error that is being

made in modern Western society.

We are losing contact with our fundamental roots

by doing that.

>> Indigenous people have been their stewards.

They've preserved the plants.

They've preserved the practices in a certain way.

But now all of a sudden psychedelics are going global,

you know.

And you get a phenomenon where ayahuasca is like taking

over the world, you know.

And a few years ago, mushrooms did something very similar.

>> With all psychedelic plants, the traditional shamanic use

of them nearly always includes a community and ritual setting.

[SINGING]

>> Shamanism is essentially a living tradition of alchemy

that is not seeking the stone but has found the stone.

>> A ritual simply means an arrangement of the certain

setting for certain intentions.

This would also be true, for example,

of a Native American church peyote ceremony.

They have the same kind of thing.

It's a group of people.

They know each other.

Some of them are friends.

Some of them are neighbors.

Some of them may be invited.

And they share the intentions.

And then they have the traditional songs

and invocations.

They invoke the spirits.

And that's completely different than the scientific study.

There's no psychological discussion.

It's not a modern Western system.

>> The shamanic cultures were very clear about this.

They viewed the psychedelics as instruments

that opened up the brain--

the mind-- to telepathy, to clairvoyance, to precognition,

pre-sentience.

And that ultimately it may be necessary to view

the perceptions that occur under psychedelics as our brain

basically tuning into a different channel

and receiving information that we really don't know

how to define at this point.

>> For roughly 20 years, across the world the prohibition held

firm--

no public use, no medicinal use, not even

research to back up the claims that placed these plants

in the strictest category.

The sleeping mind of the people seemingly fell deeper

into consensus trance.

It was as if the innate pattern recognition

and problem-solving faculties of human consciousness

were missing a critical ally, one

that had been with us since the dawn of modern intelligence.

It seemed that the propaganda campaign had worked.

Then in 1990, Rick Strassmann a medical researcher specialized

in psychiatry, applied for a federal grant

to give dimethyltryptamine to volunteers to simply see

what the effects might be.

>> Well, so there was a group in Germany--

which got started around the same time

or sooner than I did--

studying mescaline.

But my DMT study was the first in the US

and the first that used, you know, DMT in quite a while.

It was pretty frustrating.

I never really expected to succeed.

And you know, I don't think many people did.

>> Public opinion of any mind-altering substance tends

to evoke the belief that the experience is simply what

happens when the brain fails to function properly,

as if the default state most of us spend time in is the proper

state to operate from.

However, even if this were true, when someone's brain becomes

dysfunctional and then hours later returns to normal,

how would that individual explain the experience?

>> Well, I think the most striking part of the research--

and what I really wasn't expecting--

was the sense of reality that people returned with.

They felt the experiences were more real than real.

The importance of the feeling of more real

than real is we make our decisions based

on what we believe is real.

You know, the outside world we're assuming is real.

Our inner world is real.

And we make decisions based on reality--

inner and outer.

So if there's a state that feels more real than real,

then do we make decisions based on the information there?

>> What really is the bedrock of reality?

Is the consensus world we typically

operate from the more real one?

Is this where we'll find the universal truths

we seek to make life decisions from?

Is it the psychedelic realm that some

believe is more real than real?

Perhaps it's neither, and they're both merely reference

points, implying and pointing to the underlying universal

truths, encouraging us to engage with our own truth-seeking

impulse, our innate memory, and inner sense

of our integral place within the fabric of reality,

that we are all aspects of a singular phenomenon appearing

as independent things.

Even Taoists and Buddhists believe

that the outer visible manifestations of life

are the illusion of temporary garments cloaking

universal and unchanging principles that inform,

instruct, guide, and breathe life into all

that we experience around us.

So why do we experience the illusion at all?

What mechanisms cause us to collectively share

such a misleading perception of life and living?

Perhaps we should take a deeper look

at the physiological effects of the chemical compounds

in these plants that the government feared so much.

>> Classical psychedelics activate a type of brain

serotonin receptor called the 5-HT2A receptor.

And what that means in real terms

is the cells become more sensitive.

So what you're doing is really sort

of ramping up the ability of these cortical cells

to process information quickly and more effectively.

There is an area in the brain stem called the locus

coeruleus, the LC.

It sends projections up to the cortex

that release norepinephrine.

And the locus coeruleus has been referred to

as a novelty detector.

So normally if you look at firing in the locus coeruleus,

it fires in bursts.

So it won't do anything, and then you'll see-- dzzz, dzzz--

bursts of firing.

So what happens is psychedelics increase those bursts.

So we can imagine if those bursts correspond

to the locus coeruleus detecting some novelty,

then maybe it looks more novelty.

And I've used the analogy when people take a psychedelic

and they look at, say, a flower it's

as if they're seeing it for the first time.

So it increases the sense of novelty.

>> What would be the biological purpose of these plants causing

humans to see the world as if it's new again?

It is a well-known phenomena to be looking for something

like your keys while they're in your hand or right

in front of you, but you don't see them.

Your eyes have even spotted them,

but you don't acknowledge that you've seen them yet.

Our perception works in pattern recognition,

and this allows the world to become predictable

so we can find a rhythm to operate within.

These plants and their effect on the detection

of new information from old patterns

may be the direct cause of neurogenesis

and neuroplasticity.

It has been shown that these serotonergic plants initiate

the growth of new brain cells, as well

as new neural connections and patterns to emerge.

Let's think of this less as a causation and more

of a correlation.

Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity could

be occurring when authentic childlike

learning is happening.

The neural growth seems to happen

most in the hippocampus, which regulates emotions and is

involved in memory.

A Psymposia.com article says new studies

are showing that neurogenesis and the hippocampus activated

by psychedelics might be a part of the acquisition

of new behaviors and new pattern recognition.

With proper set, setting, and skill

these changes in the brain may likely

be why psychedelics have been so effective in treating

post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression

where other treatments have failed.

Imagine for a moment that you were just born again

or that all your memory has been put on hold,

and you're seeing the world free and clear

of cultural conditioning.

Imagine all the explanations for what this world is

and why it is the way it appears have been erased.

Imagine you take a look at the people in your neighborhood,

the animals in homes and in nature,

the health of the oceans, forests, and communities.

What questions would you begin formulating?

And what role do you play in all of this?

These are the questions one starts

asking when introduced to the world of psychedelica.

The mind begins asking broader, deeper, and more timeless

questions.

And perhaps this is what makes them so difficult

to properly name.

They allow new patterns to be recognized and new behaviors

to be adopted, where most of what the Western world calls

medicine tends to disengage or mask the symptoms while leaving

the root cause untouched.

>> And we even have another term, which is entheogens,

for usually for the weaker, the amphetamine-related

and so on, or something that awakens the God within.

I myself prefer to call them like sacred psychedelics

or sacred medicines.

Because that's what they are.

That's how the native cultures saw them,

and I think it's accurate.

>> It seems that these ancestral tribes understood the many

healing qualities of these plants.

The most profound effects seem to be

the self-reflection people go through under their influence,

the ability for these plants to confront you

with your regrets and worries.

Psychedelics help deconstruct old behavior patterns

and build newer and healthier ones

as seen from the creation of new neural pathways

and the birth of new nerve cells,

a quality long thought to be impossible shortly

after childbirth.

>> Very, very often, what the psychedelic experience will

show you is the mistakes and errors that you've made

in your life, where you have chosen the dark side rather

than the side of light.

Where you have chosen evil-- it may be very small,

may be very large-- where you have

chosen evil rather than good.

>> Psychedelics can give you insights into how to be

a better person.

It won't make you a better person.

And if you're a bad person, you may still be a bad person.

>> Some of the most skeptical and evidence-dependent

researchers speak very lucidly about a very tangible spectrum

of benefits they have personally experienced from using these

substances responsibly.

>> One of the fundamental effects of psychedelics is

to integrate material that is normally not accessible

to consciousness.

And the fundamental way in which psychedelics make this

information available is by a destabilizing of what's called

the default-mode network--

this part of the brain that integrates our sense of self,

our autobiographical memories, and our reflection

upon our lives.

So basically, what's happening under psychedelics

is a liberation of the parts of the brain--

that 80% or 90% of the brain that they say we don't use.

I mean, we use it, but we're just not able to access it.

Psychedelics give us access to that unconscious.

>> The language facility in the brain is destabilized as well.

So the combination of our self-identity and our language

being put off-balance by simply ingesting a plant

gives rise to the ineffability of the experience.

Just as we see with any mystical or spiritual experience,

words are not enough to communicate the magnitude

of the experience.

>> But the possibility has to be considered that what

the psychedelics are doing is retuning the receiver wavelike

of the brain and actually allowing us to gain access

to the radical alternative realities--

parallel dimensions.

>> We have the same situation in the television.

We would laugh if somebody would study that set

and go down to molecular level of the transistors

and the wires and would believe that this gives you

an explanation why you get a Mickey Mouse cartoon,

you know, at 7 o'clock in the evening.

>> If Stan and many researchers are correct in positing that

consciousness is not generated by the brain but tuned

into, what then are these psychedelic plants trying

to show us?

>> Across the range of the psychedelics,

you can definitely say that there is a broad range

of imagery that is common.

Not everybody will have all those images all the time.

Not everybody will agree on every single aspect of it.

But it starts off with what I refer to as entoptic

phenomena-- because they're considered as originating

in the ocular system--

where you start seeing zigzag lines, and cross

hatches, and geometrical patterns.

Sometimes fantastically complex and elaborated mandalas

appear in the geometry.

Then there tends to be the sense of passing

through a vortex of some kind into a seamlessly

convincing parallel universe.

>> Is this the same phenomena that humans have been

experiencing since the time our ancestors were painting

their visions in caves some 40,000 years ago?

Were those entoptic images engrams and portals

depicting a dimension that we are still tapping into today?

What is this vision, and could it

be some kind of collective consciousness of the human soul

experience?

>> It's important to keep in mind--

I'm not saying that this is the perception

of alien transdimensional thing.

It might just be a psychological construct.

It might be the result of brain activity in certain areas

in relationship to each other.

In which case, they would still be as interesting

as if they were anything else.

>> If five or six artists, you know, were to walk around--

I don't know, New York or Boulder, Colorado--

and make some paintings, you could clearly

see that the paintings--

each of the paintings might be slightly different.

But you could see that they were of the same place.

>> The botanist, author, and psychedelic psychonaut Terence

McKenna relates the plant intelligence to that of Mother

Earth.

The ancient Greeks called it Gaia.

>> The whole thing is an enzyme-driven process.

We are like an organ of Gaia.

We are the organ which binds and releases energy.

I mean, a liver cell doesn't need

to understand why it binds and releases enzymes of the liver.

We bind and release energy for reasons perhaps never

to be clear to us, but which place us

firmly within the context of the Gaian mind.

Suddenly, we come with an epigenetic capability.

We write books, tell stories, dance, sing, carve, paint.

These are not genetic processes.

These are epigenetic processes.

And they bind information and express the Gaian mind.

>> The Gaian mind--

to many this idea doesn't fit within the context

we've been given by Western culture.

How could the rocks be considered alive?

How could the bones in our body be considered the same?

What does alive really mean?

>> The Gaian mind is a real mind.

Its messages are real messages.

And our task-- through discipline, psychedelics,

attention to detail, whatever we have going--

is to try and extract this message

and eliminate ourselves from the message

so that we then can see the face of the other.

>> The other in this case would be the identity of that which

is sending the message.

Because we scarcely understand who and what

we are, why we're even alive, and what we're

meant to do with our time here, asking what the Gaian mind

truly is might be premature.

Could it be possible--

just like a human organism--

that plants communicate not only among themselves and to humans,

but among all other species?

Is this the collective consciousness of the planet?

And is it possible the war on the mind is not

limited to human minds but to the mind of the entire planet--

the plants, animals, humans, and more?

>> Their message, or their interaction with us,

might be very different than their interaction with a fungus

or a bacterium.

But they are in conversations with those things as well,

you know.

So the message varies.

In other words, these are multi--

sort of multi-purpose molecules.

>> Terence and Dennis McKenna are possibly the most notable

pair of scientists and theorists on why these plants are here

and what their greater purpose might be.

Both have firm beliefs backed by a lifetime of investigation

that these plants are here to serve

the planet by those willing to listen to their place in it.

>> I like to call them ambassadors from Gaia.

You know, they happen to make these messenger molecules that

are useful for communicating with the complex brains

of these problematic apes that evolution has spawned.

That would be us, you know?

And we're the most dangerous thing to show up on the planet

in--

who knows, depends on when you want

to start counting-- but at least the last 100 million years.

You know, because we have the potential

to completely upset the apple cart by the technologies

that we can manipulate.

>> I mean, when you look what we have done to the Pacific Ocean,

you know, what we are doing to the atmosphere,

what we have done to water--

you know, things like the Mexican Gulf or the reactor,

you know, from Chernobyl to the Japanese one--

we cannot do this for a very long time.

We might not make it as a species.

>> One of the other things we know about the world today is

that we are living in the midst of a major ecological crisis.

Some people talk about the fifth major extinction

here on the planet being promoted by human activity.

We don't have a compassionate relationship

with our environment as a global society.

>> If the ecological threat that we face is truly upon us,

could the psychedelic plants be intervening on behalf of Gaia?

>> So the Earth, I think, senses that we're-- it's in danger

and is trying to get a message to us that we have to wake up.

>> Are psychedelic plants here to introduce us to ourselves,

to the shadow of our psyche and the ills that come from

the sleeping mind?

What if the greatest threat we face

is not out there in the world of symptoms, but in here--

in the dark corners of individual psychology

and its rippling effect into the masses?

Since the dawn of time, psychedelic plants

have been there.

They've seen the horrors of the past and have always produced

the medicine most needed by these dangerous minds,

a class of compounds that-- when all is said and done--

offer us an honest look at ourselves.

And from this new perspective, humility, compassion,

and community bonding naturally emerge.

Perhaps they confront us and give us

the only medicine that may help us out of these dark times--

love.

And how far back can we trace the human psychedelic

relationship?

>> There is really an enormous wealth of evidence to suggest--

I would go beyond saying to suggest--

to prove that our ancestors, deep into prehistory,

were using the kind of substances

that we call psychedelics today.

And these would be the natural psychedelics

that are available from plants.

These plants have played a fundamental role

in the human story.

>> But how have these plants shaped our human story?

What evidence can be found that suggests at one time

psychedelics were an accepted practice on the understanding

of the universe?

Mysteriously, in 1976, a Soviet archaeologist uncovered

a 4,000-year-old temple complex in present day Turkmenistan.

This complex has many rooms with stone vats coated with residue

of cannabis, as well as poppy used to make opium,

and ephedra used to make amphetamines.

This must mean it was a facility to mass produce

a hallucinogenic cocktail.

Historians have suggested that this region was home

to goat farmers that comingled with a nomadic horseback tribe

and for the most part stayed quiet of conflict.

Could this discovery hold the key

to the ancient mystery of the fabled beverage of the gods?

Has the evidence and long-lost ingredients

of what the oldest Indian text, the Rigveda, called soma

and the Persians called haoma finally come to light?

Is this evidence of an ancient psychedelic society?

And if so, where did they disappear to?

Why has memory of this culture been erased?

And could this be an ancient representation

of humans going beyond the veil to see

the collective consciousness?

Up next, we will explore the shamanic route

of humankind's relationship with psychedelic plants and altered

states of consciousness.