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>> In the course of evolution in which life on Earth passed

through stages of single-celled organisms to eukaryotes

to multicelled and complex organisms,

one ever-present force has guided all of it to where we

are now--

integration.

That underlying principle that is

seen in all arenas of intelligent life.

Individual organisms utilize anything

in their environment to ensure life and postpone death.

By far, the most advantageous way for this to happen

is for peaceful and intelligent coexistence to take place.

The flora feeds the fauna, which in turn digests and returns

the food back to the flora.

The flowers attract the bees, which in turn spreads the seeds

and plants more flowers.

The weather patterns, seasonal cycles, birds, bees, plants,

and trees all live within a greater organism

that many now call Gaia--

the living Earth.

And upon this Earth, there is no such thing as waste.

Each part feeds the next and eventually cycles back

into itself.

All these intelligent moving parts

fit together in an integrated system.

The purpose of integration is for many individuals

to work towards one higher cause that no one individual could

achieve alone.

In the world of computers, software and hardware

are upgraded perpetually for one purpose--

to better integrate the rest of the endless web of technology.

These upgrades not only add new features to the system,

but they remove disruptive or obsolete features as well.

In the world of psychedelic plants,

we find their effect on human consciousness

not only adds insights and visions,

but dismantles unproductive or harmful patterns.

But when a deep psychedelic experience has completed,

oftentimes, the seeker is left with more questions

than answers.

It is precisely these moments that

call upon us to take time in peace, silence, and reflective

contemplation in order to pick up the shattered pieces of who

we believe we were, discard what no longer serves us,

and hold on to that which may still teach us.

And to reintegrate back into the dynamic system from which we

were momentarily departed.

>> Probably just as important as the psychedelic experience is

the process of integration.

When you have a psychedelic experience, all

your preconceived notions of the world melt down--

gone.

You could develop all this new information--

floods of new information.

And with all this new information,

you have to integrate it into your life when you come back.

>> Well, the physical body has been taxed.

The brain, in some ways, has been taxed.

Our psychology has been taxed in that we

have to re-evaluate some pretty fundamental assumptions

about ourselves.

And energetically, our spiritual body has been blasted open

and is reforming, and that's what's happening energetically

with psychedelics.

And like anything, it takes time for that to happen.

It's a process.

It doesn't happen over a few hours, or even a few days.

Sometimes it can take many, many weeks or months to return

to a different baseline--

a baseline that's more holistic, maybe.

>> Overwhelming experiences often call us to take breaks

in order to process what just happened.

After the death of a loved one, there's a grieving period.

After running a marathon, a recovery phase.

And after the fabric of reality is unwoven and stitched

back together, after people's old habits are dismantled,

there is also a period in which the tissues

of the body and the patterns of the mind need to begin anew.

In the daily grind of economically-driven society

and survivalism all around, the moments

we give ourselves to reflect upon our lifestyles and choices

are few and far between.

And this happens even after psychedelic journeys

that beg for us to slow down and integrate the messages they

hold.

>> I think it's a mistake when people rush off to their job

or rush off to do something that re-establishes all the old

patterns, because there's this amazing opportunity that people

have when, after the psychedelic experience ends,

when things are fresh, when their brain is almost like

a newborn baby, and they have this ability to establish new

patterns, you want to strengthen those new patterns and this

process of integration instead of going back to the old

patterns.

>> A lot of people I hear from say that they believe

ayahuasca's going to be very damaging,

because people who come back to society find it very,

very difficult to cope after they come back to society.

Gee, I knew this guy, and he wasn't the same

after he came back.

It can be that way for people, because we live in a very, very

dysfunctional society.

That's why it's so important for people

to integrate their experience after ceremony.

You've got to sit down with the people you

had the ceremony with and talk about it,

and realize what you've experienced

and realize what the world is that you've now opened up.

And realize what you're going to be coming back into.

See, there's the problem with ayahuasca,

is that it does reconnect people to the earth

so much that when they come back to somewhere like New York,

they just go, oh, my God.

What am I swimming in?

I can't do this anymore.

>> Many of those who have traveled to the Amazon jungle

to try ayahuasca in its traditional surroundings

experience culture shock.

The language, the environment, the customs, and of course,

the medicine become a whirlwind of new experience

that can be stressful on the body and mind.

This is what is called a peak experience,

and now these experiences are so easily attainable

that people with no preparation and no context

for the life-altering journey to come

are flooding the Amazon in search of this brew.

In the 1960s, the youth were increasingly experimenting

with psychedelics and ripping apart their most

cherished belief systems, but with little education

and a lot of ambition.

So even if they were waking the sleeping mind

to new information, were they truly ready?

Just as the gut is equipped to break down complex food

into basic building blocks for energy,

the nervous system must switch from

sympathetic, or activity-based, to parasympathetic, which

is the rest and digest state.

Without this switch, without the resting state,

the food struggles to digest.

So what is the result of moving from one

peak psychedelic experience to the next

without fully digesting the previous insights that

were gained?

What happens when people do ceremony after ceremony

without time for integration?

>> If you take another medicine before the integration is done,

you start to stack those big realizations and big

understandings without fully integrating them.

And in a sense, it can create its own psychic burden.

And it shows up like anxiety.

It's like, oh, I'm just overwhelmed by the concepts

that I've received from my medicine work experiences.

So there are times when doing regular work

repeatedly is healthy and important, particularly

in healing a trauma or something like that.

You're doing some real clinical work and it's a period.

But then after that, there should

be long, extended periods of non-medicine use,

just to really, fully receive and embody

the lessons of the medicine.

>> In most ayahuasca circles, after each night of ceremony,

the group will sit together and share their experiences

or insights in order to allow the group to reflect upon what

they experienced and why.

Some speak about what they saw or felt.

Others realize that they need to be better

to the people around them, or spend more time laughing

and enjoying life.

And others find themselves still in the throes of the journey.

Many of them have similar reasons

for attending the ceremony in the first place,

and it's nearly always because the life that they were leading

seemed off-track, and now they're desperately

looking for the trail of breadcrumbs

to lead them back to the familiar world.

>> Many people say, I am here because I lost myself.

It's interesting to hear, because, hey, I'm here.

How can I lose myself?

So what they are reporting is that their spiritual awareness

knows that they're not complete.

Somewhere on their highway of life, they took the wrong exit,

and then nasty things have happened,

experiences happen, and they want to go back on the highway.

So the beauty is, when you hear 40 people share,

you lose your modesty or shyness, or even shame,

and you just share.

And so I share, and I hear myself say something

that I did not prepare.

I was going to say something different,

but because of the whole group and the sphere, the atmosphere,

the vibration, the resonance-- because it's a dynamic field

that we're all in--

I hear myself say a different thing.

And I think, where does that come from?

It's, of course, my own subconscious speaking.

>> The ability for these medicines to reveal

our subconscious mind to us might be the hallmark of how

psychedelic plants can offer us life-changing moments.

And out of all the plant medicines,

ayahuasca ceremonies in modern contexts

are held in a slightly different manner from other ceremonies.

There's usually an emphasis on the sharing circle.

Whether or not everyone speaks is

second to the priority of all being present for the sharing.

These moments highlight the need for such peak experiences

to be spoken about, listened to, and respected.

This allows for the nervous system to settle,

for the mind to evaluate the experiences,

and to integrate the lessons of the medicine

into the tissues of the body.

There are very real shifts taking place internally--

and even externally-- around those

who partake in the ceremony.

To illustrate the effects of what psychedelic plants are

truly doing to the human body and the energy field,

a professor at St. Petersburg University, Dr. Konstantin

Korotkov, has developed the technology

to measure the biofield of the human body

during ayahuasca ceremonies.

>> My main background is quantum physics and biophysics.

And at some time, I developed instruments.

Their overall name is [INAUDIBLE]..

And this instrument allows us to detect, measure, and analyze

human energy field, and we work in predictive integrative

medicine.

It is measuring so-named stimulated electrophoton

emission.

We apply very short electrical impulses to our fingers,

and we have response in the form of photons and electrons

from the skin.

So we are measuring people before, during,

after ceremonies, and this allows

to understand how people transform,

how they experience this.

And typically, of course, it takes--

ayahuasca is very energy-consuming process.

It opens up human chakras.

It opens up your energy field.

That is why people become vulnerable.

And of course, they lose energy in the process of ayahuasca.

That's why, later on, they need to be closed--

energy fields should be closed-- and they need to be re-charged.

And we see this in our measurements.

We can see that initial energy field was quite strong,

80 Joules.

And it's uniform, very good.

And after ayahuasca, it is 61 Joules, so it dropped down.

It shrinked, as we discussed.

And we need to take it down so it is practically one day

after.

Same as on level of stress.

Level of stress drop down, you see, from 07 to 91,

so it's very positive effect.

But energy dropped down as well, quite strongly.

And we see dramatic effect on chakras as well.

Chakras was very disoriented, and after ayahuasca ceremony,

they became very well-aligned.

Not ideal, of course.

This is not meditation process, this is different process.

But they're much more aligned than before.

>> Dr. Korotkov mentions that meditation puts the body

and mind into a different process than an ayahuasca

ceremony.

The greatest difference is that the meditative insights

are arrived at by an inner process of relaxing, breathing,

focusing, and observing.

By its very nature, meditation is the process of integration.

This is why every spiritual tradition uses meditation

to integrate our concepts of life with real life

at the end of each day.

Even in the Amazonian ayahuasca ceremonies,

after each icaro, or song, a moment of silence is observed.

In order to close the photon field

around the body before the ceremony,

the shaman blows mapacho smoke over the crown of the head,

and several traditions also include a flower-infused bath

after ceremony specifically to close

any rip or hole in that field after it

is weakened by the medicine.

This phenomena is also seen after receiving news.

If the news is not shocking or destructive

to the current mindframe, not much energy

is required to digest the new information.

But if the news is intense and the person is not prepared,

it can cause such an awakening, such a transformation,

that the energy field around the body

is diminished as it moves inward to digest

the earthshaking information.

So what if a psychedelic journey reveals the inadequacies

and shadow sides of the modern society we identify ourselves

with?

>> Enlightenment is a very destructive process.

Enlightenment is a breaking down of everything

you thought was real, and none of this society is real.

Becoming aware of that is key.

That's the only way we're going to heal it.

But that's why I say to people--

I suggest they do not undertake this path lightly.

The path to enlightenment and the path to spiritual awakening

is very, very uncomfortable.

You're not going to go there and drink on Sunday,

become this new age guru who's shining light

and is going to go out and be warm and fuzzy

and speak the truth everywhere.

You're going to wake up and look back at the world

and go, oh, my God.

What have I been doing for the last 30 or 40 years,

and what am I doing, and what is this world I'm living in?

And it can be very, very confrontational.

So if you're not ready for that, maybe don't do the medicine.

>> And so psychedelics can often bring up a variety of different

kinds of material that's very difficult for people to accept

and to figure out how to move forward with.

But that's also the gift of the psychedelics--

is that it forced us to deal with these issues

that we were otherwise able to bury into our unconscious.

So people often have difficult experiences,

because they don't have the support necessary to help them

move through the new information and to find

a different level of integration regarding

the traumatic experiences that they had in the past.

>> If it truly is a lack of support that keeps us from

integrating new and useful information,

what kind of support are we in need of?

By looking to the experts who have been researching

psychedelics in both modern and ancestral contexts,

we can begin to acknowledge how shamanic cultures use

psychedelic plants to strengthen and expand the community,

and even raise their youth.

>> The major problem is, how to integrate this into a larger

culture?

If you were a [? witch ?] living in Mexico

or in one of these cultures where everybody is part

of rites of passage and so on--

these experiences-- then it's actually helping the culture,

because the way of living, the life strategy, the philosophy,

the mythology, the spirituality of the culture

comes out of these experiences.

So they actually initiate the young people

into their way of living and their way of thinking.

This is very different.

We see what happened in the '60s.

Suddenly, you had a young generation

that started creating a totally different hierarchy of values.

Make love, not war-- very pacifistic feeling.

Very much concerned about the environment, and so on.

They started differentiating themselves in the way

they looked--

beards and long hair and beads and funny uniforms.

They're painting their cars with psychedelic colors

so every cop knows there's grass to be found there.

Not very skillful revolution.

>> A rite of passage is something that many traditional

cultures do value, where young people maybe go through some

rite.

It could be something like your first hunt,

or it might be something like getting your first tattoo.

It might also be your first ayahuasca ceremony,

or your first peyote ceremony.

Of course, in our modern culture,

we have ceremonies, which all too few people have nowadays--

like a confirmation, a bat mitzvah, a bar mitzvah.

But I think that we need some sort of rite of passage,

because young people-- they want to show

that they're more grown up.

I don't know how it is in various cultures,

but I do know that young people are going

to come up with some pretty--

sometimes dangerous-- rites of passage.

And very often, it also entails not being truthful

with their parents.

And wouldn't you want your teenagers

to tell you they were thinking about doing something

of this nature, they were thinking

about doing psilocybin, and that they

could talk to you about it?

That you knew where they were, who they were with, and maybe

you could even give them some guidance, like you should

have an intention, a prayer.

Be in a safe set and setting.

>> Current forms of rites of passage are seen at age 16 when

children in the US can legally drive,

at age 18 when they can vote, and 21 when they can legally

drink.

But these achievements are not earned

by bravery, intelligence, or honor,

but simply by being alive through enough solar cycles

to be considered an adult. Because it is only natural

that youth crave to perform more mature tasks in order

to prove themselves, ancestral tribes

have traditionally crafted cultural passage ways

for children to become adults.

In the small island nation of Vanuatu,

boys at the age of 7 or 8 begin bungee jumping, oftentimes

off a 98-foot tall tower with a vine tied to their ankles,

to symbolize their bravery and their ascent into adulthood.

Among the Apache of North America,

the young girls must complete the sunrise ceremony

after their first menstruation, in which they paint themselves

and reenact the Apache origin myth of the first woman.

For four days, they are not to touch their skin

and can only drink water.

The Inuit youth are brought into the harsh arctic weather

to learn to speak with animals and hunt.

At age 13, the boys of the Sateré-Mawé tribe

in the Brazilian jungle wear gloves filled with bullet ants,

which cause extreme throbbing pain.

All of these rites of passage call upon the youth

to engage with their community and perform

some sacrificial ritual in order to become

an adult in that particular tribe.

But these communities weren't simply initiating people

into adulthood.

They were integrating them into a healing tradition,

in order to serve others and the planet at large.

For the hallmark of a functional society

is peaceful and intelligent community goals.

>> One of the classic features of shamanism was that

the neophyte who was trying to develop shamanic skills would

have to go through a very arduous ritual ordeal,

often spending weeks or more alone in the wilderness,

and often with the expectation that they were going to have

to encounter and deal with the animals--

the beasts-- that came to kill them.

And I think that this reflects a primordial human concern.

Once we become conscious, we realize we're going to die.

Your dog doesn't know he's going to die.

The antelope out on the plains doesn't worry about

whether or not the tiger or lion's going to eat him--

unless it's right there.

But we have a consciousness to project into the future

and say, eventually, it's my turn.

So how do we deal with this angst,

this anxiety about death?

Well, shamanic practices had a variety

of different ways of addressing this death concern,

and one was that you acquired an understanding

of your spiritual nature--

that the body dies, but the spirit doesn't.

And so people move beyond the concern

about their physical demise to understanding this continuity

of spiritual existence.

>> The realization that someone comes to--

that one day they will die--

doesn't sink in all at once.

It takes many moments of considering the implications

of this final event to truly make an impact on that person's

daily life.

Some people, perhaps, never come to this realization.

So to fully integrate the knowledge

that one day this body will die and return to the earth,

tribes have traditionally used extreme rites of passage,

as well as psychedelic plant ceremonies.

Without dedicated moments of focusing on mortality,

we may never fully realize the importance

of living life as if we truly know it will one day end.

Those who have gone through near-death experiences

have reported much of the same phenomena

as psychedelic journeys.

Portals of light, other-worldly beings and ancestors,

timelessness, and even the total life

reviews that cause them to re-evaluate

what matters to them.

They often report that they felt every harsh word or action

that they've ever given, but from the other person's

perspective.

Another commonality between near-death experiences

and deep psychedelic ceremonies is the realization

of how we truly use the precious time

that we're given in this body, and that this fleeting moment

of life between birth and death should be devoted

to the people around us.

In fact, all of life seeks to integrate and support

each other as one living organism.

>> You couldn't develop consciousness in a vacuum.

It takes an interaction of things.

And all of life is really an interaction of things.

The body you see before you--

they say every seven years, I've completely

gone through all my cellular matter and reproduce new cells.

My old cells have died off.

Hair's fallen off.

Skin's fallen off, and I'm completely rebuilt.

Same thing with consciousness.

I was on my 30th birthday, and I was kind of depressed.

My first book hadn't been published yet,

and I was feeling like kind of a failure.

And I did some mushrooms, and I was just like--

I started out with a friend, but I was being such a bummer,

I think he just went home.

And I was lying in this bathtub, having a bath,

feeling sorry for myself.

And there was this spider plant hanging above the bath tub.

And it was just dry as dry, and I

could see its roots and tentacles

vibrating, sensing the wealth of water that I was in,

just going like this.

And I cupped my hand and I put the water up to his roots,

and it just went [WHOOSH OF AIR] limp,

and just started sucking the water right out of my hands.

And it just totally brought the whole thing to life for me

in a fascinating way that I don't

think I would have ever noticed had it not

been for the effects of the mushrooms.

And yeah, I think that it makes us realize

that we are on Mother Earth.

That's what these plants offer.

>> That's the message.

We have to re-understand that we are part of nature.

We're not in control of it.

And we are potentially capable of damaging it very severely

by upsetting and destabilizing all

of these homeostatic processes that keep Gaia--

the Gaia organism-- in equilibrium.

We need to wake up.

I think the plant teachers have been urging us

to wake up as long as we've been associated with them,

but we're not very--

we don't listen very well, and it's getting even more urgent.

First you have to wake up.

Then you have to wise up.

You have to have the realization, then

what do you do about it?

That is trickier.

But I think it's inevitable.

>> According to many conversations surrounding this

topic, the most important thing we can wake up to is the nature

of our individual egos--

the collection of beliefs and behavioral patterns

we have about ourselves.

The ego often wants to know all and control all

in order to ensure no one else can take what is ours.

But this violent cycle of fighting for our place

at the expense of others is fantasy, not reality.

The web of life is already functional without our desire

to exploit it and milk it for everything we can.

This is called scarcity mentality--

the belief that there isn't enough for everyone,

so I better get mine.

Unfortunately, when someone is in this mode,

it is difficult to wake up to its inadequacy,

especially when surrounded by others that are also

stuck in scarcity mentality.

So the process of waking up is a surrender and the letting go

of our ambition to have more than others and more

than we need.

From there, the wising up process

consists only of peacefully and intelligently integrating

with the one dynamic web of life that we are all dancing upon,

a surrender to the flowing river of life.

And the punchline at the end of this divine comedy

is that one way or another, through intention

or exhaustion, the river will win.

But why, then, does the ego seem so afraid of surrendering

to the ways of the universe?

>> The ego wants closure.

It wants a complete explanation.

The beginning of wisdom, I believe,

is the ability to accept an inherent messiness

in your explanation of what's going on,

because nowhere is it writ that human minds should

be able to give a full accounting of creation

in all dimensions and on all levels.

The universe, at this moment, is a tremendously complicated,

integrated, multi-level thing.

Perhaps what the universe is is a kind of system

in which more advanced forms of order

actually influence previous states of organization.

They are attractors.

That means that they exert influence

on less-organized states, and pull them

toward some kind of end state.

The attractor is at the bottom of a very deep pit into which

all phenomena is cascading.

>> All life is truly a lesson, and the attractor that Terence

speaks of is that invisible compelling force that calls us

to continue learning in life.

The increasing complexity of the universe

may be exactly what calls us to abandon the ambition of knowing

everything, or playing every role,

and to simply play our own role, to keep observing and engaging

reality in order to use the information that we

do have more wisely.

Perhaps the evolution of complexity in the universe

is a reflection of our capacity to understand and utilize

more complex information.

And one of the most complex and malleable instruments we use

is the mysterious and ever-evolving human brain.

>> The brain is a product of evolution,

and the brain evolved as a profound information generator.

It generates an inordinate amount of complex information,

but also to receive and process information.

And the environment is also an information generator.

The environment is full.

The external world is full of information,

and this information is always entering the brain.

But the brain needs to learn to sample information that is

useful and to learn from that.

And in a sense, sensory information sculpts the brain.

It's sculpts the connectivity-- the patterns of connectivity.

All of these neurons--

these cells in the brain--

they are connected in an extremely complex,

intricate pattern.

As sensory information enters the brain,

it changes the structure.

>> Perhaps the universe itself is one single phenomena

overflowing with information, and our brains are the part

of that phenomena that collects, processes,

and generates new combinations and patterns in service

to an ever-evolving relationship between creation itself

and that which is continually creating it.

If psychedelic plants truly break down old beliefs

and thought patterns to make way for the new, the way

a wildfire clears the debris from a forest

so new life can grow, then maybe the process

of integrating into the cosmos is not

a dilemma to be solved, but a dance to be danced.

The idea of solving problems only

allows for win, lose, or draw scenarios.

If life were viewed more as a relationship of moving parts--

a cosmic dance do engage with, learn from,

and perpetually refine--

then the outcome wouldn't be limited

by who gets what in the end, but by how deeply we've connected.

Perhaps the point of living is not

a measure of the individual puzzle

pieces, but how they integrate into the full picture of life

itself.

Up next, we will open two sides of the holy mushroom theory--

a debate that might shake the foundation

of the Christian religion and its origins.

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