Many people report that psychedelic experiences are some of the most profound moments of their lives. But is this just delusion? Can you discover truth on a psychedelic experience? Do these supposed insights gained while in an altered state of mind disappear once the drug wears off? Or can what you learn stick with you? These are the questions I'm trying to answer on the 54th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. Hello my friends and listeners. Welcome to the show. I'm coming to you today from Bangkok, Thailand. I just landed this morning and the place I'm staying tonight doesn't have a sea and it hit a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. So if you hear some tripping in the background, that's because I've got the windows open trying to cool off. I've got another spectacular interview for you today. We're pushing the envelope and talking about a taboo subject. Psychedelic drugs. Specifically, the experiences and supposed insights that are gained while on ayahuasca. If you don't know anything about psychedelic drugs, don't worry. This might pique your curiosity. But the drug ayahuasca is a psychedelic drink that's very popular in South America. I've got two guests on this week, both of whom are world travelers, personal friends, and they've both experienced the ayahuasca state of mind when they were traveling in Peru. So we met up while my wife and I were in Japan, sat down and had an excellent conversation about their experience. I have yet to do any psychedelic drugs, I guess outside of marijuana if that qualifies. I'm sure at some point I will partake, but I've been very hesitant. I talk a little bit about this in the interview, but I've been very scared about heavy mind-altering substances. Plus, as a philosopher, I've had lots of conversations with people who end up saying really remarkable things and when you press them on it, they go, oh well, Steve, you just got to take a psychedelic drug, take some magic mushrooms, and then you'll see what I mean. So like any other topic, I treat it with skepticism, but I think you'll find that this conversation doesn't get into the woo-woo really. It meshes philosophy with experience, which I think turns into a beautiful mixture. My guests this week are Ryan Ferguson and Amanda Kingsmith. They are the hosts of the World Wanderers Podcasts, where they've been doing world travel for a couple of years now. They've been to more than 45 countries together, six continents. My wife and I met them in Atlanta about a year and a half ago, and we hit it off right away. Check out their website, TheWorldWanderers.com. You can also find them in iTunes. What you guys might find interesting about their show is it's not just, oh, hey, I went to this country, hey, I went to the city, look at these cool things we did. Here's what I recommend. They try to incorporate their traveling experiences into their worldview. So it's a part philosophy podcast, and the ideas many of them come from their travels. So in addition to being world travelers and interested in philosophy, they are both advisors for the sponsor of the show Praxis. If you guys don't know about Praxis, let me tell you about it. There's a movement underway right now of people who are starting to see through the shenanigans of academia, they're starting to see the outrageous price tag of getting a bachelor's degree is not justified. The value creation just isn't there anymore for the majority of people. And so they are awakening to the fact that you do not need a degree to have a successful career and a successful life. Praxis is at the center of this movement. They don't simply talk about ways to build a career without a degree. They are in the business of taking young, inspired, enthusiastic people and placing them at paid apprenticeships in the real world. So that sounds like you, your curiosity has been piqued. Head over to Steve-Patterson.com slash praxis, P-R-A-X-I-S. As I said, both of my guests this week are Praxis advisors.  So I hope you guys enjoy my conversation about the ayahuasca experience with Ryan Ferguson and Amanda Kingsmith from the World Wanderers podcast. So I have discovered that there's a lot of correlation between people's religious experiences and so-called psychedelic experiences. People take drugs and what they report, the experiences they have. A lot of times it sounds like what religious people say they've had some experience. They were in a dream and an angel spoke to them and all this crazy stuff going on. And I think a lot of people dismiss religious or spiritual experiences out of hand, especially when there's drugs involved. If you take a drug, whatever is going on in your mind is just totally illusory. There's nothing you can learn from it and end of story. And you're crazy if you try to learn something from a drug experience. But I think that's a mistake. I think people report really positive effects from psychedelic drugs and from religious experiences, even though these states are induced by substances. There seems to be, some people say it's the most important experience of their life. I know some people like with LSD, they take an LSD and they go, oh man, this is like top five most important experiences they've ever had. So it seems like a really big error to me to just dismiss it all because that state was induced by some drug. You guys have done a lot of traveling and part of your traveling, you've also had this psychedelic experience. So I want to pick your brain about the nature of what that experience was like, what you learned from it, what you took from it, what your analysis is, maybe how people have reacted, if you've told them about this experience. So let's start with the with the setting. Setting is how did you guys get, how did you guys decide that? Oh, this is something I'm going to try. Where were you? How did you figure out like, oh, this is the person I'm going to do it with? Give some context or how that took place. So it's kind of a bit of a backstory in 2013, we were both going through a bit of a rough time and I was both extremely happy and we had planned to quit our jobs and go traveling. And we eventually settled on South America. And during that time, I started to get into personal development. And quite a few podcasts I'd listened to at the time had had people on who had talked about the value of psychedelic drugs and specifically about ayahuasca experiences. And so we had planned to go to South America and probably in that like three months before we left, when we started to plan it out, I was like, OK, this is something that I want to do. And Amanda wasn't I don't even know if we had talked about it at that time. Yeah, it was interesting because my to-do list was things like Machu Picchu and Igua Su Falls and Patagonia and Buenos Aires. And Ryan's like the one thing I know I want to do is ayahuasca. And I was like, I what? I've never even heard of this before. And I came from a background of my parents kind of just told me that drugs are bad. Drugs equal bad. There's no scale of this. It's very black and white.  And so I never really questioned that. I never really ventured to learn more about that. It's just something I had accepted up until that point. And so when Ryan said I want to do this, this psychedelic, I was very like, I don't do things like that. I don't know about this. And he said, you know, we're not going to be improved for a number of months. So do your own research or something I'm going to do and make the decision for yourself. Yeah, and for me, it was just listening to people's stories about how how meaningful, like, like you said, a lot of people are like, this is one of the the most significant experiences of my life. And I feel like I was really devoid of meaning at the time. And I was like, this it just seemed interesting to me. And so it was like being just like the curiosity was pulling me like, I want to go do this. And so we went to South America in January of 2014. We traveled, I think, three months before we got to Peru. Peru is our last stop. So like five months. Yeah, five months. So towards the end of our trip, we started doing more in-depth research about where exactly can we do this. And it's kind of one of those things where if you start googling, you get a mix of actually a lot of horror stories like, you're probably going to die. You're probably going to get stabbed in the jungle. But we found a place that seemed really legitimate. Found a ceremony to go do. And it was just outside of Cusco. Cusco is the the hub people use when they're going to Machu Picchu. And there's a place called the Sacred Valley, which is kind of kind of like a hippie destination. And I was because we really known a Kitos in Peru is kind of the most well-known spot for it, but there's other places in Peru because it's legal there. I think you can do it in Lima, near Cusco and then Sacred Valley as well. So we had just completed our trek of Machu Picchu. We piled into a van and took the van about 30 minutes out to this area called the Sacred Valley and went to a nighttime ceremony for ayahuasca. And so the setting of that was the business that runs it has set up this kind of it's almost like a teepee like structure, round, circular, tiered floor, round a roof that extends really high up and then there's a hole in the top, which is kind of I think it's like the traditional I don't know, like ceremonial hut thing. Technical, that's the technical term. That's what they tell tourists at least. Yeah. But so this one was like a nice version of that. They had flushing toilets. They had a concrete building, concrete building. So it was enclosed and then a big hole in the roof and it was the full moon night we were there so you could see the moon pass over on the top. So that's that's kind of the setting. Something that's really interesting about the ayahuasca process, though, and something that kind of convinced me that, OK, this is an OK thing for me to do or it's something that I want to try is that it's it's very much about the ceremony. And so when Ryan first mentioned it, I was like, I'm not going to eat some random proving plant and have some like crazy exotic experience. I go to Mars and maybe get lost in the Amazon and never return to Canada. I think it's very much a sacred thing for the people there. And something that they share with tourists now if you want to do that, which is one of the things that I really like about it. So were both of you really hesitant? Because my family I was also subjected to the same kind of drugs equals bad. At this point, I would call it propaganda.  But there is this spectrum of some drugs can can really help. Yeah, you guys, I feel like in the limited drug experiences I've had, like I've smoked pot a few times and I deal with heavy anxiety in that state. It's like, oh, no, I'm in this state. This is bad. I have done something bad. Were you guys really anxious about starting? I was, for sure. Yeah, yeah, even I was. So our history with drugs. Obviously, we drank a reasonable amount, smoked pot a few times, but no experience with psychedelic drugs, no experience with kind of psychedelic experiences from even cannabis. So Edibles is kind of in that neighborhood. Nothing like that. So it was just like jumping in the deep end. And I probably listened to, you know, 20 hours of people telling their stories about this thing. Because if you search on the podcast app for ayahuasca, you can find quite a quite a few episodes of people either going there and recording it or just recounting their experiences and done a solid amount of research about people's experiences, some of the positive effects people have had. But also just in going there and researching, you find these stories about like people getting murdered, women getting like sexually assaulted because all the top all the news stories about it are these negative things and you you're going to the situation. Both of our perception of what a psychedelic drug was is really from like movies and TV shows. And you've kind of counteracted that against stories, but you don't really know what it's going to be like. You don't know if you're going to you know, try to jump off ability and are like running into the forest or like completely crazy, completely lose your ability to function. Yeah, you get all this propaganda, I remember, in high school watching this video where I can't remember what drug it was. It was like something like mushrooms. And then the person that drills a hole into their head in this video. A video. Yeah. So I don't know if they actually show it. This is like grade 10, like, oh, check this out, kids. Is that through the blue lens? No, this was a different video. I think they don't show it, but it's like this is implied. I see. I see. Anyways, yeah, you're going in, you're like, even so I had no drills around. I've done a lot of research, but still felt quite nervous about it. And I think, Amanda, you were much more on the nervous side of the spectrum. Yeah. So the movie that I just asked you if you were shown in school, we were shown in school, a movie called Through the Blue Lens, which is based in an area of Vancouver that's very heavily filled with people who are addicted to drugs. Essentially, their entire life revolves around getting their next hit. And it's really scary. Like it's terrifying, especially when you're, you know, 15 years old. And you're maybe at that age where your friends are starting to experiment with smoking pot and you've already been told that's bad. Or at least for me, I've been told that was bad. And then I see this movie that completely is like, I don't want my life to turn into that. And obviously I still don't want my life to turn into that. And so, yeah, I remember even up into the point where we were loading into the van to drive to the concrete hut thing, I was like, I don't know if I'm going to do it. So I've paid and it's not cheap. I have gone, I've waited, I've been like debriefed, I've filed into a van and I'm still like, I don't know about this. And it wasn't until we actually got into the space that I kind of relaxed a little bit. The leader or the shaman Diego for the one that we did the first time was just very. He kind of answered every question that was flowing through my head. I was like, are you in my mind because you have completely eased all of my concerns? Like I had seen, yeah, my idea of psychedelics was kind of like Euro trip where they drink absent and a little green like leprechaun fairy thing leads them on this adventure and I was like, what if a fairy comes and takes me into the forest and I actually never return and then the next headline that pops up in the Calgary newspaper is like 25 year old female does ayahuasca and disappears improving for us never to be seen again. Right. OK, so that's the worry, totally legitimate. I'd be in the same boat. So the ceremony starts. And what is the process of the actual ceremony and when do you do the the first ingestion of the ayahuasca? So we did two ceremonies while we were in Peru. One was much more traditional and one was, I think. I don't know what more to use it like. I don't know, maybe traditional with a hint of like easing newbies. Yeah, yeah, one guy's like we went into the jungle in Aquitos later and they very much had the feel of like, this is how we do this versus the other one, maybe like customer centered around people who hadn't done it before. So the way the ceremony worked was everyone arrived at the, I'll just call it a temple, the shaman or the leader. Kind of just and once everyone was settled, you just sat everybody down and talked to talk to us through the process, which is really helpful to have someone who was able to do it in English because the second time we went, no English whatsoever. And kind of talk to us through what the experience, not what it was going to be like, but kind of some general principles we'll have to focus on.  Just essentially meditate, sit there, don't bother people, don't touch people. No matter what you feel like doing, just like staying in your space, stay silent and then also just be really open to whatever comes. The metaphor they use and I'm not sure how if they would call it a metaphor, but is I was going to show you things and you just need to open, be open and whether I was and let it come.  Don't try to take this journey where you want to take it, just be completely open to it or else it's going to go go bad. And so talk to us through maybe 30, 45 minutes about kind of some some key things to focus on about what happens if you get nauseous? How are you going to get to the washroom? You know, follow your handrail, like there's people around to help you, how to respond to those people. And then in that one, it was a little bit larger. So they had organized it with all the new people around the outside tier and the middle tier people who had a bit more experience and in the very middle tier people who had the most experience. And so he called those people up to do the first drinking of the IWASC. How many people were doing this by the way? There's probably like 50 to 60 in that first one. OK, I would say 40. Maybe 40. And then there's a lot of people the first time. Yeah, the second one there was only maybe like 10. Yeah. And so IWASC is a tea. I think it's IWASC a vine and then they mix it with a leaf of some sort. I could have got those mixed up. Two plants that make a tea out of it. One has a lot of DMT in it. One kind of shuts down your body's inhibitors to DMT. And so you end up with this kind of like pinkish, sludgy, horrible, tasting. It's really gross. Both of your faces.  It's like if you took socks that you'd worn straight for a week that were sweaty for like a whole football team and brood them in a pot. That's out there for just extremely bitter coffee. Maybe a little bit of vomit. It really doesn't taste nice. And so the shaman and his helper were up at one end and everyone kind of lined up on either side, those were the people who were giving the drink and have these special little cups and one of the first things that surprised me is how little they were actually giving to people.  It's the same thing. You drink it. You kind of immediately stuck with like, oh, that's horrible. You kind of want to puke a little bit already.  And that's when you just start the noble silence, meditating process. And so for us, because we were on the newbie tier, it was probably about 20 minutes before from the time the very first person drank to the time we drank, which was enough time for the nausea to kick in. That's about 20, 30 minutes is when the first round of nausea starts kicking in. So right as we were drinking, you could hear the people down in the bottom going, like, and so just to set this up a bit more, you're on a mat and everyone gets a little bucket to puke into because 98 percent of people are going to puke. They come around and clean out your bucket throughout the evening as well. And you have a little bit of water.  And then once everyone's drinking the shaman and then usually he'll have someone else there to help with. They're called Ikeros, which are like the traditional chants. And then the first one we went to, they were kind of playing more Westernized versions of those. So like the people in the middle had some people had guitars and drums. And you kind of just lead you through these these songs. And if you Google ayahuasca, you could also on YouTube, you can listen to some of those. Yeah.  And so one more thing, this always happens at night. So we got there around 10 p.m. The first time we drank was at 11 a.m., 11 p.m. And then there was two more times during the night when you had the chance to drink if you want to. So it went through the entire night. Wow. OK, so people probably don't pay to have a puking experience unless they have an upset stomach. So you start with a puking, then then what happens? What is the at what point does think these things start happening in your mind? You go, OK, now we've begun. So things happen right away. So you kind of meditate for about like 25, 30 minutes. And all of a sudden, like for me, I was just hit by this like tidal wave of emotion and nausea and sickness. And so it's it's not really like you just start puking the way you might imagine. You know, the stomach flu comes on and all of a sudden you're throwing up. It's very much like you're you kind of get washed over by the experience and you feel something it's going to be different for every person. For me, it was this realization that my physical body was really unhealthy. And then it's like the puking was kind of this cleansing. And so they said it in our in our introduction and Diego, the shaman, was like, anyone who has done this a lot knows what I'm talking about. But you'll start to crave the puking because it's like you process something and then you throw up and you're done with it, which is kind of this really interesting part of it. And you have that experience. Did you feel like you were craving the puking? Yeah, but not until I wasn't really conscious of it until our second ceremony near the end where I was like, I just need to get this out. Like it's festering in my mind and it just needs to get out. But it's like you can't force it out until you process it. Even so, I think it's important. It seems like a lot of people have different experiences in terms of how this like the rhythm of things goes. But I imagine it being kind of like alcohol. So if you drink a lot of alcohol, for example, like if you've ever tried to take like four shots at once, you might get this like really strong wave of nausea immediately. And then if you don't puke, you're you're good. So it's kind of a similar thing.    But I just I weathered this storm is not going to happen. And so sitting there, not much is happening. I remember the first thing I could start to see like a bit of visual stuff because you're just sitting there, it's dark, your eyes are closed. And then kind of a wave of euphoria. And then shortly after that, nausea just comes like a truck and smacks into you. And so it seems like a lot of people kind of experienced that. Oh, sweet, I've made it.  And then the first round of nausea comes on right after that. OK, so how long does that puking start?  And then you have all the mental stuff and then what happens? It seems to come in waves. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of throughout the whole time they're there. Yeah, I could like when I think about to my personal experiences, it was like something negative, riding this like wave of whatever emotion. If it was anger, sadness or like envy or you know, whatever I was feeling that I was processing, throwing up and then having this like euphoric, I'm dancing in a field and I'm like this gypsy woman in my mind followed by, oh, God, I'm crying.  And then it's like throwing up or lots of people get diarrhea as well. So there's lots of people kind of going to and from the bathroom. So when you say you're gypsy, when you're dancing in the field, is that was that a visual that you had? Did you or was it just like it was kind of like a metaphorical way? You interpret how that felt? No, that was a personal visual. That was a good one. But so it is at least for me, the idea of psychedelics I had going on was kind of like almost like that 70s show version where it's like it's going to be like this heavy visual like Steve turned into a cat and now he's got his head. Yeah, something like that. And it was much less visual like than that. I felt like I could close my eyes and then if you like closing your eyes and kind of open to just like even though it's darkness, just like looking into that, it's like stuff will start to come off, but then you can open your eyes and you're back in the room. Really?  That's what I thought it was, too. It gets there at like certain points when it's really strong. But then there's much more feeling than I would imagine. So that was kind of what was surprising to me. It's like, oh, this visual isn't as compelling as I thought it was going to be, but the feelings are just really intense and really strong. OK, so let's talk about the visuals. So. First of all, like, can you give me some examples of the visuals that you saw and then the interpretation of the visuals? Why, when you were at Gypsy and Field, was that something like that's correlated with a particular feeling of happiness or or being free or something like that? So what were some of the things that you saw? Yeah, so that one before I was the Gypsy woman, I it was a happiness that had come out of a sadness. So the sadness was that I was on my side. So my entire thing, I was really tired. And so they recommend not lying down because if you kind of lose control and you throw up, then you can choke. And I was very aware of that, but I needed to lie down because I was very, very tired and couldn't stop yawning. There were like these big, massive yawns and I could not stop them. And so I think Ryan was really aware of me at that point because I was lying on the ground at one point I was on my side and I was I was crying and I was shaking and I was in this cobblestone street like as if it was eighteen hundreds in England or something was pouring rain and I was homeless and it was very cold. So I was physically not cold in the room because it's very temperate. And I was wearing like a sweater and pants, but I was really, really cold in my vision. And then that kind of passed. And I rolled over on my back and all of a sudden the earth and all these kind of insects were climbing over me.  And this was this really beautiful thing. Like Mother Earth was kind of taking me in and hugging me with her soil. And the bugs were crawling on me, but it was like I knew I was safe. And then there was a zebra and the zebra all of a sudden burst open. The ribcage burst open and all these butterflies came out and I came out with that. And then I was dancing in this beautiful field. And I was like kind of like Esmeralda from Hunchback of Notre Dame. I think I had like a tambourine. Was it kind of like a movie that was playing this? Yeah. Were you viewing yourself from your first person or was this the third person when you were seeing yourself, like you're seeing your your body? So when I was in the street and I was like, I was like in my body, like I was actually rolled over and when I opened my eyes, I knew I was in this room, but it was really hard to open my eyes because it's like I had to feel this overpowering, like coldness and sadness and suffering. And then it was kind of more third person. So when I rolled on my back, the bugs, it felt like it was actually happening to me, like if I opened my eyes, I knew it wasn't. But whenever I closed my eyes and I kept my eyes closed because it was really pleasant, this was happening. And then the gypsy part was more like I was watching it. Now, was there a was there kind of something in the back of your mind? Did you still have access to like this this reality where you could say, OK, I know this is not happening. You said you could open your eyes in your back or are you just totally enamored by what's happening? Does it feel really, really real? It's kind of it's kind of a blend. So I think that you always know, like I always knew that I was in the room and that I was who I was and that that was my reality.  I don't know if that answers. So it's kind of a voluntary choice to get to experience it.  And reality had changed underneath you. No, but at the same time, I think that there were points where it would have been hard for me to open my eyes and get up and move. Like, I don't I don't think it's the type of thing you can just like shake your head and be be out of it. Yeah, you feel pretty compelled to kind of be with your eyes closed in this experience, but I kind of get the feeling that, like, you know, if all of a sudden there's a fire in the corner, it never felt like we wouldn't just be able to like get out of the building.  And then it was like less weight to just be lost in the divisions. Was there any.  So you guys didn't feel like that was part of it. And do you think that that's just how much you took? Do you think if you took a bunch more, you really would be kind of thrown there for a while? So the experience I had was the first few times. I think the best way to think of it is like you have these waves. So you kind of go as like the experience gets more intense and there's like really intense pain and nausea and emotional pain and visions that all kind of come together and then you kind of like break out from that and it gets a bit more pleasant and easier to to be back in like reality. I had points where it got so intense that I don't know if I could have, you know, interactive with reality in a normal way. Like it was like it felt like I was completely going mad. Things were spinning. It was kind of just like intense, physical pain and completely lose touch with the fact that this isn't just a vision that's happening. So can you talk about some of the visuals that you had? Yes. So that one that I was referring to is was an experience of I can't remember the exact timeline of it. If it was I had this really intense physical pain and then slipped into that or it was kind of like mixed match between the two. But I'd gone through this the most intense purging of the process. This was probably like an hour or 20 an hour and a half into it where I puked and puked and puked and then it started dry heaving. And I had to move from seated to like being on my hands and knees. And it was just experiencing extreme emotional pain as well as crying. I remember thinking like I've got like nothing left. Like as if I was like saying this to whatever was making this happen. I've got nothing left. I can't do this anymore. And during that same period of time, I was having these I kind of like slipped into this kind of like madness state almost where it's hard to put into words, but it was like things were you know, rapidly spinning as getting these visions of this like shriveled up dying thing. And I kind of like connected immediately with like this is part of me. This is like the negative parts of me. This is the negative parts of me dying. But yeah, so it's like things were like spinning. I was like this vision was flashing back to me and it was kind of just stuck in it. And at that point in time, I was like, I just want this to end. I just want to be done with this. And it was kind of like I mentioned before where they tell you you're really going to be open to this experience and when you're fighting the experience, that's when things progressively get worse and worse and worse. So the metaphor they use is kind of like this mother Iwaska wants to show you something and if you're going to overt your eyes from it, it's just going to get progressively stronger and stronger and stronger. And so that's kind of what the experience felt like I was having where this vision of this dying baby and things were spinning. I remember thinking like this is what like madness is like this is what it feels like. And is it because you couldn't put together a thought process? Or is it because you're like your sensory input was just totally chaotic? You can make sense of it. Yeah, it was totally it was not totally chaotic because I could with the baby had that that was very firmly there. But that was like the only thing and it wasn't consistent. It was like, oh, now it's back, now it's gone. What was it in between? Was it just it just felt like just a blur spinning madness, like sensory data that I couldn't deal with at all. Was there still could you still think were you still kind of aware?  Like was that thought? So that that was a thought that occurred to me at the time. And also a lot of it was just like, I just want this to end. I kind of make this stop.  It was just the sensory data that you were getting to try to analyze was just purely chaotic or almost purely. Yeah, yeah. And then the it's it's hard to kind of know the timeline of these realizations, but the way looking back at it afterwards, how it occurred to me was I had always separated. I had an experience leading up to this where I had had some issues with alcohol and done some things while drinking that I really wasn't proud of. And just generally like I didn't really look in the mirror at myself and feel good about the person that I was. And I'd have these moments of like real disconnect with like, I can't be that person. So this is prior to I was like, how can I be a good person and do these things? And so in that moment of like, it was like the second I saw that time, baby, I knew that this was the negative parts of myself in some way. There was not like there wasn't any time between me seeing this. Hmm, what could this mean? Like maybe this is a good thing. It was just kind of like, boom, that's what I'm thinking about. And then as this madness, spinny thing kept happening, as eventually the thought popped in my mind, like, you can't separate the negative parts of yourself from yourself. Like this part of you that's dying is you.  And then it kind of this moment of like, OK, I just need to be like. OK, with myself dying. And then it was kind of in that moment when things kind of like cleared up. Wow. And then I went kind of. So this was kind of the peak of the experience and then had this really long, smooth, euphoric experience where it felt like I dealt with much lower level concerns. Like we can talk about this later, but a lot of like physical things about my body and kind of like connected to the group and was listening to music and just had an experience of joy that I'd like never really had before, but that was all kind of this like moment of having this kind of connection.  And I was like back in this kind of state where I could interact with the room and kind of interact with the visuals that were happening. OK, so I'm going to try to rephrase that. And if this is a correct summarization or like one interpretation of it, or if this is incorrect, then please correct me. It is as if there was as if there's two minds at play here. That's just for the metaphysical sake. Let's say it's two minds, but it's still within your mind, really. You have the regular Ryan mind who was experiencing all this chaos. It was like this must be what madness is like. And then you have this other mind that's saying, OK, there's a big problem in your life and that's you have done these things that you feel really bad about and you feel so bad about them that you said, that's not me, it can't be me. And that is causing other trouble in your life. And the way that you're going to overcome that is by realizing that those things aren't separate from you.  So it is and when you realize that or when you accepted it, then you there was a kind of healing in a psychological sense. Is that a fair way to rephrase it is as if that kind of teaching with the two minds is a correct way to think about it. Yeah. That's remarkable. And before I want to dive into your experiences, but before we I really want to revisit that because this seems like a very common theme in the way that people talk about psychedelic experiences. You can see it's not a stretch of the imagination to say, oh, well, that other mind that's doing that. Well, that's God and God loves you. And so he's showing you the truth, which is how you become a better person. Like you can see how that is a powerful, powerful narrative. Try to try to put it in a sound metaphysical context is difficult, but there's obviously something very profound going on. Yeah, I feel like if I had a religious background growing up, that's that's the way I would have to interpret that. Right. But since I didn't, I interpreted it in different way. Right. So we'll dive into the metaphysics. Yeah, I was just going to say it's really interesting because like Ryan kind of touched on this. It's it's like everything that comes up. You kind of have this you get the sense for what it's about. Like for me, my first wave, my vision was of a dying fetus. But you both had that kind of dying baby fetus. Mine was like external and older. Yeah. And mine was like a baby. So at first I was kind of confused because I was clutching my bucket. I was crying a lot. I felt deeply, deeply sad. Like I had lost something and I was like, this is really strange. Like if I had had a stillbirth or lost a baby at some point, that would have made very clear sense to me, but I've never had those experiences in my life. And all of a sudden I got this sense like, oh, you're really unhealthy. Your physical body is unhealthy. You need to take care of yourself. And then I got crazy tired. And if you just looked at if somebody was watching that as a movie, they would be like, how did you get that? But I just got this sense. It was just this feeling. It's like something told me that that's what it was. Which is kind of strange. Yeah, it's almost like you know what these things mean. Like just intuition kind of. Yeah. And when the bugs were crawling on me, I was like, I know I'm safe. I never for a second was like, like I was like, oh, I've heard of these situations being really bad and psychedelics and people get really scared. But for me, this is really great. I love this. The earth is kind of like eating me and rebirthing me.  Like I forgot how much I love being outside. And I should hike more and do all these things. But if you were just watching that, you'd be like, oh, this is kind of crazy.    Or I should I should do these other things that will help my body. Yeah, that's a good question. And I'm not sure if I entirely know the answer to that. It feels like somebody else is telling you, but I think that it's probably this idea of, you know, we have things in our subconscious and in our mind that are deeply, deeply hidden. And I think one of the things that I was has been said to do is help people to find out what they really want to do with their life. So it's, you know, a friend of ours that we interviewed on our podcast connected to his love of art. And now he's pursuing a career in art. And it's something that he loved as a child and it kind of got lost through years of schooling and business school and all these things. And his ayahuasca experience was like, you love art. And I don't know if you could say that that's like God or Mother Ayahuasca saying that some people might, but I think that you could just say that it's something that's deeply buried within your mind. And all of a sudden it comes up again. The most important part you might say is that it's true. It seems like these people, people connect with these experiences are like, I've spoken very favorably of an experience I had when I fell in love, realized I was in love with my wife, Julia, that I had this. It was as if somebody was speaking to me and it was as much as you love Julia, that's how much I love you. And it very much felt like it was a separate, like it was God really felt like that. Now it could be maybe my mind was accepting myself and there was there was some self love there and and all of that. But it was this.  Yeah, definitely. Especially when it comes to things like we both had things around our physical health, it seems like, you know, we are ourselves. We live in our bodies every day. Why are we not connected to this to this thing that we now know to be true? Like I came out of it being sort of thinking to myself, why have I not connected with the fact that I'm not entirely physically healthy? Why have I not felt this before? You know, it must be somebody else who's told me because I haven't been aware of it. Yeah, when I think about it, I think that it was always there and I was just not tuning into it. Yeah, there's a lot of moments of clarity that come up like through my experience, even just like these small details of like, oh, that makes sense to me now. Oh, that makes sense. Like past experiences you had had that you didn't understand? Kind of like integrating these things that you've like learned on one level, but you haven't like really like completely grogged. Yeah, I had one like I kind of like gotten into yoga a little bit before. And I was like just thinking I was like, oh, OK, this is what we're trying to aim at with that physically. And then I'd been reading I ran to not too long before and like a couple things from that book, we're just like, oh, I get that now. Like this makes total sense to me. And I remember after that experience, so this was probably like 6 a.m. the morning, we hopped in the car to get back down to the valley and I pulled out my iPhone to just write some notes. I was like, OK, I'll write more about this later, but I'm just going to write, like, you know, top five things I've kind of learned and realized and just wrote for ages, I probably wrote like 30 bullet points about some some related stuff, but just like all sorts of different stuff.  Or was it about was it about the world? Did you just? Yeah. So a lot of I'd say like psychological stuff, physical stuff, because I'd been going through a back injury and a lot of my experience was kind of around. Understanding some things about about that and just my body. Yeah, other things, something single-mole related stuff. But just like, I don't know why I'm pursuing this track of life that I don't enjoy, like I should just do the things I want to do. There's no risk involved, big picture risk, you know, just all sorts of stuff. Now, I've heard I have no idea if this is true, but I've heard that. I think it was Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA, supposedly had this insight while on LSD. So now that would be an insight, if correct, about the external world, not just the profound truths that learn about themselves and their psychology and their history and all of that, but something about physics or like that. Did you guys have any of that? Was there did you understand at least other people better? Maybe if not the structure of molecules or other people, for sure. And something that's interesting to that that maybe you can put in the show notes is I was listening to an interview a little while ago. I can't remember the name of the researcher, but they were doing research on micro dosing, so pulling in scientists micro dosing on LSD. I don't even know if they were micro dosing or taking more serious doses. And then these trying to select people who are working on problems using LSD and then seeing if they had breakthroughs. And many of those people had breakthroughs. I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head. But they were able to solve a lot of the problems they had been stuck on. These were like mostly scientists, I believe, but I can find you that. Yeah, that'd be great. One of the things that I worry about, I've listened to some of the lectures by a guy's name, Alan Watt, and he talks about or Alan Watt, whatever his name is, the kind of Eastern or he's a British guy who had like a bunch of training and I think Buddhism and stuff like that. He speaks very highly of psychedelic drugs and he talks about another type of epiphany or revelation or solving of problems that people have in these states. There's something I worry about because I don't like this idea very much where he says, you know, people will have these epiphanies in the moment.  One of them, this is trying to remember it correctly. It's not exactly correct. He said he was speaking to a lady who had one of these experiences and discovered that, you know, all of life is essentially reducible to the smell of burnt almonds. And then she thought that was like she held on to that. I was like, oh, this is it. So she wrote it down so she wouldn't forget. And then she looks back and is like, that's doesn't make any sense. It's kind of silly. But he said, no, actually, I think I like that there's truth to that. And he kind of took that idea and tried to build on it. That is what somebody who with a very rational disposition looks at. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  So do you guys feel like the insights that you had were that kind of absurdist that you look back and are like, that doesn't make sense. But it did at the time. Or is it like, no, what you discovered, you feel like really was true? Yeah, that's a good question. So I think that the personal experiences were all true for me. I think that most of my first experience was like cleansing my psyche. I think it was like, you know, they've described ayahuasca as if if personal development or going to therapy was peeling the layers of an onion. Ayahuasca shatters your onion to a million different pieces and you you don't do it layer by layer. It kind of just forces you to deal with everything all at once, which I found to be very true for myself. My second experience and near the end, I kind of dove a little bit deeper and I ended up taking this sort of strange bus thing that was spinning with other people, which if you look into ayahuasca stories, they'll say if you end up on a transportation mode with other people, sometimes you're actually traveling with these other people's minds, which is completely obscure and hard to like tangibly understand. And then I got transported to this location that was this tree with sort of a fuzzy fairy thing that was black and super beautiful. And she was telling me that the universe was located within a tree. And I came out of that being like, wow, that's a little bit strange. Did you think it was true at the time?  No, I was like, wow, this is so amazing. Like, I know the keys to life, like I have the answers now. I understand the universe and how it was made and where we all are. And then I came out of that and was like, what on earth was that? Now, was the was the degree of belief similar when you realized, you know, you had those these internal insights about your mind and you thought, wow, this is true. Was it the same degree of belief that you had when you realize, oh, the universe came out of a tree? No, no, it wasn't.  Versus this concept that I was kind of like, wow, this is so interesting. Like, it was almost like childlike wonder if you were in like, it's if somebody had taken me to Disney World and was like, look at this magic castle and look at look at Mickey Mouse, like Mickey Mouse is so cool. And I'm like, wow. Do you think that if you were to have like, analyze that, like if in the midst of this amazing experience, you were to have this little edge of skepticism about the fairy. Do you think that you would have believed still been like, wow, well, the fairy said it. So it's kind of maturity. Think like, well, maybe this isn't maybe this isn't the case. Or is it just totally overwhelming that like everything that comes out of this fairy's mouth is this true claim. So part of it was that the experience was very colorful. So everything was like the most beautiful sense that you've ever seen with hues of purple and pink and orange and yellow. And this tree was very dark and this fairy was very beautiful. Like she was almost like a mouse like thing with this black velvety face. And I kept wanting to like, you know, touch the velvet, which is very strange. And so I think I was very overwhelmed by that experience. I came out of that, though, being like, I think that I could I mean, I could choose to go around and tell everyone that I had this ayahuasca experience where a fairy took me to a tree like the universe is in a tree. People might think I'm a little bit wacky. I do think you like it gets really strong and it fades out. And then you have this process of kind of integrating what happened. And I think you see clearly some of these things that were like, that's actually just done. We had an experience of an ayahuasca experience, but I still aside an experience just ourselves out of context. I remember I grabbed a guitar at the time and I was like, I don't know why that we play these things this way. Maybe we should play them this way. It's just like trying to do it, you know, and like just messing around with it. So for people that can't can't see what Ryan just did, he just turned the guitar upside down, so the butt of the guitar, you know, just like pulling the strings. And at the moment, it's like, oh, this is interesting, because I feel like. I feel like a lot of the we don't like question a lot of the rules. Normally, and then when you're doing it, it kind of like a lot of the rules like don't make sense. You're like, I've never really questioned why we play the guitar this way. And in that moment, I'm like, I have a question. I don't know why we play the guitar. I'm going to want to play this way. This feels better. But then afterwards, you're like, OK, I understand why we play the guitar that way. So you can't do it. Why are in that, though? So I love the idea in fact, that makes a lot of that makes a lot of sense that when your mind is kind of thrown into this alternative way of viewing things, you start to realize just how arbitrary a lot of the rules are, like the procedures we follow in everyday life aren't thought about. They're just we just act them out kind of uncritically. So I think there's a lot of merit to that, especially if you're trying to think about a theory and you're stuck up near you're hitting a wall and then like, oh, maybe the way I metaphorically get around this problem is by holding the guitar this way. Like, I think that's that's really cool. But at that moment, did you think, like, wow, this is this is right? This is this is the case? Or was it like, this is something I'm going to explore? Hmm, like, let's, you know, let's see how far I can go. Yeah, it was kind of like I had this feeling. So something that happens in in this experience is you kind of get into like a flow state. Sometimes you can like start to, especially physically for me, like do things that I didn't think were possible, especially around flexibility, but also around the first time we had this experience with like rhythm, people were like playing drums and I'm not a musical person at all. And just kind of like instinctually felt this like rhythm of the room, which is a really bizarre experience for me because I have no musical background. I always consider myself not really capable of like holding rhythm. But yeah, I could just like just instinctually do it. So you're going to get these feelings of like, oh, I feel like this is going to work. And then that particular experience, I started, I was like, no, this does not work. I tried it for a while. I remember I was I did pot once or however you use the wrong verb when I write, I smoked the marijuana. And I was like, OK, so I know a lot of people have spoken highly about playing music and like the musical experience. And I know one of the most tactile things, I guess, the most sensory changes that I get while in that state of mind is when I'm listening to music, like I like listening to music, I do consider myself musical, but you can hear things in music that you otherwise couldn't. It's like what I could do in that state of mind. Is almost separate the tracks so I could hear the I could hear the drums and I could hear the guitar kind of doing separate things. And yet I could also hear them together. So it's like it was like I was of two minds there. And that's not a logical contradiction. But it was this really amazing experience because then and then you could see that you could the harmonies were much more powerful. It's like, wow, this is just so beautiful. You could almost kind of see it is a very powerful experience. I thought, OK, well, why don't I try to play the piano? Because if people play piano while they're while they're high. And I was like, what I noticed, which was really interesting is when I was sitting at the piano, I have some measure of musical theory that I understand like scales, all the different scales. And I could see a lot more opportunity for how to put the notes together. It was like, oh, it's really easy to fall into like ruts when you're when you know how to play a musical instrument. And these are the scales, these are the notes you play. But I saw there was a whole realm of possibility that I hadn't seen. I was like, oh, this is great. But it was my trying to execute playing that I was totally incompetent. Like I was trying. It was hard for me to keep the rhythm. I was like almost too much in my head and be like, oh, I could do this. I could do this. But it was hard for me to execute. So somebody from the outside would have seen me like terrible, but from the inside, I was like, no, I'm trying to communicate this this thing that I know is there. I just can't quite get out. Did afterwards, were you able to to like have any breakthroughs musically? Well, I wasn't if I were spending a lot of time with music, I would have because I look back on what it was. And I remember it was like there was some there was some funky note in the blues scale that I was like, oh, I don't play this note enough. Like this he can actually integrate it. So it was it was a correct insight. Yeah, I just couldn't I couldn't make it work. Yeah, that's really interesting. Something that's interesting related to music and you were talking about how you could see the music and not to get like scattershot just like shooting off these experiences, but I think people find it interesting is. So during the ayahuasca experience, there is this traditional chanting or the music playing and that's really connected to the the puking that's going on in the room in a really weird way. You can like the music feels heavy and like you can feel it. So it kind of like they'll play these uplifting songs and you'll feel this like amazing sense of joy and then the music stops and it's like the room gets this like pain sinks over you and gets heavy. People start puking more when the music stops and then also crying.  But she could do like lighter and stuff, but then she'd go dark and you would just hear everyone start puking. Really? Yeah. And you could like, yeah, it was weird. It felt like you were kind of the instrument that was being played in a way. With the sound of the puking. Yeah, we didn't obviously puking doesn't sound good. Although it can be you kind of these lighthearted moments that happen during the second one.  And then everyone was just a number of people were just laughing hysterically. And then she started laughing because she was like like a dinosaur. Yeah, you thought that was hilarious. You were laughing so hard. Couldn't stop laughing. But yeah, you can like you can feel the emotion that's being communicated in music interesting in this really really real way that you can't don't seem to feel it like maybe if you you know it's late at night, you're like looking out at the stars and you're playing some music out of your car or something like that. It's like that type of feeling, but just cranked cranked way up. It seems like the waves that you experience as the person in the ceremony is almost coming from the music that's being played. And I don't know. There might be some intentionality behind that, maybe to draw people in and out of these experiences, but definitely it's like the whole room would be sort of like light and it's like as if everyone was dancing. And it's not it's not like absolute. Like there's still some people who seem to be having a good time when it gets really dark and there's still some people who seem to be having a bad time when it gets really light. Right. The girl beside me in our first experience lied on her side and cried the entire time. I don't think I and obviously I mean I was having my own experience. I wasn't just paying attention to her, but there were some points where my experience is really light and pleasant and happy. And I felt like my feelings going out to her because she seemed to be in so much pain. Now, when you were describing your experience, you said you were in a bus with other people that and that one of the things you read is that it's as if you are kind of having the same mental. You're like in the same mental zone as these other people. Did you talk to those people? Did they also report the same experiences? So I don't know who any of those people are. Like I didn't know anyone and coming out of it, I wasn't like, oh, you were on my bus last night. OK, so it wasn't there was nobody you recognized from that. Yeah, yeah, no, it wasn't. There's is it seven degrees or seven stages that they say? Yeah, so there's some people who have theories about how there's kind of stages of ayahuasca. And it seems like a lot of people have things that kind of correlate to these experiences, like, you know, at a certain stage, you kind of feel like you dissolve and like disappear as a person in a certain stage. It's like a common way to go between them is like some sort of like mythical animal takes you in some sort of vehicle. And then you have your experience shifts to a different experience. And that's one of the things we actually read. I hadn't read that at all. And then we read it afterwards.  This is the thing you're talking about is exactly the thing that happened to this person. Oh, yeah, there's a website that talks about it. That's really good. You should find that website. Show notes. And it's it's not something that like I don't I don't believe like fully in it. I think that it is kind of interesting to think about, you know, other people having these experiences and then, you know, people coming together and being like, oh, wow, I was transported on the same like spinning bus thing that is kind of like a ride that you'd seen in amusement park, but it was definitely a bus in here.  It's just interesting to think about how people can have sort of similar experiences, but they're still fully different. And the second time it was a small room. I think there was 10 of us, 12, maybe. And one of the women was epileptic, so she didn't actually drink ayahuasca. She was just there and we had to leave really quickly the next day. But I was really curious about what her experience was like. But unfortunately, didn't have the chance to talk to her because you just have this like, you know, everyone in the room is having such strong experiences and everyone drinks ayahuasca, including the shaman, including the helpers. And they just seem to be able to, you know, they've done it so much. They just function fine. But I would love to find out what her experience of this room was like. Yeah, I would love to know what the shaman's experience would be like. Guiding people through that. So. You mentioned one of these levels or layers was a disillusion of the ego. This is also something or disillusion of the self. This is that comes up in religious texts all the time. Did either of you have that experience? Yeah. So the the second ceremony we went to was actually it was actually shortest. The first one was all night and they offered three times. I drank twice. Amanda drank three times. And it kind of goes on like this. It seems around like, you know, an hour and a half kind of peaks and then fades, but it's different for different people. So the second time we went, I just drank one time and had this like blast off into outer space type experience. But yeah, at one point you just I was lying there and I just to answer your question. I'll just kind of relate my experience and could feel this like my eyes were closed and it kind of you could kind of see like the stars kind of like you're in some sort of spaces like the closest thing to what it looked like and this like thicker black stuff.  What does my hands feel like? It's kind of just this buzzing. It's hard to tell like what exactly where do you end and where the space begin? That we got more and more pronounced and I kind of felt like this feeling of like my body was just kind of like dissolving and then kind of had this like blackout experience where it was just kind of a blackout experience where you have a sense of time. So if anyone's ever if anyone's ever gone for surgery and had anesthesia, this very quick change from, oh, I'm in the opera, I'm in the anesthesia room and then boom, I'm there again. It happens instantly versus if you black out drinking alcohol, you kind of have a sense of time passing in a weird way. And so this experience is more of still had a sense of time passing. And then the next thing I was aware of was just kind of the visuals were extremely strong, like I was in space looking at stars and I had no body. And it was kind of like the madness visions where it didn't I wasn't aware of the of myself in the room. I was just completely there and there was no thought of like, oh, maybe I could open my eyes or maybe I could get up and walk. I was like in space with no body. Like it was kind of like there was no me, but I was just like perceiving things. And then had this I guess the closest thing to cause like kind of like a rebirth experience where I like slowly came back into my body and then slowly became aware of I was in a room, had this experience of like the room kind of spinning around me because some of the things the show was doing was going in front of you, making the music and going behind you and in front of you. And I kind of had this feeling of like, oh, I'm just like floating here. Like I can spin around to the back of the room and spin around to the front of the room. He was physically moving over and rolling back. He was a really weird position. And we're just like, yeah, going because you just get really flexible at the time of the tension disappears out of your body. Anyways, so going through this experience and then kind of like had this moment where I come back into my body and it was really like everything didn't make sense to me anymore. And what I mean by that is like I knew my name was Ryan, but that felt weird. I was like, Ryan, it's a weird sound that I attached to myself. And I was like, OK, I'm in this room and I'm in Peru. I know these things, but it was just like, it's weird. It's like weird that we call this thing Peru. And I'm here on like the other side of this like space ball. So like, you know, just like reintegrating all of these like things that I would never have thought about before. I had this experience where I spilled some water on my leg and I was like, oh, that feels weird. And then, you know, a second night, I went back and tested again. I was like, oh, still wet. That's weird. Weren't you like, why am I wearing clothes? I'm like, why am I wearing these things? These are so strange. It was just like every all these like social conventions was just like experiencing them as very strange. And then kind of just like slowly layered back in until the point where I was like, OK, I'm back in the room. I'm here. I'm Ryan. It's not weird. Yeah, I'm Ryan. It's not weird anymore. Things with you spill water. It stays wet. My body is definitely up. You know, I've got these leg things, these arm things. Everything's back. And then so it's just slow process of like starting out with just like purely just perceiving some sort of visual data to like, I can feel things. All these feelings are correlated to this like physical thing and then kind of incorporating some mental stuff. Like, OK, this is geographically where I am. This is like who this is the sound I make to refer to the thing that I am. Wow. So there's a there's a lot there. And for me, this is interesting to hear from the outside because I've had lots of conversations with people about psychedelics. And sometimes they say some very silly things. But what you've just said makes me think that perhaps they are they they don't maybe they don't have philosophic training or they don't have the words to articulate exactly the experience and maybe they take the experience and take it in a really wild direction because people would say that you had the one with the universe experience, you know, the dissolution of the ego. You were everything. And then I mean, I've heard this before the visual from space. You get put into your body and then you relearn these things. It sounds like from a philosophic perspective, what you've just said is something I would love to be able to articulate to people that are stuck in the mindset of thinking that the social conventions aren't weird, because if you don't need the psychedelics to have some of those realizations or as like physical space and physical body and sensations, really, it's a weird thing if you just if you think about what the mind is and what the body is and then there's this correlation between to do social norms of this really weird thing, clothes or this really weird thing. But we never think of those thoughts. And it's funny you say it's funny that you say those things because years ago, before I had any pot experiences, people would ask me all the time, Steve, are you high when I would ask questions like, why do we wear clothes?  And those that for these must they must think these are stupid, silly thoughts. But I thought this is perfectly reasonable question why we wear clothes. Now I realize after the experience that it seems like most people don't think about those things unless they take drugs. Just because it's almost like a purely philosophic thing, they're not jostled enough out of their normal consciousness to realize like what is convention and arbitrary. And I would say mind constructed versus what is actual and out there. So it sounds like that was kind of a really extreme example where you're like, oh, I guess I have these limbs that I move and I guess my name is Ryan. Like that's weird, but it's true. That is weird if you think about it. That's goofy that that we call you whatever that is. Ryan, like we say these words and that correlates to the you know what that means and it knows that that's a very weird thing. But you don't think of it as weird when you're stuck in it. Yeah, definitely. You're even if you look at yourself and you're like, wow, I've got a lot of like limb space compared to most things. Yeah. And like if you think of the core of your body is quite small. I used to do this when I was a kid. I remember having a conversation with my mother. There was a glass of water on our kitchen counter and I was like, I am fascinated by this. I know that that that what's in that cup like makes life happen and like there's stuff in that thing that we take and we put in our bodies and it's like if we don't, we die. This is really weird. I remember talking to my mom was like, is it odd that I feel totally like occupied and I'm not bored at all? Just looking at a cup of water is that normal? And it's not really normal, but this is true, you know?  I think, isn't it bizarre that we have this like clump of matter that just kind of slowly grows out of this other clump of matter and it's kind of fuzzy and sort of keeps me warm? It's just absurdity upon absurdity when you think about them. Yeah. And to to to survive as a human, we kind of need to to normalize those things. And so it makes sense that we kind of just, you know, you can't like a child, right? They've been capable of doing a lot of things and incapable of ensuring they don't survive because they're like, wow, a plane, right, wow, a dog, it's my best friend, oh, it's my best friend again. And so to survive, we need to normalize those things. And humans are really good at adapting to the different situations. And the way I think about the value of, I'll just use the value of drugs or mind altering substances is that. As a human, you're kind of you're this perceiver, everything you interact with is coming at you. It's kind of like this lane and it becomes very normal very quickly, depending on who you are, become normal, more quicker, less quickly.  So you're now perceiving all the same stuff, but in a completely different way. And so that's a different conceptual framework. And it's interesting in the new way it's coming at you. But I think a lot of the value comes from looking back and saying, like, oh, hey, I'm looking at this thing that now seems so weird to me. They used to seem so normal. And I think a big way this is helpful is looking back at your behavior.  Or I don't know, I keep doing this, like, why do I keep drinking? I don't like that. I should just stop it. You kind of have this like outside observer view of your behavior because your perception of things are different. And so I think that's why drugs have a lot of value if you use them in an introspective way instead of almost all people are the most common way to use drugs now is in an escapist way. We get drunk to dull the pain. We people take MDMA and go to a club instead of closing the door in your room and turning the lights off and being going inside, people try to run away from their experience and use drugs in that way. And I think that's a lot of the reason why it has such a negative connotation because people don't actually get that much value from introspection. Now, when you were talking there, you said, as a human, these things make sense. Now, is that one of those kind of weird conceptual categories that you're putting on your experience and might that not be correct? So now I do want to dive just a little bit into the metaphysics of those claims because when you're in that state, when you're not the self, you're just kind of perceiving, I think that's the language that you use. Is there do you think that that is kind of truly the nature of your conscious mind is just the perception? It's not the conceptual categories of human in a body with a brain. It's you're the perceiver because a lot of eastern philosophy and a lot of transcendental philosophy says what you really are fundamentally. It's not your physical body. It's not Ryan and all the associations with that. It's just that point of consciousness that happens to be stuck right now to your perception. What do you think about that? Do you feel like that really is like fundamental, that point of perception? So I think that who I really am is pretty fuzzy and can't really be separated from my body or my identity in other ways and that consciousness perceiving thing. Does that make sense? So you don't think it would be possible to just remain in the state of the selfless perceiver if you were to die, let's say, your physical body, your brain would go away and all that. You couldn't stay from that universal perspective. And I asked this because this is the claim of kind of like transcend your body. Exactly. This is what people say.  Like the idea of you have a soul that inhabits a physical body. Yeah, this would be more and the soul usually implies that there's still some unique identity to you, that there's like your soul. This would be the transcendental idea that says all of that is just kind of arbitrary, conceptual things we're making up. What what you the fundamental existent thing, your consciousness is just the one perspective. The one they say the God perspective. Yeah, that there were all fundamentally they claim God. We've just forgotten about it. And then sometimes there are all of what we think of being as human beings or just little instantiations of that that have forgotten that they are this one cosmic perspective. Yeah, it's interesting to think about this kind of a central idea that you can read a lot about with ayahuasca is this idea that we are all our own God and I don't think I have that experience quite as deeply as Ryan did. I didn't have an experience when I left my body and I didn't have the experience of returning to my body, but it seems quite common that people have that experience with ayahuasca and psychedelics in general. Where else? And they realize like, OK, I kind of control my universe. I control my world. I control myself and everything that goes on around me and that nothing else does. And yeah, and then I guess to touch more on that is what I think is happening isn't that in the psychedelic experience. I think from brain scans on people who are using these drugs is like different areas of your brain shut down. So the experience of I'm floating through space isn't an experience of you have.  And therefore the conscious experience is illusory or essentially just a hallucination. I think that's definitely one plausible interpretation. What's interesting is of the people that I've met with very like new age beliefs, this people claim this state of mind comes from psychedelics, it comes from meditation, it can come from like religious rituals, that this is this is the state of mind that a lot of people for thousands of years have been talking about and said there the fundamental truth is there. It's not from our regular everyday perspective. It's from that it's from that point of mind. This is why I think in my journey is I find there's value in religion. I think there's truth to be found. I think that's mired in a bunch of nonsense. But this is such a consistent part of the human experience that people say, oh, yeah, I had this and then I realized all the my self-perception was all wonky and it helped me be a better person. I realized love was really important and it changed my life in these ways. It seems very, very silly to me that we would dismiss this just because of the claim as, oh, well, you have these insights because you ingested a substance. I think that's a mistaken way to think about things. So I do want to go back just to kind of enclosing to some more about the contents of your experience while on the ayahuasca. So you both had kind of negative and positive. Were there any other really powerful visuals or feelings or realizations that you had in that state of mind specifically? Did you find there is any experience of what people call contradiction? So did you have the experience of something being and not being or something being blue and not blue? Because I'll just say in the conversations I've had with what I call irrationalist thoughts that people also claim, oh, contradictions exist and you can experience them in the state of mind once you've ingested psychedelics. Either of you have that kind of feeling. I really don't even know what it would mean to experience a contradiction. Like would it be like with the example you gave, would it be that you know something's blue, but you see it differently than what you know to be true is blue? The way that it's reported to me is something like with the self. We'll say you are, but you really aren't.  Or like you have your self-perception and you don't have it at the same time. Would be one. And I would imagine other things like with colors. It's very hard to make sense of, but it would be something like, oh, the thing was red and it wasn't red at the same time. Now, I struggle with this. This is one of the reasons I'm scared of psychedelics is because people claim this and I'm like, that sounds crazy to me. Yeah, I don't think I had much of that. My experience, so yeah, I can't conceptualize what it would even mean to like truly experience a contradiction. But the experience I had was just kind of like playing with these conventions. So experiencing myself and kind of having this like, I can't remember what the context was, but like, oh, wow, I'm actually like quite small. And then it kind of like, like as a person physically, like I'm quite small. And like, you know, I'm six foot tall at the time was like 190 pounds or something.  And then I'm like, oh, no, I'm actually quite tiny. And then I did something change about the experience. And I was like, started thinking about it.  You know, I'm small and large. And then also, it's something happened to me about age. I can't remember exactly how it was happened, but just to like kind of quickly flip back and forth between this like feeling of experiencing being old and being young. But I think like, obviously, human life is kind of like average 80 years. So you kind of have this like strong sense of like, oh, if you're 60, 70, that means like you're really old and feeble. But that's not really like absolutely true if we could extend life 300 years. And that'd be like a quite young person. So yeah, just playing with those things. But those aren't like that's not a contradiction.  It's relevant to like what you're comparing it to. And so like in that experience could very had this experience of kind of. I guess learning that like a lot of these things are kind of relative to other things. And so it's kind of this like, oh, well, I'm like also quite large and small. I'm quite like old in some ways, but like also quite young and others. Exactly. Yeah, that's the key. Old in some ways, not old in other ways. I think if I can see why people would take this and say, oh, look, take the psychedelic experiential realize you're old and young or like you're big and small, it's a contradiction. Wow. And then they take that experience and they import it back into epistemology. And they say, therefore, logical contradictions exist and so on. And things go off the off the tracks really quickly. But when I've had these conversations with people, when you really dive into it, it's always sounds something like that or it's an insight where, oh, in this way, I had this property. But from another perspective, I didn't have that property. You know, and then it's not a contradiction. Yeah, I don't think that contradiction is a word that I would use to describe any experience I had. I think it's just like looking at things from different perspectives. Like I think one of the great things about ayahuasca is that it challenges you to look at your life from sort of like a different perspective. Like, oh, I always do this like, oh, but what if I did it differently? It's it's not necessarily that it's contradicting, it's just looking at it from a different different lens. Yes. So Ryan said his one of his peak experiences, I think he said on the first time, was this baby thing that you realized was part of yourself. And then that was this powerful experience. What was your peak experiences? Was it the gypsy thing? Was that after you were after the earth hugged you? Was it just smooth sailing from there? Or did you have any other powerful experiences? Yeah, so I think that my peak point of sadness and pain was when I was lying on my side and I was just crying and crying and crying. I think at that point Ryan was having so I cried through a happy song. I just was like in so much anguish and pain at that point I just kept crying because he used my body as a bit of a drum, which is against the noble silence. But it was kind of this like, oh, I'm here and I know you're sad, but I'm having this really happy moment and I kind of want to share it with you, which I felt like was kind of endearing. And he was just trying to do rhythm. He was like, I got this, I got this.  And then this rebirth from the earth. And then also I was so free dancing in this field. And I feel like that was my low point followed by my high point. I definitely had moments after that. It just didn't go as low like my relationship with my brothers always been really rocky and I was really not nice to him when I was younger. And I I felt like I had this third party view of me being mean. Like I could see all these different points in my life, like as if I was a ghost watching myself be mean to him and be like, wow, like, you know, I was the cause of so much of why we don't get along now. I was the older sibling and I was terrible as a child. And I mean, that spurred coming out of that. That was like, I need to reach out to him. I want to apologize for these things. I want to have a conversation around that. So that was kind of like another it was like a low where I felt sad, but it wasn't as low as like me feeling like I was going to like die on the street. Now, when you say you were feeling sad and you have these, you both have this intense feeling of sadness. Is that couple, is it sad because of X? Is it sad because you realize I was been a bad person? Or is it just literally the feeling of sadness just like overwhelmed by the emotional feeling or is it tied to like a reason? I think that it depends on the situation. For me, with my brother, it was feeling sad because I had been mean. And it was, you know, these things that if I had reflected on my life, I would have clearly seen, but I hadn't taken the time to reflect on them. I had just pushed them away and been like, we don't get along. We're different instead of being like, wow, I was really, really cruel when we were young, like I was like hitting him and calling him names and shaming him and all these things that are really not nice. And being able to see that and feeling like this deep feeling of sadness that I had done that to this person that was my little brother or that is my little brother and other instances where, you know, lying on my side and crying and being outside. It was raining and cold. I felt all these feelings, but they weren't as connected to something. I didn't really know. I feel sad because of this. I just felt emotional feelings and pain. Yeah. And for me, I think it was kind of like this backlog of feelings. My experience with emotions before that had been basically to completely reject the reality of emotional experience. It was, you know, anger that was acceptable and that was like pretty much it. So I had no trust in my emotions. I didn't use them as like this kind of pathfinder to say, oh, I'm feeling this way. I should think about this. I just completely rejected them. And so in this experience, it's just like so much intense sadness. And, you know, I probably hadn't cried before that for like, I don't know, maybe like once in the past 15 years. But and so I just like cried and cried and cried and was like, oh, God, there's just like so much. And I feel like at the time it was connected. It wasn't like I was experiencing moments again, but I could just like see back to these points in my life when my experience of it was just numb. Like I turned off my ability to feel things and then looking back at, especially after the experience. But just like look back and feel what I feel. Like when my emotional experience was at that time, at that time, I'd completely numb myself to it and look back at a lot of moments in my childhood, for example, where I was just numb and trying to escape through like video games and but I would I really feel was like this deep feeling of sadness and loneliness. So it's like you had these emotions, they were bottled up, but they really didn't go away. And so you got to actually experience the process. That's the thing that I kind of came away from it with this kind of I call it a belief of mine that you can't hide from emotions. They need to be experienced and you can pause that. You can put that off. But you know, the people who think that most of the people think they can just reject their emotional experience. At least for me, my experience was that's not the case.  So I went through this, you know, in a tense period of sadness and then had this experience of joy and it was it was this moment was like, oh, this is what it feels like to feel like very happy. Like this is what joy feels like. I've never felt this in my life before. And it's the connection I was making that it's like if I try to turn off my emotions, what I'm left with is just resentment and anger. And if I open myself up to feeling sad a lot of the time, not a lot of time, but like experiencing sadness fully, then that allows me the possibility of experiencing joy. Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with that as well. And I'm a big believer in that our bodies carry these things that we don't that we don't experience. So I think that when people say, like, oh, I'm over it or, oh, you know, I let it go, like to me, those words, I'm like, I don't even understand what that means. How can you just let it go? It's not a piece of paper that you release into the wind and never see again. It's something that you need to feel. And I feel like if we don't actually feel the things that we need to feel, they just kind of fester in our bodies. And I think that people experience that in all different ways, from tension, inflexibility, obesity, disease, all these types of things. And for me, I kind of felt like at one point it was like because I had a lot of anger before that that I was already dealing with. And I felt like it was like the core of my being had been on fire and it was slowly extinguishing. That was kind of like the metaphor in my mind during that. And by the end, I was like, wow, like the fires out. I feel this like sense of calm come over me. And just at the risk of rambling a tiny bit because I think people find it interesting, the experience I had was I had come out of a pretty serious back injury, had really no mobility in my back. And it had been the course of a year. And during the ayahuasca experience, I had this kind of like involuntary clenching and releasing of most of the muscles in my body in this kind of progressive way, like I started making these like painful fists that just like kind of crushing my hands and it was like I could fight it. But it was like kind of involuntary in a lot of ways. And through this process kind of come to this realization that all of this pain that I'm experiencing physically in my body, on some level, I'm choosing to do this to myself. And that sounds pretty, pretty far out there. But I was just kind of realizing that, oh, I can just turn this off. Like my back is stiff right now. But I can just like consciously release those muscles. I'm in control of those. And the connection was that this rejection of feeling in my body was me just like really clenching up everything. And that's kind of probably one of the more like woo-woo things I've come away from this experience with. But since then, I've really noticed like when I go through a lot of the pain in my back and moments of tension are really related to stress. So if I, for example, have relationship things going on in my neck and upper back will kind of flare up and become an area of pain. And obviously, if I sit on my computer for a long time, that does it as well. So when you said you felt like you could choose to relax those muscles, did you do it? Could you literally do that? Yeah. So it was this long process where I started with my hands. They were just like clenching the fists like you can tell the point of pain. And then I could like shake it off. Like it was like cement that. So is this a very like elaborate like, OK, this really hurts. And then I can like shake off the pain. And so I'm just waving my hands around. And then it was kind of this like developing of nuance as I went through my body where I was like, OK, I can do this everywhere. I can clench that in my back and then release it. And it was kind of this as if my body turned on this like program that was going to run like, OK, we're going to clench and release every single muscle in your body. And so I've always been very inflexible person like in high school. When you do the fitness tests, I can't even get to zero on the hip flexibility thing where you try to touch your toes. I'm stuck in the negatives. And so after this process of probably just like moving around my body in all these weird ways, I was like, I feel like I could touch my toes right now and did this forward fold where I could actually bring my chest onto my legs like a complete full expression of a foot full. And I saw this is the only other time we engaged during ayahuasca.  All the tension in my body went away and I just felt like a newborn baby physically. And so this and then afterwards that lasted for quite a while. But then the tension kind of slow over the next couple of weeks, like slowly creeped back onto my body like cement in a way. And it was never it was basically for the next year, I could just like easily touch my toes. Wow. So some interesting context to that, too, is we had had a bet the month before. And Ryan's like, I'm going to touch my toes by the end of this month.  And he was stretching every day, working towards touching his toes. And at the end of the month, he was still like a couple inches from touching his toes. And then this ayahuasca ceremony happens.  And then after he's like, look, I can touch my toes. That's like, it's amazing. And it wasn't so it wasn't like this like switch that happened. This was probably over the course of this was the second time we drank. So we, you know, we'd been sitting there on the floor for like five hours. And then I went through this kind of process that maybe took like 45 minutes of like slowly moving my body in ways to like I'm trying to move forward or that's tight. Maybe I could move over to the left and then come around. And I'm like, OK, now I'm closer. So it was like it was all, you know, it was a few hours of like playing around physically that happened. But yeah, it was that was one of the most like, I guess, I don't know what were these interesting experiences coming up.  Did you feel like when you were doing that, you knew how to move to correct? Or was it pure experimentation? Was it like, oh, maybe I could do this and you just kind of worked and see what? Um, yeah, it was a lot of like kind of tuning in to that kind of instinctual like this way it feels good. And this is an experience I've had since then with edibles and with psilocybin. A lot of the first kind of psilocybin as well. The couple times you've done, I've just like stretched the entire time. You just like body just kind of starts to want to move. I like that idea. And it's like, it's like you have to work to just sit there. And your natural state is just to kind of keep moving around and playing. But yeah, to answer your question is kind of. You kind of like testing things out like, let me try over here, but not really consciously. It's more like, oh, I feel like this is the better way to do this. And so the yoga realization that I kind of hinted at earlier was that I'd realized that when I was doing yoga, a lot of times I was what what I was looking for for success in yoga was the feeling of tension in my body, which is actually not what I should have been looking for. If I'm like, I reach a point where I'm like, oh, this feels tense. I shouldn't look to stretch my hamstrings by having this strong feeling of tension in my hamstrings. If my goal is mobility, I should try to move around that. Hmm. So this sounds like a very positive experience. It seems like you've learned psychologically. You can touch your toes. How this is we're talking about a very taboo subject here, especially like in the states where I'm from, especially like growing up in a conservative Christian household like super taboo.  Have you told a lot of people about the positive parts of this experience? Or if you tell people, how have they reacted to that? Like if people went open to you saying, oh, yes, I learned quite a lot while taking drugs in Peru. Yeah, I mean, I think that everyone's a little bit different. I've had reactions of, oh, that sounds interesting. But why would you ever choose to puke? That's one that I've gotten a couple of times from people. I'm like, it's it's not like you're choosing to drink bad water that you know has poop in it that's going to make you sick. It's not really the same thing. It's hard to explain that to somebody, though. To things like, wow, I've always been interested in that. Can you tell me more? I'm very open to that experience, to people being like, I've never heard of that and I'm not really interested in talking about it anymore. Yeah, immediately afterwards, because this was like our first experience with anything, with any psychedelic drugs, I mean. So it was just like this mind blowing experience. So I think I feel like we both had the urge to talk about it. Like, I've got to tell someone about this. This is crazy. I got enlightened in the jungle. Yeah, and so it probably came up more. But yeah, it's still out there. So it's not like the first thing you tell people.  You kind of get in that neighborhood and then you're like, OK, let's talk about this. Philosophically, I think that the way these things become untaboo is by kind of like coming out about them, talking about how, you know, a significant one of the most significant experiences in my life was an experience using a psychedelic drug and that it's something we should, you know, I think it's I think it's not a crime to do this drug. I think it's a crime that people are prevented from having this tool that if you want to do this in the United States or Canada, you can get arrested. I think that's a crime. I don't think it's a crime to do the drug. And so philosophically, I've tried to like be as open more than I would normally and say, like, oh, it's worth the risk for me to face people who say, oh, I don't I don't want to talk to Ryan because he's, you know, he does drugs, you know, very infrequently. And that's a good way to like filter people out. Anyways, I don't want to really engage with those people. Yeah, I don't think there's been anybody who's been like, oh, you did Iowaska, I'm never going to associate with you again. Yeah. So to answer your question, we talked about it, you know, more after the fact kind of talked about the subject with some of our closer friends, with people you meet who seem to have, you know, at least interests in that in that realm, but you're not not and then less over time as well. So yeah, I find that my my rule of thumb is that I don't usually offer up the information unless there's a reason for it to come up because I still feel like my experience was a very personal thing and I have no interest in somebody like shaming me for that choice. I don't want to engage with that. So if somebody wants to talk about it, I'm happy to talk about it, you know, just like we are now. And we've had tons of conversations about this off the record as well. It's off the record. The right phrase for that off the microphone. Now, do you feel like you guys frequently think about your experience? Like when you go around in everyday life to the insights that you've had, like, do they do they come up like or is this something that? OK, it was in the past I learned and now you're kind of occupied with other things. Sometimes I think that, you know, now that we've kind of talked about it and relives it, I think it'll be like on my mind a little bit more noticing those things over the next couple of days to a couple of weeks. But it's been close to three years since that experience. And I feel like there's some things that have become ingrained that I learned from that experience that I took away from it or things that like fundamentally change like it's like my mind opened up something that I'm not going to close again and that just has become a part of my life. Like, for example, like I kind of mentioned before that I was really good at kind of opening up these parts of your your mind that have been closed off, especially to things that you love doing. There's been things like after I was like, I've wanted to do yoga and teacher training for ages, I'm just I'm going to do it in the next year. And I did do that. And it's like I wasn't happy doing that job. I've always felt like I wanted to do something different. I'm going to pursue that and that hasn't shifted at all. There's never been a doubt for me since that moment that I need to go back to the path that I was on before. Other things, though, like specific, specific things like I rarely think about the fuzzy velvet fairy. She's pretty pretty rare that she comes up for me. Yeah, I'd say it's the kind of like a slow process of thinking about it quite often and less and then less and less. And we both kind of consciously integrated it afterwards. We talked a lot about it. We both journaled a lot about it. There's a lot of introspection and wrote notes and said, these are the things this this is kind of like showing me a new path. And this is how I'm going to walk down that path. Because I think it's possible to go do an ayahuasca ceremony, fly back home, get in your same social circle, go back to your same job. Is anything going to change? Maybe a tiny bit, but probably not a lot. And for us, we had this kind of vision of a different future of a different way we could go. And so we said, we're not going to go back to the same city we used to live in. We're not going to, you know, it's kind of hard to say, but it's like a lot of people in our life are going to change because these things all impact who we are. And if we want to be different people, we've got to change these these things about ourselves. So it's not a thing that permanently changes who you are completely. I think it does in like small ways. But a lot of it was also just realizing that a lot of the change is going to be require effort and it's going to require you actually doing things afterwards. So now a couple of years later, I think that a lot of those things that I thought about then and wanted to integrate have become fully integrated. I think that I've forgotten about some of those things, which is why I would like to go do this again at some point in the future. That's what I was going to ask if you guys plan on having another experience ayahuasca or other psychedelics to kind of explore this more. Yeah, I would I would really like to go back and do it in the first time we went, we just did two individual ceremonies, which was really good and really valuable. And we made quite a bit of effort to integrate it afterwards. But I think going there and being focused and kind of doing something like a week where you're just you're either only thinking journaling or doing this and having a deeper experience where you could really think through a lot of things would add a lot of value to it. And that's something I want to do in the future. So you guys wouldn't be shy in saying that you think ayahuasca at least could be for the right in the right setting with the right person, a kind of life changing in a positive direction, medicine or technique or tool for personal growth. Yeah, definitely. And I think that it's really important to do it in the right setting. Like I would not recommend going out and making your own ayahuasca or finding ayahuasca off the street. I think that the ceremonies part of what makes it really special and part of what allows you to get really deep with it. Yeah, I think the context is huge. Like people, if you just couldn't buy it and do it on your couch with your friends and we watch Rick and Morty, you're probably not going to get as much value out of it. And so going there, having someone who's an expert, having people that like make sure everything's going to go OK, doing it with a community of people who have traveled a distance because they're committed to making positive changes. I think adds a lot of value to the experience. And if you were going to do it, I mean, just make sure you do a lot of research because it can be can find yourself in dangerous situations. So find someone you know or like someone you second connection with who's done this, who knows a place where you can go and have a safe experience. Yeah. And then the last thing I would say about that is that we were both on a path of personal development at the point where we did it. We were both, I mean, Ryan was a little bit further down that path than I was, but we were both journaling, getting into meditation. We were both doing introspection in our lives. You're both working through the Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Brandon, which is probably the book that's changed my life the most. And I feel like I think that ayahuasca can be beneficial at any point in your life. But I think that it was especially beneficial in a positive way for us because we were going down this path of self-development and we were both very open to, OK, what else can we do? What else can change? What can we process? Yeah, it's not a magic pill. It's not going to fix all your problems. But it can give you some insight that will help you fix your problems. But you've still got to go up and do it. It's a perfect note to end on. Thanks, guys. This has been an awesome conversation. Thanks, Steve. All right, that was my conversation with the world wanderers. I'm sure you guys enjoyed it. How could you not? As I said in the interview, you just can't dismiss these ideas. There is something here. There's some overlap in the area of psychedelics and religious experiences and human psychology and the philosophy of mind. All of these things are blending together, at least in the way that I'm thinking about this area, there's truth to be discovered.  I think it's pretty obvious that Ryan and Amanda's experience found some of the nuggets of truth.  I see no reason why we can't treat the psychedelic experience with a 100 percent rational analysis. So naturally, I'm going to have more conversations with people about psychedelics, taking different psychedelics, the insights that they've had, and I'm going to try to get to the bottom of it. I'm sure many of my listeners have had psychedelic experiences. So if you're comfortable talking about them, start up a conversation on the YouTube channel. Let's find the fundamental principles that are lodged in the psychedelic experience and we'll try to build a coherent and rational theory from there. So if you like this show, go to patreon.com slash Steve Patterson and you can become a supporting member. There's currently over 85 other patrons of Patterson in pursuit. And if you like Ryan and Amanda, you found them intriguing. They also have a Patreon, which is patreon.com slash the world wanderers. All right, that is all for today. I'll talk to you guys next week.