Nic Gabriel - My Heart of Darkness

Full transcript: Nic Gabriel on London Real

4:14 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. This is Nick Gabriel. And our guest today, I guess you could say, is Nick’s ayahuasca journey. I’ve just seen Nick.

4:23 I haven’t seen him for two and a half weeks. I haven’t spoken to him, except for like a minute on the phone. I have no idea what happened to him. And so I am just as curious as you guys are as to what happened. And we’re gonna talk all about Nick’s experience today.

4:37 So Nick, how the hell are you? Buddy, I am so incredibly well. I am so incredibly well and bursting with love. And some of the things we’re gonna talk about today, I’m going to do my very, very best to use the power of speech to convey what happened to me in that jungle. But a lot of it is beyond the kingdom of words.

5:06 And for anyone who is doubting what I say or thinks these are the ravings of Lunatec, I would say before you make up your opinion, please go and go into the jungle and drink ayahuasca and then we will we will chat again after that okay all right now you left i think it was two weeks ago two and a half weeks ago it was um a tuesday i think you flew to peru i was wondering if you could just tell us you know what what did you where did you go and what were the details that you’re getting there um i took a flight from london to madrid and then from madrid to the capital of Peru, which is Lima. And then from Lima, I took a flight to Iquitos, which is a smaller city. And it is pretty much in the middle of the jungle.

6:01 As you’re flying over, I had a window seat in the last couple of hundred miles, maybe even 300 miles of the flight. I don’t know if you know, but when you’re on an international flight, you know when you’re coming into a city, like you might pass over a little bit of unspoiled geography and then it might become agricultural land and then it eventually will become the suburban parts of the city and then eventually becomes a densely populated urban geography. With this there was nothing like that. All you saw until you saw the airport was a canopy of green, just a sea of green as far as the eye could see. So we landed in Iquitos and then I met with the rest of the group. It was a group of 33 people who were doing this experience. They had taken a different flight from Amsterdam and I met them there and we took a bus, no we didn’t take a bus, we took something called motor cars, which is spelled M-O-T-O-R-K-A-R-S, which are, it’s almost like a motorcycle that’s been retrofitted with a little passenger tuk-tuk type thing on the back.

7:15 So like a tuk-tuk? Like a tuk-tuk, but a motorized one, yeah, similar to the ones in Thailand, very similar. And we took those into Iquitos, into a little cafe called the Yellow Rose of Texas, which is a typical tourist place. I mean, I guess it’s the main gringo meeting point in Iquitos for tourists and travelers. And then from there, we all piled onto a bus.

7:42 And we took a bus 26 kilometers into the secondary jungle. I found out on that trip that there’s two main types of jungle in the Amazon, the primary jungle and the secondary jungle. The primary jungle is a lot denser. The trees are a lot taller. it’s a lot more, I guess it’s a lot more intense.

8:03 We were going into what’s called a secondary jungle, which is, I would hesitate to say, it’s more like a forest than a jungle, but still definitely you would call it a jungle if you went inside it. And when you were traveling, you were traveling alone, were you scared, were you calm? You know, it was a lot of long flight, a lot of time to think. Yes. Brian, I knew something big was gonna happen.

8:28 I just, and I was definitely scared. I mean, you know, when we had Graham Hancock on the show, even back then, he was talking about his experiences and saying how profound they were and how difficult they were. And even then, I was scared. So I had a lot of time on my own on this, on the journey until I arrived in the Quito’s and there’s no doubt about it, I was definitely scared. But you were gonna go through it either way.

8:54 I mean, my mind had been made up. There was no doubt about it. So you go into the secondary jungle on this bus, 26 kilometers outside of Aqitos? We traveled 26 kilometers along a specific road, and then we took a turn off to the retreat where we were staying. The retreat’s name is called El Pargero, which means the purge.

9:20 Apparently, certain shamans in the Amazon are known as pargeros, which means people who initiate purges, because that is what the medicine is doing, is helping you purge up negative thought patterns and negative entities in some cases. So yeah, I mean, we arrived at El Porgero and we had to take a walk about a kilometer walk from where the bus couldn’t travel any further to where the retreat was, which was quite an idyllic location. There was a big dormitory where we all stayed.

10:01 Well, not all of us, about 20 of us stayed in this double story dorm. Dormitory was pretty much just made out of wood and not a thatched roof, but like a leafed roof almost. So it was quite a- Was the place charming? It was very idyllic. It was an idyllic location.

10:21 It had its own little creek we would go wash in the morning. You could take walks deeper into the jungle. It was having chickens walking around. Was it running water? The water in the creek was running, but just barely.

10:39 There was flow through it, but only just barely. I think the fresh water and drinking water was actually bought into the camp every few days in huge 10 liter drums or 15 liter drums. So you didn’t have showers or sinks or… We would clean ourselves in the creek. And what about toilets?

10:56 Yes, there were what could be called toilets, which were basically long drops, basically just huge holes in the ground that, you know, it wasn’t definitely not a flush toilet by any stretch of the imagination. So it was pretty rough. I mean, you were roughing it. Yes. I found myself asking Suzanne who is the shaman that took Brian and I on our very first ayahuasca trip.

11:23 I found myself asking her, do you think Brian could do this many times? I was expecting you might be thinking that. So yeah, it was pretty rough. I definitely think you could do rougher things. I mean, I guess sleeping in a tent somewhere in the middle of a forest is definitely more difficult than that.

11:39 But it was by no stretch of the imagination a holiday or a resort, sorry, a hotel or a resort. Okay. Okay. When did you meet the shaman? And what was that like meeting him?

11:52 I know you had seen some video on him, Susie has said he’s one of the more powerful shamans and he said he had a very powerful brew. What was that? So we, we, we all arrived that, that first night, which was a potentially a Wednesday or a Thursday night. I think it was a Wednesday night that we arrived at El Proguero and we were all on the bus on the way there. We were like, a lot of people were saying, I just want to get this in me.

12:19 I just want to drink. I hope we’re drinking tonight. And it transpired that we didn’t drink that first night. We met the shaman. What happened was in the resort, not the resort, the camp, there’s what’s called the Maloka, which is a temple, which is a big round structure with a wall about waist high and then a continuous window strip running around just above that wall and then a roof over a conical roof.

12:52 I mean, it’s a big, I can’t really describe it very well, just a big round room. Just weatherproof? It’s weatherproof, definitely. It’s not actual windows. It’s just a ring of open mosquito-netted structure.

13:07 What’s the diameter of it, roughly? I would say it is about 15 meters in diameter, in diameter, yeah, 15 meters in diameter. And that’s where you hold ceremonies? Yes. That’s where we would drink ayahuasca, and also we had San Pedro on one day.

13:25 So we all filed into this Maloka to meet the shaman and he came in and instantly when you meet this human being, his name is Ron Wheelock, he’s an American guy from Wichita, he’s from Wichita and you would never in a million years think that this guy is a shaman but you can sense his power he radiates power there’s no he is a I mean he’s he’s balding and he’s he’s kind of old and he’s has the most intense piercing blue eyes you’ve ever seen one of one of the people said that it looks like he died many years ago and his spirit is just keeping his body alive as a tool and that’s that’s a very good way to describe him was he intimidating or Comforting he was definitely slightly intimidating in the beginning before we all knew him. We were kind of intimidated by him. I Mean one of we all sat down you sit in a in a circle on plastic chairs Around the edges of the temple on the inside and how many people are in there?

14:37 33 about 33 of us plus him and a couple of his staff and that’s the max for this temple Yes, it couldn’t take more than that Okay And at one so if you can think of us all sitting in a continuous circle at one point in the circle is his altar, or maybe altar is not the correct word, it’s a table where he keeps all his sacred tools, where he would pour the medicine before we drank it, covered in the most incredible things you’ve ever seen, crystal skulls, ceremonial daggers, shakapas, which you know what those are, the leaf bundles that Suzanne used to shake. So we fall into there, everything’s split by candlelight, there’s no electricity in the camp. So if you can imagine, we’re all in this temple and these candles are burning and he stands up and introduces himself and we’re all getting to know each other.

15:27 It’s kind of a little bit standoffish amongst everyone. Like we’re all far away from home, we’re all jet lagged and tired. And I remember one of the very first things he said to us after he introduced himself was, I will take you to hell, but I will bring you back to the light. And it turned out that those were very prophetic words because he took us into hell. He took us into the depths of hell, but he did bring us back to the light as he had promised.

16:02 Brian, I couldn’t make the story up if I wanted to. Yeah, I don’t think you could. And okay, so he introduced himself that night and told you that. Then we went into a dining room. There’s another little dining room about 100 feet away from the malloca where we would congregate after the ceremonies and regroup and just take stock of what had just happened to us.

16:25 So after that we went and had dinner and then we all went to sleep. How’s the food? The food was very plain. Okay. I don’t think anyone will argue with me when I say it was very plain but wholesome.

16:37 What kind of stuff? A lot of vegetable soups, lentils with rice and maybe a little bit of chicken that had had just been, you’d see them grabbing the chickens and killing them, which was quite interesting to me. But not a lot of meat. A little bit. No, there was no red meat.

16:51 No red meat in the camp. Okay. So ayahuasca-friendly diet. It was an ayahuasca diet. There was no dairy.

16:57 We didn’t have coffee, only tea. It was very wholesome and simple food. I grew to like it after a while, I mean, it was, it needed salt, there’s no doubt about that, but it was nourishing, there’s no doubt about that. And what’s the state of everyone else in the camp at this point? Trepidation was definitely the overwhelming sentiment.

17:22 We all knew something big was coming. Was it much chat or was it pretty much? Yeah, yeah. A lot of banter, a lot of people’s … I mean, our masks were up then, our fronts were all up at this point.

17:34 We were all … there were equal parts. I don’t want to say bravado, but we were definitely all putting on our fronts. Did you like the people you were with? Before.

17:43 I mean. Yes. Obviously, there were a few who I was, you know, you’d have brief flashes of irritation and just, but I definitely could sense that this was a good group of people and this was going to be, this was going to be good. Because I remember when Aubrey said he first went down, he had a couple, you know, tough guy, loud melt guys, he had bring it on, all that kind of, it was just really weird energy, you know, that obviously he couldn’t control because he didn’t know who was on there.

18:08 None of that until the last night, strangely, we were one guy, and I’ll get to that story. So you think it was because it was selected by Susie, do you think it was just turned up a good group? Yes. Because it was so serious. No, everyone was vetted by Susie, and I mean, we all have our own issues like everyone else on this planet.

18:28 We all have problems and neuroses and whatever, but this group of people was, although some of them had the most horrific past, some of them had been heroin addicts, some of had been abused by their parents. They were all very, very good people. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Okay. And half men, half women, what’s the gender breakdown? I’d say it was about 50-50. And age range?

18:53 Mostly people in their 30s, a couple of older people, a couple of people in their 40s and some in their early 50s, but mostly people in their 30s, if I can remember correctly. Okay. All right. So we, we, uh, we went to sleep and then we, the next morning we, we all woke up. Um, in fact, we didn’t go to sleep. Uh, we went to our dorms, but my good friend, um, who w in fact, not my friend, my, my brother, I will use the name John. It’s not his real name, but, um, he’s, he was one of my very good friends before this and he subsequently become my soul brother. We went up, there’s a lookout tower right a few feet away from the doorway which was used to get mobile signal, cell phone signal and you know after dinner Jan and I we climbed up this tower and we just stood and we spent, started raining and it was misty and we were just looking out of the jungle just talking getting talking about about this trip that was gonna happen to us and what we’re gonna do getting ready for that and we eventually went to sleep maybe two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning and then the next morning we woke up and we all filed into the little dining room and had breakfast and we were given a few instructions. We were told that we were gonna have lunch but then there was nothing, no eating after two o’clock in the day, you fast. So you knew it was on for the next night? Yes, yes. That night.

20:17 Which is Thursday night? Thursday night. You flew out here on Tuesday? No, it was Friday night. night okay sorry it was Friday night okay so so Friday night was the first ceremony and we we led into the server that we drink at seven approximately 7 p.m. when it gets dark that’s that’s when you when you drink but we were instructed to be in the Miloka at 6 30 p.m. so at 6 30 we all started to to file in or shuffle into the into the temple and you could just sense you You know, there was tension, you could cut with a knife, like we were all very, very scared.

20:57 If anyone was saying they weren’t scared, they were lying, because we were all very scared. Okay. And had everyone participated in a ceremony? No, there were about five people who had never drunk ayahuasca before. Maybe more than that, maybe eight people who had never drunk ayahuasca before, who my heart goes out to, they were very brave.

21:19 Do you think that they were more scared, probably, because they were just more unknown? I was probably up there with, it was me and another woman called Ruth, who were probably the two most terrified, actually. I was incredibly scared, yeah. Are you visibly anxious? Yes, I was visibly anxious.

21:34 In the meeting the day before, I’d asked the shaman, I’d said, what is, I said, is it okay to be scared? In front of everyone, I said, is it okay to be scared? And he said, yes. He said, something would be wrong if you weren’t scared, because what you’re doing is quite a heavy undertaking. Why were you so scared?

21:54 My mother and my brother are very religious, Brian, and their own prejudices and fears had started to manifest before this. They were sending me messages. My mom was sending me a message, sent me a long email saying, this is witchcraft and it’s of the devil. brothers sent me a message saying, in a very biblical, with biblical overtones, saying, I tell you somberly this will only increase your sorrow, and you know, I used to be a fundamental Christian until the age of 23, and those thought patterns and belief systems had been implanted so deeply in my psyche that there was still a deep-rooted fear that I was doing something wrong, that this was okay was not right and it was against God okay so it’s not the fear the unknown or even the fear of your own self it was more that you thought you were doing something there was also a lot of fear over what I was gonna find out about myself you know Graham Hancock room he said on his interview with us how he realized he wasn’t such a nice as nice of a guy as he thought he was when he did I was and I was terrified of that I was very terrified of being shown how much I’d hurt people in my life and how I’d let people down in my life.

23:12 So between that and the Christian fear, I was very anxious. But then Ron asks us all, we’re all sitting down, he asks us all, who would like a small dose? Because he gives two doses, a smaller and a normal. And some people wanted a small dose. I took a large that night.

23:34 Is that a decision you had made long before, I think you told me before you left. It was a decision I made long before. Now Ron’s ayahuasca is widely regarded as being one of the strongest, if not the most strongest brews available. I know other shamans actually come to him to get ayahuasca, it’s that powerful. He uses ayahuasca, wambisa, flowers of bob and sauna, and he had also started experimenting with another plant called waiduro.

24:09 He mixed all of these into his own special brew, which he claimed was, he said this is a strong one, and it turned out to be very, very strong. Does he just boil it down and reduce it that makes it strong? He chops up the, it’s not necessarily the, it’s a combination of the ingredients and the process that creates the strength of the brew. I mean he showed us, he actually made some ayahuasca one day, he made some ayahuasca one day, which we drank, we’d seen him make, some of it actually helped him chop the plant, I didn’t, but we’d seen him make one of the brews for one of the subsequent ceremonies.

24:44 And… What does it take a couple days to boil it off now? Yeah, it takes a couple days to reduce it down, it might even take a few, it might even take three days if I remember correctly. I had a piece of the ayahuasca tree that I wanted to bring with you. I’ll bring it next time.

24:56 We were all given a piece of it just to see what it was. Excuse me. We were also showing the vine growing around the camp. So it’s surrounding you really when you were there. Yes, yes.

25:05 There’s different kinds of ayahuasca as well, which I didn’t know this. The two that I was told about were Cielo, Cielo ayahuasca and ayahuasca negra, which means the first one is sky ayahuasca and the second one is black ayahuasca. And we had the first one, Cielo ayahuasca, on that first night okay yeah and what’s a what’s the difference between a small and a large dose is it like a shot worth or two shots versus four shots I would say the small is 75% of the large they both are in the same size cup the one is just full to the brim and the other one is a full to about 75% okay and what kind of volume like half of that can would be the large no not so much not so much a third of that can maybe even a little bit less okay yeah maybe even a quarter of that can wine okay maybe three ounces yes and if you’ll excuse me I just want to refer to my notes very quickly I’m about to tell you about the first ceremony and he only lets you drink once it’s not like no you can drink a game okay you can drink a game when he’s when he’s not singing ikaro during the ceremony like you can drink a game but you cannot have two in a row at the because at the start of the ceremony okay how long does it take to get 33 people to drink a must take no it doesn’t take long because what he does is He sits down and he first says a prayer over the bottle of ayahuasca, he says thank you to his teachers, he says thank you to his family, he names his son, he names his daughter, he

26:31 Says he calls upon God, he calls upon ayahuasca, he calls upon all the plants in the mixture, he names all the plants in the mixture, he thanks them all and he finally closes with he says all my work is positive and he bows his head in prayer and then he stands up and he lights a Mapacho cigarette. Mapacho is sacred tobacco, it’s natural tobacco, it’s a sacred plant, it’s a plant teacher as well. He lights the Mapacho and he blessed, he first pours out the ayahuasca into the 33 cups.

27:07 Obviously he’s segregated some cups as being small doses and some cups as being large doses. And then he blows the smoke, the tobacco smoke, the Mapacho smoke over the cups once he’s poured them, just to bless them and ward off any negative spirits. And keep in mind, before this, they’ve walked around the whole center of the temple, and they’ve blown sacred tobacco smoke over us. Him and his helper have done that. Was Susie involved in the ceremony?

27:36 She was, but not in that capacity. She was just sitting there, and she sung a few times. But in this ceremony, she didn’t prepare the hours because she wasn’t involved in the preparation or the actual act of serving it to anyone. She was a participant from that point of view. So then he says, step forward, please.

27:56 And we all step forwards up to the altar. And then he says, anyone who asked for a small measure? And he hands out the small measure to people who’d asked for a small measure. And then he starts handing out the large measure. Now, strangely enough, his young son, who’s 10 years old, was in the first ceremony, which was incredible to me.

28:18 That wasn’t his first ceremony, I take it? It wasn’t his first ceremony, but Ron told us Ayahuasca had instructed his son to be in this first ceremony. So he handed out all the drinks and we were all standing around the altar holding our respective cups. And he bowed his head and he held it up. He raised up and we all did the same.

28:40 We held up the ayahuasca and then he said, salut. And we all knocked it back. And then we all returned to our seats. And from this point, there’s no talking. There’s no talking in the ceremony.

28:52 And did you have anything to chase it with the taste? Or is it just- Not in the first ceremony. And I wish it had because it was the most vile tasting thing, just the thought of it now. Sometimes when I think of it, my gag reflex is initiated. It was the most vile tasting thing you can possibly imagine.

29:08 Worse than Suzy’s stuff? Without question. Okay. Without question. And it’s stuck in your mouth?

29:14 Yes, yeah. I mean, everyone was spitting and like, some people were shaking and it was… So then he… He sits back down at his altar. There are two helpers sitting in the middle of the temple.

29:29 There’s two supports that keep the roof up. There are two Peruvian helpers who work for him. They weren’t drinking hours because they were just watching and being involved. He had another shaman working with him called Medardo, a native shaman, and an assistant, an Australian guy called Mark. Those were his two main assistants.

29:51 So the two helpers sit down at their chairs. Their job was to help us go to the bathroom, which is basically just outside the meloka. So he gave them instructions. They only spoke Spanish, but he said to them, et cetera, et cetera, in Spanish, blah, blah, blah. When you hear the word help, You bring your torch over to someone and you take them outside and then you bring them back.

30:12 So he said, he bowed his head in prayer over the altar one more time. He was sitting down in his seat. They blew out the two candles in the middle of the maloka. So there was one more left on his table. And then he picked up his shakapa and he blew out the candle.

30:31 And we were in total darkness. Total darkness. See the discrepancy between the blackness of inside and the light of outside. But the light of outside was not electric light, it was just the light, the ambient light of the jungle. Okay, so some starlight, maybe a little moonlight?

30:48 Yes, maybe starlight, little moonlight, no electric lights whatsoever. And then we all just sat. What are the chairs? Do the chairs have backs? Yeah, back chairs, just like plastic lawn furniture, not very comfortable at all.

31:04 Armrests? Armrests, exactly. Not very comfortable at all. But not stools? Not stools. Yeah, the back chairs. And so now it is black and dark and silence.

31:16 Just silence has to be observed or that that was the rule. And we just sat and I just started breathing. I just thought I was terrified, absolutely terrified. And I just started breathing deeply. Did you try meditating?

31:33 Yes, I was just trying to calm my mind, let go of the fear, just breathe deeply, just breathe, breathe into this experience, preparing myself for what was coming. And then he started to sing. He started to sing. Now… Did you have to make sure you keep it down?

31:50 Was that ever an issue in your brain, to keep it in? No. Okay. No, that was not an issue for me. For some people, definitely.

31:56 But for me, luckily, for the first few ceremonies, I didn’t have to feel that. And then he started to sing, now you know Susanna, you’ve done ceremonies with her and she has the voice of an angel. She has a very melodic, beautiful uplifting voice and her ichoros, for those of you who don’t know, ichoros are called the songs of power and they’re actually alien in origin, they don’t come from this planet, they were brought to this planet by aliens and what they do is they start the magic of the plant working in your body, they call the spirits of the forest and the spirits of the jungle and they begin the process working.

32:34 Now he began to sing. Now Jen’s, as I said, Jen’s singing was a pleasant thing to listen to. I mean, I could put on a Walkman and listen to her singing and I would enjoy it. It’s uplifting. It’s beautiful.

32:47 Would you agree? Yes. Yeah, I’d look forward to it. Harry Carlos. Now Ron was not like that.

32:54 Ron sounded like the cross between a Gregorian monk and a gremlin. Okay. I don’t kind of remember the words of the songs but it was something like Ayahuasca, ayahuasca. And so he would start singing Ikaros like in his voice and terrifying. I mean Ron’s job is not to make you feel great and feel the beauty and love of ayahuasca.

33:20 Okay, Ron’s job is to dig into your soul and find the darkness and bring it out. Okay Okay, yeah, I mean it’s for people that haven’t drank it I your ceremony your setting is very important and I believe that if you had a That kind of audio or even energy coming in it could take you to some dark places. Okay So I lay back and I started to feel very relaxed very relaxed There was a point where I just felt, wow, this is doing something. The first 15 minutes I was like, maybe this is a dud, maybe I didn’t drink enough, whatever.

33:56 But suddenly I started to feel very relaxed and I started to slump in my chair. My hips slid forward and my shoulders slid back and I started to slump. And then the magic that medicine began, it kicked in and I saw, people started to retch. You know, after his maybe third ikuro people started to retch just you think 20 minutes or 30 minutes Anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes at last track of time at this point might people started to retch They’re retching in the thing or they went outside. We all had a puke bucket in front of us. Yeah, okay No, no a small ball. Okay, like a small ball like a wash basin almost people had started to retch and And I just leaned back in my chair and I was breathing deeply and then suddenly I felt an entity.

34:45 I remember Aubrey Marcus spoke of a giant spaceship that looked like it was made out of feathers and a bunch of strange things. This was similar but it was a living entity that was made out of leaves and vines and it was definitely an order of intelligence above mine. I don’t know, I don’t know what it was. To this day, I’ll never know what it was. I think it was some sort of spaceship, but it was some sort of entity that was floating over me.

35:23 I was definitely scared, but something told me it was benevolent. You know, I felt that it was there for my good, not my bad, it was there to help me not harm me. And then shit got real.

35:38 My head just snapped back. My head snapped back and my tongue stuck out and my jaw opened as wide as it could possibly open. And I realized that I was doing this to allow this entity to interface with me. And so if you can imagine, for those of you watching, I was lying back like this, right? Like literally my mouth gaping open, every muscle in my jaw stretching, my tongue sticking out, my eyes were probably rolling into the back of my head.

36:11 And this thing started to work its way into my soul and my brain and my psyche and just connected with me. And I just went with it. And then I sat up. At one point, I just sat up forwards in my little plastic chair. And as I did that, my spine just went, like it, every vertebra slipped into the position it was made to be in.

36:43 I had perfect postural alignment, like the most, you know, I’m someone who’s relatively in touch with his body. You know, I know what’s wrong with my body and what’s right with it. And this is how my spine was meant to be. You know, it was, I can’t explain, I just had the most perfect posture. And I was sitting up in a crappy little plastic chair and it had become a throne.

37:08 And I was, I’m still trying to figure it out, but I was either a king or a pharaoh. It was some, the phrase I keep thinking of is God King. I was some kind of God King and I was in Egypt and I was looking out over the sands of Egypt and I could see the pyramids as well. And I had been entrusted with the creation of a civilization, with the creation of the Egyptian civilization. That was my mandate on this planet.

37:39 And I felt the staggering pressure of what it is to do that. Like, I could feel the overwhelming responsibility I’d been given to do this. And it was too much for me. It was too much for, for this, this Nick incarnation to handle that power, that energy that was being channeled. And I just slumped forwards.

38:02 I just slumped forwards and then that vision was over. That vision was gone. Um, I told you this was heavy. How long did that last? Do you know?

38:13 You probably don’t know more than a minute. It was a short vision. It didn’t last more than a minute. Um, so I’m just, I was just checking my notes. Did you know, were you completely inside your own brain at this point?

38:28 Do you know, do you even know where you were? At that point I was in Egypt. Okay. And there’s no one around you, you’re not in the Miloka, there’s no… No, at that point this was as real as you and I sitting here talking.

38:39 It was, I mean, I clearly wasn’t there, but in some dimension I was there, you know. I understand. At this point, I needed to get to the bathroom. I needed to take a piss. That’s all I needed.

38:55 I had to take a piss really badly. Did you have any water with you? Yes, I had water with me. We had a bottle. Everyone had a bottle of water.

39:04 I stumbled outside in… I didn’t ask for a helper, but I managed to stumble outside. And there were helpers outside to help people when they were outside to go to the bathroom to come back. And I was just confused, beyond confused. At one point, I couldn’t urinate.

39:29 All I wanted to do was urinate. That’s all I just couldn’t. But it was stuck there, like in my bladder. I couldn’t take a piss for love nor money. All I wanted to do was take a piss. I felt, I mean, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the depths of my own madness, Brian.

39:49 I really understand now how most people, myself included, are insane. They are literally insane. Most Westerners are insane. And I was confronted with that. I was shown just how insane I was, just how many fears I had, how many neuroses I had, like how I thought too much, how I sat in my little flat in London just over-analyzing and over-thinking stuff and trying to control life.

40:17 And I remember I needed to get back to the, I needed to get back into the meloka and I started walking towards it and I just collapsed. I remember thinking to myself, I can’t hold this anymore, it’s too much. I’ve been carrying my own ego and my own madness for too long. It’s too heavy for me and I just collapse to my knees. I literally just collapse to my knees.

40:43 And I mean, I’m a reasonably big guy. I think at that point I probably weighed around 200 pounds and these little Peruvian guys, beautiful men, angels, they were trying to help me up and take me back into the meloka. But at that point I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Like I didn’t have the motor coordination or the strength to get to my feet walk inside I just didn’t have it okay but you were supposed to stay inside yes yes rule yes one of the rules you stay inside can’t you stay inside from beginning till the end and now at this point it started raining and I was utterly confused utterly utterly confused I was I couldn’t figure out if I was inside or if it was raining or not okay no I didn’t know I just felt I knew I was wet and you’re laying on the ground right now kneeling okay kind of kneeling then sitting then then just discombobulated and the guys have given up on you they’re still trying to drag you they were coming back to me every now and then going house house and pointing towards the temple right like because then because I had to go back in and but I couldn’t and then eventually they picked me up and they took me inside and they sat me down God knows how do you know how long you were out there for it could have been a few minutes it could have been 30 minutes I’m not sure okay now you were supposed to stay seated in your chair, but I couldn’t. I was, in that ceremony, I was the one person, I think the only person who couldn’t sit in his chair. And I lay on the, I first started

42:09 Sitting on the ground, and then eventually it ended with me lying on the ground in like fetal position, whimpering. But then it got very scary. Then I entered, I became a kind of a creature with only mind. I had no body, I had no spirit, I was just mind. I was stuck in this mental realm. I didn’t know what I was or who I was. I just knew I wasn’t human and I was stuck in this strange mental realm. I remember I was trying to call up memories of being human, memories of my life, memories of what it was. I kept thinking to myself, If a bright ball of fire comes into the sky, that’s the sun, and that means everything is okay.

43:00 That means I’m supposed to be here on this planet. And then I remember I started realizing that in this mental realm, thought kept everything going. So I knew that I had to keep thinking to stay in this realm, and then I started playing a trick with myself. I was, if I keep thinking, I’ll stay here. And then I realized that I was thinking about thinking, and then I realized that I was thinking about thinking about thinking and I got stuck in this mental loop which was absolutely terrifying terrifying terrifying beyond but terrifying in a cold emotionless way like it wasn’t fear like like oh I’m afraid of a monster or I’m afraid it was just fear like I am stuck in the void okay you know I’m stuck in the void and then then I started doing yoga I started doing weird yoga stretches to try and remember what a body was and what a body meant and I remember we had been told to breathe like remember to breathe like when when when you were in your darkest hour and I managed to take a few breaths deep breaths and that made me understand okay I’m in this I’m in something I’m in some sort of vehicle you know that I remember the vehicle doing this I remember breathing was something that I’d done before and then the first candle came on and that signified the end of the ceremony and Brian when I tell you I’ve never been so happy to see anything in my life is that candle that that’s when he tells you the ceremony is over not not just yet but that signifies

44:34 The start of the ending process once the candle comes on is there a time that he waits he turns on the candle how long how long after then when this was a It was a four-hour process, three to four hours. So it was now about 12 o’clock, 12 p.m. in the evening when that candle goes on and it’s- When you drank at seven? Yeah, yeah, it was about 12 o’clock. So three hours later?

44:57 12, no, five, five, five. It was about 11, 30, 12, yeah. When he starts laying the candles in the ceremony? So ceremony’s about five hours. Yeah, yeah.

45:06 Some a little bit longer, some a little bit shorter. Okay. And then, I mean, I’m just- Did he ever tell you to get back in the chair? Yes, someone may have told me at some point to get back in the chair. I was, for example, the girl who sat next to me, my chair ended up in her lap.

45:24 My physical lawn chair was in her lap at some point. That’s how much confusion- While she was sitting. While she was sitting. I wasn’t in the chair, just the chair was in her lap. That’s how much confusion and- So you knocked it over or something?

45:36 I knocked it over and, I mean, there were points where my friend John tells me, I was sitting next to him in the first time. I was lying back like this, like, He said, you had no dignity, you were just lying in the dirt. So the candle comes on, and the closing ceremony is him, and Murdado, and Mark. They split the participants into thirds. And they walk around the room doing a closing ceremony, which involves blowing tobacco on your crown chakra on your head, blowing tobacco on your throat, your chest, and your back, down your spine, and saying a sort of shamanic prayer to seal you off from negative energies once you leave the temple, because the temple is a protected space.

46:22 And you’re very open during an ayahuasca ceremony, and now he has to reseal you before you can go out. And are you vision free at this point, or are you still not sure? Vision free, now I realize I’m human, I’m Nick, I’m in a body. It’s still a little fuzzy, like the end of an ayahuasca ceremony. Yes.

46:40 And you still have mild hallucinations, like not hallucinations, but the lights, funny colors. Yes. Yes. But you’re back. I’m back.

46:49 I mean at this point I could stand, I could stand and make my way outside and also come back without assistance. But I was shaky on my feet, like very shaky on my feet. And then it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to do this closing ceremony on everyone, maybe a little bit longer. And then Ron walks to the center of the room and he says, no, after that he puts his head down on his table and he’s exhausted. He’s exhausted from the extraction of negative entities and the singing he’s been doing.

47:24 As he’s singing the whole time. Pretty much. Oh no, in this ceremony there was a point where people started, I mean John started babbling, babbling incoherently, speaking in French, making weird sounds. There was a point where people were wailing, which we weren’t supposed to do. We were told off the next day after this.

47:47 But most of the time during the ceremony, Ron, the shaman had been singing. Susannah started singing at one point. Medardo also sang. They sang separately, never over each other. No, never over each other.

48:00 When Susannah started singing, a lot of people sang with her because they knew the ichoros. A lot of people started singing with her. That was at the darkest point. There was another thing that happened. One of the people who was doing the ceremony, he had entered into a hell realm of some sort.

48:15 He had also been lost in his mind, but in an even darker place than I had been. He was wailing. He was just wailing, oh God, oh God, wailing like that for about 20 minutes. The energy became very dark. So there was a thick negative energy in that room.

48:36 Do you remember this? Yes, I remember that. I left it out of… It was before… It was around the time of the infinite loop, the infinite nomencla loop I’d entered into.

48:45 Okay. And I can’t remember that happening, but I couldn’t quite figure out who was doing this, but I knew we were all in hell at that point. We were all in some kind of hell. It was horrific. So the group energy was negative in that sense?

49:00 Yes. Okay. Yes. Was there anything positive about the group energy? I started singing.

49:05 Yeah. And everyone started singing with her. That’s when the cloud, the cloud broke. That’s what broke the veil. Okay.

49:13 And we, and that was shortly before the candle came on as well. Okay. So he seals everyone off? He seals everyone off and he says a closing prayer with his head bowed on his desk and And then he stands up, walks to the center of the room, and he says, thank you everybody, the ceremony is now over, I’m going to bed, I’m very tired. And he goes home, he didn’t live on the camp, he lived a couple of miles out.

49:42 So he drives away or walks? I don’t know if he drove each night, sometimes he drove. I think one of his helpers drove him that night. And then what do you do? And then we all would stand up and we would just look at each other like, the only way to say it is, what the fuck?

50:03 What the fuck just happened to us? And we’d file out. A lot of us went to the dining room and all lit by candlelight and a lot of us went back to the dorm. I went to the dining room and we would all just start to talk about our experiences. Did you want to talk?

50:19 Yes. A lot of people didn’t want to talk. And you wanted to? talk. A lot of other people wanted to talk. We were all, we were all just high, high on that experience, like vibrating at a different frequency.

50:36 Positive for everyone? It was definitely, everyone at the end of it, everyone was positive. We had all seen some incredible things. One of the predominant themes on this trip was there were points where I’d turn to someone next to me with my head in my hand and I’d just say, the things I’ve seen. Because unless you’re in that group or unless you’ve done strong ayahuasca, people cannot understand the things I’ve seen Brian. Do you compare this okay you had two ceremonies before one was with me the very first one we did was which in March where I think Susie said she gave us a medium to small dose and then you had a second group experience that I don’t think you got much effect from is was this anything like those and or was this a factor of an order of magnitude There was an order of magnitude higher.

51:38 Was it like apples and oranges? The queasiness in the beginning and a few of the visuals were similar, visuals of like plant spirits eating into me. That was similar a couple of times, but this was an order of magnitude, incomparable. I think maybe your second ceremony was on level. I don’t know what you went through, but maybe your second ceremony was on a level.

52:08 It sounds like it wasn’t. It sounds a team compared to yours. So you went back to some chat and spoke for a few hours and then crashed out. Yeah. It was hard to get to sleep, but eventually I did.

52:21 The early hours. Brianna and I went up this tower. We were known as, we love the tower. We went up the tower and we were just, we were just… Was it just like stairs of like a few stories up?

52:31 No, it was like a little ladder to the first platform, a little ladder to the second platform, and then a little ladder to the top. A very rickety structure, I mean, it’s… But you didn’t use your mobile phones out there. No, I didn’t use my… I just wanted to get up there and see the view.

52:45 So Jan and I were just up there and we were just talking and really bonding. Sorry, not Jan, Jan. You sold out everyone’s identity at this point, by the way. So I might have to bleep some things. Yeah, so Jan and I were up there and we were just talking and connecting and sharing our experiences And then I went down and I tried to go to bed, couldn’t go to bed, so I went back to the dining room, chatted to people who were there, had a cup of tea, managed to keep that down.

53:14 You didn’t purge at all this first night? No, not at all. And did you feel sick or ill? No, no, no, didn’t feel sick. Didn’t shit myself, a lot of people shat themselves, a lot of people pissed themselves.

53:24 Unfortunately, I didn’t that first night. And so eventually got into my bed, managed to get a few hours of something resembling sleep. Yeah, it’s, yeah, yeah. You know what it’s like. Yeah, yeah.

53:39 Then, yeah, woke up and… Now, can I, did they tell you how many ceremonies you were gonna have while you were there? Yes. And did they tell you the frequency of them? Yes, we were having four ceremonies.

53:51 Okay. Every other day. Okay. Except, yeah, every other day. So on Friday we did ayahuasca, then it was a little bit different because on Sunday, Saturday we rested and on Sunday we did San Pedro, we did a San Pedro ceremony and then Monday was the next ayahuasca thing.

54:14 And San Pedro was the daytime? San Pedro was a daytime ceremony. That was a very interesting thing as well. Very powerful medicine. I had a very bad trip on the San Pedro.

54:23 And did they time that intentionally where you would have an ayahuasca and then the San Pedro next? Yes, exactly right. Is there anything you want to say about the first night before you talk about the San Pedro? No, that’s pretty much all I can share right now about the first night. I’d like to talk about the San Pedro if you’d like to as well.

54:41 Yeah, definitely. Yeah, this is intense to listen to. I’m sure people watching you can tell that you’re kind of reliving it a bit there, definitely. Especially with your vocals there. I had to adjust the volume a few times there.

54:59 You had to turn it down? Up and down, because you were reliving it. But, okay, I mean, it’s a good description. I kind of feel like I was there. I wish you’d, dude, I missed you so much, man.

55:11 I miss you so much, dude. I literally, I have to take you there one day. I have to take you there one day. I know, I don’t want to, You had your own experience with ayahuasca here. I’m not belittling it.

55:27 I know you had an incredible experience, but I rarely don’t want you to miss out on what it’s like to drink ayahuasca on a home turf. Do you think it’s a home turf thing or do you think it’s a wrong wheelock thing or do you think it’s a wrong wheelock brew thing? It’s definitely a combination of all of those things. Remember the spirit of the jungle. The jungle is alive, dude.

55:47 Like I know this sounds crazy, but the jungle, all the plants and animals have their own spirit. They are literally alive. And when you’re in the jungle, they come to you and in an ayahuasca ceremony, good spirits and bad spirits come and it amplifies the experience beyond, we live in a city, we are disconnected from nature, we’re disconnected from where ayahuasca comes from. Yeah, or his brew is really strong. I guess, I guess, I guess.

56:12 Maybe I’m being devil’s advocate, but someone has to be. Fair enough, fair enough. But okay, fair enough. Okay, well, there you go. So you had Saturday off And then Sunday was the San Pedro.

56:23 Now, I don’t know much about San Pedro. I’ve heard about it, but for people. It’s masculine, San Pedro is masculine. I had never tried it. I’d never had any real desire to try it.

56:33 I was invited to a peyote ceremony a few months ago, which I turned down, but I was kind of interested in it. So we had the masculine, the San Pedro ceremony, which was completely different. We all filed into the, you can’t eat breakfast. You have to do an empty stomach. So we, on Saturday, we took a day off to decompress after the ayahuasca, talk about our experiences.

56:58 We ate a breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then we were told, next day, anyone who wants to do San Pedro can do San Pedro, so. But there was no eating if you were gonna do San Pedro, so we- And it was optional. Optional. Were the other ceremonies optional?

57:10 Everything is optional. Okay. Everything is optional. But in your mind, you were like, I’m gonna do the four in one, I’m gonna do- After the first one, no. Okay.

57:19 The first one, I was seriously contemplating whether I would ever do ayahuasca again. Really? Yes. The next day? Yes.

57:25 Yes, I was seriously contemplating whether I would ever touch that medicine again. Because it was terrifying. Terrifying beyond, yeah, incredibly terrifying. Did you get a certain buzz out of making it through that? Did you get any kind of a, I don’t know, a good feeling that you made it through that night and you were back and- Yes, I mean, I didn’t get, I felt a lot of my ego had been taken off me.

57:50 Ego had been taken off me a lot of the pressure of the ego had been relieved, which is a good feeling definitely a good feeling But I would not at this point say that the benefits had outweighed what I went through this point Okay, but you had Saturday to not worry about that. Yes. Yes Saturday. We just chilled out Do you get bored there? Is there stuff to do? No, what do you do?

58:12 Talk to people connect with people I guess was the main one I mean I took a few books and stuff, but I made a decision not to read I realized that one of the reasons I have not been as happy as I could is because I read too much interesting My mind is overactive And so I decided not to read at all for the duration of this thing There’s no TV. No mobile phones. No video games none of those things so You you really are forced to face yourself and face people and connect with them in a way that I think the distraction of the modern Western world definitely interferes with.

58:48 Well also, I think post-Iowaska, you want to connect with people, right? Iowaska is, yes, Iowaska, I found it, it’s called an, it’s what’s known as an empathogen. It’s something which allows you to feel empathy for others, allows you to open up and connect to other people. Who told you that? I just know it.

59:04 Okay. And pathogen. I never heard that term. It’s an interesting term. It is a crazy thing.

59:09 I never heard that term before. You just created it? I didn’t create it. It is an official term. Okay.

59:14 Yeah, and so after that so Sunday Sunday, San Pedro So we go into the Miloka run run is not involved with this. He said said to us one point I do not I do not serve I of San Pedro. I do not work with it, but you guys are welcome to the ceremony and We we all drank this One of the the people there who was practicing to be a shaman He said a prayer to the force the four corners of the Northeast Southwest They called upon all the Pachamama, the earth spirits, called upon the earth spirit of the wind.

59:49 I mean, you’re very, I don’t like to use the word hokey, but that’s what it was. It was hokey. I mean, at that point, I thought it was hokey. Okay. As opposed to the ayahuasca ceremony, which isn’t hokey, right?

59:59 Yeah. I mean, it’s not hokey. That is a sacred thing. And it’s short, too, the ayahuasca ceremony. There’s not a lot of yippin’ and yappin’.

1:00:08 Yes. You get down to it pretty quick. Yeah. short to the San Pedro, so we did the San Pedro. You drank it as well?

1:00:16 Drank it, it’s, if you’re not aware of it, San Pedro comes from a cactus, it’s grown in, oh man, forgive me, I can’t remember, I think high in the mountain somewhere, it comes from a mountainous region, a very, very, very bitter tasting thing, it almost made me wish for the ayahuasca, it was so disgusting in its own way. So we all drank the San Pedro. same kind of volumes was there a volume choice you were given a regular sized cup a drinking cup with it was a full about a third with this powder which was ground up San Pedro and then you had to keep diluting the mixture stirring it up it didn’t dissolve it just turned into a suspension almost and then you’d have to shoot it back and then pour more water in to get the dregs and then you had to do that it’s three or four times disgusting absolutely vile tasting stuff. And so then we were told to go and enjoy the day, do whatever you want, go for a hike, go for a walk, hang out with people. I went and I went and lay in a hammock. There were some hammocks in the little camp and I waited for it to come on and it started to come on in a strange way. I became pretty nauseous.

1:01:30 I remember asking the woman Tracy who had administered it. I said, is it supposed to make you feel nauseous?” She was like, yes. And of course it is. That’s why you drink it. And then things just became strange. Things just became very strange. Like my senses became heightened.

1:01:51 I just became very in touch with nature, walking around like looking at leaves and looking at plants and insects and just very in touch with nature in a way I’ve never been before. The only thing that comes kind of close is magic mushrooms that I did in California once but this this was a far more powerful medicine probably due to the dosage I didn’t take many magic mushrooms but I think this is quite a large dose of San Pedro. And then I saw a guy called Vas who subsequently became a brother of mine, a soul brother. And Vas and I, we took a walk out of the camp through a part of the forest into this clearing by a river. And there were a few of us, a few of the people in the camp. They were all waiting there. They had taken some of the chairs out there and then and they were sitting there and at this point we were all giddy with laughter like just laughing her asses off and I would became very touchy feely like I was that guy I was giving people massages and back rubs you know yeah not a guy yeah but not not in a sexual way in a strangely I just wanted to heal people I just wanted to to connect with people and I was this one guy was a boxer and I felt how fucked up his hands were from years of boxing so I was just trying to massage the scar tissue out of his hands and wrists and just helping with that in some I don’t know why to this day I don’t know why I was doing that was just my instinct telling

1:03:26 Me to do this and and apparently I was giving great massages right I mean and it was to girls and guys it was just there was absolutely nothing sexual or insidious about it was just I felt I needed to do it I felt I needed to use my hands to help heal people and we were all just making each other laugh and then I started having these profound insights. You know we were sitting in this little clearing and ants were crawling over us and spiders were crawling over us and we could look down and we looked down at this river and we were sitting next to this old abandoned house that it it was it was a surreal place and we were joking and laughing and everything was making us laugh. There was about five of us and then I started to have these profound insights. One of them was that human beings are hybrids of alien and primate DNA. I don’t know where this came from but I just knew it to be true. I instantly just I was like this it is what it is. I was looking at everyone in the camp so every one of these five people and I could see I could see that they were alien I could see that there were different strains of alien DNA that had been synthesized with primate DNA.

1:04:46 I could see like, oh wow, she’s a more insectoid species of alien and he’s a more feline species of alien. And I could just see it Brian. I know this sounds like the most crazy fucking shit you’ve ever heard in your life, but I could see this stuff. I don’t deny that you saw it. And at this point I started to freak out a little bit.

1:05:08 I was like, I hadn’t eaten, you know, my blood sugar was low. I was like, I had really started to think, Nick, you have really pushed it too far now. You’ve crossed the line into, you’ve pushed it too far in your quest for whatever it is you’re looking for. You have taken too much. So I started to freak out and I went back to the camp and we all kind of went back to the camp at some point and we were standing around the camp and now it was time for it was time for a mud bath that was part of the San Pedro ceremony yeah just part of the the day’s activities is that had to give us all a healing mud bath so all the girls in the camp started to prepare this mud bath right that had been brought up from from the creek they’d brought up all this mud and mixed up with water and they’d prepared this mud bath and all the girls had stripped down into their panties okay now at this point I was starting to get paranoid as fuck I was looking around and I was saying to people doesn’t this remind you of that Heaven’s Gate cult you remember that cult of about ten years ago when that crazy guy took everyone into I can’t remember he took everyone somewhere he made them all put on a set of Nikes and and a purple t-shirt when the Haley’s Haley’s Comet was coming in they drank they drank some poison and they said he said that some spaceship was coming to get them. Now at this point I remember standing around looking at people and I was

1:06:40 In my underwear by this point literally just standing in my underwear. I think I was one of the few people in my underwear but there were others. All the girls were in their panties and I was saying to them, to a few of my friends in the camp, I was standing there in the sun, we were all in the sun, being driven, fucking stark, raving mad, standing in the the sun on strong hallucinogenic drugs. And I was saying to them, you know, this has all the recipes of a large scale cult suicide.

1:07:11 We are a thousand miles from home. Okay, so you told them that. Yeah, I told them this. I was the guy in the, I was the paranoid android in the camp, dude. I was telling them, I was like, we are a thousand miles from home.

1:07:21 We’re all kind of freaking, we’re all on strong drugs. We’re in the sun. We’ve just taken ayahuasca yesterday. You know, Ron could tell us anything. He could tell us he was the second coming of Christ and that he was taking us away in a spaceship tomorrow night and we would believe him.

1:07:36 Okay, so you started tripping out? I started tripping out. Some people found this funny, other people didn’t want to be around me. Okay. And I’m sorry to- I know the feeling.

1:07:44 Yeah, to those guys, yeah, you know the feeling a lot. To those guys, I completely apologize. I was not really in charge of my faculties at this point. All right, so what happened? Did you take the mud bath?

1:07:53 Well, then the girls were all saying, come on boys and boys come and get involved and they were all like dancing around like temptresses, like dancing around like, I couldn’t make this up, Brian. I can see you’re getting uncomfortable. I’m just, I want to tell you this story. No, it’s great. I just want to hear the end of the story.

1:08:31 So they were going, come on guys, come on, who wants to get involved? So I just, I was like, fuck it. So I just walked up to them and I got into this bath of mud and they were all like joking around going, ah, he needs some healing, he needs some healing. let’s give him some healing and they were like, dancing around me, rubbing their breasts on me, rubbing their breasts in my face. It was like this weird sexual fucking ritual thing that I can’t even begin to, it was, the archetypes, the male and female archetypes had become very strong in the camp at this point.

1:09:06 Men were becoming very manly and women becoming very feminine. On the San Pedro? Yes, on the San Pedro. I remember looking at this one girl, she was covered in mud in her panties And I just looked at her and I went, I looked across at her and I went, you are a goddess. And I ran up and I picked her up and I started running around the camp.

1:09:26 The camp descended into fucking madness, Brian. I couldn’t make this up. It descended. It was horrible. It descended into madness.

1:09:32 And then after the mud bath, I mean, we went and got washed off a few of us and we were laughing and playing in the creek like five-year-olds and throwing water on each other. then Brian I’m sorry I know the story is insane but it has to be told then we what happened then I don’t have notes in the San Pedro ceremony I’m just trying to recall oh then we started to come down a little bit but I was still very very paranoid I was I was very paranoid I was started to see everyone’s ego when I looked at a person people in the camp started to have little arguments it was weird strange little arguments started to break out and I knew it was the ego I could see my own ego as well it was an ugly thing dude I could see the worst aspects of myself the worst aspects of myself and when I’d look at someone I would see their ego on their face I couldn’t see their heart I could only see their ego but a few of the people were not like that like the little children in the camp that are the children of the Peruvian workers they were innocent and pure there was when you looked at them there was no ego okay So they were around watching all of this?

1:10:41 Yeah, I mean, I cringe to think what these workers must think of these crazy gringos that come to that camp. I cringe. Wow. And his son wasn’t there for the St. Pedro ceremony.

1:10:51 No, no, his son wasn’t there for the St. Pedro ceremony, but the little girls, they were younger than this. I mean, they were just… I was just watching you guys. So they were kind of oblivious to it.

1:11:00 I mean, mainly the older workers were just looking and laughing every now and then. Okay. So how did that end? with Vaz walking me down to the creek. Vaz became my advisor. He was the guy who taught me through the bad trip and I will always have love in my heart for that man. He saved my life on that day because I remember lying on the wooden dock thing by the creek and I was like hyperventilating and I was on a bad trip Ryan and Vaz just said to me, what you were afraid of and I just said to him I’m afraid to die and he said there’s no reason to be afraid and eventually it broke it broke out of that but yeah okay so that was San Pedro that was San Pedro yes that’s our um I don’t know if we’ll have time for every single ayahuasca ceremony but you’re gonna have to keep telling us how the rest of the week was okay so the next day was we were all just a little bit shot after this.

1:11:58 I think that I was gonna send Pedro taken consecutively like that, all so close together. I think that was a little bit too much for a few of us, myself included and I will regret that ceremony. Were they feeling weird the next day? No, I’m glad. Was there any tension or uncomfortableness?

1:12:13 Yeah, there was a little bit of tension, but we were, we were all good. We were all good. I mean, I’m very glad. Did orgies break out? No, no, no.

1:12:20 When I say orgies, no one, no one had sex with anyone. And it was a lot more innocent than I made it out to be, but it had a very buccanellian filter. A very buccanellian filter. That’s a very good word you used. Very good word you used.

1:12:32 And that’s not a nice thing always. It’s definitely not a nice thing always. I’ve had my share of it. I won’t go to killing kittens or anything like that ever again. I’m done with that.

1:12:41 I don’t want that in my life anymore. And so it was time for, almost time for the second ceremony. Okay, that’s the next day Monday, so you have a whole new day. Yeah, okay, and now we were all scared I mean now we were really fucking scared by and I remember I Didn’t want to go into that room. Okay. I did not want to go. I was looking for excuses. I was But I knew it had to be done. So 630 we all file back into Into the Miloka and now it’s different. Okay tension. The tension is heightened. Did anyone opt out? No, okay Oh, everyone did it the second night.

1:13:23 And now there’s a storm brewing, Brian. There’s a proper tropical storm brewing, 6.30. It’s raining lightly, but there’s full cloud cover.

1:13:35 And there’s a storm brewing. And we’re all in the temple, same thing, 6.30. We’re sitting down. We’re all chatting a little bit, but he’s pouring the medicine. It’s time.

1:13:46 Then he turns off the light. You know, we’ve all drank. This time I had a small measure. Okay, why? I just, my instinct told me, my instinct told me take a small measure.

1:13:55 I had a small measure, he turns off the light, it’s pitch black, but now the storm begins, lightning. At the heaviest, most powerful storm I’ve ever been in my life, lightning flashing up. So loud, rain so loud, you couldn’t hear him singing his ichoros. Jesus, it’s not the kind of, you don’t want that noise when you’re drinking iron wash, guys. much it was too it was but it was so powerful it was so much energy and power in that storm I can’t it was a sacred thing that storm bro it that’s so that storm started like it was something I feel so blessed to be a part of I will be grateful to my dying day I don’t think many people have ever experienced anything like this okay you were also drinking ayahuasca at the time that’s poor that was what me I mean I couldn’t I couldn’t make it up Ron sitting at his at his at his table like a mad scientist with all his sacred potions and the rain coming down and the candlelight and the storm and it was the most surreal experience of my entire life up until that point how was the ceremony for you ceremony was powerful the ceremony he had ordered a gong a huge huge gong that he had mounted on a frame, a massive, I mean, maybe this big in diameter for those of you listening, it was maybe four feet in diameter, this gong, and it had only arrived that day, and so he hadn’t used it the first night, because he used a few musical instruments, strange musical instruments that I’ve never seen before either, but that gong

1:15:32 Hadn’t arrived until this night. And so the ikuros were very powerful that night, and then he started banging on this gong. Okay. And the gong show gong like, yeah, but it was going, he was doing like some weird tune, like there was a rhythmic thing to the gong. Like it wasn’t just random him just whacking on the gong, he was going like banging on the scone and it unleashed some kind of energies, it dredged things up from the pits of our souls.

1:16:14 People started retching. When I tell you, you know what it’s like. It’s not like a little vomit like, oh, I ate something bad. It’s people going like, I have to tell the story. going like puking like that like puking like the most demonic evil sounds you have ever heard in your entire life sorry guys I just accidentally adjusted my chair down it was one of the aliens how do I put it back up right there you go that’s it okay so people just started retching and this gong was I mean I had to put my fingers in my ears because it was so loud and so intense.

1:16:56 The gongs, the wretches. The gongs, the retching, the ayahuasca. It was just… Okay. But you stayed in your seat this time.

1:17:04 Yes. I stayed in my seat. For the full ceremony, I managed to stay in my seat. Thank you God or whoever was helping me to do this. But you retched.

1:17:13 But I retched. No, I didn’t retch. I didn’t retch. No retching. No puking.

1:17:18 So I have I have something in front of me some notes I’m gonna run through a little bit of what happened if okay is okay Yeah, just you can push the mic forward a little bit cuz I’m no up towards me just for this. Is that good? Yeah, that’s okay So then I start it started to show me things about my life Break it down for us You know It started to show me all my friends and and how I see what they mean to me and and what I mean to them, how they perceive me.

1:17:51 I saw you a lot. I realized just how important you are to me. I saw us doing London Real and I, you know, the funny thing is I saw my friends, I saw that this human experience is just a game. It’s just an amazing game we’re all playing and I saw how my friends are all put here to help me play the game and I’m put here to help them play the game. And I saw ways that they were helping me to do it, you know, that I didn’t realize. I saw how you helping me grow as a person. Being around you helps me grow, like you teach me in ways that you don’t know, in ways that I didn’t know, you know, and I saw how other friends did the same thing, you know. I saw my family, I saw how massive the weight on my father’s shoulders were in the last ten years when his business started to fail, and I saw how much it aged him. I saw my brother and how his second child syndrome because he’s the middle of three children I saw how how much that plays on him you know how difficult that was has been for them I saw my family I saw how they’re my little tribe my family’s my little tribe and how they they’ve done so much for me they and how much they love me I went to I went to my own birth I saw my own birth and what my mother did to give me life you know uh…

1:19:14 I’m mixing the second and third certainly here a little bit, you know I saw how broken my heart was over my ex-girlfriend, I saw how incredibly broken my heart was, I saw how much I loved her like and you know there was one point where I was just sitting, just cuddling myself, just rocking backwards and forwards saying it’s okay, it’s all okay, it’s okay you were hurt and and that’s it’s no one’s fault and it’s all okay you know was it painful seeing these things or was it it was painful and illuminating at the same time some euphoria in this no not yes at some point after the ceremonies is when euphoria came I was shown Osho you know I was shown Osho and how much he taught me I was shown Hicks and Gracie and Roger Gracie the two Gracie’s who I resonated the most with and and how much they taught me and I saw how enlightened Dixon Gracie is what an enlightened master he is. I saw myself as a as a holy man under a tree just laughing just just laughing it is at the the enormous gift life is this incredible gift that we have all been given, Brian, it is such a precious gift every day. Wake up and be thankful for what you’ve been given. Your eyes, your ears, your senses, your body, these are all tools you’ve been given to enjoy life with, to experience this incarnation with.

1:20:54 The universe is working so hard for you to be able to play this game. Don’t take it for granted this is such a powerful and beautiful thing. You know at one point in I think the third ceremony the girl next to me she she reached I reached over and grabbed her hand and I put it on my heart right and because I just needed someone to rub my heart and she started to rub my heart and I felt that my heart started working properly again and I had known intellectually, I had been speaking to people about this before, I had known that my heart chakra wasn’t working properly, but I’m someone who had lived in his head a lot.

1:21:37 You know this better than everyone. Remember when you always say to me, be present, be present? You always say, when I’m playing on my phone and you would always say to me, be present. I saw you doing that and I was like, oh, Brian was trying to teach me, he was trying to help me, he was trying to bring me into the moment, because it used to take the fuck out of me when you did that, but I understand that you were trying to help me, you know? And I realized why that was, because I was working in my third eye chakra, it was having to work way harder because my heart chakra wasn’t working.

1:22:09 So I was someone who was having to think his way through the world as opposed to someone who was having to feel his way through the world. That actually makes sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I finally understand that now, and what’s changed since that experience is now when When I speak to people so much more, I speak from my heart, I don’t speak from my head. I cannot put it into better words than that, but there’s been a fundamental change in me.

1:22:34 I’m becoming a heart-centered person and not a head-centered person, and a little bit of advice I want to give to anyone who’s listening, whether you do ayahuasca or not, your heart knows a lot more than your head knows. You know, it knows a lot more than your head knows. And whatever you do, I think ayahuasca is an amazing way to do it, but whether it’s meditation, whether it’s prayer, whether it’s yoga, whether it’s whatever your own search entails, always let that be the focus, is trying to find your heart because your heart will always know better than your head.

1:23:16 As in your instinct knows better than your intellect? Yes. Yes, exactly that I’m almost finished with what I was of what I have capacity to share today and that’s second and third ceremony. Yes The in the third second ceremony there was a point where Brian I couldn’t make this up. I’m gonna drop it for us. There was a point where I became a snake Okay, I literally became a snake. My tongue started moving around in my mouth doing the craziest things and And my vision, it became a strange, like almost like a fish eye lens field division.

1:23:58 And my head started bobbing and my whole spine started moving in this strange serpent-like manner. Wow. And I realized this is what a snake is like. This is what it’s like to move as a snake through the jungle. You know, I couldn’t make this up.

1:24:16 Was there any reason for that? Or it just happened? trying to teach me like another profound insight I had on this trip is that the earth is our mother and Brian that was something I knew intellectually it was a some hippie concept I’d been exposed to many times oh man the earth is your mother man you know but the earth is our mother it is literally the earth is our mother and we are absolutely destroying her. She asked for nothing from us and we are just abusing and wrecking her and that became so clear to me and I understand that so much now. Will that change the way you do things? Yes, it will definitely change the way I do things a lot. It will definitely change the way I do things. I’m just going to pull out the notes. Can I ask what the fourth ceremony was and was there any different dynamic about that did you consider not doing it I just love a bit more about the third ceremony if you like to hear the third ceremony was there’s two things two more things I want to speak about the third the ceremony are you gonna write all this down or you can write an article or something at some point at some point there was a girl I met on this trip her name is Sarah I don’t care like I guess and might as well dispose of me and I’m sure she won’t mind.

1:25:42 And in that third ceremony, we had become close. There was some strange attraction to us, some magnetic attraction. The moment I laid eyes on her, I felt something between us, something strange. And we just ended up sitting next to each other most of the time. And we spent a lot of times in the camp.

1:26:00 She was that girl I saw on San Pedro, and I said, you look like a goddess. OK. And in the third ceremony, she was also the girl who was rubbing my heart and who kick-started my heart again, my heart chakra. In that third ceremony, there was a point where she became a queen, an Egyptian queen. Like, the name that keeps coming back to me is Queen Semiramis or Isis, like this.

1:26:27 And I saw her sitting there and she was the most beautiful, goddess-like Egyptian queen I’d ever seen. And I’m pretty sure we were connected in another life. Either we were connected in another life or another intelligent person in the camp said, we might have both been accessing another point in time and another dimension that was pretty similar. We’d both been in a similar frequency where we had crossed over and we’d both been that king and queen, if that makes sense.

1:26:58 And the most important insight I was given on that third night, on the day before, in the camp we had all been chatting, actually on the San Pedro day, and I was speaking to one of the guys called Colin, and we were having a very in-depth chat about the nature of reality in the world and what we were all doing here, and he said to me, he said the truth is hidden in plain sight, and that line just, it snapped like electricity. And I was like, I just kept repeating it over to myself. The truth is hidden in plain sight.

1:27:33 The truth is hidden in plain sight. And in the ayahuasca journey on the third night, it showed me that. It showed me how Hollywood, there is so much truth in Hollywood that, you know, I saw, remember Elizabeth Taylor. She was clear Patrick in some old movie, if I’m not mistaken. Yeah, it was on recently.

1:27:51 It’s awesome. That’s interesting. I didn’t know. It showed me her. And then it showed me movies like Prometheus, you know, about these stories of aliens coming and seeding our planet with their DNA.

1:28:03 It showed me the truth is hidden in plain sight. It’s waiting there for anyone who is looking. You can find the truth. And it showed me Star Wars, bro. I understand why the Star Wars movies are so incredibly popular.

1:28:19 It’s nothing to do with the special effects or any of that bullshit. because the story the Star Wars movies tell, at least the first one, that is all happening, you know, there are other planets with aliens on, you know. It’s also a very popular storyline, the dark and the light. Yes, that’s what that’s the second point that I’m about to get to is, you know when Luke goes to Dagobah, he’s doing his training with Yoda in Empire Strikes Back and he comes to that tree, he’s walking with Yoda and he knows he has to go into that that old tree, it’s a hollowed out tree, and Luke says to Yoda, what is in there?

1:28:58 And Yoda says, only what you take with you. Now, I’ve said that, we’ve chatted about this before, I think, it’s been something that’s been in my psyche for a long time, but it showed me that is, that is the age old story of a man facing his shadow. And that is what Ayahuasca is. It is facing your own shadow. That is what Luke Skywalker went through in that tree, when he had to slay his own father.

1:29:25 That is what I went through in that jungle. And it was himself ultimately. It was his self, his own shadow, because that’s what Ayahuasca is. It’s a journey into your own shadow, right? And that’s the most scary thing is facing yourself, facing who you are, seeing the dark and the light, seeing the ugly parts of yourself.

1:29:44 It’s an incredibly difficult thing, you know? And you’ve done it as well. I know you’ve done it. You’ve changed since you’ve done ayahuasca, you saw your shadow bro, you went into the darkness. I saw part of it.

1:29:55 You saw part of it, you know? And on the final, now we’ll come to the final ceremony, I had another full dose, again, I’ve left out a lot, I didn’t actually write down the final ceremony because I’ve just, I’ve been unable to verbalize it into. Has it been a week since that ceremony? Just to give people a rough idea. Just under a week, I think buddy, just under a week, maybe five or six days.

1:30:17 So there’s probably still processing going on. I am still definitely, I will be processing this for six months to a year I think. Definitely, maybe even longer. The final ceremony I took a full measure, I decided that day I’m going to take a full measure, that’s what I’m here for. The final ceremony was on the day of the Mayan calendar, December 22nd upon which there’s a galactic planetary alignment, our sun is, if I’m not mistaken, I don’t know the specifics of it, but our sun lined up with the center of the galaxy, and what that meant, it’s my understanding what that meant is that there would be a huge cosmic energy being beamed down upon Earth.

1:30:59 That was the point for this whole trip, that’s why we planned it around the 22nd of December. To have that last ceremony on that day. And during that day, there was a very strange feeling in the camp. Some people were excited, I was scared as hell. I was very scared.

1:31:15 More so than the other time? Yes. that was the apex of my fear. I knew something big was coming, I didn’t know what it was, but you could feel there was an oppressive spirit on that camp, something was coming. Suzanne, the shaman, she had been keeping this whole group together, she was acting as pretty much the group psychologist for the people who were freaking out, and she just needed to, she needed to pull back, she needed to be on her own because she was under a lot of pressure.

1:31:50 There was a lot of energy coming down on her. So I decided, I said, fuck it, I’m taking a full dose. This is what we came here for. I somehow grew the stones to take a full dose. And we all filed into the Miloka for the last one.

1:32:11 This time, Ron, he had been wearing a tan-colored ceremonial Shippebo, Shippebo is a tribe in the Amazon. He had been wearing a Shippebo robe, and this night he was wearing a white robe, okay? And we all just knew, wow. Then we, Suzanne took control of the start of the ceremony because she wanted to, she wanted to do a few things. She wanted to, we all did face paint.

1:32:38 We painted our faces with the crushed juice of this strange Amazonian berry. We painted our faces red. Did you take any pictures while you were down there? No, but there are a lot of pictures that certain people took. I’ll show you them.

1:32:51 Okay, okay. So we painted our faces and we began, we all stood in a circle and we chanted a few chants. Ohm was one of them. And then we chanted another chant. I can’t remember what it was, but it was designed to open the heart.

1:33:06 And then, now I, what I asked to have painted on my face was a circle, a perfect circle in my forehead with a point in the middle of it. The reason I asked for that is there’s a movie called Watchman, and the protagonist is a guy called Dr. Manhattan, he becomes like a superman in the movie, like a god, he is disassembled in a nuclear accident and then he reassembles himself somehow and he draws that own thing on his forehead and that becomes his symbol and I don’t know why but the whole day I just kept thinking about him and I just kept thinking I need to have this symbol on my forehead pretty insane right and I took the full cup and we started the ceremony and then it was a descent into madness. It became a descent into absolute madness. One of the guys next to me, who’s strange enough, was the only person who hadn’t been vetted for this trip by Suzanne. He became possessed by some entity and he started rolling around on the floor wailing and then he started shouting, I am God, I am God, like shouting, screaming, and then cursing, like swearing the most vile curses and profanities and demonic stuff from his soul.

1:34:43 I’ve ever heard, I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know who it was. I was so under the depths of the medicine. I couldn’t figure anything out. I just knew I was terrified.

1:34:55 I could sense the evil and the negative energy that was radiating off him, or whoever it was. I didn’t know who it was at that point. And somehow I got the strength to stumble out of the meloka. I don’t know how I got out of there, but I got out. And at that point, I lost sight of what I was again.

1:35:20 I started thrashing around in the dirt like a possessed animal. I don’t know what was going on. To this day, I still cannot believe what I was doing. I was rolling on my back, doing almost like jiu-jitsu on my own, my legs over my head, just mumbling strange things. And one of the helpers who is an angel and who probably helped me to cling onto the only tiny little thread of sanity in that ceremony, he was a guy named Caesar, a beautiful spirit.

1:36:01 He just, not only English he knew was my name, he just kept going, Nick. I just kept hearing Nick, every few minutes he would shine the light on me and go, Nick, just to check that I was okay. But Brian, the only way I can put it is that was the death of my ego. That was the death of what I was and the birth of what I am. When we did our debriefing ceremony as we did every day, when everyone would sit in a circle and talk about what happened to them, I just kept saying, I was born in the jungle because I was born in that jungle.

1:36:36 There’s no other way to put it. I was born in that jungle. died in that jungle and whatever I am now was born in that jungle on that fourth night on that fourth night on that fourth night it was You know I spent like maybe 30 or 40 minutes or maybe an hour a minute was longer It was probably one hour lying on the ground. I lying with my head face down in the dirt and scrolling over me Raining on me just just lying down like eventually Sarah that the goddess she came in I remember at some point, I remember her saying, are you okay?

1:37:09 And I was looking up at her and she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. She had the face of an angel looking down on me and I’ll never forget her so long as I live. I mean, she got the workers to put a blanket over me. Also this guy who had this psychotic episode, he had been thrown out of the temple and he eventually, while I was riding around like possessed, some of the other guys snapped out of their own trip and got enough composure to drag him back to his hut where he was staying.

1:37:43 Thank God, because he just, there was a very dark energy on him. What? Drag him from Maloka to his hut? No, from outside, because he had already been thrown outside, but he was still standing outside screaming, I am God, I am God. And I didn’t know who he was.

1:37:58 I just knew he was evil. I just knew whatever was in this human being, whatever was coming out of him was evil and I wanted no part of it and eventually one of the guys on the trip, he had come outside and he was kneeling down, a guy called Sanjaya, an Indian guy, he was kneeling down holding my hand and we had a heart-to-heart chat while I was lying down, I couldn’t get up, I was lying in the dirt, couldn’t get up and he was just kneeling over me and he was saying and we hadn’t got on very well on that trip because he kind of, he had a thing for Sarah, goddess like she’s kind of like his unrequited love you know and their friends but but you know he loves her and she loves him as well but not in that way and so because her and I had been becoming close there was a negative thing between us you know but in one of my darkest hours he was the guy sitting there holding my hand you know chatting to me and he we had this deep, deep heart to heart conversation. I was just speaking from my heart, you know, just telling him things that I couldn’t possibly know about his life, you know, and about him and he was happy to hear them and we bonded.

1:39:11 We bonded incredibly and somehow I managed to get help to my feet and we went back into the, we went back into Maloka and it was only about halfway through the ceremony but at this point I realized I’m not going back into, I’m I’m not going back under. I’m gonna sit and stay present. I don’t want any more trips. Okay, and were you successful at that? Yes, yes.

1:39:36 So you stayed back on earth? Yes, I kept trying, the thing I did was I kept trying to hold on to my next day’s debriefing. I was trying to plan it through my mind. What am I gonna tell the group what I went through? But you were done tripping.

1:39:52 I was done. You’d seen enough. I was still fucked out of my brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the phrases we used on this trip was, I was still tripping balls.

1:40:00 But I realized, okay, I’m done with ayahuasca, like for now, there’s no more. And eventually that candle came on and I knew it was over. I knew that this trip to Peru, I knew it was done finally. And you were glad you had enough? Yes, I was very happy that it was all over Brian.

1:40:21 And how was the next day and how was leaving the camp and coming back. Strange. I felt like for a long time, in fact, it’s only just starting to, I felt like a stranger in my own head for a long time.

1:40:39 At one point, I actually was, I thought I’d lost touch with reality completely. I was just like, I’ve gone too far, as I said earlier, on the San Pedro. But this time, when I woke up on that next morning, I was so confused. We were all walking around in the days. If you had seen me the morning of that next ceremony, I was covered in mud.

1:41:07 One of my shoes was missing. I was just stumbling around the camp. We were all just stumbling around, babbling, giving each other hugs. So happy it was over. Some guy had bought a bunch of candy, which we were so grateful for.

1:41:22 He had gone into town and bought a bunch of candy, which we weren’t allowed to eat. We probably shouldn’t have eaten, but it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my whole life. There was a campfire that night that we were all just sitting around just discussing life and the universe, and we were all on a massive, massive high. So you did get a buzz, a big buzz? Last night, a massive buzz.

1:41:45 The relief combined with the DMT, combined with the rite of passage that we’ve all just been through, massive buzz. Was everyone positive after the end of that trip? Overwhelmingly, yeah. Everyone was positive. We were all giving each other hugs and, you know, I- Even the I am God guy?

1:42:04 Did you give him a hug? No, he, no, I didn’t give him a hug. I didn’t want to touch him, but some people did. He, he had, he was the only person who was not happy. You know, he realized he had almost spoiled it for all of us.

1:42:19 But I mean, I don’t blame him at all. He had something bad in him. I don’t blame that man at all. He’s a good guy. We all got on with him up until this point.

1:42:29 I mean, he has his own issues. Maybe it’s the beginning of his journey. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he’s staying there. He’s staying on to do shamanic apprenticeship, which is Brian.

1:42:40 That’s pretty much all I can take right now. What, of telling me? Of telling you the story. Okay, no, no, I think you covered most of the things. But I just wanted to ask you, what do you say to your mom and your brother after this ceremony?

1:42:56 You’ve just described everything you went through about how you were so concerned before. What do you tell them now about what happened to their son? I’m so happy you asked me that because I really hope they listen to this. I doubt they will, but I really do. My mother and my brother, I love very much.

1:43:19 I saw what it means whenever they say they’ll pray for me. I saw them and it’s one of the things I’m so grateful for, I saw what prayer means. What an incredibly powerful thing it is to have someone praying for you, you know. I know my brother, he’s not a bad man, I know that he is in touch with God in his own way. That Christian framework is the framework through which he sees God.

1:43:46 You know, I called them all and I tried to impart this to them, I tried to start telling them the story, I wasn’t trying to rub it in their face, they were asking me, I was trying to tell them the story and when I did he started saying, you were saying you were not the king of Egypt, it was all just a demon and I couldn’t talk to him about it, I realised I’m not interested in his opinion of ayahuasca, I’m not interested in his opinion of my spiritual path. I love him. I love him more than anything. But that is their fear. Their fear of ayahuasca belongs to them. It’s not my fear. And I don’t want anything to do with their fear anymore.

1:44:26 This is my spiritual journey. I rarely believe that ayahuasca is one of the right hands of God that is put here for our healing. There’s no way it could be evil from the devil. It could be used in that way by a negative shaman, but ultimately Ayahuasca loves us. It’s here to help us as human beings. It’s here to help us grow. It’s here to help us develop. So I would say to my mom and my brother, do not worry about me.

1:45:01 I was given healing in the jungle. I was born in the jungle and I thank you for giving me the physical life you gave me to my mom. Thank you for being there for me, my brother, but don’t worry about me. Okay. Yeah.

1:45:17 It’s interesting how they were saying that you weren’t really in Egypt and you weren’t this Pharaoh. And I think some people confuse sometimes the value of ayahuasca and the visions. And while the visions are very powerful and you see them, I find that the reason I go back to ayahuasca is because the way it changes my life afterwards, I mean the things you see aren’t always relevant. Like the things you see might mean nothing, but I mean what I take away always is the way it changes your life afterwards.

1:45:45 So someone might be like, Nick was a snake and that’s why he goes down there. You know, you really go down there to confront the dark side of your personality and you know, I was terrified at one point I was like, I’m not even gonna do London Real with mine on this. I’m like What am I how am I gonna tell people that I was a snake dude? How am I gonna tell people that I’ve seen aliens and had a plant spirit connect with me and I mean fuck dude I realize I’m really putting myself out there I mean I I’m known as a guy who’s kind of on the fringe anyway when it comes to life I know you are a little bit as well and but this is really there’s no turning back now, you know You know, my credibility in everything will probably be questioned from this moment forward.

1:46:24 But this is a story that had to be told. Ayahuasca is, I just want to say to anyone, if you’re looking for some answers in your life and God knows I was looking for things, and I’m still looking, you know, I’m still, but now I look from a point of curiosity, not a point of need, you know, I don’t have to know what God is or where He came from, I’m just interested. If I continue the search, it’s just from a point of curiosity. And I would say to anyone listening to this, go to the jungle and find out who you are.

1:47:04 Find out who you are. Face what you are. And I want to say a thank you to everyone, those 33 people on that trip, to run, to Susanna, Mark and Tracy who run El Pogero. I will love you people for the rest of my life. I will know those people. I will be friends with them for the rest of my life. They are my soul brothers and my soul sisters. Something happened to us in that jungle. We did something. We We did something special, and I am so indescribably grateful for it, and I’m so happy to be alive.

1:47:48 And that’s pretty much all I have left to say, Brian. Okay. A couple more questions, and we’ll wrap this up. What happens now? If you will still have me on London Real, I would like to use it to change the world with you.

1:48:06 I know we work really well together when we do work. I know we have our own issues, but as I said to you when I walked in the door today, I love you very much. I know I still have so much to learn as a human being.

1:48:21 I’m starting to make reparations with the people I’ve hurt. I’m starting to, I realized jujitsu is something I’ve taken for granted for a long time and my ability to teach jujitsu is a gift from God and I need to honor that gift. Another thing I can’t believe I almost forgot to tell you guys, this is another teaching that I was given, one of the most important, if not the most important questions you can ever ask yourself is don’t ask for how I can make money, don’t ask for how I can be successful, don’t ask for what the meaning of life is.

1:49:06 Ask yourself one question, and if you can answer this question and answer it every day and continuously answer it, you will have all of that and more. And that question is, how can I give my gifts back to the world? How can I give these immense blessings that the universe has given me? How can I share them with the world? And that’s what you and I do with London Real.

1:49:30 We’re good at speaking. That’s one of our gifts. at communicating and using language, the tool of language, to draw things out of people. That’s why I want to still be a part of London Real. I didn’t know why I was doing London Real.

1:49:44 You said to me once, I get the feeling that you don’t really want to be here sometimes, and sometimes I didn’t know why I was here, but now I understand that it’s to help us all connect. It’s to help bring the light of things like ayahuasca to the world, to help us elevate the consciousness of humanity, and we don’t have to compete with anyone anymore because a rising tide raises all ships, right? I mean, it’s not about me, it’s about everybody, and yeah, I want to be involved with London Real in a big way, I want to be involved with Jiu Jitsu in a big way, I want to take this forwards man, I just want to live life, I want to fucking enjoy it man.

1:50:27 Okay. And what’s up for you next year, 2013? Nick Gabriel. To grow the brotherhood, the jujitsu brotherhood, build my network of schools, to give back, to give my jujitsu back to the world, to hopefully hang out with you, to learn more from you in whatever way that means. London Real, if I’m still involved, to do London Real. I know we’re going to travel a lot together, you and I. We’re going to take the show on the road. I’m definitely going to do ayahuasca again next year.

1:51:03 Okay, yeah, my last question was, what is the role ayahuasca is going to have in your future? I have a lot more to learn from ayahuasca. I don’t think ayahuasca is my ultimate, I mean, I know it’s just part of my journey, you know, I don’t worship it, I don’t bow down on its feet, but I know it is a powerful plant teacher that’s given me many valuable lessons and gifts, And I know it still has more to teach me and so I would like to learn more from it but I also know just like Aubrey Marcus and certain other people have said they reach a point where Iowa School will say that’s enough you’ve learned all I’m prepared to teach you all that I need to teach you. I will be doing other plant medicines this year I’d like to do peyote I have a calling to do peyote yeah. Will you go back to the Amazon again next year? I will definitely go back to the Amazon I will I don’t know about next year okay maybe next year I want to take you there Brian I want you to see that if I have to drag you if I have to drag you kicking or screaming kicking and screaming I know that you need to see this what you told me about the San Pedro ceremony there’s no way I’m going anywhere near that country you won’t have to do this in federal I’ll never do I’ll never do some federal again that’s for sure really yeah I told I got a clear message that’s not a plant teacher for me okay but um yeah buddy let’s let’s Let’s shake the world, man.

1:52:25 Let’s set the world on fire, Brian. Okay, man. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for being so honest. I think it’s important to say all that stuff.

1:52:36 You said maybe people will question your credibility because you talk about these visions, but I know the feeling after our first ceremony, I talked about a woman in Africa after she’d been raped by soldiers, and I was getting a message from her, and maybe that makes people are uncomfortable, but I mean, it’s what I saw and it’s the truth and in some way the plant medicine affected me. So if this is uncomfortable for people to hear, then maybe you should ask why it makes you uncomfortable. I might not have the same conclusions that Nick might have, but I don’t question he saw all of those things and believes all of those things.

1:53:12 So I think it’s very important that you came out and talked about this stuff. And I know it would have been easy for you not to, and I personally feel the more ceremonies I do, the less I have to communicate about them, and so I think this is a great resource because maybe after your fourth or fifth or eighth ceremony, you know, you might internalize it and I think it’s important that you tell people. So thanks. My man, thank you, I love you very much, Brian.

1:53:41 I won’t say it on any further podcast. It’s like the four times you said that to me. Yeah, but I do, man. I do, you know? I appreciate that.

1:53:48 No, I do. Well, welcome back. And that’s it. I think this is our longest podcast ever, and I’m glad we took the time because I think we had to cover all this stuff. So I hope you enjoyed it.

1:53:59 We’ll probably put some information on the site about where Nick went and all that stuff. And of course, if you have any questions, contact us at the information piece on our website at LondonReal.tv or tweet to us or on Facebook. You guys know how to get ahold of us. And there you go. Happy New Year.

1:54:19 Happy New Year. Merry Christmas to all of you. And until then… It’s about the journey. Awesome.

1:54:28 Alright buddy. Peace. We as human beings can do anything, anything we set our minds to. You’ve just got to think big enough and give it a go. I wrote that book because of McKinley, man, because as you know within that chapter I nearly died on that mountain.

1:54:49 The legend goes that people have literally been flash frozen in that.