Full transcript: Simon Powell on London Real
0:00 Hey guys, it’s Nick and Brian from London Real. We just had Simon Powell on the show who’s the author of The Silo-Cybin Solution and has made the film called Manna. This guy had a bunch of knowledge on magic mushrooms and other psychedelic experiences. We highly recommend you check this out. Welcome back to London Real. My name is Brian Rose. To my right is Mr. Nick Gabriel and joining us today is Simon G. Powell who’s the author of Darwin’s Unfinished Business and The Silo-Cybin Solution and his films are Manna and Metanoia. Welcome.
0:42 Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure. I told some people that you were going to be on today and I was just mentioning mushrooms, silo-cybin mushrooms and part of their brain just seems to kind of shut off when I say things like that as if they’re like okay hippie boy and it just seems like part of our culture today just has a certain place in their minds when it comes to silo-cybin or mushrooms and I was just wondering if you come across that ignorance and how you deal with that and how maybe that’s changed from say 20 years ago. Yeah, I come across that all the time. It’s like the the bane of my life because there are these negative associations because people immediately start thinking of drugs, they immediately start thinking of weird people, the subculture, all this kind of thing and there’s a serious side to it and it’s very sometimes it’s very hard to get across to people the serious side of it but if you look at the history of these mushrooms and other entheogenic substances like ayahuasca they have a rich noble history so the problem with the west is we haven’t really integrated them into culture so they get a bad rap and it’s unfortunate and I experience it all the time. You learn to live with it and you basically learn to persevere and if you’ve had a significant experience with silo-cybin or ayahuasca and you know the virtue of that experience and you know it was genuine and it felt like a genuine spiritual experience then you
2:12 You speak out and you speak the truth and I think hopefully people can tell when you’re speaking the truth so I think that’s the most important thing but yeah I mean it’s the it’s a some of the it’s it can be horrible you know having a book that is about so let’s well for a starter it’s a class A substance so I’ve written a book I’d never imagined that one day I’d write you know I’ve been to university and stuff I think I would regular guy you know have a good relationship with mum and dad you know don’t do I don’t hardly drink I don’t do cannabis much anymore I’m just a regular normal person and um the other I sometimes think why the fuck have I written a book about a class A substance I mean that’s guaranteed to how to lose friends and influence people in a bad way straight away you know but I did it because it’s the experiences I had compelled me to do that have you definitely lost friends have you have you missed that on job opportunities well I don’t know it can cause I know from professional dealings particularly over the last few years it can um you get bias against it and people just turn off and I have experienced that yes yeah but if you worked for like a company that made some vodka that killed millions of people hundreds of people I mean no one had anything to say right think of it if he was a CEO of an alcohol company yeah we can’t you can’t compare you cannot compare that this is the other thing is is I’ve said elsewhere psilocybin is not
3:44 I don’t even see it the psilocybin mushroom I don’t even see it as a as a drug it’s a spiritual food that grows it’s similar to ayahuasca I mean they talk of ayahuasca being a medicine is you’ve got to get beyond this calling them drugs drugs is the wrong it’s a pejorative term drugs language is everything so one of the tasks that faces people like myself who are interested in these areas is um is language re re re phrasing re situating the discussions and changing the language and um medicine or spiritual food is a better term I think for mushrooms or ayahuasca you know I’ve been listening to some Terrence McKenna lately and he has a whole lecture where he talks about language and how his whole concept of just the language we use influences our world so much or even like even taints our world just just by the dialogue we have with our heads everything is language and our paradigms and our the whole way we look at things is often and we’re not conscious of it is guided by language you know and how we like take take for the last week I’ve been having discussions with people and been thinking about the term wealth now for probably for most people when they think of wealth they think of dollars money you know down wealthy I’ve got loads of money you know but argue on the other hand wealth is I think is good relationships if you’ve got lots of good relationships with people loving relationships that’s your wealthy you know
5:20 And and yeah yeah all right another example I felt wealthy briefly yesterday I went swimming in um do you know um mixed pond at hamstead it’s the only good open air swimming natural water place in London yeah the serpentine doesn’t look sort of it’s not very nice I don’t think that the mixed pond at hamstead is beautiful trees surrounding it it’s a natural pond it’s about 100 meters gets very busy there but I had a like a peak experience I went because the water you know this kind of weather you dive in and it’s really refreshing swim right out and I’m just lying there and looking at all these trees and they were dragonflies going around the damsel flies and stuff landing on leaves and I’m branches just above me and I had a little perfect moment had nothing to do with my bank balance it was just you know you’re at one with your environment so things like that peak experiences like the mushroom is free as well you know grows free and experiences free so that is wealth so this language thing so I think we need to and I’ve also been thinking about profit as well because profit is always thought of in terms of money and how much money you can bank well I think profit and wealth need to be redefined and um wealth is having right is to do with right relationships I think with one another and with the rest of the biosphere and profit as well because so many people are seeking profit I think profit needs to be reinterpreted and that’s to do with if you’ve made profit and good
6:49 Fortune the thing to do is to spread that good fortune and that profit you know so this is all all language again I think most if it’s been my experience that most wealthy people most successful people ultimately do start to spread their wealth and their profit and what do you think a lot of times later in their careers I mean you still see Bill Gates doing that you see Warren Buffen doing that I think usually when they get older they start to realize maybe because they’re faced with their own mortality this you know because there’s this whole they’re trying to get I think all wealthy people Buffett and Gates to give back like half their wealth or 80 percent of their wealth to give it away Tetone have donated like a billion dollars to the UN right yeah it’s easy to do when you’re 80 yeah so that’s so my point was about language that we need to all these words are charged and how you use language is very important and I’m I’m very into redefining and reinterpreting words and concepts and that kind of thing so if I was called the plant teacher what would be your ideal way to describe the psilocybin mushroom it’s the same I I am I’m a pretty boring person really I’m just I’m mainly a psilocybin man as well as loads of psychedelic substances in the world and psycho various psychoactive species of plant fungus I’m basically a psilocybin man that’s the kind of thing I focused on because they grow in this country and I’d never taken ayahuasca until
8:09 Last October October the 28th of last year and that was through Alex who you know you’ve had on your show Alexander Ward the Jesus of ayahuasca the chosen one as we call him but I found it really it was a very it was very auspicious evening I’m writing about it he’s including in his graphic novel he’s working on I’m not going to go into it in detail here and it’s very auspicious and I was very keen to to know that to compare ayahuasca to psilocybin because they’re structurally they’re very similar both got rich shamanic histories to them but ayahuasca’s got this it’s the in thing at the moment and it’s got a very powerful mystique attached to it you know more so than the mushroom I think you know I think ayahuasca is probably seen as more sexier and more up-to-date and contemporary and where it’s at kind of thing compared to the psilocybin mushroom and so I was interested in comparing but I it was it was very it was fascinating and surprising because I found the experience almost indistinguishable from the psilocybin experience it elicits what I call the higher self it does the same so could you explain that though how what the higher self is well it’s just my latest I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on exactly with the substances right it’s always mysterious and Terrence McKenna used to say that all our theories and notions they were provisional all we got are provisional ideas so I changed my you know I’ve been into psilocybin
9:37 Seriously for about 20 years now my ideas change I’m not even sure I agree with everything I’ve written in the psilocybin solution now and I I really don’t know and it’s good to have an open mind and say I don’t know what’s going on but I like that I’m moving more towards a Jungian interpretation these days and higher mind really I got that from um I went to last year I went to a an ayahuasca symposium in Amsterdam where there were all these researchers who were doing research into the therapeutic use of ayahuasca amongst westerners and stuff lots of researchers they’re giving lectures and there was one woman there and during her talk she said there was a difference between McKenna calls it the other this confrontation or communion with a what seems to what feels like a tutorial higher intelligence that’s the nub of it with psilocybin and ayahuasca so this woman researcher said most men whereas most men perceive the other as being something separate from themselves an alien intelligence of being from another dimension or whatever women see it as the higher self and I think by higher and I kind of favored that that interpretation I think the higher self is a I think what these substances do is they elicit this potential of the unconscious and the unconscious is vast if you think of how big the unconscious must be all the think of all the places you’ve been the people you’ve met all the experiences you’ve had
11:15 Terabytes and terabytes of like a billion movies all that information in there and it’s not like a static retrieval system it’s like a living thing the unconscious I think and it seeks this living thing unconscious living unconscious this organization that’s just below our conscious awareness I think it seeks coherency and it wants to like a minimal energy state if you like so when there are things that need resolving loose ends and issues that you need to resolve and bad relationships and all this kind of thing that’s why a lot of people go to Peru to take ayahuasca because they’ve got problems in their lives and they want to help resolve those issues the unconscious wants to resolve the things and I think what psilocybin and ayahuasca do they facilitate the self this self organizing potential of the human psyche or the unconscious to organize itself and gain health Stan Groff talks about he coined the word holotropism and said that the human psyche was holotropic and holotropism means moving towards wholeness that’s what the psyche wants to do it wants to be healthy and whole like your bodies want to be healthy and whole if you have a trauma like a cut or a broken bone or something your your body wants to heal itself and it will it will re it will heal itself and you’ll get your coherency back it’s the same with the psyche with the unconscious it wants to heal it so these substance boost the self what I call the self organizing potential properties of the
12:49 Human psyche that’s interesting in the form of visions and symbolic visions but I think once you’ve resolved issues just below the surface then I think you you can then plunge into deeper levels and then you get to what Jung called the collective unconscious where there are archetypal symbols and this thing I think you can go really deep and then you get to really powerful symbols and you’re into mysticism and this kind of thing I think it’s all to do with patterns of information are you conscious of those changes or you think a lot of that happens unconsciously even under one of these experiences and then maybe years later you might notice or maybe you’ll never notice that some of those things well I think it must be going on all the time because we are moods I think a lot of the time we just find ourselves in a dark mood or something or depressed and it’s things just below your consciousness you know that things want to get resolved and you’ve got worries and you know and all that kind of thing stress is it’s just but I so I think that there’s stuff going on all the time and it will also manifest through dreams I mean probably all our powerful dreams we wake up wow that was like a drug experience you know it was a whole scene go a whole like another lifetime in that dream where we you know and it felt tutorial like you’re being confronting something again that’s that’s the unconscious and the higher self so I think the higher the higher self is just a term that I like at the
14:08 Moment and I use it well you know in discussions like this because I think it’s a useful term to talk about these experiences and what’s going what’s going on I prefer that and that’s a kind of Jungian approach and that’s where I’m leaning more towards that now Brian and I said like it’s uh we spoke about the feeling after we done Iowas get felt like the hard drive had been defragged yeah that was your description yeah yeah I use that I said that in psilocybin solution I talk about defragmentation processes because that’s when well you probably know maybe you know more than me as files get moved around and compressed rather being in bits in it that’s a minute more of a minimal energy state so and I yeah I said that and so the cyber solution defrag it’s a bit of a cold sort of term to analogy to use but I think yeah there’s some there’s some kind of truth in that this is it cool your everything that you are gets rearranged and all the kind of implications are played out your whole life what you what you are is is is shown to you um and the implications thereof and um it’s very powerful it’s very important and that’s why even though it is a class a substance and it gets all this shit you know and people turn away and think it’s a bad thing and um that’s why certain people do pursue it that’s probably why you’re interested in it and you’ve had you’ve had Alex on you’ve got Graham Hancock on next week you know it’s an interesting because we’re all searching
15:37 Right we’re all searching but you’re probably like me in that you feel I can’t buy into the notion voiced by a lot of um apparently clever scientists I can’t buy into the notion that we are essentially complex accidents walking around in a very big accident I can’t buy that to me I I side with I don’t know what’s going on but I side with Paul Davies the science writer who says there’s something very fishy about the universe and that’s it I don’t know what the cause of this fishiness is it just seems too good to be true and you know that that must be the case because they’re coming up with all these multi-universe theories now you know the only way if and if you think about it if the only way you can explain this apparent significance of this universe that it gave birth to um to the genetic code and then the evolution of life to the point of consciousness so nature’s become conscious of itself evolution’s become conscious of itself if the only way you can explain the the laws of nature and forces of nature that encourage that incredibly creative process the only way you can explain that is by saying well there must be a an infinite amount of universes then all you’re doing is passing the buck and you’re you’re in expletively deep uh water you know and you’re you’re sort of floundering you know you sense there’s something significant so if you are what I was saying was is if you are you feel there’s something some purpose to to our life our sojourn on the earth
17:10 And there’s some reason why the universe is doing what it’s doing um and you’re like a spiritual seeker or whatever you I can’t see how you could not want to at least explore once or twice so there’s I’ve been or I Oscar what do you do when people come and I’m sure this happens all the time people come to you and say Simon how do I start I’m curious about it you know where do I get it I mean do you tell people just to go read first or what do you tell people to do to jump in I warn them of the dangers I tell them exactly what happened to me that you’re in danger of suffering from I tell them it’s a class A substance so don’t do it right if you do do it prepare to you know go to prison and for your sins uh also tell them that it can it’s got negative side effects like chronic biophilia I’ve suffered from chronic biophilia for 15 over 15 years now it’s not to be you laugh it’s not to be laughed at chronic biophilia can you explain what chronic biophilia is in love of life right I always have to explain this but you know it’s serious business well biophilia was a term coined by EO Wilson Harvard entomologist respectable Harvard entomologist he he coined this term biophilia what he meant by he meant our innate love of nature trees when I was in the pond yesterday dragonflies and trees and blue sky and you know water natural things with biophilia is this innate love we have of nature but unfortunately
18:36 When we live in the city it’s probably it’s like a seed that’s not cultivated that biophilia so people end up nature becomes a scary thing like Blair Witch Project horrible dark forest you know insects spider you know but it’s actually beautiful nature and forests are beautiful you know so we’ve lost them so biophilia is our innate love of of nature chronic biophilia that the mushroom can instigate and it’s not a laughing matter is where you really come to love nature and you fall in love with with Gaia basically you know which is my the book which is the earth guy or everything from the earth yeah the by the whole some some total of living things on the earth and the the fact that they’re networked into a homeostatic uh system that maintains itself I could feel your biophilia coming about halfway through manna I was like wait a second he’s obsessed yeah yeah so my mind it’s in there where you were like the well yeah it’s good to be it’s good because uh we you know it’s not just look at a tree like literally go and look at a tree and I’m not just saying that’s what he’s saying there’s a tree but if you stand and look at a tree and examine it it’s an incredible thing it’s way cooler than a 3d flat screen television or a Ferrari it’s just an incredible thing right exactly that’s what he said manna and that’s exactly what can happen my preferred mode of taking mushrooms now is out in nature trekking I did it with Alex twice actually the last few years and we were out trekking in the
20:00 You know remote forest miles and miles away a beautiful oak forest you know English mysticism Celtic you know sacred places really really beautiful and you’ve got a fire going and stuff and after the peak effects I mean during the peak effects you shut your eyes and have visions but after the peak effects I always go exploring I’ve got a head you know trekking lamp and it’s absolutely it’s it’s expletively amazing just just like the bark on a tree or you come across a spider doing acrobatics and stuff you know looking it’s just it’s fantastic and just and seeing the Milky Way and it’s it’s we’ve that’s the beauty of these it’s a weird thing it’s like something it’s like something it’s the it’s like a science fiction story or ultimate sci-fi fantasy plot that you’ve got at the very time when we’re mankind’s got its head up its own ass it’s had its head up his own ass for so long and we’re just surrounded by human intelligence and all these things we do and stuff and we’ve cocooned ourselves in the city away from the nature we’ve forgotten about the biosphere even though the biosphere gives us the air we breathe and supports us it’s the stage we’re supported by the biosphere we totally moved away from it fucking up the entire planet and that very time when we’re doing that and I would you know out we’re ecologically so insensitive at the very time growing out beyond the city even in the city in Richmond Park in
21:29 London on Hampstead Heath in London and even on Streatham Common if you can believe that these mushrooms are growing you can take these mushrooms particularly if you take them out like I say in the Lake District or Snowdonia or Dartmoor or somewhere you can take them you can pick them in these beautiful areas take them in those beautiful areas and you will then commune it’s like a deep beautiful communion with a larger intelligence that’s all around you and everything’s woven from it and I think that’s an important thing isn’t it a bit too convenient that these little things are growing in the ground right in front of our faces that have the solutions to all of our problems I don’t know that no I wouldn’t say they have the solutions to all our problems I wouldn’t say that what I’d say was they’re not what they they’re not they don’t I don’t think they give you Gurdjiev made this point I don’t think they give you anything real permanent change they give you an insight so you take them and you have a you have a new vision of yourself existing within the kind of the biosphere and you have a new vision of nature and the the universe and they will vivify you spiritually and have emotional impact and they can help you psychologically if you’ve got that’s what you know the medicinal kind of side of it but really the task then McKenna used to say this the real task is to bring some of that those beautiful visions back those kind of higher emotions and stuff that
23:05 Connection to a larger the larger cosmos the biosphere whatever you want to call it that spiritual connection to the whole is to bring try and convert those powerful spiritual experiences into some you know books films whatever McKenna used to say you find the art pedal when you press down on it so so I don’t think that it’s not that the mushroom or ayahuasca has got the answers it’s that they can act as catalysts for positive change that’s what I guess I’m saying it would be a mistake to think the answers there you know that’s in that you can get insight through it but I think it’s a mistake to say there’s kind of answers in there it’s there they’re there as tools as part of the biosphere really sort of acting in a catalytic way to make to reconnect us to the like that another example I said about this the mushroom you said isn’t it too good to be true that they’re growing it’s the same as the amazon is like the heart of the biosphere you know it’s the where the most biodiversity is people talked about the the amazon rainforest has been like the lungs of the biosphere and this kind of thing it I’ve forgotten what I’m going to say now yeah yeah it seems it’s significant it’s the fact that the amazon is producing ayahuasca and it’s coming out of the amazon again this is this is kind of homeostatic catalytic mechanism for for positive ecological change in a new relationship with the biosphere but I don’t yeah just to I’ll just say it one last time it’s not that the answers are in I
24:41 Want to make that clear I don’t think the answers are in the thing they can catalyze they can act as a spiritual catalyst like a kick up the arse in a way you know okay you know Brian I always find it very interesting that you I mean you’ve done magic mushrooms once before right many many years ago and didn’t have a good experience and had no idea what I was doing and was an urban environment yeah that’s why I always wanted to to talk to you more about it um I’ve done it once and I looking back I’m so glad I didn’t do it in urban environment you did it in Amsterdam right yeah and I just could not think of anything worse than being in a big city like that it must have been hell and what are your thoughts and do you do you think that it’s not not a good idea to do these things in an urban environment no I’m gonna have to be honest now for my mushroom fever period started in 1992 20 years ago and that lasted three months and I basically did mushrooms in a room the house I was living in under the guy under the recommendations of Terrence McKenna he said you know find find a comfortable room unplug your phone there are no mobiles they can’t unplug your phone make sure you’re not going to be disturbed he even said do it in the dark when the mushroom comes on when it reaches its peak you shut your eyes you have visions and McKenna used to say you shut up and you listen you know just to get this teaching
25:54 That comes from it which is the higher mind yeah you’re boosting the higher mind and it will teach you so I used to do it I’ve done it in an urban environment a lot I’ve done all I’ve done all I cycled to the British Library once under the influence I’ve done all sorts of strange strange things um and it can be just as illuminating but for the last 17 years or so my preferred method has been that’s how I differ differ from McKenna but it’s hard for me to recommend doing this because you have to have you have to have good trekking equipment you have to know what you’re doing to be out although I suppose you could be in a park or something but um yeah the best environment to be in is is is a is a natural environment in the wild you know how often do you take psilocybin well I haven’t I’m clean man I’m not taking no I’m not recording this no psychedelic fungus has been no I haven’t taken the last time was after we Alex and I took ayahuasca on October the 28th we took mushrooms the next day because they were growing out there as well so that was the last time I’d use them very rarely now maybe two or three times a year maybe a bit more do you think there’s a finite do you think in the beginning when you started taking them you got all this knowledge and then it was good to take a break and process it absolutely okay got to I’m in a period now where I mean I’ve taken psilocybin about 130 times over the last and that that that is quite a lot for a strong you know psychedelic substance
27:18 And my the period I’m in now I really feel I’ve got to it’s very very important to integrate stuff if you don’t and I do that through books and films and stuff I’ve got another film I’m working on now um if you don’t do that if you don’t integrate it into the larger culture and stuff I think you can it can lead to psychological problems you just become more and more alienated and you can’t communicate with people when you go to you sort of burn your wings or whatever so I think it’s very important to in order to remain grounded you have to integrate all this stuff all this information into into the interculture integration by education or what do you mean when you say integration well for me it’s to make to it’s got to come out all these experiences they were so powerful and I felt I felt very privileged could you give us an example of one of these powerful experiences what psilocybin experience yeah like a vision of a vision that you thought was particularly illuminating or particularly engaging or just something to get to give our audience and understanding of the power of of these experiences well no I keep thinking the last the last powerful very powerful experience I had was with ayahuasca but it’s the same it’s the same thing it was that I was went to the same place in it uh I alex filmed me talking about this actually recently he’s making a film psychedelic dialogues or something um I at the peak of the
28:46 Ayahuasca but this was don’t forget we weren’t in peru we were in a snowdonian beautiful oak forest um I my I conjured up or my my higher self expressed itself through the archetype of an american indian so there was an american indian chief and he was addressing he was addressing the um the world it was all like in slo-mo and he was a quite an old american chief and he spoke very slowly and he basically said um and I had my eyes shut and this was happening I know some people will say well this is an american indian spirit I see it as an archetype because I used to read books about american indians when I was young anyway he he it was very powerful and he basically said that the earth is the earth is our mother and it seemed really really poignant about half an hour later I was raving to alex about this I said this is an american indian there you see he’s spoken to the world he said that the earth is our mother and I’m saying I think I said yeah but I could flesh that out what does it what does mother mean what does it mother mean you know the big big meaning of mother and um what does it mean that the earth’s a mother I can defend that seemingly simple statement I can defend it I could write you know thousands of words defending this give it some bollocks you know you say no you don’t need to it’s perfectly clear so that’s the kind of and then later I think it was that same evening we looked we could see the milky way Alex was moved to tears at the time
30:19 It was absolutely stunning it’s just factored to just be there to be in a super conscious state in this pristine oak forest with a milky way above you and to be everything’s crystal clear and it’s just fantastic to be to be alive and in that place and in that moment it was a perfect moment and I said to him I said look we’ve got to make this this film I’ve been wanting to make phrases I’ve got to make this film about the biosphere and you’re obliged to help me you’ve got to you’re gonna get a video camera you’re gonna have to help me and stuff and he said yeah I agree so that’s the thing I’m working on at the moment so what I’m saying to that’s the way I I feel obliged to to write these books and make films and music videos and stuff because it’s it’s the only way I can it helps the integration process you have to give back if you’re given something if you’re vouchsafed a beautiful spiritual vision of the biosphere and how lucky we are and privileged we are you have to you have to let that flow you know flow out somehow true I know exactly what you’re talking about that’s experience you spoke about with the milky way because the first time I did well the only time I did magic mushrooms was with a friend in in um in northern California and we were walking into this forest and we both stopped as soon as we got far enough away from the road I don’t know why we both just stopped the same time not
31:38 No words were spoken and we were looking up and seeing the light coming through the sunlight coming through the trees and everything was perfectly silent and it was there and then then I realized how disconnected I was from nature I felt like an alien I was like what am I doing here you know this is not my my place and then I realized it’s not our natural state we we shouldn’t be disconnected we are the children of the earth right I mean what do you think fine I mean when I was in under ayahuasca I mean Nick and I took ayahuasca March 19th it was about four months ago and um so you know as my first real experience but I had a lot of visions of connection to nature and a lot of connection to people and things like that but we were inside and we were in central London so I didn’t see nature right in front of me like that well maybe you guys should come out for a trek so I mean they’re mushrooms grow in autumn as long as you’ve got trekking gear we can figure it out yeah it’s not a Simon challenge issue can we do it on the scene like I say they grow like the thing is I spent years and years and years trekking I discovered the lake district in 1995 I couldn’t believe that this area existed in the UK that looked like a miniature version Switzerland so me and this guy called the I call him the guru he was like my sort of guru me and the guru used to do these treks about four treks a year all over the lake district all over Snowdonia taking mushrooms everywhere we went we’d
33:07 Find the most god you know work the very paths walked by Wordsworth and these most beautiful I mean you talk really beautiful the most I’m not kidding here’s the most beautiful places in the UK the mushroom grows there and it’s it’s yeah it’s an honor to camp you’re not supposed to camp discreetly camp you know in a forest or you know in the mountains or whatever pick mushrooms the other day take them around a campfire at night and that that is it’s the it’s the people let’s do this right people have no idea they have no idea what a real trip is well it’s not all weird and hallucinate no you’re just it’s communion no it’s heat big it’s mother guyer power you know nature patchy mama you know you get you’re in communion with it and it’s it’s a good there’s nothing like it it’s a very special thing you know on that note I wanted to ask you you know Nick and I took ayahuasca and we took it with a shaman because it was our first time I think it was really important that we had the shaman there when we took it just for all sorts of reasons and for people that don’t know the shaman drinks ayahuasca as well and kind of is there as a guide a spiritual protector or that kind of thing and I wanted to know what your thoughts are as far as shamanism and psychedelics and ayahuasca so let’s have it I don’t know I mean I don’t you know I’ve never you know some people call them I never I don’t know people call them westerners will call themselves shamans and stuff I never really
34:36 Understood that and they call themselves a funny strange contrived name and things that might not be the right name I think they call them something else in Peru but you know the idea like a guide yeah yeah no that’s it’s uh it’s good it’s good um it’s good to be guided through these experiences that I went to this is what we need that we’re lacking in the in the west right and why it’s so difficult to integrate these substances substances into the west I went to forum in America two or three months ago it was actually about death and dying in the near death experience but they had these psilocybin researchers there and I knew all about their work who are doing research on giving psilocybin to people who are dying from cancer end stage cancer I don’t know if you know about this yeah I do research is going on right now in America three three different universities in America they’re doing psilocybin research and a lot of it is to do with the therapeutic application psilocybin for people who are dying so you’ve got six months left to live they’re finding it useful because people can resolve issues this thing they don’t want to die with chips on your shoulder they do it like in a hospital you’ll go into the hospital they said bring some important things like pictures of loved ones or a pillow and they’ll put a person in the room and they give you psilocybin I mean yeah with music it’s all done set and setting is there so that’s their acting as like the shaman they’re providing this
35:54 Set and setting and they’re there as facilitators because at the end of the day you all you know you know these these ayahuasca ceremonies there might be a dozen people and some of them are throwing up and they’re all you’re all in your own thing you go you Terrence McKenna said it’s a journey of the alone to the alone when you take a psychedelic it’s just it’s just you you you you all the other stuff fades back and it’s you where and you and you confronting the higher self whatever you want to that’s what no one wants to do today no one likes to be alone no one likes to go inside they all want distraction you know they want distraction from their girlfriend or boyfriend or from the new batman film which was amazing by the way or whatever but no one wants to go into the dark and go into inner space and see what the buck is lurking there facing it yeah the unknown because we’re afraid of the unknown so um we were scared going into ayahuasca definitely so these these facilitators in where they do this research they’re acting like a shaman so the sharks so shamans for sure have a very important role in guiding they can just take you there to the edge and then you take that step so it’s very important so what we don’t have in the west at the moment is people we use these substances willy-nilly we don’t so that well i said i went to this uh forum about the near-death experience all these psilocybin researchers there i got to meet
37:07 Them and had dinner with a lot of them and i’ve i’m interested in how i this tv thing at this sky tv thing i did i mentioned that to that guy i’m interested in how these substances can be the real bone the bone of contention or the hard task is how you integrate psilocybin and ayahuasca into western culture and these psilocybin researchers we all we all kind of agreed that what you need are kind of in the you don’t you shouldn’t have to go all the way to bloody peru you know not everyone has got thousands of dollars to go all the way the other side of you should be there should be what i call revitalize i revitalization centers in the uk and in europe and stuff where you go to have where you’re guided through an ayahuasca or psilocybin experience and you come out spiritually revivified you know there’s there’s a i’d like to see that happen it’s never going to happen seems so simple i wouldn’t i wouldn’t i wouldn’t and there’s a precedent’s been set for it in elusis in ancient greece the elucinian mysteries that this is this used to take place you’d go to this temple in the dark and you take this potion which people researchers now think was a psychedelic potion you have this vision you know i think plato and arista or Socrates they went there people would go to this once a year or pilgrimage to it there i think no i wouldn’t rule it out because the researchers i spoke to what the reason they’re pursuing this research with the cancer patients is to to show that
38:41 There’s evidence that psilocybin in this case has therapeutic potential once they have enough evidence in and have published enough peer-reviewed papers in journals it then gets downgraded that’s their aim is to get it downgraded in america it’s called uh schedule one i think not over here it’s called class i downgraded once it becomes downgraded to a less harsh um schedule scheduling then that opens it makes research easier it’s very very hard to research and you’ve got to go through the FDA and the dea and all these fucking acronyms you know um they make it very difficult so if they carry on with their research and they all said that the situation now is better than it’s ever been in this second wave of psychedelic research um if they can get it does get downgraded there’ll be more research going on more evidence coming in and there’s no reason why if it’s think about it if someone who’s dying it’s got six months to live the state says yes you can have psilocybin to help well we’re all dying are we we all want to go sometimes so we it should be open to everyone so i wouldn’t rule it out we have a big farmer we’ll never let that happen because there’s no well then you involve big farmer and you get there someone’s got to make this stuff i mean you know marijuana is a huge huge business in california and it’s it’s medic medicalized and it’s actually a thriving business so potentially maybe mushrooms there’s always a way to integrate these things and i like it’s not
40:05 No i i wouldn’t close your your mind have you ever any have you ever had any bad trips simon of course but terence mckinney used to say uh a bad trip was where you were being forced to learn quicker than you were accustomed to learn i felt i think he had it right hit the nail right on the top of the head with that one so yes i’ve had some yeah my main concern with do you breathe through them or what’s the best when you have a bad trip what do you do no you have to as the guru would say you have to you have to be with it whatever whatever you experience whatever you experience you be with it as soon as you shut the door on it yeah shut the door on it and you hear a pounding on the door you know so you have to be with it no matter how uncomfortable just be with it and then you have like a storm i don’t know if you ever been caught out the best thing that if you ever caught out and i was caught out in the rain a few times once in the uh where was i malaysia or somewhere just stuck and i couldn’t go anywhere i when the storm comes just don’t moan and just be with it so you have to that’s the what what to do if you’re having a bad experience you be with it start of letting go right just be with it just don’t fight it just you know be with it yeah before i was guy trying to train my mind to doing that and when it started coming on about 45 minutes after we drank i was just like oh man my head was starting to throb in the beginning and i
41:31 Was just like just you know just let’s go with it breathe and just yeah i mean you have no choice be with it yeah i think it just helps to know well you know just to to educate and spread information and stuff it’s not going to last forever and you be with it it’s quite i think the more you go into psychedelics is you get you get at some stage you will have uh better bad experiences but you’ve got to remember because there’s a lot of misinformation about this people there’s a danger that people think there’s something that the bad experiences in the psilocybin or in the ayahuasca there’s nothing bad about the molecule it’s in you all your all you’re being exposed to is your unconscious and your stuff that’s inside you which is really weird people there’s almost a tendency to think this drug’s bad there’s something bad but something terrible in that it’s not it’s just a molecule that happens to fit in your brain and then facilitates a different kind of information processing so what you’re being exposed to even the horrible stuff you can see horrible visions and there’s nasty stuff it’s you know powerfully nasty monsters and demons it’s inside you it’s part of the the dynamics of the of the psyche and you have to work through you know you you’ve come out a stronger person i think if you can we’ve all read the stories of the guy who takes like as bullhicks says the guy who takes lsd and jumps sort of a fourth uh four-story building or i mean i’ve i had friends
42:52 Of friends in south africa who when we were growing up did did acid and they were fucked i mean they were institutionalized and for me that’s my main concern with psychedelics is i want the growth i want the spiritual growth but i as i always say to brian i don’t want my mom and dad to come have to visit me when i’m in a padded cell somewhere you know and um yeah that’s the like main concern what are your thoughts on that padded cell yeah i’ve never thought i’ve never been worried about padded cells well you just you tread if you’re a grown you’re a grown man all right you’ve acquired some wisdom i’m still going with that yeah well you treat you treat you tread carefully tread carefully do your research tread carefully make sure you’re as acquainted with the material you’re studying make sure you’re you’re as acquainted as you can be with that material and you’ve read around it and you take it seriously that’s a good so you do your research you tread very carefully because it’s it is it’s you’re you’re a pioneer really you’re at the leading edge of of conscious experience there’s big vistas there nobody really knows what’s going on i’ve got you know i’d like to think i know sometimes but i don’t need these higher mind and self-organizing information that’s that’s just my way of kind of dealing with it i don’t know so it’s there it’s new it’s unknown to its elite it’s unknown territory people think outer space and you know exploring caves under
44:19 The water no one’s ever been in before sure you’re going where no man’s been before but it’s the inner space is the same it’s a it’s a realm that we don’t particularly in the west we it’s still a new realm and the vistas are new and we’re still we still don’t really know what it is but yeah you just tread carefully and just like going off for a trek where nobody across some mountains where nobody’s been before you make sure you’ve got the right equipment and you make sure you’ve done your research and people have scouted that area before you do your research you know if you listen to your fears you’ll probably end up regretting it sorry if you listen to your fears you’ll probably end up regretting it because your fears would stop you from doing something like that well the the only fear is fear itself wouldn’t it so you know you always specifically say psilocybin mushrooms i mean can you talk about the other kinds of mushrooms and then lsd peyote sanpejo ayahuasca have you looked into these other things because you seem to be very a very vertically focused guy i said i said earlier i’m a really simple guy i’m just a plain psilocybin man are there other types of mushrooms dullest psychedelic person there is you know well i tried you’re vertically integrated the first the first mushrooms i ever tried were fly agaric i tried them again and when i was about 20 i found stacks and stacks of them i tried they’re the red ones with the white spots okay um
45:36 Siberian shamans used to use it and i tried them again and again and i tried preparing them in various ways i’ve never got any effect whatsoever they’re the only real psychoactive it’s not in the same from what i’ve read about it’s not really in the same league as psilocybin uh peyote i’ve never tried uh ayahuasca i did once i smoked dmt once what was that like took me exactly like the ayahuasca experience it took me by surprise because i had this pipe i smoked the dmt and it took me i recognized the realm i went to the visionary realm i went to i recognized it immediately and it was the same as the psilocybin realm so um yeah that’s about the sum total of mics oh yeah i’ve taken lsd a few times as well what are your thoughts on lsd because it’s my understanding i mean one of the reasons i promised myself i’d never take lsd is because of um these sad people in salaf good had these psychotic episodes i have this gut instinct that lsd is is inferior to psilocybin because it’s a kind of a man-made counterfeit almost what are your thoughts well two things i’ve getting back to these bad experiences you’re the danger with psychedelics because they’re so powerful is anyone who’s got any underlying psychosis just just below the surface you know who are prone let’s say to psychosis but they’re not pushed into it they these substances i think from what i can tell can push them over it’s a bit like the analogy i have is with a hair you could have a hairline fracture
47:03 In one of your neck bones and you go through life’s fine but you go on a waltzer you know the fairground and that you know crack hands you know because you’re pushed into this dramatic you know intense experience so it’s the same so anyone who’s got any kind of underlying psychosis strange weird you know strange stuff you have to be healthy and balanced that’s the first thing i’d say yeah and only really you know whether you which is difficult because a lot of people who aren’t healthy and balanced we they’re the people that need this kind of stuff i mean when on my last iowasca journey like in fact one of the things i said at the closing ceremony we all had to do this little debriefing um and and the what i the conclusion i came to was i’m actually pretty normal like most these people were rarely deeply damaged people and they were the ones who got the biggest benefit out of the iowasca so i would have to disagree saying you have to be psychologically balanced to do these things no no i’m talking about the people you’re the people you mentioned before who are in rubber rooms and straitjacket so it’s very rare that’s very rare i’m just saying to you those people it strikes me you had there was some kind of underlying issue there not just people who are depressed or have got relationship issues the people that the people that have got that’s psychological issues that go and take iowasca in Peru that’s not that’s not there’s nothing psychotic or that’s not what i’m talking about
48:25 I’m saying the danger they’re fine they’ll learn and they’ll come back and they’ll they’ll be there’ll be better people from having taken i’m talking about people with underlying schizophrenia that’s that’s the thing like like the guy from uh pink floyd cid barrett i think that i think he it’s my opinion i don’t know i think because he took he took LSD a lot you know they said he came back one weekend and he was just gone you know i think he pushed himself too far but i think it’s my opinion that he people like him they he had some kind of underlying not maybe even less than borderline schizophrenia just but it’s just below because there’s going to be a spectrum of schizophrenia full-blown or you really shows kind of thing so that that’s all i’m saying to you is that any if there’s any hint that there might be underlying psychosis stay away fair enough i heard a very good analogy which um said that um your brain is basically like the faucet or the valve that connects you to the infinite right connects us reducing valve yeah the reducing valve and what happens if you abuse drugs or psychedelics what what could happen is you could break that valve and then you can imagine how someone would just go insane because there’s this huge flood of information that they’re just unable to process yeah yeah i mean that’s a one way of but it’s very rare you know these are rare all those stories about people it’s very
49:51 Rare i’m just being a pussy right brian i should just do this but lsd i mean you know with give psilocybin why bother with so your your second question was about LSD what i think about LSD i took it a few times i thought it was interesting it was similar to psilocybin but um i i just prefer add a different kind of vibe and feel to it lasts longer as well so that’s why i’m a psilocybin man because the main thing i often go on about with LSD is context is everything you know set and setting in context and why i think psilocybin and ayahuasca are so important is because the context by which they arrive to you is all to do with nature in ayahuasca it’s the amazon it’s a jungle you know it’s the strength the sort of quintessence of the rainforest you know and the mushroom i mean what what better symbol of of the earth than a fungus you know a strange mysterious weird looking thing growing out of the ground so that whole context that comes that larger environmental context that comes with mushrooms and ayahuasca i think it’s very important it will have a it will affect the actual experience as well where LSD it’s it’s you know it’s a product of the lab you know you get it on a blotter a tab or whatever it’s it’s it’s got human intelligence kind of all around it kind of thing whereas the mushroom has got it’s forest or around it just makes sense yeah you know someone i was wondering if you can tell us about your next film project and how people can get in touch with you and just find
51:20 Out more about you and your other films well the next film project i want to do it because two films i’ve made a zero budget you know old work zero budget kind of thing i want to do a proper now i’ve had some experience me alex ward the jesus of ayahuasca we worked together on a project for about a year and a half so we both had experience working together and he wants to help me with the film anyway so i’m and there’s another guy we worked with so there’s three of us i’m hoping i’m uh i’m writing the fund the funding proposal at the moment which is quite it’s quite stressful i’ve never done anything like that before although i had it i’ve had some experience in writing stuff proposals and things so it’s going to be a film about the biosphere but i want to i want to hopefully set up a foundation so it’s a non-profit film there’s a fountain and any monies raised from the film will go into the foundation and i want to sort of initiate something so i’m there’s a someone i know who could potentially fund it so i’ve got to in the next few days i’m going to send this get this document’s going to be printed for this guy and hopefully you’ll fund it if it it’s it it’s going to be fucking amazing if it if it what’s the film about or can you can tell basically the biosphere and symbiosis and our relationship with nature i want to get one of the things i want to do with the film is i want everybody because my darwin’s unfinished business is a reinterpretation of evolution
52:45 I talk about this what i call natural intelligence there’s an intelligence to nature unconscious intelligence but it’s an intelligence nonetheless um one of the things i want to do is everybody’s everybody knows this has heard of the survival of the fittest competition fighting and all that kind of thing i want to make symbiosis a household term so everybody knows what symbiosis is that’s one of the aims of the film because it’s it’s just as important if not more important in the web of life than out and out competition symbiosis is everywhere it’s in our cells in there don’t know if you know about the mitochondria do you know star wars you know the midi-chlorian is the source of the force they’re based on mitochondria not midi-chlorians mitochondria mitochondria are the energy producers and every one of ourselves they have their own dna which is quite amazing they’ve got their own dna separate from the few human dna they used to be separate living organisms that are now living inside us chloroplasts inside plants that do the very very clever process of photosynthesis they’ve got their own dna as well they used to live separately um about 80 percent of all plants have symbiotic fungi associated with them you’ve got pollination through bees symbiosis is everywhere um and it’s networking it’s things working together because it makes sense to work together and there’s more strength through networking this kind of thing so one of the functions one of the functions of the film is
54:10 To make symbiosis a household so everybody’s aware of it because i think it’s got a i don’t know if you’ve heard of the biomimicry movement there’s a movement now called the biomimicry movement where they’re looking at nature for solutions to technological you’re looking at how does nature do things you know so you look at how um how did termites control air conditioning in a termite mound they get to what they all die there’s no electricity the termites don’t come out of a plug and you know plug something in they’ve got they’ve got their own inbuilt using you know air ducts and water and evaporation and kind of thing so you can look at they’ve actually built a building somewhere where they uh based the air conditioning on the way termites do and it worked i think it did yeah they got they if you want to build an underwater glue you look at how mollusks make an underwater glue they’ve got leave lotus leaves that are self-cleaning they clean themselves these leaves of the lotus plant and they found it’s because the the actual structure at a sort of microscopic level it’s all very uneven so every time it rains particles can’t be trapped anywhere every time it rains it cleans itself so they want to build surfaces of you know walls outside with self-cleaning you know you could get materials at self-cleaning a bit like um vitas that i interviewed the robotics guy he’s trying to you know mimic the actual human and animal structures
55:30 And robotics as opposed to just simple lever arms and muscle movements but to get the whole with fascia and stuff like that well i mean it comes back to i mean it’s a little nutrition as well as we um we always try to improve on nature like when it comes to food but we can never do like healthy natural food right yeah that’s probably true guys this is our hour we’re going to actually come back and answer ask a few more questions for simon you can find us i’m at simon gpal.com is that the best are you twitter you don’t seem like a twitter twitter we’ll have to get you involved in that maybe um this dang newfangled technology um that was a lot of fun um we’re gonna just ask a few questions um if you want to get access to our questions go to uh londonreal.tv and give us your email we send those out about a day after this thing airs on can i say one more thing yes please because i’m i’m trying to make it coherent what i was saying the biomimicry thing learning technology learning solutions to problems by looking at nature my point is that we can look at principles of living from nature as well and symbiosis is like an operating principle if you go into if you go into a rain forest that sustained itself for 60 million years it must be doing something right symbiosis is a part of that so the sooner we learn how the web of life is is is achieving health and vitality for millions of years through things like symbiosis the better for us so i want to make symbiosis a household term so
56:54 Everyone i know you know you could go up somewhere in the street yeah mate you know what symbiosis is of course i do yes way ahead of you oh you heard it here first right symbiosis simon thank you so much for coming on i’ve just been really enjoying just listening to you the last hour is one of my favorite episodes so thank you so much for coming in thanks a lot no problem i did quite enjoy that go figure no no because it’s always really strict i’ve never had a microphone like this before and it’s kind of but yeah we got yeah these are the best microphones money can buy i’ve got a beringer at home but it’s probably not as good as i will be back in a few minutes with some questions but until then it’s about the journey all right thanks guys
