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After six million years of boredom, the evolutionary set of our species from the last common

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ancestor with the chimpanzee. Something extraordinary happened to us less than a hundred

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thousand years ago, which by the way is long after we'd become anatomically modern.

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It was a kind of emergence into consciousness less than a hundred thousand years ago,

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really less than 40,000 years ago, when we became fully symbolic creatures. This

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great change is being defined as the single most important step forward in the evolution

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of human behavior is intimately associated with the emergence of the great and transcendent

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rock and cave art all around the world. Over the last 30 years, research is led by Professor David

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Lewis Williams at the University of Wood Wartes round in South Africa and many others have

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suggested an intriguing and radical possibility, which is that this emergence into consciousness

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was triggered by our ancestors encounters with visionary plants and the beginning of shamanism.

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If you analyze the cave art, there's not time to go into the details here, but there are

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so many details that make it clear that this was an art of altered states of consciousness,

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of visions and that plants like the Amanita Musgaria Mushroom or silo-sibin mushrooms appear

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to have been directly connected with this sudden and radical change. To investigate this

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possibility, when I got interested in this mystery, I went down to the Amazon where there

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are still surviving shamanistic cultures today and where they drink the powerful visionary

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brew, Ayahuasca, of which the active ingredient is, Dymethal-Tryptomyendium-T, which is actually

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related at the molecular level to silo-sibin. Normally, Dymethy cannot be activated

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orally when we encountered it in the west is generally smoked. There's an enzyme in our

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stomach called mono-Aminoxidase, which switches off Dymethy on contact. But in the Amazon,

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they've got round this problem and they say it was the spirits that taught them how to

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do it. The Dymethy in the Ayahuasca brew is contained in these leaves from a plant that

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they call shakruna in the Amazon. And there they mix it together with this vine and out of

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the 150,000 different species of plants and trees in the Amazon. This is the one that contains

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Amanua-Aminoxidase inhibitor, which switches off that enzyme in our stomach and allows

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the Dymethy and the leaves when the two are married together and cooked in water to be absorbed

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orally and takes us on a four-hour journey into extraordinary realms. Now, it's no joke to drink

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Ayahuasca. The Ayahuasca brew has a foul taste, really really hideous and a dreadful dreadful

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smell. And after you've drunk your cup, you'll find within 45 minutes or so that you're

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sweating, that you're feeling nauseous, pretty soon you may well be vomiting, you may well have

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diarrhea. So, you know, nobody's doing this for recreation. And I'd like to add that I don't

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think any of the psychedelics should be used for recreation. They have much more serious and

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important mission with with humanity. So, we're not doing this for fun, but what draws people to

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Ayahuasca again and again to brace themselves for this experience and you do have to brace yourself.

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Is it extraordinary effects at the level of consciousness? And one of those effects

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has to do with creativity and we can see the creative cosmogenic impulse of Ayahuasca in the

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paintings of Ayahuasca shamans from Peru, like the paintings of Pablo and Maringo here,

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those richly saturated colors. They're amazing visions that they that they reproduce.

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And this creative impulse has also spread to Western artists, many Western artists now have been

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deeply influenced by Ayahuasca and are also painting their visions. And as these paintings show

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another universal experience of Ayahuasca is the encounter with seemingly intelligent entities

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which communicate with us telepathically and I'm making no claim one way or another as to the

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reality status of these entities we encounter. Simply that phenomenologically in the Ayahuasca

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experience they are encountered by people all over the world and most frequently of all,

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the spirit of Ayahuasca herself, mother Ayahuasca who is a healer and although she's kind of

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the mother God-ears of the planet, she seems to take a direct personal interest in us as individuals

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to heal our ills, to want us to be the best that we can possibly be to correct errors and

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mistakes in our behavior that may be leading us down the wrong path. And this is perhaps why

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and it's an untold story really, Ayahuasca has been fantastically successful in getting people off

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harmful addictions to hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, Ajak Mabit at the Takawasi clinic.

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In Peru, brings heroin and cocaine addicts out there for a month, gives them 12 Ayahuasca sessions

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and they have encounters with mother Ayahuasca during those sessions that lead them not to wish

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to take heroin or cocaine anymore and more than half leave completely free of their addiction,

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never return to it and don't even have withdrawal symptoms and the same incredible healing work

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was being done in Canada by Dr. Gabo Matay until the Canadian government intervened and stopped his

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healing practice on the grounds that Ayahuasca itself wasn't illegal drug. Now I have some personal

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experience of this, I have not been addicted to heroin or cocaine but I had a 24 year

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nonstop cannabis habit and this started off smoking the herb and naturally vaporizing it

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but the basic truth is that for 24 years I was pretty much permanently stoned and I enjoyed being stoned

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and I felt that it helped me with my work as a writer and perhaps at some point it did but when I

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first encountered Ayahuasca I had already been smoking cannabis for 16 years and almost immediately

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Ayahuasca started giving me messages that this was no longer serving me that it was leading me to

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behave in negative and unhelpful ways towards others and of course I ignored those messages for

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years and years and went back to being stoned 16 hours a day but that negative behavior that Ayahuasca

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was pointing up did actually get worse and worse I don't want to put down cannabis and I believe

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it's a sovereign right of every adult to choose to smoke cannabis if they wish to do so but I think

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I was overusing it I think I was abusing it not using it responsibly and I became more and more

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paranoid jealous, possessive, suspicious I was subject to irrational, rages I often made the life of my

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beloved partner Santa a misery and when I went down for my regular encounter with Ayahuasca

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in October 2011 I was given the most unbelievable kicking by mother Ayahuasca and I was put through

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an ordeal it was a kind of life review and it's not an accident that Ayahuasca is the vine of the

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dead I was shown my death and I was shown that if I came to death and what awaits us after death

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without having corrected the mistakes that I was making in my life that it would be a very bad

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thing to meet from me and and actually mother Ayahuasca literally took me to hell and that hell was a

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little like this hell painted by her anonymous Bosch a truly terrible place and and a little like

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the place that the ancient Egyptians called the judgment hall of Osiris where our souls are weighed

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in the scales in the presence of the gods against the feather of truth of justice of cosmic harmony

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and I was shown that the path I was walking my abuse of cannabis and the behavior associated with

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it was going to lead me to be found wanting in the judgment and that I might face a annihilation

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in the world beyond death so perhaps not surprising that when I came back to England later in October

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2011 I gave up cannabis and I've never smoked it again since then and actually and again I'm

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speaking only personally with no comment on others use of cannabis it's as though a monkey has been

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lifted off my back I'm liberated in incredible ways far from my creativity being inhibited I

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find myself writing much more productively much more creatively much more focused and and much more

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efficiently as well and I began to be able to address those negative aspects of my behavior which

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cannabis had revealed and hopefully to make myself slowly it's a long progress into a more nurturing

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more loving, more positive person and this whole transformation that really has been a personal

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transformation for me was made possible by this encounter with death that Mother I wasca gave me

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and you know that Lemmy's to ask what is death our materialist science reduces everything

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to matter materialist science in the West says that we are just meat we're just our bodies so

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when the brain is dead that's the end of consciousness there is no life after death there is no

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soul we just rot and are and are gone but actually many honest scientists should admit that consciousness

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is the greatest mystery of science and and that we don't know exactly how it works the brain's

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involved in it in some way but we're not sure how could be that the brain generates consciousness

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the way a generator makes electricity if you hold to that paradigm then of course you can't believe in

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life after death when the generators broken consciousness is gone but it's equally possible that

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the relationship but nothing in neuroscience rules it out that the relationship is more like the

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relationship of the TV signal to the TV set and in that case when the TV set is broken of course

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the TV signal continues and this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions that we are immortal souls

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temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to develop

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and really if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist

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reductionist scientists they have nothing to say on the matter at all let's go rather to the

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ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work for 3,000 years on the problem of death and on

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the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare for what we will confront after death

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and the ancient Egyptians expressed their ideas in transcendent art which still touches us emotionally

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today and they came to certain very specific conclusions that the soul does survive death and that we

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will be held accountable for every thought, every action, every deed that we have lived through

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in our lives so we better take this precious opportunity to be born in a human body

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seriously and make the most of it and in these inquiries into the mystery of death the ancient

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Egyptians weren't just exercising their imaginations they highly valued dream states and it's now

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known that they used visionary plants like the how does anogenic blue water lily and it's interesting

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that the ancient Egyptian tree of life has recently been identified as the occasion elotica

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which contains high quantities of DMT die mythartryptamine the same active ingredient that we find

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in ayahuasca now it's difficult to imagine a society more different from the society of ancient

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Egypt than our society today we hate visionary states in this society in our society if we want to

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insult somebody we call them a dreamer in ancient societies that was praise and we have it erected huge

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apparatus of armed bureaucracies who will invade our privacy who will break down our doors who

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will arrest us who will send us to prison sometimes for years for possessing even small

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quantities of salisibia no substances like DMT whether in its notable form or in the ayahuasca

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brew and yet ironically DMT is we now know a natural brain hormone we all have it in our bodies

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and it's just that its function remains unknown for lack of research and it's not as though our

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society is opposed in principle to altered states of consciousness I mean billions are being made by the

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unholy alliance of psychiatrists and and big farmer in over prescribing drugs to control so

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cold syndromes like depression or attention deficit disorder in teenagers and we have a

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a love affair in our society with alcohol we we glorify this most boring of drugs

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despite the terrible consequences that it often has and of course we love our stimulants our

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tea our coffee our energy drinks our sugar and and huge industries our our built around these these

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these substances which are valued because of the way they alter consciousness but what all these

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approved altered states of consciousness have in common is that none of them contradict or conflict

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with the basic state of consciousness valued by our society which I would call the alert

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problem solving state of consciousness which is good for the more mundane aspects of science it's

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good for the prosecution of warfare it's good for commerce it's good for politics but I think everybody

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realises that the promise of a society over a monopolistically based upon this state of consciousness

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has proved hollow and that this model is no longer working that it's broken in every possible sense

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that a model can be broken and urgently we need to find something to replace it the vast problems

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of global pollution that have resulted from the single-minded pursuit of of profit the horrors of

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a nuclear proliferation the specter of of of hunger that millions every night go to bed starving

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that we can't even solve this problem despite our alert problem solving state of consciousness

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and look what's happening in the amazement the lungs of our planet this precious home of biodeversity

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the old growth rainfall is being cut down and replaced with soya bean farms so we can feed

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cattle so that we can all eat hamburgers only a truly insane global state of consciousness could

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allow such an abomination to occur and I did a back of an envelope calculation during the Iraq war

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it seems to me that six months expenditure on the Iraq war would have solved the problem

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of the amazement forever would be sufficient to compensate the people's of the amazement so that

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no single tree ever needed to be cut down again to garden and and look after that amazing

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resource but we can't make that decision as a global community we can spend countless

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billions on warfare on hatred on fear on suspicion on division but we can't get the collect together

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the collective effort to save the lungs of our planet and this is perhaps why shamans from the amazement

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are now mounting a kind of reverse missionary activity when I've asked shamans about the

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sickness of the west they say it's quite simple you guys have severed your connection with spirit

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unless you reconnect with spirit and do so soon you're going to bring the whole house of cards

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down around your heads and hours and rightly or wrongly they believe that a ayahuasca is the remedy

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for that sickness and many now are being called to the amazement to drink ayahuasca and ayahuasca shamans

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are traveling throughout the west offering the brew often under the radar often at personal risk

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to bring about consciousness change and it's true that the message of ayahuasca the universal message

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is about the sacred magical enchanted infinitely precious nature of life on earth and the

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interdependence of material and spiritual realms and it's impossible to work with ayahuasca for long

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without being deeply and profoundly affected by this message and let's not forget that ayahuasca is

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not alone that it's part of an ancient worldwide system of the targeted careful, responsible

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alteration of consciousness it's recently been shown by scholars that the kaikeon used in the

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Ellis anducinian mysteries in ancient Greece was almost certainly a psychedelic brew that the

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soma of the Vedas may well have been a brew based upon the amanita muscaria mushroom we have the

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DMT in the ancient Egyptian tree of life we have the whole global cultures of surviving shamanism

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and what it's all about is a state of consciousness that's designed to help us find balance harmony

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the ancient Egyptians would have called it mart with the with the universe and to remain mindful

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that what we're here to undertake on earth while immersed in matter is fundamentally a spiritual journey

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aimed at the growth and perfection of the solar journey that may go back to the very origins of

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what made us human in the first place and I stand here invoking the hard one right of freedom of

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speech to call for and demand another right to be recognized and that is the right of adult

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sovereignty over consciousness there's a war on consciousness in our society and if we as adults

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are not allowed to make sovereign decisions about what to experience with our own consciousness

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while doing no harm to others including the decision to use responsibly ancient and sacred

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visionary plants then we cannot claim to be free in any way and it's useless for our society to go

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around the world imposing our form of democracy on others while we nourish this rot at the heart of

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society and we do not allow individual freedom over consciousness it may even be that we're denying

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ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution by allowing the state of affairs to continue

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and who knows perhaps our immortal destiny as well thank you

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thank you