1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:25,339 For those of you who are seeking a deeper understanding of the fabric of reality,... 2 00:00:25,339 --> 00:00:29,039 their own lives, Ayahuasca has been a facilitator. 3 00:00:29,039 --> 00:00:33,339 As with a number of my interviewees, author Graham Hancock has placed his Ayahuasca... 4 00:00:33,339 --> 00:00:35,859 as among the most sacred events of his life. 5 00:00:35,859 --> 00:00:40,600 He believes that with the help of mind-expanding agents, we will better be a... 6 00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:43,240 the deep history of the human experience. 7 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:47,439 Where archaeological evidence leaves off, our collective memory can fill in the gaps. 8 00:00:47,439 --> 00:00:51,840 I met with Graham in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Earthkeepers Conference to speak about 9 00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:57,560 Ayahuasca and the right to sovereignty over our own minds. 10 00:00:57,560 --> 00:00:58,679 It's good to see you again. 11 00:00:58,679 --> 00:00:59,960 It's been a couple of years. 12 00:00:59,960 --> 00:01:05,200 Last time we sat together, you had just finished, I think you only had advanced... 13 00:01:05,200 --> 00:01:08,319 which was very interesting because it was your first work of fiction and you didn't 14 00:01:08,319 --> 00:01:10,039 know how it was going to fly. 15 00:01:10,039 --> 00:01:11,400 How did it fly? 16 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:18,000 Well, it's been rather difficult to reinvent myself as a novelist in my 60s. 17 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:24,599 The publishing industry likes to keep me in a box of writing nonfiction, but I feel as 18 00:01:25,599 --> 00:01:31,479 that it's my right to explore other areas of my craft. 19 00:01:31,479 --> 00:01:38,439 I've felt very strongly called for some time to do some of my work in the realm of... 20 00:01:38,439 --> 00:01:40,759 But it's very difficult. 21 00:01:40,759 --> 00:01:44,079 I've had many big bestsellers in nonfiction. 22 00:01:44,079 --> 00:01:45,879 You're a cash cow in that genre. 23 00:01:45,879 --> 00:01:46,879 Yes. 24 00:01:46,879 --> 00:01:52,159 And now starting out writing fiction, it's like starting again from the very beginning. 25 00:01:52,159 --> 00:01:55,519 It's like being 25 again. 26 00:01:55,519 --> 00:02:00,399 And I'm completely unknown as a novelist and the publishing industry reluctantly publishes 27 00:02:00,399 --> 00:02:06,079 my novels, but doesn't particularly want to push them or promote them. 28 00:02:06,079 --> 00:02:11,439 So Entangled, those who've read it seem to have visceral reactions to it. 29 00:02:11,439 --> 00:02:13,479 People either love it or hate it, which is fine. 30 00:02:13,479 --> 00:02:16,479 I'm very happy with either, but not a vast number of people. 31 00:02:16,479 --> 00:02:17,960 It means they're not sleeping through it. 32 00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:18,960 Yeah. 33 00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:20,240 Not a vast number of people have read it. 34 00:02:20,240 --> 00:02:26,159 So the interesting thing we talked about last time was that when you are going nonfiction, 35 00:02:26,159 --> 00:02:29,680 which you're well known, very, very well known for, I mean, I started a lot of my... 36 00:02:29,680 --> 00:02:32,920 based on your work about 20 years ago, too. 37 00:02:32,920 --> 00:02:38,240 The problem is you keep bumping up against science and peer review and all this sort 38 00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:39,439 of thing. 39 00:02:39,439 --> 00:02:41,080 And you are pushing the envelope. 40 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:43,680 That's the nature of what you're to do in your work. 41 00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:49,600 So by going into fiction, aren't you able to kind of jump that chasm a bit and put forth 42 00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:50,960 theories that... 43 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:51,960 Well, that's the delight for me with fiction. 44 00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:52,960 Yeah. 45 00:02:52,960 --> 00:02:58,879 Because I don't have to bulletproof my arguments with 2000 footnotes because to t... 46 00:02:58,879 --> 00:03:00,919 I can say, relax. 47 00:03:00,919 --> 00:03:06,519 It's just fantasy, but it becomes possible to explore extraordinary ideas. 48 00:03:06,519 --> 00:03:12,280 So in Entangled, I was looking at demonic influence in human affairs. 49 00:03:12,280 --> 00:03:14,240 I was looking at a time travel. 50 00:03:14,240 --> 00:03:19,960 I was looking at the role of beneficent supernatural beings such as the Blue Angel... 51 00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:25,439 in Entangled, that people have been reporting encounters with entities of this type down 52 00:03:25,439 --> 00:03:26,439 the ages. 53 00:03:26,439 --> 00:03:28,600 And science, of course, completely dismisses them. 54 00:03:28,600 --> 00:03:32,439 But I think they've had a huge role to play in the human story. 55 00:03:32,439 --> 00:03:37,480 And a confluence of history in a new way where you were putting various considered... 56 00:03:37,480 --> 00:03:42,080 original peoples together in the same timeframe, interacting with certain traits. 57 00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:46,960 Entangled involved one young woman, Leonie, in 21st century Los Angeles, and another 58 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:50,760 young woman, Rhea, 24,000 years ago in the Stone Age. 59 00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:54,880 And it involved altered states of consciousness, the use of visionary plants... 60 00:03:54,880 --> 00:04:01,640 of Rhea in the Stone Age, psychedelic mushrooms, in the case of Leonie in the... 61 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:07,120 and then ayahuasca, in which the active ingredient is dimethyltryptamine. 62 00:04:07,159 --> 00:04:12,800 And I think perhaps these are also reasons why the mass mainstream audience didn't go 63 00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:17,519 for the book, because the book is dealing with very challenging and edgy ideas. 64 00:04:17,519 --> 00:04:21,840 And it's suggesting that in these altered states of consciousness brought on by... 65 00:04:21,840 --> 00:04:29,920 plants, we may have incredibly important experiences, which might even make it... 66 00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:31,399 the barrier of time. 67 00:04:31,399 --> 00:04:36,959 Once we step out of the body, once we're no longer confined to the material plane, then 68 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:41,839 the time-space continuum no longer applies upon us, and it might be possible to visit 69 00:04:41,839 --> 00:04:45,039 different epochs, perhaps not in physical form, but in an out-of-body form. 70 00:04:45,039 --> 00:04:50,680 And that's what I considered and explored in Entangled, because the basic theme is 71 00:04:50,680 --> 00:04:58,159 that my two heroines are dealing with a time-travelling demon, and that's why the... 72 00:04:58,159 --> 00:05:04,639 behind the story, the Blue Angel, needs to have one person in the timeframe of 24,000 73 00:05:05,319 --> 00:05:09,319 years ago and another one today, both working to fight this battle of good against evil. 74 00:05:09,319 --> 00:05:12,360 It was interesting you chose heroines. 75 00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:15,919 And then again, when you speak about your journeys with ayahuasca, which we'll go into 76 00:05:15,919 --> 00:05:20,120 a minute because I want to talk about the TED Talks controversy that is still roaring, 77 00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:24,479 again, it's mother ayahuasca that you connect to, it's a feminine essence. 78 00:05:24,479 --> 00:05:25,479 It's a curious thing. 79 00:05:25,479 --> 00:05:29,800 I find as a writer, I'm not massively attracted to writing male characters. 80 00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:33,479 I'm more interested in female characters. 81 00:05:33,479 --> 00:05:34,479 Why is that? 82 00:05:35,319 --> 00:05:43,360 I feel that much that is noble and nurturing and courageous and powerful about the human 83 00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:47,040 race is in the feminine side. 84 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:54,200 I think we live in a testosterone-driven epoch today, and have done for quite a whi... 85 00:05:54,200 --> 00:06:00,360 men have been calling the shots, but with horrific results, where the balance of the 86 00:06:00,360 --> 00:06:02,960 feminine has not been allowed in. 87 00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:08,600 And we see this culture of aggression and competition and warfare and conspicuous... 88 00:06:08,600 --> 00:06:10,360 and everything that goes with that. 89 00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:15,240 And I feel that that comes from a society that is overbalanced in the direction of 90 00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:19,960 a particularly narrow interpretation of the male energy. 91 00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:27,920 So I find myself wanting to honor the feminine in my stories and wanting to look... 92 00:06:28,160 --> 00:06:36,240 massive role, hidden often, but massive in human affairs, that women have had in the 93 00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:37,439 parts that they have played. 94 00:06:37,439 --> 00:06:42,960 And for whoever doesn't know it, you chose a very powerful wife, beautiful, powerful 95 00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:46,800 being as your wife, so you have this influence in your life with Svantha all th... 96 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:47,800 Well, this is my... 97 00:06:47,800 --> 00:06:48,800 Who is your partner? 98 00:06:48,800 --> 00:06:50,879 And for whoever's read your books, of course, she's done the beautiful photography as well. 99 00:06:50,879 --> 00:06:51,879 That's right. 100 00:06:51,879 --> 00:06:54,879 She's my partner and my fellow adventurer. 101 00:06:55,839 --> 00:07:00,560 And I think I would be lost without Svantha in my life. 102 00:07:00,560 --> 00:07:02,639 She's been a huge balancing influence for me. 103 00:07:02,639 --> 00:07:03,639 Absolutely. 104 00:07:03,639 --> 00:07:08,879 Okay, now let's talk about the journeys, the ayahuasca, mother ayahuasca and so forth. 105 00:07:08,879 --> 00:07:13,879 And before we go into the details of more or less your visions and discoveries, let's 106 00:07:13,879 --> 00:07:14,879 talk about the fact... 107 00:07:14,879 --> 00:07:17,360 You talked about it publicly at the TED Talks event. 108 00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:18,839 Yes, I did. 109 00:07:18,839 --> 00:07:24,159 And you talked about your background, where you had been doing a lot of cannabis in the 110 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:28,240 past and your journey through that and out the other side of that, what had happened 111 00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:29,240 with you. 112 00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:31,240 It was a very personal and powerful talk. 113 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:38,080 Yeah, I told a personal story and I felt naively that TED was the right place to tell 114 00:07:38,080 --> 00:07:39,080 that story. 115 00:07:39,080 --> 00:07:40,080 You were invited, right? 116 00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:44,400 I was invited and I was invited to a conference of which the theme was challeng... 117 00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:45,740 paradigms. 118 00:07:45,740 --> 00:07:50,480 So I felt right at home in that theme. 119 00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:55,960 I was also aware that people in previous TED Talks had talked about psychedelics, so 120 00:07:55,960 --> 00:08:01,840 I didn't see why that should be a problem either. 121 00:08:01,840 --> 00:08:08,800 The personal element of my story, which I relayed in that talk, is really very... 122 00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:14,120 which is that ayahuasca is known as a healing agency amongst other things. 123 00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:18,120 This entity that people all around the world encounter in the ayahuasca experience and 124 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:19,920 tend to construe as mother ayahuasca. 125 00:08:19,920 --> 00:08:25,519 And I was very careful to say in the TED Talk, I make no claim to the reality status 126 00:08:25,519 --> 00:08:26,519 of this entity. 127 00:08:26,519 --> 00:08:31,519 I'm simply reporting the phenomenology that people all over the world are encountering 128 00:08:31,519 --> 00:08:36,320 an intelligence, what they interpret as an intelligence when they drink ayahuasca, and 129 00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:39,159 most often she appears in female form. 130 00:08:39,159 --> 00:08:46,320 Although she's a shapeshifter, she may sometimes come as a jaguar, sometimes as a... 131 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:52,520 sometimes as a human woman, and she has powerful lessons to teach us about ourselves. 132 00:08:52,520 --> 00:08:57,320 So although you sense a power of love in this intelligence that you encounter, it's a kind 133 00:08:57,320 --> 00:08:59,760 of tough love. 134 00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:03,240 You have reality reflected back at you itself. 135 00:09:03,240 --> 00:09:05,840 She will not let you off the hook lightly. 136 00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:09,160 You are confronted with the truth about your own behavior. 137 00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:16,000 And something that was bending my behavior out of shape for many, many years was my own 138 00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:19,120 personal abuse of cannabis. 139 00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:23,600 And when I talk about cannabis, I want to make it absolutely clear that I have nothing 140 00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:29,440 against cannabis, and I celebrate and honor the right of adults, the sovereign right, 141 00:09:29,440 --> 00:09:34,720 to make choices over their own bodies and their own consciousness, to use cannabis if 142 00:09:34,720 --> 00:09:35,720 they wish to do so. 143 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:41,279 I believe our society has no right to intervene in an adult's sovereign decision... 144 00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:43,440 or her body and his or her consciousness. 145 00:09:43,440 --> 00:09:49,600 Furthermore, I recognize that cannabis can be a wonderful healing agency for many people. 146 00:09:49,600 --> 00:09:50,960 You just went overboard. 147 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:53,600 I went overboard. 148 00:09:53,600 --> 00:09:58,160 I believe that cannabis, like all the sacred plants, should be treated with respect, and 149 00:09:58,160 --> 00:10:03,360 it should not be smoked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. 150 00:10:03,360 --> 00:10:04,360 You had a vaporizer. 151 00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:09,040 I had a vaporizer, so I was smoking steam, no combustion products, much better for the 152 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:10,040 lungs. 153 00:10:10,040 --> 00:10:11,040 You were serious. 154 00:10:11,040 --> 00:10:12,040 I was serious. 155 00:10:12,039 --> 00:10:14,000 I had three vaporizers, as a matter of fact. 156 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:17,799 I was very committed to my cannabis relationship. 157 00:10:17,799 --> 00:10:19,679 I can't imagine the world you were living in. 158 00:10:19,679 --> 00:10:25,639 I was mostly doing that for a period of time when I was skiing and having a lot of fun 159 00:10:25,639 --> 00:10:28,919 outdoors, and it was kind of ragweed back then. 160 00:10:28,919 --> 00:10:29,919 But this sounds serious. 161 00:10:29,919 --> 00:10:30,919 Now it's very strong. 162 00:10:30,919 --> 00:10:34,319 Now we're dealing with very strong strains of cannabis, and maybe that was part of the 163 00:10:34,319 --> 00:10:35,319 problem. 164 00:10:35,319 --> 00:10:40,319 Cannabis very, very heavily focused on the THC end of the ingredient, less on the CBD, 165 00:10:40,600 --> 00:10:42,600 because cannabis has a range of ingredients. 166 00:10:42,600 --> 00:10:43,600 Right. 167 00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:44,600 That creates paranoia. 168 00:10:44,600 --> 00:10:45,600 Well, it's well known. 169 00:10:45,600 --> 00:10:46,600 That's what I noticed. 170 00:10:46,600 --> 00:10:50,760 That was one of my problems, was that I became paranoid, suspicious, jealous. 171 00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:52,960 I didn't trust anybody. 172 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:58,720 I behaved negatively towards my wonderful wife and partner, Santha. 173 00:10:58,720 --> 00:10:59,840 You were in a prison of your own making. 174 00:10:59,840 --> 00:11:03,240 There was lots of ways, which I was refusing to admit. 175 00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:10,120 From the moment that I started drinking ayahuasca, which was in 2003, I did start ... 176 00:11:10,120 --> 00:11:15,240 that I needed to do something about my cannabis habit, and would even feel really... 177 00:11:15,240 --> 00:11:17,519 that during the session itself. 178 00:11:17,519 --> 00:11:21,000 But I kept going back to the habit. 179 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:27,240 And it was only in 2011, when I was already up to something like 35, 40 ayahuasca... 180 00:11:27,240 --> 00:11:33,840 and I went down to Brazil for five sessions, and I shall continue to call her Mother... 181 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:35,399 whether she's real or not. 182 00:11:35,399 --> 00:11:43,399 Mother Ayahuasca focused on my cannabis problem, and showed me that I was moving i... 183 00:11:43,399 --> 00:11:50,039 direction in my life, and that I was poised on the edge of an abyss, and that if I... 184 00:11:50,039 --> 00:11:56,079 to allow my behavior to deteriorate in the way that it was doing, because of my abuse 185 00:11:56,079 --> 00:12:04,600 of cannabis, there would be some sense in which I might be immortally doomed, that I 186 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:11,879 could not put right the wrongs, and the pain, and the hurt that my behavior was causing. 187 00:12:11,879 --> 00:12:16,120 So in a way, Mother Ayahuasca took me to hell. 188 00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:18,519 And I'm not claiming that hell is real either. 189 00:12:18,519 --> 00:12:19,840 It was your experience. 190 00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:26,600 But I was taken to a place, and shown very, very vividly, this is what you will face if 191 00:12:26,600 --> 00:12:29,399 you don't fix this problem in your life. 192 00:12:29,399 --> 00:12:30,920 What did that look like? 193 00:12:30,920 --> 00:12:33,560 It looked like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. 194 00:12:34,359 --> 00:12:39,599 Hieronymus Bosch was a visionary artist of the 1400s, and he painted hell a number of 195 00:12:39,599 --> 00:12:40,599 times, and it looked like that. 196 00:12:40,599 --> 00:12:46,079 And it looked a little bit like the ancient Egyptian judgment hall of Osiris, where every 197 00:12:46,079 --> 00:12:51,079 action, every thought, every deed, every moment of your life becomes transparent, a... 198 00:12:51,079 --> 00:12:52,279 must account for it. 199 00:12:52,279 --> 00:12:57,439 And I found that where the heart is weighed in the scales against the feather of truth, 200 00:12:57,440 --> 00:13:04,320 and I found that the bending out of shape of my behavior and my attitude to the world 201 00:13:04,320 --> 00:13:09,440 that was linked to, I will not say it was caused by cannabis, but was linked to... 202 00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:13,740 would put me in a place of jeopardy in the judgment hall, and that my heart would not 203 00:13:13,740 --> 00:13:16,000 weigh light against the feather. 204 00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:19,280 And this was an alarming situation for me. 205 00:13:19,280 --> 00:13:22,640 There were elements of those experiences, those five experiences in Brazil, which are 206 00:13:22,640 --> 00:13:25,320 too painful for me to recount. 207 00:13:25,400 --> 00:13:29,879 The net result is that when I came back to England, I was done. 208 00:13:29,879 --> 00:13:30,879 And that was 2011. 209 00:13:30,879 --> 00:13:31,879 That was 2011. 210 00:13:31,879 --> 00:13:36,080 I was done with cannabis, and I have never smoked it again since. 211 00:13:36,080 --> 00:13:40,760 And for me, it has been a wonderful revelation. 212 00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:45,680 So what did you discover in yourself when that was no longer clouding you? 213 00:13:45,680 --> 00:13:49,560 First of all, what I discovered is that all the pain, because jealousy and suspicion were 214 00:13:49,560 --> 00:13:55,280 causing me pain, as well as causing others pain. 215 00:13:56,279 --> 00:13:58,839 So that just vanished completely. 216 00:13:58,839 --> 00:14:00,000 I don't approach life. 217 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:01,679 I don't approach the world. 218 00:14:01,679 --> 00:14:03,360 I don't approach my wife. 219 00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:08,319 I don't approach anybody I meet in a state of suspicion or mistrust. 220 00:14:08,319 --> 00:14:11,199 I come from a place of trust. 221 00:14:11,199 --> 00:14:17,360 And I would rather trust people now and perhaps be proved wrong than mistrust them. 222 00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:19,919 I don't like being in a place of mistrust. 223 00:14:19,919 --> 00:14:20,919 It's much too painful. 224 00:14:20,919 --> 00:14:21,919 All of that is gone. 225 00:14:21,919 --> 00:14:23,799 I have absolutely no paranoia. 226 00:14:23,799 --> 00:14:25,359 I have no suspicion. 227 00:14:25,359 --> 00:14:28,120 I feel very comfortable inside my own skin. 228 00:14:28,120 --> 00:14:32,519 I don't elaborate fantasies to worry about. 229 00:14:32,519 --> 00:14:35,319 I feel much happier, much more relaxed. 230 00:14:35,319 --> 00:14:39,399 And the big thing that was worrying me about cannabis, which was that if I stopped it, 231 00:14:39,399 --> 00:14:41,639 I wouldn't be able to write my books. 232 00:14:41,639 --> 00:14:44,559 That turned out to be total nonsense. 233 00:14:44,559 --> 00:14:49,879 And that far from becoming less productive since I stopped smoking cannabis, I've become 234 00:14:49,879 --> 00:14:50,879 much more productive. 235 00:14:50,879 --> 00:14:52,839 I write much more fluently. 236 00:14:52,879 --> 00:14:58,240 But at the same time, during the years you were smoking, you were cranking out books. 237 00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:01,360 It's like people listening to this would say, how is that possible? 238 00:15:01,360 --> 00:15:04,519 Those books were brilliant and there were lots of them, a dozen of them or so. 239 00:15:04,519 --> 00:15:07,080 I was cranking out books and they were good books. 240 00:15:07,080 --> 00:15:08,800 Yes, they were. 241 00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:10,280 I was focused with cannabis. 242 00:15:10,280 --> 00:15:12,759 It put me into dreamland. 243 00:15:12,759 --> 00:15:15,040 I was able to work with it. 244 00:15:15,040 --> 00:15:20,879 But I'll tell you what sometimes would happen, which is that sometimes I would sp... 245 00:15:20,919 --> 00:15:23,960 day puzzling over a three line paragraph. 246 00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:25,600 It slowed me down. 247 00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:26,600 I see. 248 00:15:26,600 --> 00:15:27,600 Yes. 249 00:15:27,600 --> 00:15:34,120 And sometimes I think the books got a bit over long because of that process in a weird 250 00:15:34,120 --> 00:15:37,080 kind of way that I would keep coming back into. 251 00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:38,080 It felt heavy. 252 00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:39,559 A little bit heavy. 253 00:15:39,559 --> 00:15:41,919 And that's what's changed. 254 00:15:41,919 --> 00:15:46,559 And also I'm just much more productive and I'm finding myself exploring realms of ideas 255 00:15:46,559 --> 00:15:49,279 that I actually didn't explore before. 256 00:15:49,319 --> 00:15:52,079 I feel that I've opened up a lot since then. 257 00:15:52,079 --> 00:15:55,199 So I feel that I've had a monkey taken off my back. 258 00:15:55,199 --> 00:15:59,159 And again, I want to emphasize because I don't want to be misunderstood on this. 259 00:15:59,159 --> 00:16:00,720 I am not putting cannabis down. 260 00:16:00,720 --> 00:16:02,240 Right, I understand. 261 00:16:02,240 --> 00:16:06,279 Cannabis is for many people an incredibly helpful aid. 262 00:16:06,279 --> 00:16:10,679 And there was a time in my life when it was incredibly helpful for me. 263 00:16:10,679 --> 00:16:15,559 My problem was the self-indulgent abuse of this sacred book. 264 00:16:15,559 --> 00:16:16,559 I understand. 265 00:16:16,559 --> 00:16:19,919 I was wondering, though, you were talking about, I was talking about ragweed from, 266 00:16:19,919 --> 00:16:21,599 you know, a few decades ago. 267 00:16:21,599 --> 00:16:25,759 And then what has become now with this super hybridized and specialized product. 268 00:16:25,759 --> 00:16:26,759 That's what I was talking about. 269 00:16:26,759 --> 00:16:32,039 And that, you said there is a chemical shift from one chemical dominance to the other. 270 00:16:32,039 --> 00:16:33,039 Yes. 271 00:16:33,039 --> 00:16:36,119 There are two key ingredients in cannabis. 272 00:16:36,119 --> 00:16:38,159 One of them is THC. 273 00:16:38,159 --> 00:16:40,079 And that is what gets you high. 274 00:16:40,079 --> 00:16:44,039 And the other is CBD, okay, which doesn't get you high. 275 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:51,159 And at the level of the studies that have been done, it seems that there is some risk 276 00:16:51,159 --> 00:16:55,039 of THC inducing psychosis. 277 00:16:55,039 --> 00:16:56,039 Yes. 278 00:16:57,039 --> 00:17:01,120 The CBD is a powerful anti-psychotic agent. 279 00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:04,879 And in the natural herb, these two ingredients are balanced. 280 00:17:04,879 --> 00:17:05,879 Yes. 281 00:17:05,879 --> 00:17:07,159 So you giggle and eat too much. 282 00:17:07,159 --> 00:17:08,159 So it gets you high. 283 00:17:08,159 --> 00:17:09,159 Yeah. 284 00:17:09,159 --> 00:17:10,159 But it doesn't make you paranoid. 285 00:17:10,159 --> 00:17:11,159 Right. 286 00:17:11,159 --> 00:17:12,159 Okay. 287 00:17:12,279 --> 00:17:18,800 The very engineered varieties that we are now dealing with have almost entirely got 288 00:17:18,800 --> 00:17:22,320 rid of the CBD and are almost 100% THC. 289 00:17:22,320 --> 00:17:23,320 Okay. 290 00:17:23,320 --> 00:17:25,680 And that, I think, is part of the problem. 291 00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:31,640 And if we lived in a rational society, which was not governed by the truly insane and 292 00:17:31,640 --> 00:17:35,600 grotesque war on drugs, then we wouldn't have this problem. 293 00:17:35,600 --> 00:17:41,400 The reason we have this problem is that, you know, growers are looking for the maximum 294 00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:45,800 amount of high that they can concentrate into a bud. 295 00:17:45,800 --> 00:17:50,000 Whereas, you know, what we really should be looking for is a balanced experience, which 296 00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:53,040 is what the traditional herb offers. 297 00:17:53,040 --> 00:17:57,400 And you know, somebody like me, I might be, if I lived in a society where I could make 298 00:17:57,400 --> 00:18:02,080 sovereign choices over my own consciousness and I wanted to smoke cannabis, I could go 299 00:18:02,080 --> 00:18:06,240 to a grower and say, well, you know, fix me a strain that's very high in CBD and very 300 00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:07,240 low in THC. 301 00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:10,640 And that might be, you know, I might have a completely different experience with that. 302 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:11,880 Who knows? 303 00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:12,880 Well, I'm wondering. 304 00:18:12,880 --> 00:18:17,880 This is where my mind's going with it, which is, okay, now you have the THC and you have 305 00:18:17,880 --> 00:18:23,440 it, a possible propensity for producing psychotic states. 306 00:18:23,440 --> 00:18:28,880 When you look at psychotic states and you look at the entry of paranoia and influences, 307 00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:34,759 is it possible that you're then also interfacing with other dimensional fields ... 308 00:18:34,839 --> 00:18:40,839 that are also maybe boosting some of those effects within the psyche? 309 00:18:40,839 --> 00:18:49,119 Well, I think that my work over the last few years has opened me up to this possibility, 310 00:18:49,119 --> 00:18:55,759 which is that the brain is not a generator of consciousness, but in a sense, a transceiver 311 00:18:55,759 --> 00:18:58,279 of consciousness. 312 00:18:58,279 --> 00:19:03,759 And that if that is the case, then when you alter the receiver wavelength of the brain, 313 00:19:03,759 --> 00:19:09,279 other realms of consciousness that are normally closed off to our senses may beco... 314 00:19:09,279 --> 00:19:14,920 And I think that is one of the primary functions of the powerful psychedelics.