In this episode, Kyle invites a guest interviewer, Hallie Rose of the Thought Room Podcast, to interview him on his recent experience at Soltara. In the show, they talk about Soltara, Kyle’s experience with the plant medicine, and important topics like privilege. 

3 Key Points:

1. Eastern attendees have a different integration need than Western attendees. In the West, attendees come back to more hustle and bustle, more time is needed for integration. Soltara does a really good job at providing that time for integration.  
2. With Psilocybin and other psychedelics, there is this one big door, you eat the mushrooms and open the door and get to experience it heavily. With Ayahuasca, there is a smaller doorway to penetrate through, you have to create a relationship with the medicine first.

3. If the people that really need the help can't even afford it, then how do we have mass healing? Peer support movements are a way forward in this issue.

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Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes

About Hallie

• Hallie interviewed Kyle after his first 4 experiences with Ayahuasca
• Kyle's episode on The Thought Room Podcast about his Near Death Experience
• The Thought Room Podcast was inspired by Hallie’s first Ayahuasca experience
• She had typically pushed away anything psychedelic in nature, even alcohol before coming to Soltara as a guest
  • “A lot of the paradigms I had been working with were flipped upside down on their head” - Hallie
• The message that really spoke to her was to create a podcast
  • 2 ceremonies later she had some things come up about family and career, and again, the message ‘podcast’ came up again
  • When she went over her integration notes from her experience at Soltara, she kept coming back to the podcast thing
  • She describes her journal entry message as a black hole, a void
  • She felt like she was in rooms, some were bright and rainbow-y, and others were dark and lonely
  • The rooms were rooms for thoughts, thought rooms
• She owns the start up company Lunar Wild

Soltara

• Hallie mentions that she was blown away by the amount of effort that it takes to uphold a medicine center like Soltara
• Kyle says right from the start from arrival to the location, he was greeted with such warmth and it reminded him of his breathwork background
  • The ground rules that they laid down right at the start made him feel so safe
  • She said it's amazing to see the amount of healing that happens in that space
  • “When it comes to your own medicine work, your own journey work, only you know what's right for you” - Hallie
• Hallie is part of a mastermind group through Aubrey Marcus, the CEO of Onnit
  • She is connected to a bunch of people as a part of this group
  • She was introduced to Dan Cleland, a co-founder of Soltara, who invited her to come down
• Yes they had the traditional Shipibo aspects, but they also did a fantastic job of adding in the Western concepts to cater to the western needs
  • Hallie mentions that coming from the West, we have the need to integrate the experience in a different way than those coming from the East, and Soltara does a really good job with that kind of integration

The First Session

• Kyle said the tea was actually tasty
  • You drink a lot of it where you override the system to where the body wants to purge
• Kyle drank 5 cups of the tea over all the nights
• The purging is to clear the system out of toxins and clean it out energetically
• Soltara built in pre-ceremony sessions like yoga or meditation to help ease into the actual sessions
• Kyle said that the Ayahuasca experience was familiar
  • Everything felt very green behind his eyes
  • There was a serpent weaving in and out of his DNA
  • The experience felt so healing
  • Kyle didn't purge (vomit) but did do a little crying
  • He said he did not experience much anxiety
  • The serpent was healing him and stitching parts of himself back together
  • “There is something intelligent here working on very subtle levels” - Kyle
• The next two ceremonies were very gentle, some crying, going through family dynamics, but always in the background, there was that same serpent
• Kyle said the first 3 sessions felt really easy, compared to previous experiences with psychedelics
  • The spirit said to him “oh you think this was going to be easy, that you would just drink this and that I would show you all this stuff. Well we have to get to know each other first”
  • With Psilocybin, there is this one big door, you eat the mushrooms and open the door and get to experience it heavily, with Ayahuasca, there is a smaller doorway to penetrate through, you have to create a relationship with the medicine first

Final Ceremony

• It was during the full moon in Cancer and lunar eclipse, the energy was already intense
• For the 4th ceremony, Kyle was already feeling high energy, and did not want to go too strong, so he started with ¾ of a cup
  • Kyle felt like he was sober, the medicine told him to ask for a second dose
  • The facilitator gave Kyle ¼ of a cup more
  • That ¼ of a cup really blasted him off
• After the singing, he laid down and that's when things took off
  • All of a sudden, he saw himself back in the CAT scan machine (referring back to his NDE as a teen)
  • He always tells the story as blissful and beautiful, but this time was so different
  • He saw himself back in the CAT scan machine as a child, and was terrified, and he began shaking
  • He felt this pain in his pelvic area as he felt during his NDE
  • He was shivering and so cold, it brought him right back into that state
  • He was re-experiencing the fear in a new way during the ceremony
  • He went into his body and felt the scar tissue and felt that shake and stretch and kind of brought in some healing there
  • After his actual surgery/NDE, as he was healing he was always really afraid to move in certain ways in the fear that movement would re-open some of the healing wounds
• He got a clear way of looking at how the body holds trauma, especially after surgery
  • That trauma is tied to the way we hold ourselves, the way we walk and talk and in so many ways
  • This ceremony helped Kyle view somatic body work in such a new light
• The ceremony was not scary, he allowed his body to process the fear, but not attach to the fear and become fearful
• Yoga can also bring that out, stillness and vulnerability can bring up some body trauma and put you into that fight or flight response
• Even when you think you're done processing something, there are always more layers to dig into and see something differently to bring more clarity

Preparation

• Hallie said what she is learning with this medicine, is that she doesn't need to make anything happen, she needs to just let it happen
  • That feeling of relaxing things is scary because it means giving up control
  • It's a practice and its a lot easier said than done
• The most important part is the set (mindset), because the set is you
  • “Having your set figured out, when the going gets tough, you're safe still” - Hallie
• Kyle said that Aya always told him to wait, he didn't need to jump into trying it right away, he waited over 10 years to process his NDE trauma
  • Hallie says it's just like marriage, you can get married easily, but it's not always going to work out if you don't have the tools and the skill sets to maintain it
  • Ayahuasca is similar in needing the right tools and time to do it right
• The dieta and the prep itself is so hard
• People are turned off by the idea of doing something disciplined
  • These experiences can be so much different when we go through the process of giving something up
  • It's not to punish ourselves, it's to heal ourselves
  • “There is a whole other side of us, that opens up when we cut out some of the things that numb us” - Hallie
  • The dieta strips away the illusions, the plant medicines help us remember who we are

Hopi Creation Story

• The great creator said “I have a gift for the human beings, but I need to hide it somewhere until they are ready to find it”
  • It is “the gift of the knowing that they can create anything, they can create their own reality”
• The creator asked the earth where he should hide it
  • The eagle said he will bring it to the moon
  • The fish said he will bring it to the bottom of the sea
  • The buffalo said he will bring it to the edge of the plains
  • The creator said no to all of them, they will find it there
• So the great grandmother who lives in the breast of the earth said, put it inside of them
  • And the creator said “it is done”
• It brought Kyle back to his fourth ceremony, the Ayahuasca was a reminder that everything he needed was already inside of him

Privilege

• It's hard to tell people of their only legal options for healing, which most of them are leaving the country, which is not an option for some people
  • We are all worthy of finding relief of our suffering through psychedelics
• Is therapy only going to be for the rich and elite? There are so many people who really need it
• Yes, you can grow mushrooms, but then you're at risk of the law
• The system is so complex and we need a more humane way of moving forward in this field and offer experiences like this to the people that need it
• Therapy is a privilege
  • Most people that need therapy are in survival mode that don't have the privilege of access to therapy
• Peer support movements are a way forward in this issue
  • If the people that really need the help can't even afford it, then how do we have mass healing?
  • There are great healers out there that never became healers because they didn't have the privilege to
• Kyle says he escaped a lot of suicidal ideation after his near death experience, it took a lot of time to call earth his home
• “Just to wake up and be a part of this, even that is magical in itself” - Kyle
• “The stars come out every night, and we watch television” - Hallie

Authentic Self

• Hallie has recently had her 12th Ayahuasca experience
  • “I am no longer breathing, I am being breathed” - Hallie
• “Hatred does not exist, it is only a resistance to love” - Hallie
• Even being hard on ourselves is only a resistance to loving ourselves
  • Its love with nowhere to go
• People that have a lot of self hatred toward their bodies or themselves, the medicine always comes back to the self, it teaches people to love and take care of themselves
  • “You really can't love anything outside of yourself until you love yourself” - Hallie
  • Kyle says that the people who he looks up to (ex, Stan Grof), what if they never showed up for themselfves? What if they never stood up for what they believe in?

Links

$200 off coupon code for Soltara: THOUGHTROOM

Soltara Healing Center

Hallie's Instagram

Thought Room Podcast 

About Hallie

This disclaimer was originally posted in our episode, Treating Social Anxiety in Adults with Autism with MDMA and LSD – Voices in the Dark, and it feels important to post it on this episode as well. 

Caution/Disclaimer

A few important notes. This is an episode of an individual experimenting with powerful drugs to see if he can get any sort of relief from autism. In this case, it appears to have been successful. That said, this came with a substantial amount of risks, and people need to be aware. Please read the below bullets so you understand. 

• Autism is not what is treated. The thing being treated would be a symptom like social anxiety.
• "The field of autism science includes a long and shameful history of quack treatments and parents taking desperate and harmful measures to “fix” their children. Autism is a spectrum of congenital and neurocognitive variants, and there are no published research data in support of any compound that can influence its course." Alicia Danforth, PhD
• Please do not administer these drugs to children with autism. It would be highly unethical to do so. 
• There are only two researchers investigating where MDMA and autism meet - Alicia Danforth PhD and Dr. Charlie Grob. A scientific paper will likely be available on this in the next few months. Expect to see more here. 
• These drugs have not been shown to cure or treat autism, but in some cases, just like with neuro-typical individuals, some have seen meaningful changes. 
• Even if changes are noticed the person is still autistic no matter how many high doses of psychedelics they take.
• Obtaining pure drugs is very difficult if not impossible in black markets.
  • Verifying purity will require the resources of mass spectrometry from organizations offering these services like Energy Control or Ecstasy Data
  • Providing unsafe, dirty or compromised drugs to people can cause serious harm or death.
• If you are planning to use MDMA to alleviate some suffering on your own, please wait or don't.
• Do substantial research and have skilled people available to help. 

Thanks to Alicia Danforth for helping us understand the nuance's in this area.

..autism is a genetically determined cognitive variant. It's pervasive, and it affects the whole person, not just the brain. No chemical compound has been shown to treat, cure, or alter the course of autism. However, for some people, substances like MDMA can help them manage symptoms such as anxiety, social anxiety, and trauma effects. - Alicia Danforth, Ph.D

In this episode, Joe sits down with Aaron Orsini, Author of Autism on Acid. In this powerful episode, Aaron shares his moving story on how LSD gave him life-saving relief from his struggles with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

3 Key Points:

1. Aaron spent the first 20+ years of his life suffering from the struggles of Autism Spectrum Disorder. He changed his life in an unexpected way through the use of LSD.
2. LSD gave Aaron the emotional installation of perception to see the stimuli in life that he had been blind from because of his disorder.
3. Aaron is the author of the book, Autism on Acid, a self told story on his autistic perceptions before, during and after his LSD experience. He goes into great depth on his experience in the show.

Support the show

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Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes

About Aaron

• A large part of his psychedelic journey stems from his Autism
• His diagnosis didn't affect him in school so much as it affected him in his adult years with socialization
• His childhood friends were more based on similar shared activities
• When he was thrusted into more social situations, he had more issues with non-repetitive and non-scheduled socialization
  • He was anxious in the idea that he would go into avoidance, he wasn't very afraid, just more confused
  • Most of his knowledge was based on repetition and memorization, it was harder to navigate new or unique social scenarios
  • Social vertigo is how he described his experience
• His doctor told him to read some books, and he felt like he was reading a journal on his own life
  • Daniel Tammet - Born on a Blue Day Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

A Transition Point

• Aaron left his job
  • A relationship he was in ended
  • A friend of his was killed by a drunk driver
• He was in a dark place, and he wanted to retreat
  • He didn't know what he needed, he just wanted to leave
• He got a backpack and a bike and headed west toward California
• He had an opportunity to try LSD
  • He thought it was going to be an escape, and it ended up being the most involved experience of his life
  • He sat on a tree stump in a wooded area, finally noticing everything that had been there his whole life that he hadn't seen before
  • He saw the beauty in literally being alive
  • He sat there and cried for an hour or two, it was a lot
• Aaron eventually got up, and started walking and saw some people walking and he had an urge to say hello, so he did, and they said “hello, how are you” back
  • He describes it as a sensation of a child riding a bike for the first time
  • Them saying “hello, how are you” to him, was the first time he experienced someone saying hello to him and him feeling it
  • It was like a def person getting a cochlear implant and hearing for the first time
  • It kick started his exploration of the world around him

Integration

• His LSD experience was about 6 years ago, and he didn't know much about LSD at the time
  • He didn't know what to do with his experience
• In the beginning, he felt as if he would go into it, see everything very clearly, and then back out of it again, and things felt more muted and ‘blurry’
  • “I was utilizing LSD, not for a sub-perceptive, metabolic effect, I was going for a supra-perceptive effect” - Aaron
• Aaron was taking at or slightly above the threshold dose amount (20-50micrograms)
  • For someone who already had sensitivity issues, it was very apparent when he would take ‘too much’
• In no way is he advocating someone to repeat what he has done, he wants it more to spark interest in researchers to find more data on this in the hopes to find relief for others

Emotional Installation

• “LSD has helped me understand myself and embrace that” - Aaron
• Aaron said he's willing to take a risk to not be anonymous, because it's not some simple thing, it's so important, it's the most important thing to him
• He gets emails all the time saying the same thing has happened to them, but they want to stay anonymous
• Aaron says it has changed his relationships with his loved ones, the fact that he has this new depth of feeling has changed his relationships dramatically
• The main treatments for kids with autism was to help the caretaker, to help the child not fidget when they sleep
  • Aaron says he needed to fidget, he needed to squirm around
  • “If you can't hear, and someone is telling you over and over again ‘listen, listen, listen’, how are you going to begin to listen? That’s the void that LSD filled.” - Aaron
• He fell in love with parts of himself that he didn't get a chance to before
• Every other form of therapy was coming from the outside and telling him what to feel, LSD was the only therapy that came from the inside
• He mentions a quote from a documentary on someone who used truffles to help them, “Truffles installed emotionality in me”

Hope for Research

• There were studies done with LSD on autistic children in hospital settings before the drug prohibition
  • The results showed the kids changing so fast and so effectively
• It's a difficult topic, ASD research in general is heavily funded by the government
• Autism aside, the older you are in life, the more surprised you are when that veil is lifted for a moment
• The risk that he is taking is nothing compared to the significance of what good this has a chance of bringing
• It's not a desired risk to come out as an Autistic person, and especially as one who has taken controlled substances to heal from it

Links

Autism on Acid: How LSD Helped Me Bridge The ASD-Neurotypical Divide  

Website 

Email: autismonacid@gmail.com

About Aaron Orsini

Aaron Paul Orsini is a writer, public speaker, and survivor of a decades-long battle with clinical depression resulting from social isolation, mental rumination, and hypo-sensitivity issues common in autistic individuals. When Aaron was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of 23, he took comfort in receiving a diagnosis but remained deeply depressed as a result of seeing himself as broken and blind; someone who just couldn’t and wouldn’t “get it”. But then came his first experience with LSD, during which he became intuitively aware of the very stimuli he’d been incapable of perceiving throughout his life. Thanks to LSD---and a yet-to-be-fully-understood combination of chemically-induced synesthesia and associated fluctuations in intrinsic functional connectivity within the salience and default mode networks, Aaron can now perceive critical social cues embedded in facial expressions, speaking tones, and body language, which in turn means he feels fully connected to the human experience, and fully capable of navigating the social and emotional landscapes of life.

In this episode, Kyle and Joe interview previous guest of the show, Daniel Greig. In the show, he goes in depth into the meaning of enlightenment and previews the new book he is writing with Dr. John Vervaeke, The Cognitive Continuum.

3 Key Points:

1. Insight, flow and mystical experiences are all facets of working toward enlightenment.
2. Enlightenment is really a fundamental grip on reality. It's about maintaining a relationship with the transcendent, it's not about just constantly escaping this body life.
3. The mystical experience is a glimpse at consciousness. The most important part of having a mystical (psychedelic) experience is coming back into our bodies and developing better relationships with ourselves, others and the world.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes

The Cognitive Continuum

• There will be a crowdfunding campaign launched for the book
• The book will be a combination of art and science
• He is writing it with Dr. John Vervaeke
  • Youtube - Awakening for the Meaning Crisis
• The core of cognitive continuum is insight
• There is also the flow state
• There are also mystical states
• Insight, flow and mystical experiences all have something to do with enlightenment
  • If we can train people on how to access this cognitive continuum, they can become enlightened

Enlightenment

• It is important to see the truth
  • “How can we take our natural ability to attach to things, and learn to step back and care about the greater good?” - Daniel
• Cognitive flexibility is important to understand the needs of the greater collective
  • "Enlightenment means to apprehend truth and act in relation to truth” - Daniel
• Mind does not equal brain

Gut Feeling

• EGG - electro gastro grams
• There is a singular resting state network between the brain and the stomach
  • You're never really able to access this network, but when we have ‘gut feelings’ it's typically coming from neurons in your stomach
• Being grounded in those sensations of the stomach is a huge part of problem solving and guidance in truths
• We need to get back to ‘feeling’ something as actually meaning something

Mystical Experience

• Enlightenment is really a fundamental grip on reality
• It's about maintaining a relationship with the transcendent, it's not about just constantly escaping this body life
• Daniel uses a lot of Roberto Unger’s theories in his new book
• There is the absolute reality and illusory reality
• The mystical experience is a glimpse at consciousness
  • The most important part of having a mystical experience is the coming back into our bodies, having better relationships with ourselves and others
• Psychedelics don't do anything by just sitting there, they take a perceiver to matter and make a difference
  • It's the person, the body, that really holds the power to embodiment

Psychedelics and Enlightenment

• People say that psychedelics are a shortcut to enlightenment
  • Daniel says that psychedelics can help take people out of depression style states
  • A mystical experience can help you, but you're going to hit a plateau if you don't integrate and interpret these experiences
• For those practicing a lot of psychedelic work, they should balance with body work like yoga
  • There needs to be a balance in all practices in order to keep escalating toward enlightenment

Links

Website 

About Daniel Greig

Daniel is an educator, organizer and artist living in Toronto. He studied Cognitive Science and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, specializing in wisdom, consciousness, and spiritual belief and experience. In 2015, he founded the Mapping the Mind conference that occurs annually in Toronto, which raises much needed funds for psychedelic research. Daniel regularly host lectures and workshops, on topics in cognitive science. He is currently writing a book with Dr. John Vervaeke on the science of enlightenment, which will be published in 2020. When not contemplating the realm of the intellect, Daniel delves in the sonic perturbations of music, writing and producing progressive metal.

In this episode, Kyle and Joe interview Chris Bache, author of LSD and the Mind of the Universe. Chris went through 73 high dose LSD sessions and talks about his experience in the show.

3 Key Points:

1. Chris went through 73 high dose LSD sessions, but he says that pushing the edge of high dose and high frequency use brought on increasingly intense difficulties. He does not recommend high dose sessions like he did.
2. The mind of the universe is where someone goes when one completely dissolves.
3. In the show, they discuss psychedelic therapy and the debate on whether or not therapists should have to have psychedelic experience to do the therapy. Chris believes that the level of experience a therapist has had will impact the type of support they will be able to give.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes

Psychedelic Interest

• It was at the time Chris had just finished grad school and was looking where to take his research as a university professor
• He was introduced to the work of Stan Grof, and his book Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research (Condor Books)
• He was the professor of Religious Studies, sticking to his traditional life
• He knew there would come a time for him to share his experiences with a larger audience
• Chris says he's always been locked into his body and his physical experience
  • He had no background in psychedelic states of consciousness

Protocol

• He said you're always working with a sitter and same context/setting
• As the dosage increased, he began creating a more intense music playlist
  • Chris thinks music is very important for psychedelic sessions
• Chris does not recommend working with high doses
• “When you're working with opening consciousness that radically, music has a tremendous effect, it has an amplifying effect by 5 or 10x than doing it without music” - Chris
• Chris said he has experienced all the common layers of the psychedelic unconscious that's talked about

Consciousness Levels

• Chris experienced 4 different death/rebirths
• Chris differentiated 5 levels of the universe
  • The first is at the personal mind, where an ego death happens
  • The second takes places at the collective mind, about species
  • The third level is an archetypal mind, the high subtle mind, moving beyond the species existence
  • The fourth level is causal mind, causal oneness, profound states of non-dual reality
  • The last is Diamond Luminosity, its absolute clarity, pureness

Psychedelic Therapy

• Chris says that there is a certain level of support that one needs to truly let go of themselves and let go to the experience
• He says that he thinks the level of experience will impact the type of support a therapist will be able to give

Subtle Level

• The mind of the universe is where someone goes when one completely dissolves
• Pushing the edge of high dose, high frequency use brought on increasingly intense difficulties
• Chris says he was very secret about his psychedelic use, his students didn't know about it
  • But he said after he had gone deep and touched these different levels of consciousness, his students became alive
  • The deeper he went in his own work, the more it touched the students at a deeper level

Potency

• Chris thinks that LSD is a little cleaner than other psychedelics
  • His basic sense is that psilocybin tends to be less evocative, disruptive
  • Ayahuasca is more disruptive in opening up to deeper levels
  • LSD is the most disruptive in opening people up to really deep levels of consciousness
  • With LSD is was less about his personal experience, and more about the collective unconscious experience

Realizations

• With one of his experiences, he had seen everything in his whole life all at once
• He then entered into archetypal experiences, the platonic domain beyond the time-space reality
• The beings he ‘met’ were as large as universes, responsible for creating time and space
• He went into ‘deep time’, different magnitudes of time experiences in a broader frame of reference (where we are in the history of time, what our future looks like)
• He reached that diamond luminosity level only 4 times out of all of his LSD sessions
• “If we keep this up, sooner or later, the totality of this consciousness is going to wake up” - Chris
• “We are moving toward a collective wake up, it's not a personal experience, it's a collective experience. An evolution of our species.” -Chris
• If Chris has one tip, is to let go of our fear of death, when we die, we go back home
• After so many sessions, and not taking the time to stop to integrate, after years, his body was screaming for community, and he felt this deep existential sadness and felt as if he was just waiting to die
  • It took 10 years to integrate his deep exploration, and to finally feel okay and comfortable again in his body suit and in this life
• The universe is an infinite ocean of possibilities, we will never reach the end
• “The collective psyche is being cosmically stimulated by the trauma that we are entering into” -Chris

Links

Articles 

LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven

Chrisbache.com - future website

About Chris

Christopher M. Bache is professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University where he taught for 33 years. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. An award-winning teacher, Chris’ work explores the philosophical implications of non-ordinary states of consciousness, especially psychedelic states. Chris has written three books translated into six languages: Lifecycles - a study of reincarnation in light of contemporary consciousness research; Dark Night, Early Dawn - a pioneering work in psychedelic philosophy and collective consciousness; and The Living Classroom, an exploration of teaching and collective fields of consciousness. His new book is Diamonds from Heaven ~ LSD and the Mind of the Universe (2019).