I have taken part in ceremonies with North American and Mexican shamans, as well as Brazilian ceremonies.
There are people who can start having very powerful experiences without taking psychedelics. It can happen against their will. This is a universal phenomenon.
A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm.
Freud said that we are born as a tabula rasa. This is a model that simply is too superficial and inadequate.
Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior.
I spent much of my later childhood and adolescence very, very involved and interested in art, and particularly in animated movies.
A number of cases have been reported in which a dying individual has a vision of a person about whose death he or she did not know.
The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death.
I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in.
As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions.
