Thought I might start a thread on the power of psychedelics for treating certain mental health (and spiritual health) issues in our modern world.
I saw this talk a few months ago, and found it truly fascinating. Hope others here also find this interesting.
Not at all sure how many here are at all interested in this topic, and it is pretty off-topic (kind of) for this board, so forgive me if I"m the only one!
Anyway. In case there is someone else, I found this whole interview really interesting. Joe Rogan (for it is he) is joined by Brian Muraresku & Graham Hancock, and together they take a very deep dive into the history of the ancient mystery schools and their ritual shamanism.
Along the way they talk about the evidence of ancient ritual psychedelic use, the birth of the sacrament in the early Christian church, the true age of the sphinx, and a veritable encyclopaedia of related topics. Wide ranging and fascinating.
Hope you enjoy
I like Bill Hickās take on it. I was in my early twenties when I first did acid, via a microdot. I had no idea what to expect and, after weād come up, one of the three people I did it with [Matt E] decided to drink a bottle of whiskey and subsequently go temporarily mad. Me and and the other guy [Matt C] made the decision to get the hell out of there but because we were so mashed, couldnāt decide whether we had made the right decision (we were all friends btw and the guy who lost it was meant to be the experienced one) and having walked around the block, went back to Matt Eās house where weād originally dropped. If anything he was worse, had wet himself and was raving on about crazy shit and trying to fuck with our heads. I remember his eyes were so dilated they were entirely black and that he seemed like a kind of devil to me. Me and Matt C were still not sure what to do but eventually I left and walked home, leaving Matt C (to my eternal regret) to his fate. Having got home I had to try and navigate the normal interactions with my Mum; I remember having a bath, probably because it was a ānormalā thing to do and then watching MTV and being captivated by the slow motion waves in the video for āReturn to innocenceā by Enigma. Later, when I was coming down, I was smoking and listening to music in the shed in our back garden when Matt C turned up, bloodied, with a black eye. It turned out Matt E had spent the peak fucking with his head, an experience from which he never truly recovered and had made so much noise that, eventually, one of the other lodgers in the house where he was staying had burst in and beaten them both up.
Now this sounds like a nightmare but for me it was a transcendental experience. I didnāt realise beforehand that the cognitive system we take for granted was something malleable, that reality is something perceived through what amounts to hardware, i.e. the visual cortex interacting with the larger brain. This is a humbling experience because you realise that everything you think, everything you perceive, everything you thought was real is/are in fact entirely subjective. Thatās not to say that if you walk in front of a bus you wonāt be killed, rather that the societal certainties we are encouraged to accept as concrete are simply constructs of our collective imagination. Now, obviously I didnāt think this at the time but that insight has shaped my life and the way I think about things. Iād even go so far as to say that experience is why I am typing these words on this website, right now.
āThatās why I always recommend a psychedelic experience because it makes you realize that all youāve learned is in fact just learned and not necessarily the truth.ā
Bill Hicks
āThis is a humbling experience because you realise that everything you think, everything you perceive, everything you thought was real is/are in fact entirely subjective.ā
Though subject to the pre-evolved physical rule-set that this particular reality runs by; hence the critical importance of that busā¦ 
Your perception of that basic fact is crucial, spike. Something we all need to get at some time in our lives. It does indeed alter fundamentally the way you see the world, and life. Psychedelics make the realisation come quicker than thirty years of dedicated meditation practice!
If you havenāt looked into Tom Campbellās Big TOE yet, I recommend a disciplined, in-depth study. He gives the most comprehensive - to my judgement - description to date of how basic reality works; it all being rendered by Big Mind (in Tomās carefully-scientific vocabulary: the 'Larger Consciousness System) to each āIndividuated Unit of Consciousnessā - or soul, in the older vocabulary. Each of us gets our personalised information feed, nicely harmonised with each of our individual viewpoints and belief-systems, from which each of us constructs our individual interpretation of the - actually virtual!! - physical reality around us.
And when a tree falls in the forest? The answer is that nobody hears anything, because - unless thereās at least one unit of consciousness there to observe it - āthere is no tree, there is no forest, nothing fallsā, because the LCS has no need to render any of these virtual āthingsā in the first place, there being no-one, no Individuated Unit of Consciousness, demanding an information feed from the reality-rendering engine in that particular neck of the holodeck.
This is the basis of all shamanism, all ceremonial magic of whichever kind. And itās the basis of your own confidence that - within the evolved limitations of the rule-set that governs this particular reality - you can acquire considerable, rather strikingly magical management of your own life, your own fate.
Always, always, always under the strict discipline of no-egotism, of course. White magic at all times; helping everything that you can reach, that needs help and would accept it from you, but always without any smidgeon of truly selfish self-servingā¦
Here endeth the lesson.
PS: Remember that a squirrel, or even a bumble-bee or whatever, has consciousness to some degree; and to that degree, their expected reality will be rendered to them. So most times there will be something conscious demanding a forest panorama to be presented, and within that proviso, there may well be a tree, and falling at that and making a noise as it does, because thereās a soul around to receive the information feed to its physical senses, and that soul has been indoctrinated by life experiences to expect such things; what you expect with limpid certainty being - mainly - what you get; though - er - not invariably; āparaā normal incidents are permanently possible, everywhere, and at all timesā¦
What an experience, @spike! Sounds pretty intense alright. Your realisation that perception is not the same as reality is fundamental and earth shaking.
Have you ever come across the work of Donald Hoffman? In particular his āuser interfaceā view of reality. I think it would really chime with your own thinking. Heās a neuroscientist who worked initially on the human visual cortex. He did some research and a fair few computer models that seem to show very clearly that (1) not only is there no evolutionary advantage for a species to see reality as it really is, but in fact (2) every species in his simulations that did see reality as it was ultimately went extinct.
Thereās a very good chance that reality is not at all what we think it is. There are a ton of videos on YouTube where he talks about his theories, here an older one, but there are loads more of you get interested.
Keep journeying. Itās a much bigger reality than any of us give it credit for.
Cheers
Right P! Donald Hoffman is one to hear extensively. There are a lot of his interviews with various reporters, on YT, and listening to a batch of them gives you an excellent idea of what heās proposing - very convincingly to my mind. Heās an excellently-lucid explicator.
Thereās a wave of this philosophical-idealism ground-breaking work going on at the leading edge of science generally right now; to the great chagrin of the Dawkinsoid rabid philosophical-materialists, bad-temperedly defending their previously-unquestionable mechanical-reductivist worldview: little particles and energy-packets and nothing else, except, perhaps āfieldsā (gravitational, electro-magnetic), all with no purpose, no goals, no meaning, and with mind as nothing more than a - rather embarrassing - glitch in it all, lamely explained-away as āan epiphenomenon of brain functionā (hah! tell that to the OOB-experiencing Near-Death-Experience survivors, vividly aware of their conscious perceptions even whilst their vital physical signs, particularly brain function, are all flat-lining!). But however loudly they scream, itās clear that the way to greater understanding of our reality is swinging back towards idealism now - because it must: Mind is paramount. Mind rools, OK!
Mind is paramount! Agreed.
The big word these days in consciousness studies seems to be panpsychism - the idea that everything from atoms up through molecules, cells and bigger entities had some degree of consciousness. Saw a recent video of Rupert Sheldrake asking the question āis our sun conscious?ā. A very interesting question as it turns out.
Panpsychism seems to be creeping into the mainstream from the fringesā¦ If only they had read some of the 3-4000 year old Vedas. Feel like we missed a shortcut there 
Donald Hoffman, is part of a new wave of scientists who are willing to go public with their heterodox views. Tom Campbell, of course, is another. It was interesting to observe, in the video I linked to above, the description of some very well respected historian who basically lost his entire academic career after publishing a book in 1978 on the ancient uses of psychedelics in their shamanic rituals. To some degree, the same thing happened to Graham Hancock - public humiliation and instant dismissal of his body of workā¦
Gatekeepers, it seems, are everywhereā¦
Itās the threat to their basic ego-structure, P, that makes people gate-keep. Giving up the entire theoretical explanation grid on which youāve modelled your personal identity since toddlerdom is too painful to tolerate; produces instant belligerent denialism (Dawkins style!).
Panpsychism seems to me to be a sort of methadone for the āmindless-materialismā addiction: itās not really a clean, complete escape from the addiction to philosophical materialism, because it clings on to the - alleged - āparticlesā, but simply endows them with some degree of basic consciousness, which is then seen as able to add together to form larger awarenesses. This despite the unavoidable obstacle of quantum mechanics - āmechanicsā FFS! Hah! - which insists (by constantly re-confirmed experimental demonstrations) that āparticlesā are ghost-like entities that only exist in degrees of probability - until some mind demands a verification of one of them, what time an interpretable facsimile is rendered by Big Mind to the particular Individuated Units of Consciousness who are demanding the answer.
A complete switch to idealism - for a while, until a necessary re-balancing is struck - is the fruitful way forward. Weāve just done three centuries or so of materialism, and itās ushered us into the modern, hitech industrial world with all its - wonders? Horrors? So, having hopped along on one foot for the past several centuries, weāre now beginning to realise that bi-pedalism might be a touch more useful: rest the right for a while; switch to the left for a needed period of re-balancing; then, in due time, start walking like a duck - on both bleedinā feet at once! Soddinā obvious really, init? 
Hahaha! Brilliant
Yes, some kind of pure idealism might be where we ultimately end up. I have found it deliciously ironic that when the hardest of the āhard sciencesā took a long hard deep look at the smallest units they could, the alleged units proved to barely exist at all, disappearing before their very eyes, and stubbornly refusing to make sense. And that Loki, in all his mischief, seems baked in. No way round him.
If that doesnāt suggest that the ultimate intelligence has quite a weird sense if humour I donāt know what does!
PS: Just heard that wonderful conversation between Joe Rogan, Graham Hanckock and Brian M. It must be one of the most valuable videos Iāve seen for a long time. Many thanks P! I can feel myself getting more and more decided to find a source - or maybe a produce-your-own route - for DMT. This is something I think I need to do. 
Really glad you liked it Rhis. I thought it was really interesting.
Iāve never tried any DMT myself, but do know a few people who did. Thereās something very powerful there for sure!
Cheers
A bit late to the party here Iām afraid. Only just popped in again after a few days. Hadnāt spotted youād started this thread. Certainly very interested in this subject. Iāll download the above talk as an mp3 and listen to it while Iām at work.
Cheers.
I think you can get Joe Rogan stuff on Spotify if thatās helpful.
Hope you like it!
Finally got round to listening to (need to watch it next time) the whole programme today. Extremely interesting and inspiring. Plenty of nuggets in there. Will be putting The Immortality Key on my Christmas wish list!
Many thanks for suggesting the video.
Nice summary of research work into psychedelics last month. Good to see the field really gathering steam againā¦
And one further study inexplicably left off the list
Interestingly, P, Iāve noticed that something similar happens to my awareness generally, especially to the acuteness of my physical senses, when the psychedelic effects of my daily doses of canna-oil come on - usually a couple of hours after ingestion, to get the full-on effect. Itās a subtle, but pretty reliable effect.
And hey, whaddya know! We have a whole eighth of an inch of snow here this morning! I was wondering if Iād ever see a Winter wonderland again. And yet - behold! Something to cherish later this AM, as my morning dose makes itself known, whilst Iām walking in the woods with K and her dogsā¦ Thank you, Big Mind!
Another step towards the mainstream - an article in Nature no less.
All thatās left is for big pharma to work out how to rip people off with this. Iāve heard talk that a single pill of legal psilocybin could cost something like 10,000 USD.
That sounds fair. After all so much money was spent in R&D creating this mind altering substance in the labā¦ Right?