Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I have got a stellar show for you guys today. I think you're going to love this. I am going to... I'm hitting a few more buttons here, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much. So... In the heart of the sacred valley of Peru, where the ancient meets the cutting edge, a new frontier of understanding is emerging. Luke Jensen stands at the intersection of neuroscience, anthropology, and the mystical realm of plant medicines. As a neurofeedback practitioner and researcher, Luke has embarked on a groundbreaking journey to map the human brain during one of the most profound spiritual experiences. For the first time in history, Luke's work captures the brain's enigmatic dance through EEG and QEEG imaging before, during, and after encounters with this sacred plant medicine. His research not only pushes the boundaries of neuroscience, but also ventures into the depths of human consciousness, trauma, and the soul itself. Luke's work reveals a fascinating paradox. Dr. Richard Sauter and an unwavering curiosity about the mysteries of the mind, Luke is helping to uncover how plant medicines transform the brain and perhaps even the essence of what it means to be human. Today, we dive into the questions of his work raises. How does trauma store itself in the brain? What happens when plant medicines begin to heal these wounds? And what can this research teach us about consciousness itself? It's a privilege to welcome Luke Jensen, a pioneer at the edge of science and spirit to the show. Luke, thanks so much for being here today. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. That was a great introduction. I appreciate it. Well, I appreciate what you're doing down there, man. And I can't wait for the people today to learn more. And it seems like this might be the year of Luke Jensen, man. You're exploding down there. You got all kinds of cool stuff going on. Why don't you just give us a little snippet of maybe a little bit of background and what's going on today in your world? Yeah. So, ten years ago, I visited Peru for the first time after Deploying Afghanistan, I was in the Marines. I found a lot of healing through plant medicines, ayahuasca. It really opened me up to another world. And then soon after that, a friend brain mapped me, the QEG brain map. I learned about neuroscience. That's called another realm. And, you know, for me, it was such an empowering thing. She does this brain map. Oh, you have a pattern for PTSD and you can train that away. So for me, this is really cool. It wasn't like talk therapy, which, you know, I was a tough Marine. I didn't really want to do that. It wasn't prescription medication, which I was, you know, into natural health back then. So I wasn't into that route. But, oh, you just train this brainwave. And then I started researching this technology and I realized there's tons of spiritual implications because, you know, our body, our brain, our nervous system is a seat of consciousness. So you learn how to control that. You can control meditative states, deep states, spiritual states. So it was my idea to combine these two modalities together. I showed up to a conference. I met my mentor there, named Dr. Richard Suter. And he goes, I've been waiting to meet someone like you. I'll train you. So that was about five years ago now. I've been working with him very closely for five years. And part of what I do is research. I study plant medicines with QEG brain mapping. in an unique way, I would say. I've published two studies in this last year. Since last December, I published two studies, one on ayahuasca, pre and post brain maps, which I think is the only study to ever do this, to track changes over time. Other studies will take a brain map during the experience, but no one's tracking change, which I think is very interesting. And then I also published a study in Huachuma, which is the first study to ever brain image Huachuma. So no one's actually ever done that before, at least published it. So that means MRI, spec scans, QEGs, EEGs, no one's actually ever measured it in that way. So that was also really cool. So all those things happened within the last year. We started running on retreats, which we combined. Well, this was kind of inspiration that I wanted to do a long time. And, you know, things come together. I don't know if I was ready for it yet. But a friend came and goes, hey, welcome to Peru. I want to retreat. Like, okay, we'll make it happen. And our retreats do pre and post brain mapping. So everyone that comes through, they can see the change in their brain. After three ayahuasca ceremonies and a huachuma ceremony, it's a very validating experience because you can show them, like, anxiety is lifting, depression is lifting. And, you know, like, oh, okay, this wasn't just in my head. There's like new neural pathways happening and it really validates the experience and shows them something happened. So it's been a really interesting time. And now, yeah, we have a documentary coming out soon. We just finished it and we did a couple of local showings with it. We don't have an exact date yet, but it's all been a really wild ride this last year, I would say. Man, I wish I had the map of your brain before all this started happening and then the map afterwards. I bet you it's off the charts, man. Well, you know, when you start getting into brain mapping and getting into the science, I wish I had brain maps all throughout my life, you know, before the Marine Corps, after the Marine Corps. You know, what was my childhood brain like, you know? Yeah. But yeah, so since I started doing this, I've probably done like fifteen brain maps, you know. And the beautiful thing about what I do is I do the brain mapping, but also do the neurofeedback. So I train states. So I train the brain. There's really no upper limit on that. And there's really no limit of learning. So I'm constantly trying different methodologies. I have my core neurofeedback methods I use on myself and the people that are close to me that I'm working with all the time. But there's really no upper limit to the brain. you can train it forever. And just like a meditator can get new depths of meditation, thirty years later, the brain's a similar thing. There's no limit. And when you're training the brain, those neural pathways are strengthening. Everything's getting stronger. You're more resilient. And yeah, it's been a very powerful process for me and the people I work with. What does that look like when you're training the brain? Are you watching the you see the like what does that look like do you see the the when you see the neural feedback is that a set of lines that come in waves and if so when you look at those waves you just try to reimagine the state that you were in to continue to have that particular pattern or how do you train it that's a really good question so how we train the brain so it looks differently from the person that's training the brain I'm interfacing I'm an inner fact or interfacing with their brain through my computer, right? So I can, on my computer, I see their brainwaves live, but the person that's training it on their brain, it's either eyes closed or eyes open and there's a reward system. It's opera conditioning. So if the eyes open, the screen will get lighter or darker depending on the right brainwave or not. So say someone has ADD, the classic patterns, a high theta pattern, they can't focus. So, and then we want like a low beta pattern, relaxed focus. We want to train that up. So when they get the right brain wave, the screen gets lighter and rewards them. When they're in the wrong state, it gets darker. So rewarding a healthy pattern. And in this case, it's a really good analogy that it's a mirror in front of the brain. The first time the mirror's seen a reflection of itself. So the brain wants to become more healthy. So the brain is doing millions of calculations a second that you can't do consciously, but it's doing it itself. You just show it the path and it wants to be more healthy. So that's the eyes open training. Eyes closed training, you'll hear a tone. So this, we do eyes closed for more relaxing states, meditative states, deep states, negotic states, and it rewards you the tone. And then you'll slowly go into these deeper states as you hear the tone more. So say a meditator, it takes a meditator maybe years to learn meditation. um because they have to figure out that brainwave for themselves but with this technology we can reward that exact brainwave the brain was like oh okay this is where I need to go so um in that situation the reward of the tone and on my end I can see their brain waves so I can see them moving in a healthy state or I can see their brain regulating so it's very interesting it's the only modality I know of where I can see actually trauma lifting from the body because I can see the brain become more healthy And that's the beautiful thing about plant medicines. I love plant medicines, but it's sometimes hard to tell, like, well, how far have I progressed? What has it done for me? And that's why I integrate the two, because I can directly see what's happening in the brain. Yeah, and I think it sort of is beginning to bridge that gap between quantifiable and unquantifiable, because it seems like that's one of the things that's missing from clinical trials is this ability to really understand well where's the results can you show us the results you know well I can show you that my husband's less of an asshole I can show you these tears of joy for someone that doesn't have this addiction anymore people want like yeah I got it but I want to see the actual results man you know and it sounds like that's kind of what some of the things you're doing might be able to prove well yeah I agree so if people use plant medicines they have that subjective experience and which is very very powerful they know that something amazing happened um but you know science uses opera observation and we're a culture of science we're a culture of the scientific method so how do you reach those people right and my objective is not to explain away consciousness itself um I think this deepens that like I never will explain away someone's visions you know I think some people worry about that when I first talk about science like no I'm That's not my objective. My objective is to understand deeper how the healing works. And what we do is with our studies, we'll have a questionnaire study that's really related to neurophysiology. And then we'll have the brain mapping. So we're the first studies of this kind I know of. We're tracking questionnaires and the brain maps at the same time, pre and post, so that both can validate each other. So for example, We had one person in our ayahuasca study that had really strong symptoms of self-report for ADD. That's the report on his questionnaire. And his brain pattern showed the classical high theta pattern for ADD, like dissociation, can't focus. After three ayahuasca ceremonies, that pattern was gone, and the self-report symptoms were gone. So I believe it was the first person to report on this for ADD, but this gives us insight into healing, right? So wait. what does that mean about add maybe if the trauma and response maybe that person's association not to feel trauma so we're getting new insights into trauma itself a mind works how psychology works and who we are as conscious beings so we're I think a lot of retreats they'll say we change a person one we change the world one person at a time but if we create the science The data, this is how you change a culture. This is how you change a civilization because you built these data sets and no one can argue with it. Like, hey, these are pre-post brain maps with a hundred people or a thousand people. And that's our goal to keep all those data sets up and have larger analysis. Yeah. It seems like one of those things, the more you have, the more concrete the evidence, like, especially when you start talking about patterns, right? Like if you, if you have a, you know, there's that, um, the logical fallacy of a small representation set but the bigger set you have the more difficult it is to argue against right yeah so our initial studies are small data sets and that's that's really good for exploratory research our goal isn't you know the double blind you know classical you know um gold standard as they say it but we're we're getting this data no one else has received you know and you know as we get you know, hopefully maybe get grants or something like that. We can start connecting more studies, but just doing what we do, doing retreats, you know, we're building that data set up. So eventually, you know, as we get to a higher percentage, like, you know, how many brain maps do people need to see? We're like, wait, there's something going on here for sure. Right. Yeah. And, um, that's, that's really my goal is to build that data set to say like, Hey, we have pre and post data maps for say like a hundred people or two hundred people or more, you know, as the years go on. And if we see these distinct trends, you know, what does that mean? Like something's going on. And I think many people in, you know, are still stuck in this mindset or that this is just some kind of like hippie stuff, or it's just some kind of hallucination that people are having. Well, even that's true. I don't think that's true, but even if that is true, it's obviously changing people's lives. Right. I think this should be interesting because some people come back and Maybe get married or maybe get divorced or maybe start a new hobby or maybe like start singing or music or painting. Like something's happening. And I think it's our job as human beings to be bold and try to figure that out. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it speaks to the world of integration as well, too. I get to speak to a lot of really cool people who have these really interesting techniques about helping people not only make changes in their life, but maintain those changes. And it seems to me with sort of the neural network, the biofeedback or the Brain mapping, like that's a pretty powerful tool for people to see that resonates with them. Like, oh, I can see the changes. I can feel the changes and I can see them. That sounds like something that could be a huge part of integration. No, I mean, yeah, that's one of the things I really focus on. I'm glad you brought it up because, you know, for me personally, everyone's different. For me, I have really bad PTSD. I came down to Peru for the first time. I had a really powerful experience like three months for three months after that was great. I was feeling awesome. And then old thought patterns came back and old things like that came back. Anxieties came back and the same thing would go back down again, do ayahuasca. And then like same thing would happen again. So for me, the neurofeedback was that daily practice that really got me where I wanted to go. The ayahuasca gave me insight and, and, neurofeedback competent perfectly because I couldn't do ayahuasca every day, but I could train these deep states and keep releasing trauma. So actually one of our main modalities is using integration with neurofeedback. So people go home and I can send them a home training unit. They can keep training and progressing and doesn't have to stop after doing the ayahuasca. You can keep progressing and have insights and training spiritual states. So I send people home. I can send people home with a device after they visit Peru, but also I can train anyone in the world who hasn't done plant medicines. Say, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not sure if I'm ready for Peru yet. And they can pair for ayahuasca, say, with neurofeedback or just do their own work, spiritual work without neurofeedback, you know, or without ayahuasca and just use the spiritual training to, the neurofeedback training to reach spiritual states. So I have some people I work with that have never been to Peru, and they just want an edge. Or some people might have head trauma, or some people might have anxiety, or some people have AVD. So we can train the brain. It could be so effective for so many different things. Yeah. I keep going back to this idea that you said a few moments ago about putting a mirror in front of the brain. I can't help but think of the psychedelic states, at least for me, allow me almost like a third-person point of view. It's so meta to start thinking about a mirror in front of your brain. You know what I mean? On some level, it blows my mind because it's a great way to change your awareness. It's a great way to think in almost another dimensionality. And that's where real changes can be made outside the ideas of shame, outside the ideas of guilt, outside the ideas of self. You can really get to look at yourself in a way that is nonjudgmental. And that's where real patterns can be observed and changed, it seems like to me. No, what you say is huge because when I started doing this, it really blew my mind because all of a sudden my brain is doing the work and I'm not. What does that mean? What's that imply? What's that imply for mind? What's that imply for consciousness? And just like what you're saying, the observer effect that maybe Eastern religions have been talking about for a while, then we're bringing this back through science, right? We're seeing it right here. So, yeah, I think it adds a depth to everything you're saying right there. Yeah, it blows my mind. We got a question coming in. It says, is the balance and healing observed in the brain under the influence of plant medicines evidence of a deeper universal intelligence within us? Well, yeah, I think it speaks to a lot of things. I think it speaks to intelligence within the plants. I mean, really, how is this happening? What's that imply? And I think it speaks to intelligence within us. and that intelligence that allows those two things to link. There's something going on. I think there's a lot of mysteries to be explored, but yeah, that's exactly what's being demonstrated by these things. Yes, the essence mirrors are a way to reflect in the moment. Yeah, I've never even heard that term, essence mirrors, before, but it's out there, I guess. Have you heard that term before, Luke? Essence or a scene. A scene, I'm sorry. A scene mirrors. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm not exactly sure, but wasn't it one of those scenes, like a spiritual movement in the desert? I don't know, so I'm not sure. I'm going to look it up here. We've got another question coming in. It says, does your research suggest that the brain itself holds a map to spiritual awakening, or is the process driven by something beyond the physical? Yeah, so the beautiful thing about mapping is that It does allow a path, right? Because say just standard neurofeedback, I can take a map of somebody where they're dysregulated, and I have an idea where I want to go, where they want to go to become healthy, right, to relieve anxiety, depression. And those things are spiritual. If someone's operating less out of anxiety, less out of trauma, more from their heart, right, more from their soul, that's spiritual itself. And then we can train these deep states. We know how to get to them. And as far as brain mapping goes, we can see meditation all the way up to Satori. We can't see past that. So there's probably something going on at a quantum level or these micro networks that we can't see, but we can see a lot of it. And it's very interesting, so. Yeah, it makes me wonder. Do you think we could tell a lot about culture about if we use neurofeedback? I would imagine that if you were to map someone's brain who lives in Southern California, was born and raised there, versus someone who lives in the Sacred Valley, I bet you they have a different set of brainwaves going on, right? And is that reflective of culture on some level? Yeah, I think so. My mentor talks about this because he's in the field for three or four decades now, or maybe more, you know, I think around that time, but He's he has seen patterns change over time patterns. So the pattern we're seeing a lot now is what we call perseverance or a busy mind that can't slow down. And I think this has a lot to do with technology. People always look at their iPhones and distractions. So we're seeing that in their brain patterns reflecting back. So I think at different points in time, different cultural constructs, we'll see different patterns for sure. Yeah, it's interesting to think about what that means for us. I think that once you get good at looking at that, once you get good at sort of understanding the data, then you can begin to see not only patterns like ADD, but just mental illness and mental wellness as well, right? Yeah, I mean, we... We have a natural homeostatic state that our bodies desire to be in. I think in ancient times it was much easier, but with modern diet and the stresses and all these things, it's created a situation where it's harder to achieve that. But this technology, it really opens it up for that healing and healing the natural process for human beings. We just have to allow ourselves to do it. Yeah. What, so you got a new documentary coming out in the next few months. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, man. That sounds amazing. Yeah, no. So, um, yeah, where life takes you. I did not think I'd have a documentary coming out. Um, I met a friend in jujitsu and, um, it turns out he was a documentary filmmaker and now the people you meet in Peru, sometimes he works, he used to work, he's from Spain, but he worked for the London real. He was in London. um, making big time productions. And then he's kind of fell in love with plants and plant medicines. I was living in Peru and I'm like, well, Hey, I'd love you to make a documentary for me. And at the time, like we're both poor, I don't really have any money cause we're living in Peru and just, you know, get by. And I, I mentioned to my mentor, Dr. Richard Suter and his company, he knew my technologies and, uh, he said he'd sponsor it, which was a huge, huge deal for me to be sponsored by, by someone. And, um, he, uh, So we sponsor it. So we did a retreat last March. I had a good friend that came down. He actually had seen for like ten, fifteen years before that. He's my unit. And, you know, before that, he he he wrote a book about a dog that he had that like changed his life. This dog had cancer. So he took this dog around the states for six months for the last months of its life and had this beautiful moments with his dog and had this huge social media following. Even went on Today Show and wrote a book. I'm like, well, hey, come down here. Let's have another adventure. So the documentary tracks his story of plant medicines and healing his trauma. His brother died in Iraq, actually. And then my story and then how the neurofeedback and plant medicines come together. So there's a really beautiful story arc and there's a really powerful way to explain how plant medicines and brain map and neurofeedback can be applied to go together and how this benefits my friend at a personal level. So it was really powerful. Nice. Ollie, thanks for joining in, man. We got Luke Jensen on the line over here. Luke, this is Ollie. Ollie, this is Luke. I'm so stoked you're both here. Ollie, how's it going, man? We're just talking about some neural feedback and psychedelics, man. Amazing. Thanks so much, George. Nice to meet you, Luke. Yeah, great to join you guys. Fascinated to hear. Hey, yeah, really fascinated to hear about neurofeedback and psychedelics. I know a little bit. I've chatted to my friend Heather Hargraves quite a bit about neurofeedback. I don't know if you've heard of her. I've had experience neurofeedback done, used the helium hardware and Yeah, really fascinated to hear more, you know, because I've got such limited experience. Yes. Well, cool. Yeah, I mean, I can probably read books on neurofeedback for like ten years now, so so fascinated with it, but professionally for five. And it's one of those fields that you'll always be learning because it's the brain and the mind and then how they bring plant medicines like the soul consciousness. So, yeah, I mean, it's been really amazing. We were just talking, Ollie, about how it gives an individual something visceral to look at. So many of the psychedelic states seem to be subjective, even though they're full of powerful, profound changes. A lot of it is subjective, and science seems like we want something to grab onto. Do you think neurofeedback could be that sort of link that we're looking for to really sort of have something to look at to match up these subjective states? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. For me, my experience was of this interface in a way that you're talking about, almost a standardized interface. I was engaging with some hardware and some software, and it was quite clear. And I had headphones and a Muse headband on, so there were very tangible things that I was engaging with. So in that sense... It prepped the system, I think, so to speak, which might be a bit different to psychedelics. People often talk about psychedelics as a form of technology, which I think is a really interesting way of talking about them. My friend Darren LeBaron, who's an expert mushroom cultivator, speaks a lot about mushrooms as technology. I still think we're a little bit... behind that in terms of our actual experience of the mass technology. And it's really useful having these interfaces that can standardize a model or a program to help us engage. And that's what I found so profound with my neurofeedback experience was almost this disbelief that Someone could say to me, you're going to engage with this. This is the intention. And if you do these things, this is essentially what you'll achieve. And I was like, OK, I went in open minded. I was really calm about it. And I think I started crying during the experience because it was just that. That feeling of knowing of. where to hold it where to hold that resonance and and how easy it was to drop out of that resonance but also how easy it was just to go back into it and it was almost like a warm hug or something someone telling me hey you can do this it's okay you almost have a choice of how to resonate and that for me was so powerful and I think you know it It was without language. Okay, the person who directed me was speaking in English, but the actual experience was a non-linguistic experience. It was an energetic resonance experience. That's the only way I can describe it. And I guess, you know, it is that entrainment. It's that self-regulation of the brainwaves that you're doing to yourself and realizing how powerful... the human brain is, but using the technology, it's almost like using the digital as a useful interface to engage with the physical neuro biological stuff that's going on. Yeah. What do you think about when you hear that, Luke, when it comes to your mind? Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting. My mentor calls neurofeedback electronic yoga. Because this is what the yogis will do. It's interesting to think about because to have these altered states of consciousness takes training, right? Often psychedelics or these beautiful things or plant medicines, there's often like a shortcut. But meditators, they've actually built those structures in the brain over years and years of training. So those structures are strengthened. And neurofeedback is doing the same thing. So were you, so yoga is in preparation for altered states of consciousness that are like in a healthy way for the, for the individual. So neurofeedback is doing that same thing. It's that training. So you combine that training with, with plant medicines. I think we're like opening interesting doorways and we're going interesting ways, interesting paths. Yeah. Did you have something to add, Ollie? I just wanted to ask what you found to be, you know, when you talk about plant medicines, do you find that there are some which have more potential to be used in combination with neurofeedback than others? Well, I think we're still at the early stages. I think these are like questions we'll research more. I have a feeling as we go through this, the one thing I've mentioned to people is that we'll see different plant medicines may be effective for different things. Some might be good for PTSD. Some might be good for head trauma. So, so, you know, it depends. Um, I kind of have heard peripherally through people that, uh, the mushrooms and alpha theta might be a good protocol to do together. Um, I remember this woman, she's like the head of the NFL concussion program. That's what she works with as athletes. She goes, She looks at me and she goes, yeah, like I have PTSD. I do mushrooms and alpha theta. So she goes in these deep states on mushrooms. And I have to talk to her again to see what kind of dose she uses. So right now it's a lot of like self-experimentation. And I know like modern twenty first century. I guess self-experimentation is kind of frowned upon, but if you look at the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century. Everyone did this. It was like Huxley, but also everyone else with mescaline. They're all self-experimenting back then. And that was considered good science to go out there and try it out and figure it out. So I think that we're in that stage again, kind of this new area where like we're going to try these things out and figure it out. Yeah, it's interesting. Haven't you recently written two papers, Luke, on Wuchama and San Pedro? And what is different in those two substances versus ayahuasca when you're doing the neurofeedback? Well, so we brain map both. For the ayahuasca, we had pre-maps and post-brain maps. And in huachuma, we had pre, during, and post. And how our brain mapping system works, which I think is really cool, it comes out of the field of neurofeedback. So it's basically been ignored by mainstream neuroscience, mainstream psychology, mainstream science in general. So how we look at the brain is different. than them so how a neurologist looks at the brain they're looking at brain waves mostly to see like head trauma or epilepsy or patterns like this but with with qeg brain mapping as it's done by my mentor's company my technologies and other neurofeedback companies we can see emotional state right so we can see like when trauma is in the system and What I think we're seeing, which is most profound, is that plant medicines have a way of reducing trauma in the system. So a brain compartmentalizes trauma in certain ways. Some people have a busy mind, perseverance. Some people have ADD disassociation. Some people worry. Some people worry about the future. Some people think of the past. These different mechanisms are ways, subconscious mechanisms, for the brain to compartmentalize trauma. And so what we're seeing is both with ayahuasca and huachuma, Those ways, those trauma mechanisms are reducing in the system so that the brains are becoming more regulated. Now, in the future, I think we'll take more time to see maybe the differences between the two, but both plant medicines, both ayahuasca and huachuma, both seem to move in a healthy direction, move the brain. So an overactive brain will quiet. An underactive brain might gain more power, might speed up. someone has a busy mind or someone has like ADD, that will come related. So both plant medicines seem to move the brain in a healthy direction, which I think is really cool because you think of a pharmaceutical drug, it just moves everyone in the same direction. And there's nothing really like this in the world except maybe adaptogens. So I think this is really going to give us a whole new model on trauma once this is widely understood. And this will give us a whole insight into healing, right? How does healing happen? And then Once we understand that, we'll be able to engage that mechanism much, much more effectively. Yeah. For me, it brings up this question of are there different – I don't know if this is possible, but when you look at brainwave activity – is there a difference between healing and optimization? You know what I mean? Cause sometimes we get stuck in these words where like, we want to, we want to be healed, but some people want to be optimized. And if you think of optimization, maybe you think of like an athlete that's trying to get to the next level or a businessman that wants to conquer the world. I don't know, but you know what I mean? Are those two things the same thing? Yeah, no, I think they're definitely the same spectrum. I think they're definitely the same thing. So for example, there's trauma in the brain there's a famous book called the body keeps the score it's about trauma in the body and um our body holds on to trauma physically so and there's trauma in the brain as well physically so you start healing the brain everything starts coming online better their memory starts working better because the reason memory is not effective or not where it should be because when trauma is in the system the system compartmentalize the brain compartmentalizes that trauma. And then since the memory uses so many different sections of the brain, memory affected. So it's all on the same spectrum. So as you heal, that's peak performance. And then there's no one ever really that's totally healed from trauma. It's always a thing you're kind of working on, unless you're like a lightened Buddha. But then, for example, say like with neurofeedback, like, okay, I've done a lot of work healing their trauma. And what do they want to specialize in? Like, what do they really want to work on? So I can, like, if it's an athlete, I can train the motor cortex for them to be better in that way. There's some people that, like, train opera singers, for example, with neurofeedback. They just train that part of their brain. So it's all kind of part of a spectrum. But I would say as you heal trauma, that's a healthy performance. And then after that, you can start working specifically on where they want to go, even more so. Ollie, what do you think about that? What's your take? I mean, I think it's really fascinating. And, you know, when I think about the brainwave states, I'm drawn to... these ideas of oscillations and I was speaking to my friend who's a neuroscientist and he's he's looking really deep into the actual sine waves within the oscillations to you know look at it on this micro level and do you think there's something there where we can really fine-tune the oscillations within a certain state and and maybe reconceptualize how we're feeling or how we are or what's happening as a state rather than I have depression. It's I'm experiencing a depressed state or I am in an anxious state and that's okay. And it's something you can work with, but it's not the defining characteristic. It's not necessarily you, you are not your thoughts. Your brainwave is in a, in a state and it needs to be more regulated. Do you think it can be, I guess, standardized, fine-tuned to this point where you will get that optimal result? Yeah, no, I think that's a really powerful insight what you're saying because I had that same insight. So when I had my first brain map, And then she goes, you have a pattern for PTSD, insomnia, and anxiety. That took this onus off me, like, oh, like something wrong with me. And like, oh, I have this brain pattern. I have this state, like you were saying. And my job was to train it, right? So it took this, it was hugely empowering for me. So then sometimes I'll train, like I'll do a brain map of someone like, hey, you might have trouble focusing any of that brain pattern. Like, oh, I thought that was just me. That's a brain pattern, you know? So it was so empowering for people to hear like, that's not you that's not you're not your thoughts like you said like and you can you can change these things and it gives people such a level of empowerment and that's the really beautiful thing because all this technology is to empower people And then going into the subtleties of the brainwaves, I think there's so much to explore and so much to learn. When you see brainwaves going across the screen, it's really like a zen-like experience when you know what you're looking at. Because this is literally the life force of you going across your screen. And within that... you see everything about a person and the true genius in the field can look at your raw brain waves and see everything about you and it's something that it's like learning sanskrit learning your own language from the brain so yeah I think we have so much to learn I think there's lots of um people interested in gamma waves for example and these little brain waves that write other brain waves and what do those mean and some people you know those associate like peak experiences and meditation and and some people say if you train these gamma waves Like, we can train, like, energy healers can become more powerful, or psychics can become more powerful. We train with gamma waves, you know? So we don't know where all this goes, but I think we're, yeah, it's definitely that peak potential, and then there's also, like, that empowerment that we're not our state. Like you said, we're not our thoughts, that we can train these things. When I start hearing about that, I think of a tuning fork. And I think of that old analogy of like we are the receivers and we radiate outwards on some level. And then I start thinking about, wow, it's interesting to hear about people sitting in ceremony together. And is this contagious? And we've all been around people that's like, wow, this person is fun to be around or this person is like an energy vampire. Yeah. are these states that are going on in our mind are are we attuning fork are we radiating outwards this energy and it's syncing up with other people's brains and maybe we're getting on that next level with them it's it seems like there's so much there yeah no I think that's exactly there's so much to go in with that but yeah I think we are these tuning forks one I think There's a lot of people that say that our body, the physical, is a tuning fork for our consciousness. So we're like a receiver for consciousness itself. And then when we're in the physical, we're actually tuning in to other people. So I think if you look at a shaman and an apprentice, that shaman, apprentice, their brain waves are sinking. If you look at a whole room full of people, their brain waves are sinking, but their heart waves, their heart energy is probably sinking. And there's probably a quantum level we can't measure yet that's probably sinking now. And this idea of synchronicity and everything syncing up, I think it's for sure going on. I think I remember reading once that one person used to hook up married couples for marriage counseling and sync their brainwaves up. And they had these really powerful experiences because they were synced up, their brainwaves were synced up. So yeah, like what are the limits? What are the potentials of this? I don't think we even know yet. I think it's very interesting. I remember you recently just mentioned adaptogens. I remember a conversation I was having with someone where we were talking about adaptogens, nootropics, functional mushrooms, and wondering, okay, you've got loads of situations, whether it's a workplace situation or a family situation where there's disagreements or misunderstandings or things just aren't quite working properly. People aren't resonating properly. They're not vibing on the same level. The communication's really problematic. And we were wondering, hey, if you could get a whole workplace using the same dose of lion's mane or reishi or cordyceps or a family doing that, would you be able to finely tune it you know so that people are resonating on a similar level with something which has possibly less um you know potential for adverse effects like like psychedelics something that you could maybe easily integrate a bit more uh in terms of predictability I think so wondering I don't know have you explored what's happening to people's brains when they're taking things like lion's mane or is it more the psychedelics that are showing more promise at the moment? Well, psychedelics was my primary research because I'm in Peru and I have a free range down there. Actually, I'm in the States right now with my family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But in Peru, I have a free range of research psychedelics as my primary research. But I've actually researched other things like tobacco. People go on tobacco dietas. And I was kind of surprised because after two weeks of tobacco dieta, I saw really powerful changes in the brain as well. So as far as adaptogens, I love adaptogens. I think they're great. I think I could definitely see what you're talking about and the potential to that. And just from my insight, Okay, what do adaptogens do? They really help out with stress, right? It helps the body in stressful situations with physical stress or mental stress. It helps that out. But say mental stress. If everyone's stress level is reduced and everyone can adapt in a certain way, they can adapt to each other in a much better way. They can adapt to stressful situations in a certain way, and they won't be operating out of this stress response. So I think definitely, I think there's a lot of hope to what you're talking about. Sometimes I wonder too, being where you're at, Luke, it seems to me that a lot of people come down there with leverage on themselves. You know what I mean by that? Like they're ready for change. And so they have made that change and now they're in this new environment. What role do you think that, or can you see those changes in brainwaves when someone just moves into a new environment? That seems like a big part of it is if someone wants to break patterns, the first thing that they might want to do is find a brand new environment to be on. No, I think that's huge. Um, this is my personal life. I think I've been a veteran, like going to the jungle, living in the jungle before I even did ayahuasca was such a powerful experience. I remember when I first went down, I was four days in the jungle. I talked to this pre facilitator. And I'm like, wow, this is great. This amazing experience. And then she gives me a little like rice mile. She goes, wait till you try ayahuasca, you know, but like really the experience of being down there is so powerful. I know many veterans that live in like foreign countries. Because like you can be closer to nature. You can live on a beach for a lot less expensive. You can live in the jungle. And for me, like just being in the country of Peru and like, you know, especially the jungles throughout my nature, like that is healing. And I haven't done research as to myself. I know other people have, I think there's this book called like the three day experiment where people go in nature for three days and their, and their, their brain is dramatically more relaxed because they're just in nature, you know? So I think environment is critical. And I think that especially Americans and Westerners, we live in these concrete jungles and cities and stuff. So whatever we can do to like change things up or even bring in some plants inside and stuff like that can be really powerful. Yeah, I agree. What do you think? What's your thoughts on that, Ollie? It's a really fascinating one because, you know, particularly with psychedelics, I've personally had a lot of experiences by myself. And at times the environment hasn't been so important, depending on the nature of the experience, depending on the strength of the experience. It might just be something where I'm needing to really go within and the external environment isn't that important. And actually, you know, there's other people around me that can maybe create, I don't know, an experience that might not be so pleasant depending on whatever the other person's going through. And I think as well, You know, it's great that you are in a place like Peru where you've got this freedom. I think in, you know, and the US as well, where there is more of that freedom in a place like the UK where things aren't necessarily so ordained, things are really underground. It's difficult to find these kind of experiences. So a lot of it is... doing it on your own without necessarily a whole lot of guidance or a lot of those spaces provided. And like the UK, I think is the most concreted country in Europe. So, I mean, I'm quite fortunate. I live on the edge of a national park. And I've got that ability, literally not even five minutes walk, and I'm on beautiful downland with lots of views. And it's not the same for a lot of people in this country. There's a lot of people who are in quite difficult situations that You know, they can't afford to go to somewhere like Peru or go to somewhere where it's allowed to take psychedelics. And on top of that, their environment is a concrete jungle and there's all the other things going on, like systemic inequalities and stress and all of this going on. So it's... I'm always intrigued as to how we can create more accessible experiences to give people that respite, put people in different environments where it does create that change. I mean, I've never taken ayahuasca. I have been to Iquitos. When I was in South America, I was like, I just want to go to Iquitos and check out this place. city that's hit a million people in the middle of the Amazon. It's insane. I just wanted to soak up a lot of the energy there. And I've never been somewhere where I just got this buzz, like being on reserves or just meeting different people and really feeling this energy of ayahuasca, meeting so many people that are talking about ayahuasca. I had a very different experience in Cusco where I took part in a San Pedro ceremony. And that it strangely kind of felt a bit like more like home. I was up on a mountain. The scenery was like, oh, yeah, it's kind of looks a bit like Scotland or Wales. There was this ruggedness about it that I I resonated with. And it was amazing. It was actually, in a way, less of a powerful experience than being in the Amazon on no psychedelics. After that San Pedro experience, I felt a little bit I wouldn't say cheated, but I felt a little bit like, oh, that was so gentle. It was so calm. I was on a mountain. It kind of felt like I was in Scotland. And then afterwards, the integration of it, it turns out it was one of the most profound, beautiful experiences in my life. But yeah, just being in the Amazon, it's wild. Being on the Amazon River, going to see pink river dolphins and just sitting on a boat, you're not moving, you're just taking in that stillness and you catch a glimpse of this pink thing going to the water and you're like, wow, what was that? And you realise it is this place of magic and I can't imagine, well, you know, heard so many stories and so many people I know tell me about the, especially the audible experience of being in the Amazon under the influence of ayahuasca. If you've never been in a jungle, if you come from a city and then you go to the Amazon and you've got all these insects and creatures that you've never heard before, it must be. I mean, I've like I've lived on. uh farms in tasmania where you know I'm on maybe like smoked a bit of weed and there's all the different things going off all the frogs all the different insects I'm like this is wild you know so yeah it's it's a really special place and i You know, I find that with like the UK, with a lot of the pagan sites and standing stones and ley lines and areas of significance, you you pick up that energetic resonance again. You know, it's coming back to this idea of resonance, I think, which is really important. Yeah, I love that it's. In some ways, it makes me think of this other question that I had written out here. And since I have both of you experts with me here, I'm curious to get your guys' opinion on this one. Fungi embody principles of interconnection and resource sharing. How do these natural principles challenge the philosophical concept of individualism in human society? Anyone want to take that one first? Yeah, I mean, this is something I'm thinking about on a daily basis. I'm currently collaborating, shout out to Mycelium Hub in Sweden. They're a really interesting group of people that I've just started talking to, but they're looking at principles of mycelial interconnectedness and how that can work. help people I guess who have been in the corporate space for a long time and feeling burnt out and feeling a lack of purpose have put all of their time and energy into working whatever seventy hour weeks for a lot of money and realizing that that way of of doing things hasn't necessarily you know been the end goal and they're looking for But other ways to connect. You know, I think if we can find ways to replicate what's going on in nature, this idea, as you said, resource sharing, even when you've got two different species of fungi in nature, they won't. It's not competition in the same way that we think of competition. It's not trying to get one over on the other. It's this acknowledgement and respect. Hey, okay, you can take those resources there. I'll take these there. But we're all a part of the forest. It's not this top down way of doing things. It's not a CEO coming into a boardroom saying, I've got these targets and you've got to hit these targets by the second quarter. If you don't, everyone's fired. It's like a mushroom would probably laugh at that. way of doing things I think yeah luke did you find when when you initially went down to peru did you find not only the act of moving into a new location that was geographically much more diverse than you were used to but also the culture of like this is how things are done here did you find that to be something that was healing yeah so like um there's like in Western culture, we have like this sense of control where everything has to be controlled. And, and, um, down there is that's, that's, that's sort of a big deal. It's kind of, everyone's kind of going with the flow and life just kind of happens. And, you know, for the, for a lot of Westerners, like really challenging at first, you know, cause maybe things won't get done when they want to get done and things like that. Um, Oh yeah. Try, try getting a bus in, uh, in Bolivia. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I really, I really appreciate how, like, yeah, how things are done differently. You know, we always have a thing that our way is the best way, but there's other ways too. And I really appreciate like, so sometimes I go and I drive around my motorcycle in the mountains and I'll see some Peruvians, they'll wave me down. They have what they call chicha. It's like a corn drink, an alcoholic corn drink. They invite me over and like around noon, they all start drinking chicha while they're working. So they're kind of drinking and Things start slowing down. I'm not sure how much work it's done. I'll sit and talk to them for half an hour. What kind of crops they're growing. I just kind of sit around and look at this like, wow, this is not bad life. I'm always rushing around doing stuff all the time, but they're always pretty much in the present. So I really enjoy that. Yeah. It's mind-blowing to me to think. You know what it kind of gets me going down this road of is this idea of why we have trauma in the first place. And sometimes... Especially, this is a great question. I've heard you talk about this earlier, Ali, in a previous talk. When we look at so much of the psychedelics, at least to where I'm looking at, it seems that the military veterans are at the forefront, like PTSD, heroic hearts. There's all these veterans groups that are finding ways to deal with trauma. My friend Doc Askins wrote a book called The Antihero's Journey, and he talks about things that happened to them. But there does seem to be sort of a... a lack of talk about anti-war in the world of the veterans groups. I heard you speak about this, Ollie. And I would love, maybe you could introduce that, Ollie, and then I could get your response on that, Luke, just to see what your thoughts are on that. Go ahead, Ollie. Yeah, I mean, thanks for the question. You know, I think I want to caveat this by saying that know obviously there is a serious issue going on with veterans committing suicide when you look at the statistics of people killed in active combat versus you know killing themselves it's horrendous what's going on and we need ways to to help people I think with you know with everything with any desperate situation health situation we need ways to help people and for me you know I I really do see the benefit of of mdma particularly in helping with ptsd I know people that were practitioners underground practitioners in the eighties who were treating um veterans from the gulf war the first gulf war and you know there's a real lot of promise but For me, I guess the difficult thing is when the narrative gets spoken about in terms of this net zero trauma, which is an acceptance that, okay, we can't get rid of the sources of trauma like war, so we just have to find ways to mitigate them. And I suppose the psychedelic hippie idealist within me is still hammering home this point of like, hey, come on, togetherness, oneness, love and peace. Like, what's going on? You know, when I... sat and you know had psychedelic experiences and and thought about you know I I'm in a very peaceful country relatively you know in the uk and I think I try and kind of meditate on being in a war situation and it's it's impossible you know it's impossible to even conceive of a bomb dropping on your house it's impossible to be think of being in combat. It's like, I can't, my, my mind can't get there. So for me, it just naturally draws towards, so this is horrendous. How do we stop it? Yeah, I think it's a huge, huge topic, right? War. Why do you mean the gay regional war? What is this all about? Um, I think there's a massive political component to it. I think the modern mind. has a way of blocking it out and don't think about what's going on. I think the United States, if you look at post-World War II, it was a start there. Before that, we had a Department of War, and now we have a Department of Defense. I think by any stretch of the imagination, we're at war anywhere in the world, you know? And it's supposed to be like a defensive thing, right? So we have these illusions and games we play with ourselves to deny that reality of war even really happening or existing. And I think... Um, some people, most people at some level know there's a problem with veterans, but it feels very far away because I think the veteran population is only, it's fairly small. I mean, I don't, I don't know any, I don't know any veterans. You see, I had this conversation probably for the first time with some people in the psychedelic space. And I was like, do you guys actually know any, like, you know, the people we're connected to in the U S but in the UK, I was like, do you guys actually know any veterans? I can't find anyone I know who knows any. veterans in the uk yeah I know and I think I met someone from canada they said the same thing like you're the first veteran I met you know and um so it's it's we're in the united states for example you know there's a few states that contribute the most um military manpower to all four branches you know so and um So often those states might have that idea in the community, but most states don't. And they're on a large military basis. The general population has a whole lot of interaction with that. And then people come up back with PTSD. It's often natural with any kind of trauma to isolate. So they'll isolate and not be around people. And then just like everything in Western society, like our denial of death, death is always kept very far away at a hospital and things like that. Same thing with war, you know, like the American war machines all around the world doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And the average person has no clue, no clue about it. And just like, you're talking about like trying to imagine a bomb dropping in your house or trying to imagine a war situation. Most Americans, unfortunately never even tried to figure that out. It's just something on a screen, like a video game and they can, you know, I think it's really sad because it, you know, like, um, in ancient cultures, you know, war happened, but it was very visceral and no one could really deny it when it was happening. But, and today, like we have this denial of it and yeah, I, I guess that's part of the question. I'm not even sure how we, uh, like you said, this, this, this problem of war, I think it's something we definitely should talk about and work on. Um, I look at it as very much a spiritual sickness when we have these wars going on and no one talks about it. Kind of just the same thing with the opioid epidemic, right? We have these huge crises happening and the media totally distracts us with something that's relatively irrelevant compared to war. I think the war is the most important issue of our age and no one even realizes that. I'll say a few people actually think about it like you think about it. Think about what it means. I mean, really, people should think about what it means for a bomb to drop on their house. And then you think of American drone pilots dropping bombs on wedding parties in some far-off country. Or even just having drones flying over your country on a daily basis dropping bombs. How would that make an American feel if that was happening to his country? I think those are important things to think about. I think so many of us wish that that things could change in like a leap of faith, but it's more like a slow unraveling. You know what I mean? Like we're slowly sort of waking up with like one eye, like this is painful, man. I was going to go back to sleep. You know, what about Billy, the water skiing squirrel over here? Let's look at that for a minute. That's a little bit nicer, you know? But I think that perhaps like what we saw in the, in the sixties, uh, If past relevant behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, people beginning to wake up and be like, you know what? I don't think we should do this anymore. Wait, you know what? I have a lot of friends that are committing suicide. You know what? This ruined my relationship. You know what? This ruined my kid's life or so-and-so just committed suicide. When it gets to this level where you can't ignore it anymore – That seems to be a time when people at the top get pretty nervous. They're like, let's put this thing back, man. Let's get this genie back in the bottle. We got this guy Luke putting documentaries out. He's got this EEG machine. He's doing brain patterns. We got Ollie in the UK speaking about this. Do you think that this sort of waking up is something that can cause people in positions of authority like insurance executives, politicians to become more nervous and start wanting to put psychedelics back in the bottle? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have personally been uh reprimanded over linkedin uh from certain people for for being too vocal for commenting on people's posts and you know particularly um with the israel gaza situation and and it was a thing where it was like very quickly okay I have to learn where the right audience is and understand that there's a lot of people in, you know, certainly in the UK where we have these power structures related to like the landed gentry, aristocracy, royal family that is in ties with, you know, British colonialism and the army and all of that stuff where You know, we have a lot of wealthy landowners, like one percent of the landowners in the UK own fifty percent of the land. So it's like when you start to talk about these things, starting to talk about, you know. Things which challenge certain power structures, which people are connected to, people do get nervous and people, you know, I see a lot of. gleeful talk about psychedelics in the uk and you know critical inquiry can sometimes not be welcome in certain circles particularly where we have got such an establishment you know whatever you want to call it ruling class as you know this social class system that's so heavily entrenched people often feel like you're ruffling feathers too much and there's a lot of self-censorship that happens in the uk you know we we get really worried really nervous about saying the wrong thing upsetting the wrong kind of people having whatever opportunities taken away and you know Some people just want to still have their seat at the table, which is fair enough. And I guess for me personally, I've existed somewhat on the fringes and been a bit of a renegade I guess um me and a couple of friends we started a psychedelic society at our university before there were any student psychedelic societies so there was you know there's always this sense of like hey come on we've got to press whatever the issue is and now that psychedelics have become more normalized and mainstream okay what are the pressing issues within this normalized paradigm it is actually how you know we look at these ideas of of oneness and togetherness that everyone espouses and ultimately if it makes some people feel uncomfortable you know I I think possibly it's gone too far to maybe put the genie back in the bottle but certainly it's being regulated in in certain ways there's certain ways of accessing things that people would prefer you know so we have for example the organization psilocybin access rights in the uk it's not called magic mushroom access rights you know there's certain narratives in certain ways that people want to steer things in in order to understand how we're going to access them and if you rock the boat too much you know I mean I went along to uh like a swanky event with Paul Stamets and I started talking about mushrooms and aliens and people were like, I would love to hear about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the, yeah, that's, that's maybe a conversation for another time, but you know, yeah. Yeah. I think like, well, there's always been power structures throughout history. Right. And, um, I think if you look at, like, there's a cycle of civilizations where that power structure starts becoming corrupt, decadent, and non-responsive to the people. And the people are like, hey, you know, this is an interesting thing. Something's going on here. And, yeah, it's very easy for, like, even if you look at, like, in the Brave New World, like, give people Soma, right? And, which might be alcohol and sports and things like this, you take a psychedelic and like, wait, you start wondering things. Every one time I took one, I'm like, what are these things called mortgages? It's ridiculous. Why would I pay this one for, you know, paid to a bank? You know, it's a silly it's a thought, but like when you start thinking about it, this is kind of ridiculous. You know, what's going on here? And now people start thinking about that. And, you know, the power structure might get started really worried when people stop paying their taxes or, you know, because it's a small minority ruling over a much larger majority. And in the end, all their power is really illusion. It's really the masters of illusion where they trick us with different kinds of methods. And you talk about like thoughts, like some things are allowed to say and some things are not allowed to say. So we self-censor ourselves because they have this illusion of power. And we even have a sense of things we're not supposed to say. Think about that, right? Like think about that power structure where we're like, we're self-censoring what we're saying in our thoughts. Like, wow, that's a lot of power. And I think that, you know, some people might even go on conspiracy theories. Like, this is a thing that's developed over a long time. But I think if we just look at this, I didn't even need that. Like, this is something like, you know, it's not healthy for us to be able to not speak our minds. And I think that the more we do empowers us. And for people that wonder, I think the power system is very, very concerned. It has been for a long time. If you look at J. Edgar Hoover, he was wiretapping everybody. The FBI in the United States, there's no one he didn't try to observe and see what they're doing. It's extreme paranoia what the masses are doing for them, anti-war activists and civil rights leaders. I think that same paranoia exists in the power structure today and there's a constant effort to divert people's attention to things that they can control, right? Just the last thing. So say for like the abortion issue in the United States, and I'm not really saying one thing or another, but like if you have everyone focused on that issue, you might not be watching what the CIA is doing in this country and the bombs are dropping here, here, here, which they're okay with that, right? They don't want you to know about that issue, right? So when the media is talking about, Always be thinking of what they're not talking about. That's what I try to do. Yeah, it's a great point. What were you going to say, Ollie? I mean, I think, you know, just going on from your point about power structures and control and I think it's interesting to see where psychedelic culture has gone. And certainly in terms of, you know, my personal interest into psychedelics was through music was through the kind of, you know, that hippie culture that is out there and, and quite creative and not necessarily that controlled. And, now it feels like the the overwhelming focus is on psychedelic science or therapeutic applications or speaking in in quite limited terms and almost like psychedelics have been disarmed somewhat it's almost like they're a little bit boring they're a little bit lame you've now got DARPA talking about can we create psychedelics that don't give people a bad trip and it's like people I know are saying bad trips can be really useful it's really useful moments that teach you a lot and help you understand your mind and give you that real power over your mind is having that difficult experience and if we want to just carefully control and make it all nice and fluffy and marketable into a product. And I feel like it's going to just get really dangerous and there'll be some snapback. There'll be some, I don't know, spirit of the psychedelics will come back and bite people in the ass maybe. Yeah, I see it. Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. Carry on. Just that whole thought, like, forget sometimes in Peru most of the time, I'm in the jungle doing ayahuasca to shaman. I forget people talk about, yeah, we'll just put this thing in a pill and then don't have a bad trip. I'm like, whoa, this is wild. I think it takes away the whole essence of it because especially shamanism, you are going to be part of psychedelics and shamanism especially, you will be challenged. As part of the experience, you will be challenged. And by far some of my best experiences have been my most challenging because that's been learning about yourself the most and I think some of it's just the western culture we want to put in a little pill you just take it I mean they might even want to put like the compound of the pill so there's no psychedelic effect just you can supposedly heal from it you know this really misses the point of healing at a spiritual level because healing at a spiritual level at least actually a shamanic level, you have to face your demons. You have to face your challenges. You might have to face things about yourself that you do not like. And if the Western model tries to avoid that, then the healing won't take place. That's all the Western model does is try to avoid that. They're like, we would like the psychedelic experience, but without any of the negative kind of things. Have you guys seen some of the research where they're trying to take the difficult parts of the trip out of the pill? You have people studying this to like, we want the transformative effects, but we're not so much interested in the hallucinogenic effects. Can we figure this out? And you have people spending millions of dollars on this. And I remember researching and being like, what the hell are you talking about? You can't separate these two things. But I guess on the underlying part of it, they're like, well, what about people that are you know, that are on their deathbed or maybe that's not even the excuse. It just seems absurd to me to try and eliminate the difficult part of the trip out of the trip. Like that's like saying, I want to have the ability to grow without any trauma. Can you fix that for me? And then you start looking at like nepotism and our leadership and how that kind of echoes. Like I was gonna put my kid involved over there. Like in some ways it echoes the world that we live in. And Maybe you could say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Like we don't want people to get hurt. We want them to have the best possible life without getting hurt. But when you try to nerf everything and protect people, you're really limiting who they can be. You're really limiting them from fighting their demons and seeing their potential and moving forward. On the topic of where psychedelics are today, I want to give you my thoughts and then hear what you guys have to say. I feel like we're in the late fifties, early sixties. Like this thing is trying desperately to be contained in this medical container and And there's some people that are like, man, if we can wrap our arms around it, centralize it, we can make a lot of money, man. This will be awesome. But you already see the birth of the new Merry Pranksters with people like Dennis Walker coming out and making these Instagram accounts and blowing up to like ten thousand people and then getting shut down. Coming back, getting five thousand, eight thousand. There is this culture emerging out of it. And I think that... Maybe in the next ten years, it's not obtuse to think that maybe you have these day-glow Tesla school buses rolling around with new electric Kool-Aid acid tests happening, and you already see the protests on college campuses. It's already bursting at the seams. I don't know. Is that too far out? What do you guys think about this world of psychedelics beginning to blow up into a Sixties-style sort of creative experience? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've noticed it being a psychedelic musician in the UK, being in, I guess, the wider genre of psychedelic rock, which is... really is one of the massive growing genres in the UK at the moment. There's a lot of, there's a franchise going around called Psych Fest, which takes place in different cities. So there's this explosion and there's a crossover happening of the heavy metal scene with the psych scene. So there's people getting into psychedelics in a cultural sense. in something of like a visceral sense, you know, the festival scene is quite big in the UK. And I think that has come hand in hand with the academic stuff, but maybe through kind of like convergent thinking. Because I said earlier, there's not necessarily those people that I meet in the music scene that are also going to psychedelic conferences. But I know a lot of people who are trippers, who are heads that are very much into their psychedelics and almost like the trickle down legitimization that has happened, I think has had some useful effect, um, whilst also kind of pigeonholing the research into science. It's also helped like people to have more conversations with their families and, and I can quite comfortably talk to my family and be like, yeah, I'm in a psychedelic rock band, you know? And it's like, cool. You know? Um, yeah. What are your thoughts, Luke? Yeah, I think it's very. There's a lot of moving parts to it, right? So in Peru, I tried ayahuasca for the first time like over ten years ago, and I was twenty-eight at the time. I was like one of the oldest people in the group, and it was all like young adventurers that were going down. And now we have like doctors and lawyers and, you know, people and the like looking for meaning. It's much more widespread now. So I think it's a good thing because more people have access to it, but it's also kind of like People are often not engaging with it in the same way. So now we have, like before I went down, like you kind of just were on your own. You had to figure things out. And I have these huge ayahuasca retreats. They're like luxury resorts. And people almost look at it as kind of like, yeah, I'm going on vacation. I'm going to do this thing. And it's kind of like a, I don't know what you would call it, but it's kind of lifestyle choice, right? Instead of like, I'm going down to be like challenged with something that like no one even knows about. Because no one even knew about it horribly when I went down. And now you hear it in pop culture a lot. So I think you kind of have this tension between two different things that are happening at the same time. And at the same time, you have this legal fight for it to happen. But it's very much... put in the psychological model and the mental health model, which I think has its legitimacy, but it's taken away from the real shamanic model and traditional model and tribal model like our ancestors would have it. So you put in the mental health model and psychologize it, I think we're missing out on the true nature of shamanism, the true nature of consciousness, because we're more than psychological beings. We're also spiritual beings. And for me, plant medicines and shamanism is so intertwined for me. I've seen such amazing things and amazing change. And really, the magic of the world comes to life. Clearly, the universe comes alive. And I think it's a lot different thing. Like, oh, this guy's going to take mushrooms for his trauma. Our ancestors didn't even think of trauma in that way. And I think we need to be careful how we, from my perspective, I like keeping that traditional the traditional way of doing things. And I think the modern, I think there's this tendency because the modern culture psychologizes everything. It's just kind of how it's done. I think we all keep in like that spiritual aspect, the magical aspect, and realize we don't know everything, you know, realize that we don't know the answers. So I see these tensions on both sides, but I'm really hopeful and I'm really excited about the future because I think it's, I think it will continue that way. I think you'll have the one side that medicalizes it the other side that's kind of like the artists and the you know the the people that are doing mushrooms in their lawn looking for ufos and you know like like doing for adventure I mean I think we have to have like that like that open heart and the mind of children and realize like this universe is so beautiful and we have to go into it and that with that kind of yeah the lightness the lightness of heart I think that's how we describe it It's a really interesting point because often I've found myself grappling with ideas of psychedelic gatekeeping and where, you know, you said the way in which people are engaging with it, you know, it doesn't feel like they're engaging with it in these ways which honour the traditional aspects of psychedelics. And then, you know, it's this whole thing of... Does everyone need to take psychedelics? Does everyone need to actually have this direct experience in order to have that healing? You know, if on like a societal level, could there be enough of us taking psychedelics that it tips the scales and then changes these different structures? And it seems like it's very much this capitalist way of like, no, I've got to go and do it. I don't believe you unless I've had it. And it's funny when you mentioned it like a holiday when I was in Iquitos. And I was at a hostel and someone literally just off a list. Yeah, we're going to a reserve for three nights. Then we're going to see the river dolphins. Then we're going to take ayahuasca. I was like, and they were, you know, they're like early twenties. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. I was like, have you taken ayahuasca before? They're like, no, no. I was like, you know, brilliant. I hope you have a beautiful experience. And yeah, But yeah, it just, it didn't seem this like, you know, I'm going to take ayahuasca and, you know, it's going to be, it was just like, yeah, you know, let's go. All right, fucking hell, all right. More, you know, we'll go for it. But, and that's the thing. It's like, I don't want to get into that because you get into that and then you start to become judgmental. You get into ego state where you're just like, Do you not know the veracity of the experience you're about to undertake, little girl? And it's like, whoa, you need to really check that stuff and be like, people are going to have the experiences they're going to have. And, and ultimate, you know, when I've been interacting with some people from the corporate space, you kind of have corporate burnout. It's, it's like they see the magic, you know, the, they, they see that spark and they're like, Oh, what, what is that? You know, I really want some of that. And maybe historically, you know, I guess like, hippie subculture just like yeah whatever square you know go away in your in your suit and and that's not useful because it just creates more division and it's like as you said how can we come at it with that open heart you know for me the wachuma experience was so profound because it it was that heart opening experience that allowed me to be less cynical and realize that yeah okay if you've been in the world of finance for thirty years that's that's not you that's the thing that you've been told that you need to do and actually you your spirit is this like holy amazing wonderful thing that needs to be nurtured and you know doing stuff like inner child work and and coming at situations where it's like hey if I was you know the inner child within me is is meeting the inner child within you that kind of egoless expression where you just want to connect it's almost like that pre-egoic state where you see you know like four-year-old kids and they're like hey you're a kid I'm a kid let's be kids and play and it's and we really do forget that because we've got to be serious adults doing the things paying the mortgages all this stuff and you know the beauty of psychedelics is that that wonder that connection and if we can bring other people into that wonder and connection then it's like yeah come on let's get everyone on board and then hopefully it's like the people who are have a lot of influence and ability to make change and resources. Like let's get them on board as well. And hopefully it will kind of expand. Yeah. In some ways it sounds like a giant rite of passage ceremony. You know what I mean by that? It seems like, like, We spoke about adaptogens earlier, but perhaps the people that find themselves called the psychedelics through whatever means become changed in a way. And then they become the catalyst for change for everybody else. You know what I mean? And like, if you just look at it as sort of this ritualistic that happens every maybe hundred years or something like that. we do have this significant group of baby boomers that are this giant generation that are dying in a way that's kind of unprecedented. There's such a large group of baby boomers. You could argue that so much of the trauma that's happening are the unrealized dreams of these people dying, just scratching for one more term in office. If I could just get this, if I could Just get this part right past, man. I will fulfill my destiny. And then you have this younger generation. It's like I don't care about any of that. That's stupid. Why are we funding your stuff? Like haven't you guys done enough? And it's sort of this tension between these generations that's happening. And I can't help but think the absence of rituals and rites of passage is something that's been – gutted from at least the Western world. Like, you know, when I hear Luke talk about some of these ceremonies, like I find it like, wow, I wonder what it's like to watch the elder pass down knowledge to somebody else in this ritual ceremonial setting. And we have so many people in our, it seems to me that in the Western world, we have people that are refusing to pass down information. Like that's a recipe for war and destruction, right? Could it be a ritual ceremony on a bigger level that we're going through this, this, this rite of passage maybe, or is that too grand of an idea? Yeah, I think rights of passage are huge. I think it was the first time in history we had them. I think it's extremely damaging in so many ways because we all fundamentally need that. I think people often will do it in the wrong ways. You know, I mean, I think I went to the military for my own right of passage, and it was what it was. But I think you often get into like real destructive behaviors to try to like, you haven't had this right of passage. And so I think you look at your ancient traditions, they always had this rite of passage. And I think it's interesting because you're talking about like how do like changes happen and can a small group change the bigger group? I'm reminded of a story I read, I forget which book, but all these women took LSD, they're like Eastern Coast, like East Coast establishment women. And they won LSD and they realized they want to stop the Vietnam War in the sixties. So their goal was this group of women is to marry like powerful politicians and generals. get them to try lsd so they would wake up the follies of vietnam and you have this idea we can just get this out there because the right people we can do it and you talk about like well you know if enough people do this we need everybody I don't think we need everybody and in fact I don't think everyone should do these things I always say people should be called to it and the person in the jungle that was just going to try it like a tour I'm like well you know like this person might be really challenged. And if you're not prepared mentally for that, they can be, you know, a lot of, you know, they can have like big, big challenges. And I, and I noticed people that prepare for the most, like a year, I've met people prepare for a year for the first ayahuasca and they get the, some of the most things out of it. And this kind of going on to the same thing, the temple of Lucis in Greece was around for a thousand years. I'm not sure what the ceremony was, but there's kind of psychedelic events, but anyone knows anyone ancient world. went there to do it. So like Cicero and Plato. And so it gives you a whole insight. You know, like I think of like these historians that write about ancient world, but have no clue that all these people had a psychedelic experience. And that gives you a whole different insight into that world and who these people were. And if that historian has ever had a psychedelic experience, he's missing a whole big thing of what happened. And, um, Yeah, I think this culture, this intermersion, I think is very fascinating. What's your thoughts on that, Oli? Yeah, I mean, I've been getting into this stuff a bit. It's such a kind of complicated thing. You know, I think a lot in terms of this country in the UK where the sense of indigenous connection to the land is quite tenuous. And we've had the Romans, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, all these different cultures come in. And then we've had a royal family that has taken away the land and prevented access to sacred sites in this country. we really lack a right of passage. I think it's why the UK might historically have so many problems with drugs and alcohol and violence and this need to establish itself. And, you know, there's a lot of men in this country who have a lot of anger and emotional problems and real problems with alcohol and drugs and You know, I've met men who have real kind of issues with absent fathers and have found like, you know, getting into gang violence or just general, you know, getting, you know, to street fights and this kind of thing. It does become a rite of passage. And I see a lot of those men, those types of men ending up in men's circles. where they're looking for that spiritual connection, where they're looking for something which is in line with nature because they're realizing that like this whole thing of, of being a man, the macho bravado, that's not it. That's, you know, they're, they're looking for something that is like that. And, and we really lack that. And I think I'm seeing more. More of these types of people entering into the psychedelic space who come from quite tough, you know, macho backgrounds where the rite of passage might have been going to something like the army or, you know, joining a boxing gym or something like this to prove themselves as a man. think it's you know there are ways in which we can do the rites of passage which aren't necessarily about like proving yourself as a man but actually about engaging with the land and honoring it and and then in doing so you respect it and hopefully then you create better systems which work for everyone because you've all had this initiation into into something whatever it is you know It's interesting that you bring up. Yeah, go ahead, Luke. No, I was just saying, that's kind of what I tell people too. Like, Hey, come challenge yourself with. So we do, we have a retreat, we have martial arts, we have hiking, like come challenge yourself with ayahuasca and a hike in the Andes mountains. And, you know, like this is a way to like healthily challenge yourself instead of like drugs or gangs or different things where people can get into. And I think, you know, you know, boxing and military are probably the healthier, some of the things they can get into. I mean, Um, but yeah, like really, if you have a spiritual challenge, most initiations traditionally were a spiritual challenge. We become part of that group, part of the tribe, part of the community. Like you were, uh, you're reborn into a full being as an adult, as a man or woman to have an initiation of the transformation process. So it's something about importantly that it's that, that we need that. I agree. So. You know, when I think about initiation, I think about storytelling and like, you know, you can look back at, you know, choose your mythology of the hero's journey or, you know, the sirens calling Odysseus to the rocks or Luke Skywalker, whatever your story might be. You know, there's these great stories that have happened throughout time. And it seems that we're at a time where storytelling has turned into story selling. And when I think about all that narrative out there, it's like a profound lack of meaning and purpose. And of course there's going to be anger. If you're doing something that's meaningless or purposeless – like if I worked at a job for twenty-six years and when I got to the top of the corporate ladder, I realized I was against the wrong wall. you know, what, what do you do? I look over the wall and I'm like, this is bullshit. This is not what it was said. You know, there's the meaning, there's the purpose. And when you lose that, when you, now you're talking about losing identity, like what now you really need that spiritual nature. Then you're searching like, holy cow, man, I'm in a crisis right now. Like I'm, you're at this particular age. Where is, where do I find it? Like I, I feel like that on some level is is what psychedelics can be about and if people can learn that through psychedelics at an earlier age to find purpose and meaning in life we're way ahead of the game like I I feel like we're in a crisis of meaning and and and story lack of stories like what do you think luke like you've had one foot in both worlds like living in this story of the western world and then moving down and participating in the story of transformation and but do How does that, what I said, resonate with you? Well, I think it's a really great insight. There's so many things to say on that. If you look at ancient traditions, like the gods, Odysseus, like these are stories to emulate and to model souls after, to give us a firm idea of like, we were and those stories reached out to the past because those stories were tell for generations that linked us from our ancestors to the present so it gives a huge identity of who we are these stories gave us identity stories now we have like mass culture popular culture which totally takes away those stories and um and also I think it makes us easy to control when we don't have a story don't have a background we're just kind of consumers um the power structure As much as you just control people that don't know your people, who they are. Yeah. I think the power of story is so important to existence. I had more things I was going to say, but I forget. But yeah, it's a really great point. Yeah. The crisis and narration, Ollie, what do you think? I mean, you know, that's a re you know, I, I've been speaking to people more in terms of, you know, doing psychedelics with a view to honoring ancestors, to honoring that story, to finding that link. And, you know, I found personally when. I am going through a challenging experience and I might be emotional. There might be floods of tears. Sometimes I wonder, well, is that necessarily my trauma? Is it trauma from my family or the ancestors or the land or whatever it is and finding a way to weave my experience into a wider narrative, into a, into a story then It allows that sense of belonging. It allows that sense of safety, almost that you are held by the wider narrative. You are held by the ancestors and the spirits. It allows you to then connect with the land. There's people I know that have a favorite tree, and they go and they sit with their favorite tree, and it's like these ways of conceptualizing where we actually are weaving ourselves into this wider tapestry, I think just makes us nicer people. It makes us, it makes us step out of ourselves. We're less wound up energetically. We're actually expanding ourselves. We're tapping into the like ancestral worldwide web. Probably, you know, it's like, that's probably what the mycelium are doing. Mycelium are tapping us into this wider narrative. And yeah, And for me, you know, it hammers home that point of this oneness, of it is all you, you know, this intersubjective experience of the one cosmos, you know, and then honoring that. Again, it just allows me to be a lighter person, having a softer ego. um being able to engage with anyone and everyone you know and that's where I find like the benefit of of psychedelics and then it you know as you say luke it's like you you aren't so easily controlled because you're not you're not lost you're not like oh well if I you know fill my life with xyz of all the things that are you know preordained by the capitalist society then then everything's fine and actually if you can weave that narrative of like, hey, what's the significance of this, you know, hundred and fifty year old oak tree or something like that that's been here and it's seen all of these things and it's and it's still here. Like, what's the significance of the resilience? What can we learn from these different aspects of that tapestry? And like, I'm very jealous of the Aboriginal educational system in Australia where it looks at things in this aboriginal dream time it's not it's like you you're telling a story and through that story you're gaining so much knowledge it's not this didactic sitting in a classroom you know oh I know that because the teacher told me so it's more I know this because I am woven into the tapestry of the ancestors and if I engage with the plant and fungal medicines you know that is the the technological interface by which I can talk to the ancestors and yeah find that belonging yeah I think story has like this um it's the most powerful way to communicate anything in the human consciousness we're designed for a certain oral communication this was done for a millennia upon a millennia before the written word uh so there's something in us like that's the most powerful way to transmit information through a story right That's the most powerful way. And I remember I was going to say, too, is about talk about these stories have these deep archetypes inside of us. And Carl Jung really revolutionized our thought when we think about this. So these stories reoccur over and over again, the hero's journey and these myths, like these myths, idea of myth. We have no idea where myths come from. And we kind of use it as like a, as an ad hominem today of the myth, but like myth with a capital M, like they're deep structures to who we are. And you mentioned Star Wars, I kind of chuckled because I think Star Wars used the archetypes. The original Star Wars movies used the archetypes very effectively and it resonated with people. And then when modern media or modern Hollywood from those archetypes. Those movies flop and people are like, what the heck is that? But if you stick with those archetypes, even a new model, even a new story, it resonates with the human soul. It resonates with who we are. And I think Star Wars is actually a really good example of that. So, Yeah. Yeah, I think it speaks to the idea of mysticism, too. You know, when you sit under an old tree and you begin to imagine how long that tree has been there, what it's seen, the lessons it's learned, you can almost begin to learn the lessons from that tree. You think about, whoa, I bet you this has had some drought. I wonder what it did. Well, it obviously survived. How did it survive? What are these other plants around there? Like, you start seeing the story unfold in front of you in ways that are... just earth shattering. It's almost like there's this bigger language desperately trying to communicate to us. And I can't help, but when I talk to both of you guys, get this, this sort of admiration for the mystic tradition. And I know that you both have your own relationship with it. And I thought maybe we could, we could talk about that a little bit. Ollie, let's start with you. You've, you've got a background in mysticism. What do you think? Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's, you know, really interesting in, in terms of like the, the mystical connection. And, and with that, I spirit, I guess, um, I've studied a little bit of Gnosticism and I come from a Jewish background and I've, uh, recently been reading some stuff connected to Judaism, which is more similar to the Gnostic traditions of this idea of the godliness within. When we talk about the entheogenesis, it's actually, it's not just you are taking something and experiencing God, but actually you are bringing the godliness into the situation. And some of the traditional prayers, In Judaism, where you're blessing the bread or blessing the candles and the English translation might say, thank you, God. It's actually, you know, the Hebrew is more about is like blessed be the godliness of the situation that is occurring right now. And actually the the eminence, you know. as you were talking about that tree, you know, I was, I was picturing it. I was, I was thinking, I was really visually just like, yeah, I was there, you know, in the English countryside, just sitting under an oak tree. And with these kind of, um, experiences, which can be infused, you know, more powerfully with plant medicines, it does hammer home that engaging with the the spirit that's infused with it. You know, I've explored, uh, the Shinto traditions, which are really like, it's not just like general spirit, but it's like, there's the Oak tree spirit. There's the river spirit. There's the little forest spirits. Then there's the grand spirit of the forest, which is like the overarching spirit and these really useful ways of engaging with it and, and honoring it, which I think are really powerful. They are powerful. It begins to think about the ideas of... Before I go off on some other rant, let me push it over to Luke here. You have an incredible relationship with shamanic learning and being around shamanism and the mystic tradition. What do you think about when we start talking about the word mysticism and mystical? Well, I think there's so many good points to bring. The Shinto tradition, this idea that everything's alive around you. Animism, this is the natural state for human beings through forever, that the river has consciousness, that the trees have consciousness, that there's elementals and spirits all around us. And with the modern mind, we kind of dismissed that. But if everyone believed that all around the world for all history, is that so ridiculous? You know, and maybe there's a lot more to that than we think. And, you know, I'm from a Northern European background, so I'm really into the ruins and the old gods and, The runes mean mystery. They mean esoteric. They mean a secret knowledge. And when you study these runes, there's so much to them. And the idea of exploring mystery, the esoteric, is this beautiful thing, this beautiful life endeavor to do. And I think of Tolkien, who borrowed from like, well, you read, he's immersed in the old sagas and myths and the Eddas and everything else. came through his work and then you read I read token and I'm like wow it speaks to me at a certain level and then I'm in the jungles of the amazon I think to myself man if if billboard or frodo kept going a thousand miles south it would be where I'm at with pink dolphins on the amazon river you know and um yeah I I really think that the mystical is really around us all the time and then like the our job or maybe the job of like certain individuals, tribe has that connection to see beyond that veil, to see the double meaning, like that might be a rock or that might be a sun. And then at the same time to realize like that has a spirit to it and that has something special to it and to understand that. And when you're sitting under that tree, like to realize that tree is feeling your energy and you're feeling his energy. And just like we do with humans, there's an exchange going on there. So yeah, just for me, it's about enjoying the journey and enjoying the mystery of all of it. Yeah, I love that. It's interesting to just take a moment and realize how therapeutic it can be, especially when we're overwhelmed to realize that we're part of the whole. You know, it's so difficult sometimes when our personal problems become so overwhelming that you just want to break down And sometimes all that's left is just to give it to the tree outside. You know what I mean? Well, it's been there for a hundred and twenty years through this, you know, but like there's something so profound about how beautiful that is, because our journeys can become overwhelming when we start carrying the weight of. of the uncertain nature of the future. Like that's a lot for anybody to try to hold on. So I'm going to try to, let me just try to wrap my arms around this uncertainty principle here. Like it's, it's crazy. I feel like we're, we're at this crisis and I'm, I'm so thankful to get to pick your guys' brains on it and stuff. I got another question coming in from the chat. It says, what can the principles of mycology teach us about building a political system that prior prioritizes symbiosis over competition? Why don't you take that one to start off, Ollie? Yeah, I mean, this is an amazing question. I think, really, just to be quite blunt, we would need to develop systems that are based on anarchistic principles, where we don't have a centralized point of authority and power, where we understand where... If we think about the concept of... grains which are inoculated and then put into a substrate then everyone in there you know if we were to have a system of governance that was based on mycelium then it wouldn't be uh you know we would have to totally reimagine the political structure where it's not top down where we have more trust and openness and honesty and um Yeah, in feeling that, okay, people can be these inoculated pieces of grain in different areas of the substrate. And if we are all operating on this open level, then we can find ways where we communicate and we're sharing resources. So I think, you know, in terms of devolution into local governments, that kind of thing would be really useful, but you'd need to be quite careful, I think, in terms of resource. I think, yeah, non-hierarchical structures where you're not You're not restricted by a certain time goal. I think this is the thing. When you're growing mushrooms, when you've got mycelium in a cupboard and you're colonizing some grain, if you keep looking or you ask, oh, how long is it going to take? And it's like, it would take as long as it takes. Now, if you had that in a... you know, a cabinet meeting in the UK and someone's like, we've got these targets, we need to hit them by twenty, twenty seven. And the person goes, yeah, I don't know about that. It will just take as long as it takes, you know, because of the way in which, you know, the class structure is where it's all dependent on results and key performance indicators. How do we know if we're doing well, where we've achieved this by this time, you know, net zero by twenty, thirty or whatever it is. So I think if we can get rid of this idea of target driven goals and look at what is the what is look more in terms of systems and outcomes, you know, like if we look at the the slime mold, which was put into a model of the Tokyo subway system and found out the most efficient way to do it. And that's what the Tokyo subway system is modeled on. So it's like if we can. start modeling systems you know there might be ways we can really do this in in practical ways looking at resources when it comes to food and energy and yeah try and create like literal physical structures and government departments which are replicating these principles I mean it's a really big question and think has has many layers but I think certainly the principles in terms of energetic sharing of resources and even when there's competing ideas you know as I mentioned before with the competing strains of fungi you don't necessarily all have to agree on the same thing politically or philosophically you can just realize that hey we are all this this organism and actually all this stuff surrounding politics and philosophy and identity politics is it's a distraction it's not really necessary it's kind of stuff we've been holding on to for ages if we can get rid of some of that and try and form new identities into this collective you know as we've been talking about that therapeutic realization of becoming part of the whole and try and maybe get our political leaders I don't know, taking lion's mane and cordyceps and reishi and not feeling so stressed out. You know, I really do think like, you know, especially in the UK where we have so many stressed out leaders that come from these, you know, upper class systems where they would have gone to boarding school and not had connection to their parents and really, you know, they're coming from places of trauma, you know, and it's like, how can we, help our leaders to say, you know, what's all right. And, and not feel like there's this scarcity, you know, coming into these ideas of abundance and being able to share. And then we don't have to fight wars because actually there is enough to go around. Yeah, it's really well said. I look at the political structure over here in the United States and I have so many of the similar ideas and you can't help but, I mean, you get angry. But then for me comes empathy of like, man, these are just human beings. These are just people. And I don't know what kind of cards they've been dealt. I have no idea what's going on in their family life. It doesn't look too good from this angle over here. You know, maybe Luke, you have done, I think both of you have done incredible things. One thing that I noticed about you, Luke, is that you have found a place to bloom. Like you've came to this new location and you found not only who you are, but what you love and it's thriving, man. I know it wasn't easy to set up and start doing, but do you think that that's an answer for some people is like, hey, look, if you're not satisfied with this particular area, you can go somewhere and make it your home and, and begin to bloom where you're planted out there. Is that, is that a strategy that you use or is that something advice you would give to people who may be searching? Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm talking about these political systems. I kind of felt the United States was oppressive to me, just the political system and, and just, you know, like it's how everyone thinks and scrolling suburbia and this idea to a nine to five job and, you know, all these things are just take, for granted. And like, I just want to do something else. I just like want to figure something else out. And for me, I was looking for deep healing because I was, my PTSD was so bad. So I tried ayahuasca, but in that experience, I'm like, wait, why don't I try to live down here and just figure it out? You know, that seemed much more healthy for me. I felt better, you know, more connected to the earth, more connected to the land, more more freedom, a different place. So I made that work. So I think for a lot of people, just, just traveling experience, different cultures, just even a little bit. Cause I think most Americans only have passports. So if you just like travel a little bit to see a little bit of the world, give you a whole different perspective. And then for me, um, yeah, I felt like I was in a world I could remake. myself and make something that wasn't really done before I didn't have the constraints of the political system like the united states or uk or psychedelics are illegal especially at the time you know and and all of a sudden like oh I can start doing research in this part of the world right and then I can start you know doing studies and get this out there get this knowledge out there um I think like kind of anarchist philosophy that you know all he was talking about like Uh, you know, we have this idea that we have to have these governments, these superstructures, and there's like all of a sudden, like I said, like millions of bureaucrats and I'm gonna, I don't know what they do, you know, but we think we have to have this system because we had it for so long, but maybe we don't need these systems and maybe we should be free to do what we want. And all of a sudden, like a healthier system can like naturally emerge from the ground up. I think these are like conversations maybe we should start having, um, because To be honest, all Western systems aren't sustainable right now. They're all extremely in debt. Every politician borrows from the future and the future children are the pay for these things. This is nuts. And this is just like the tip of the iceberg of what's happening in these political systems. And like you, I can have sympathy for these, for these people in this power structure, because I think they're born into it in the same way. But also I think that it's kind of concerning when you consider that UK, United States, Russia, China, all of these like massive nuclear arsenals, right? And one little off thing in one of these leaders heads can like one little thing, one little psychological disturbance can lead to a really terrible situation to say the least. So I think we should be open to all possibilities and you know, why not? You know, like I can talk, we can talk about Fungi for a long time, but why not look at what something else is doing? Why not? You know, like maybe that, maybe that is a good idea. Who's to say it's not? Um, I think we should just be open-minded everything. Yeah. I agree. Both of you gentlemen, I have a fascinating – this is such a good time, and I feel like we just barely scratched the surface right here. Two hours flew by like it was nothing. Like it was two minutes, and I have – I probably have like another twenty-five questions in here, but I got a hard out coming up. So maybe we can come back and do it again. Like I really – thankful for both of your guys time and while we have a little bit of time left let's start with luke luke would you be so kind as to tell people where they can find you what you have coming up and what you're excited about and then we'll shift to ollie after that go ahead luke yeah so um just this last year we're running retreats in peru with um ayahuasca and machuma and brain mapping and kind of adventure because I love the ideas have an adventure with retreat I'll stay in the same space we do mountain hiking and stuff like that so um the best way to reach me I have two websites one's called tiwaz awakening tiwaz as in the rune the nordic rune and um another one called neuro enlightenment which kind of more stresses the neurofeedback side of things the brain training and tiwaz awakenings are are a Adventure retreats and both those emails. He was awakened in neural enlightenment. And the big thing we have coming up with on an exact date, we have a documentary. It's finished and it's amazing work. I'm really happy about it. And it'll be probably released here in the next couple of months. So thank you. Yeah. Fantastic. Ollie, you have got some incredible, uh, speeches that you've been given you've been doing quite a bit of touring and I was hopeful that maybe you could shed some light on what you're excited about where people can find you and what you've been up to man Yeah, thank you. So I'm doing a talk tomorrow night online for the Psychedelic Society, which is a UK institution on the topic of psychedelics and social justice. So I'm going to be doing more talks on this topic and also engaging more within mycelial structures and ways of thinking so collaborating with different organizations like I mentioned mycelium hub in Sweden to be doing some events with them holding some retreats next year and doing some intensive kind of emergence events so bringing people together at the mycelium hub and finding ways to mirror this mycelial way of working and see what arises naturally. And I'm working with trade associations in the UK, liaising with different functional mushroom companies. So I do consulting for functional mushrooms, helping organizations and individuals understand how functional mushrooms can benefit them. So looking at things like the functionality of the workplace, but also looking at the functionality of the human system. So you can find me at thefungiconsultant.com and also Oli at thefungiconsultant. Also my link tree, which is linktree.com forward slash Oli Genbash. And you can find articles and talks that I've done, music as well. As I said, I'm a psychedelic musician, so that's really exciting. We've got a new album coming out next year, my band Codex Serafini, which is all intertwined with... topics surrounding the spirit, the pneuma, the things which are connecting us to our inner nature. And we like to express ourselves within this wider psychedelic context and be champions, I guess, for kind of more wilder psychedelic expression, psychedelic culture, you know, trying to draw conversations more towards that artistic creative side of things where it's not just, you know, scientists. So, yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, gentlemen, hang on briefly afterwards. I want to talk to you both. But to everybody within the sound of my voice, I know I've got tons of other podcasters to listen to. Doc, Clint, Doc, reach out to both these guys. Incredible individuals. Ladies and gentlemen, within the sound of my voice, go down to the show notes. Check out both of these gentlemen. Reach out to them. If you have any questions, if you enjoyed it, reach out to them. And that's all we've got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha. Thank you.