Conversation starts @ 8:25

How can we understand traditional accounts of visionary experience in terms of the neurophysiology of our brain? What are the scientific bases for shamanism and healing, cross-culturally, throughout history beginning with the Byzantine era to today? These are several questions posited by Dr. Winkelman within the first few minutes of the interview. We continue exploring the void experience of introverted mysticism and the narratives expressed in extroverted mysticism (and what are the differences?), spiritual practice and psychedelic use in youth, recreational vs. religious use of these substances, a session with the Mazatec healer, Maria Sabina, in his youth, we discuss the tendency toward reductionism when using a physiological lens to explain the phenomenology of consciousness, describe the neurophenomonological experience of the spirit world, extrasensory perceptions and the brain, what is real?, naive materialism, group consciousness and the development of religion and the religious impulse, belonging, religion and social control, symbol use and group dynamics, religious groups and social connections, western medicine, ritual in healing, placebo effect, cross-cultural analysis of shamanism, priests & witches.

Bio:

Michael Winkelman, PhD, University of California–Irvine; MPH, University of Arizona, retired from the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University in 2009. Winkelman has engaged in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research on shamanism, psychedelics, and altered states of consciousness, focusing principally on the universal patterns of shamanism and identifying the associated biological bases. His publications on shamanism include Shamans, Priests and Witches (1992), which provides a cross-cultural examination of the nature of shamanism; and Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing (2nd ed., 2010). Shamanism provides a biogenetic model of shamanism that explains the evolutionary origins of spiritual healing in ancient ritual capacities. This biogenetic approach is expanded in an assessment of the evolutionary origins of religion in his co-authored Supernatural as Natural. These approaches provide a framework for understanding the contribution of psychedelics to the evolution of the human mind and social relations and their continued application in healing. Winkelman served as an expert witness for the defense in the Santo Daime case against the U.S. federal government, which won their right of religious freedom to use of ayahuasca as a sacrament. Winkelman received a Fulbright Fellowship for research on the health of ayahuasca church members in Brazil during 2009 ( https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00136 ). Winkelman is currently living near Pirenopolis in the central highlands of Brazil; he may be reached through his website:

https://michaelwinkelman.com

Articles:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Winkelman

to purchase book:

http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A2593C

Referenced resources:

https://www.ligare.org

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

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Conversation starts @ 4:15

The Santo Daime, a syncretistic tradition including parts of indigenous South American religion, African folk traditions, and Catholicism, is a new religion as of the early 20th century. All of this to say that in this conversation, we are invited into a deep dive to explore the nature and formation of religion in general as we look at the specifics of a sacred ayahuasca-based new religious tradition. We begin with Dr. Barnard’s first-person experience within The Santo Daime, which is a real treat given that, as a professor of religious studies, he is quite experienced evaluating, comparing, & exploring religion and religious traditions from the third person, though in Liquid Light we benefit from his history as a comparativist, who analyzes his own tradition. In modern studies we often learn of first-person experiences with ayahuasca – the images, the process, the purging, though we do not often get a glimpse into the religion itself. Today’s conversation explores these dimensions of ayahuasca and more, including the formation of the religion, the institution, the preparation of the sacramental substance, philosophical interpretations, metaphysics, an exploration of religious studies and comparativism, divinity with The Santo Daime, Christ Consciousness, panpsychism, William James, & mystical experiences - we end by briefly questioning the ontological nature of the Other, though read the book and take a deep dive into mediumship and encountering the More.

Bio:

G. William (Bill) Barnard is a Professor of Religious Studies, as well as a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. His primary areas of research interests are the comparative philosophy of mysticism, religion and the social sciences, contemporary spirituality, religion and healing, and consciousness studies. For over 15 years (including his ongoing study of Portuguese), Professor Barnard has researched the Santo Daime tradition, a syncretistic, entheogenically-based new religious movement that emerged in Brazil in the mid-twentieth century. Professor Barnard is the author of Living Consciousness: The Metaphysical Vision of Henri Bergson as well as Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism, both published by State University of New York Press. In addition, Professor Barnard is the co-editor of Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism. Professor Barnard has also written many journal articles and book chapters on a variety of topics, such as pedagogy in religious studies, the nature of religious experience, issues in the psychology of religion, and most recently, entheogenic religions and spirituality.

https://liquidlightbook.com

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

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Conversation starts @ 7:26

This conversation begins with a discussion of the banisteriopsis vine (ayahuasca) featured in the background. We explore Dr. McKenna’s first adventure down to South America to study and explore psychedelics used in the Amazonian medico-religious process. This endeavor would eventually connect him with several elder medicine men who created mixtures for Dennis to study – “We want to learn everything that you know about ayahuasca.” We discuss how the indigenous folks of the Amazon responded to the scientists who sought to investigate their sacramental plant, the rubber boom of the early 20th century, lost aspects of the Amazonian ethnomedical tradition, the hard problem of consciousness, the limitations of reductionism, the value of science, limitations of science, an overview of the journey to La Chorrera, building the temple for “spiritual” experience, or ecstatic/mystical experience, the body as apothecary, theories of consciousness, the molecule and the “trip,” scientific bias of the west, the Default Mode Network, the value of psychedelics to the scientific community, and the McKenna Academy.

Bio:

Dennis McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines. Dennis also serves on the Advisory Board of the American Botanical Council; as Founder and Executive Director for the Institute for Natural Products Research; as an Independent Research Consultant to the Phytomedicine and Nutraceutical Industry; was formerly on the Editorial Board of Phytomedicine, International Journal of Phytotherapy and Phytopharmacology; and is an adjunct professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In that role, he has taught graduate courses in Botanical Medicines and Ethnopharmacology and an inter-session ‘intensive’ in Hawaii each January called Plants in Human Affairs. He has also taught summer field courses in Ecuador for the University of Arizona, and courses in the Amazon and Andes for Pharmacy doctoral students at the University of Kansas and the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Dr. McKenna received his Master’s Degree in Botany from the University of Hawaii in 1979, his Ph.D. in Botanical Sciences from the University of British Columbia in 1984, and continued into post-doctoral research fellowships in the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and in the Department of Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine. His research has included the pharmacology, botany, and chemistry of ayahuasca and oo-koo-hé. He has also conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon.

Since 2019, he has been working with colleagues to manifest a long-term dream: the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, a non-profit organization founded in the spirit of the ancient Mystery Schools and dedicated to the study of plant medicines, consciousness, intelligence in nature, preservation of indigenous knowledge and a re-visioning of humanity's relationship with Nature. Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of 6 books and over 50 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

https://mckenna.academy

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

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Conversation starts @ 4:31

We begin our conversation exploring José’s background, and with the likes of Dr. Andew Samuels and Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés as mentors, his intellectual, professional, and spiritual orientation ranges from depth psychology and meditation to attachment and spiritually integrated psychotherapy. First up is one of José’s papers on spirituality and psychotherapy wherein he takes a critical look at “Jungian” approaches and identifies some of the dangers of both ungrounded psychotherapy and spirituality. We discuss the nature of therapy, ways psychotherapy can support and transform suffering, the nature of the relationship in therapy, meditation, development of a private spiritual process, religion and defining related terms such as spirituality and mysticism, the taxonomy of healers and therapists, the shadow side of spiritual work and healing professions, shamanism, fairytales, the archetype defined, inflation in healing work, differences between mythology and fairytales, we analyze the fairytale “Sleeping Beauty,” or “Briar Rose,” and the importance of inviting the unexplored psychological aspects of self.

Bio:

José has an M.A in Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies from the University of Essex, where Andrew Samuels was his academic supervisor, and an MSc in Systemic Psychotherapy from the Milton Erikson Institute from Monterrey. Since 2013, he has trained with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. He works as a psychotherapist in private practice and writes the column ‘The Spiritually Ambivalent Therapist’ for Thresholds, a Journal of Psychotherapy and Spirituality, from the British Association of Counseling and Psychotherapy.

Class:

https://junghouston.org/theevents/the-seven-gates-to-the-underworld-the-descent-of-inanna-online/

Journal:

https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/thresholds/

Sleeping Beauty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty

https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm050.html

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

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YouTube for The Sacred Speaks

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Conversation starts @ 6:29

“Ecstasy, trance, and soul flight … these powerful and potentially transformative elements of ancient experience have long been left to the fringes of archaeological research.”

Dr. Sarah K. Costello and John begin with a question exploring the often unconscious issue of projecting modern perspective onto antiquity to support a current argument. As an archeologist, anthropologist, & art-historian, Dr. Costello’s peak into antiquity is through the lens of the material content. We continue exploring the contributions of Dr. Costello’s various disciplines, challenges of evaluating art in antiquity, symbols, Gobekli Tepe, interpretation of antiquity, carefully approaching one’s intuitive assumptions about antiquity and the risk of projection and bias, the Transcendent as a cultural universal, challenging the idea of universals, narrativization of consciousness, cross-cultural studies, universals and the particulars, we discuss her creative process for the book, “The Routledge Companion to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World,” defining ecstatic experience, we discuss, The Immortality Key, & cultural containers for alternate states in antiquity.

Bio:

Sarah Kielt Costello, Ph.D., has taught art history at UHCL since 2014. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the humanities and the history of ancient art. She was the recipient of the UH Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2012. Dr. Costello’s research focus is the visual culture of the early periods of the Ancient Near East.

In her writing, she investigates the social contexts of visual culture, especially how people store and communicate ideas, and how imagery relates to religion. She is a project leader of a collaborative research initiative with Houston’s Menil Collection, focused on the art of the ancient Mediterranean world. She has conducted field research in Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, and Greece, and in 2013 studied in Greece as a Fulbright Fellow in the summer session at the American School of Classical Studies.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Ecstatic-Experience-in-the-Ancient-World/Stein-Costello-Foster/p/book/9780367480325

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

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Conversation starts 5:45

Growing up within a family lineage of community herbalists and healers, Dr. Hobbs leads us through his orientation to healing and medicine starting with an overview of medical and healing systems, in particular the intersection between eastern and western medicine. The central question that Dr. Hobbs asks is: “What is medicine?” This, an obvious question that, sadly, is not often reflected upon. Dr. Hobbs urges us to cultivate and source our own medicine within our daily lives.

As a young man, Chris spent his time in the old forest looking for mushrooms and, given his family history and knowledge of healing modalities, he became acquainted with medicines that grow naturally. We continue with subjects ranging from the community of mycologists, mystical states through a scientific process, the religion of science, food as medicine, issues with modern medicine, factory farming, food tax, food as source of healing, medical response to Covid, vaccine rollout, the role of viruses in our biological network, humanity living out of balance, the dual split of the vaccine, understanding a vaccine and a virus, the scientific method, publication and interpretation of data, medicinal mushrooms, inviting mushrooms into your diet, the microbiome and the gut, fungi and the immune system, nutritional benefit of mushrooms, visionary mushrooms, value of subjective experience following many mushroom journeys, and the lack of cultural and ritual process to fold psychedelics and religious experience into a sacred practice.

Bio:

Dr. Christopher Hobbs is a fourth-generation, internationally renowned herbalist, licensed acupuncturist, author, clinician, botanist, mycologist, and research scientist with over 35 years of experience with herbal medicine.

Christopher has a doctorate from UC Berkeley in phylogenetics, evolutionary biology and phytochemistry. He is also a founding member of the American Herbalists Guild.

https://www.christopherhobbs.com

https://www.facebook.com/chrisrhobbs

https://www.tellurideinstitute.org/telluride-mushroom-festival/

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

Information for Mark Plotkin:

www.markplotkin.com

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Conversation starts 8:36

We begin by exploring Dr. Kastrup’s history with Jung and philosophers in the 19th and 20th centuries and very quickly move into antiquity through the classicist Peter Kingsley. We discuss the layers of meaning in writing throughout our cultural history, common misunderstandings of texts, positivism of the 19th at 20th century, assumptions within systems of thought and belief, the problem of abstractions and interpretations of reality, Aristotelian logic and conflicts with abstractions, quantum systems, maps and logic, intuitionism, maintaining mystery, Pauli & Jung, synchronicity, meaning, myth and language, & reality as mind.

Bio:

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on 'Scientific American,' the 'Institute of Art and Ideas,' the 'Blog of the American Philosophical Association' and 'Big Think,' among others.

https://www.bernardokastrup.com

https://www.essentiafoundation.org

https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/bernardo-kastrup/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeDZCa3VrRQvzBlVR-oVVmA

John’s Workshop:

https://www.esalen.org/workshops/exploring-the-shadow-and-the-psychology-of-fame

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

WATCH:

YouTube for The Sacred Speaks

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https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/

@thesacredspeaks

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Conversation starts @ 8:15

What happens when the place where expansive, meaningful, transcendental, and just simply weird conversations becomes just as important and meaningful as the conversations that began there? Esalen. We begin our conversation exploring the birth and development of The Esalen Institute and then the boundaries of the geographical container dissolve and the ideas emerge to the foreground – religion, psychology, mysticism, & psychedelics. Jeff and I discuss the founders and the origin story of Esalen, religious comparativism, the counterculture in America, Russian & United States relations through the Cold War, diplomatic solutions through psychic research, the psychological and the social/political, the influence of Asian philosophy, Tantra, plant medicine, psychology, somatic process, Aldous Huxley, Abraham Maslow, social justice, sameness and difference, cancel culture, the need for unifying language and shared understanding of difference, and the 5-times jacket prize.

Bio:

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world. He is the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he also serves as Chair of the Board. Jeff is the author or co-author of eleven books, seven of which are with The University of Chicago Press, including, most recently a memoir-manifesto

entitled Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago, 2017). He has also served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes, 2015-2016). He specializes in the study of extreme religious states and the re-visioning of a New Comparativism, particularly as both involve putting “the impossible” back on the academic table again. He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of religions and the sciences for The University of Chicago Press, collectively entitled The Super Story.

https://jeffreyjkripal.com/life/

https://impossiblearchives.rice.edu/registration/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MG5gFtZ3U8&t=9428s

John’s Workshop:

https://www.esalen.org/workshops/exploring-our-shadows-through-the-psychology-of-fame

www.junghouston.org

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

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YouTube for The Sacred Speaks

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https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/

@thesacredspeaks

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Conversation starts @ 5:38

Dr. Miles Neale offers us his breadth of knowledge about psychology, Buddhism, suffering, and psychedelics. We begin this conversation with Miles describing his early training, teachers, and practice as he traces the path of his development as a psychotherapist and teacher of Buddhism. Dr. Neale emphasizes a multidisciplinary dialogic process that is necessary to address the suffering of our time. We discuss The Four Noble Truths, a foundational insight and scaffolding of Buddhism, and use this frame to describe the problem, the cause of the problem, the potential for a solution, and the path for the solution, we explore materialism as a worldview that is the problem, define materialism and nihilism, the limitations and value of materialism and the overwhelming reliance on the scientific worldview – to the exclusion of religion, Tibetan history and practice, oracles, the confluence between easter and wester traditions, the Holy Grail, the Jungian Self and Buddhist no self, metaphysics, a spiritual path, the Three Jewels, and more.

Bio:

Dr. Miles Neale, PsyD, is a Buddhist psychotherapist in private practice and founder of the two-year online Contemplative Studies Program. Author of Gradual Awakening (Sounds True, 2018) and co-editor of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2017), Miles is a faculty member of Tibet House (US) and Weill Cornell Medical College. With more than twenty years integrating the mind science and meditative practices of Tibetan Buddhism with psychotherapy, trauma research and neuroscience, Miles is a forerunner in the emerging field of contemplative psychotherapy, and leads pilgrimages around the Buddhist world.

milesneale.com

John’s Class:

https://www.esalen.org/workshops/exploring-our-shadows-through-the-psychology-of-fame

www.junghouston.org

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

WATCH:

YouTube for The Sacred Speaks

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Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/

@thesacredspeaks

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Conversation starts @ 7:50

This conversation begins by exploring the ground-level of psychedelics and it broadens to other aspects of the relationship between religion and psychedelics, continuing through the psychedelic renaissance, science and the sacred, consciously bringing these sacraments into the broader culture to heal and support those who seek out these transformative, a brief history of psychedelics in the U.S., mystical experiences setting the stage, the Perennial philosophy, social control and religion, misinterpretation and the birth of harmful aspects of religious dogma, a life trajectory of ritual, death and ritual, death and psychedelics, the nature of suffering, transpersonal psychology, agape and meaning, a report from the psychedelic field, and training clinicians for psychedelic.

Bio:

Mark Arey, born in Richmond, VA (1954) and raised outside Washington DC, Arey converted to Orthodox Christianity from the Episcopal Church when he was 22 years old. He graduated in 1975 from the University of Maryland (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) with a BA in Latin Language and Literature. In 1976, he matriculated at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline MA. He graduated in 1979 receiving a M.Div. (with distinction) and was subsequently ordained both deacon and presbyter in October 1979. In the intervening 34 years, Arey served six parishes (last as interim Dean of the Archdiocesan Cathedral in New York City), as well as parishes in Baltimore, MD, New Haven, CT, Nashville, TN (twice), Frederick, MD and New York City. In 2006 he was awarded the rank of Economos and in 2007 that of Protopresbyter. In 2013, he asked to return to the ranks of the laity in order to marry, and did so, marrying Lyn Cameron Hayes on December 9, 2013. Arey has one grown daughter, Zoë Arey, who lives in New York City with her three daughters, Lillian, Beatrice, and Evelyn.

https://www.thehellenicinitiative.org

Anthony P. Bossis, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine conducting FDA-approved clinical research with the psychedelic compound psilocybin for over a decade. Dr. Bossis was director of palliative care research and co-principal investigator on the 2016 landmark clinical trial demonstrating a significant reduction in emotional distress from a single psilocybin session in persons with cancer, specifically, a rapid decrease in depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and demoralization along with improvements in spiritual well-being and quality of life. He is study director and lead session guide on a clinical trial evaluating psilocybin-generated mystical experience upon religious leaders. His primary psychedelic research interests include the treatment of end-of-life existential distress and advancing our understanding of consciousness, meaning, and spirituality. Dr. Bossis is a training supervisor of psychotherapy at NYU-Bellevue Hospital Center and co-founder of the Bellevue Hospital Palliative Care Service. He is a faculty member for The Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research Certificate Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies and for The Art of Dying Institute in NYC. He has a long-standing interest in comparative religion, mysticism, and the interface of psychology and spirituality. He maintains a private psychotherapy and consulting practice in NYC.

www.esalen.com

www.junghouston.org

Website for The Sacred Speaks:

http://www.thesacredspeaks.com

WATCH:

YouTube for The Sacred Speaks

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@thesacredspeaks

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WATCH

Get Centered

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdbeVcDXWXezYMkHJg-2duw

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