He was compelled to write a number of unorthodox books, including The Psilocybin Solution and Darwin's Unfinished Business. He also wrote and directed two documentaries, Manana and Metanoia. In this interview, he talks about his journey to becoming a writer, the difficulties he faced in getting his first book published, and his views on global warming and Agenda 21.
00:03:47.920Well, you need to research this because basically it's the UN is pushing for Agenda 21, which is about, you know, climate change and changing different things for the environment, for the health of the environment.
00:03:59.300And one of those things is rounding people up out of the rural areas and into the cities living in apartments because it's better for the environment.
00:04:11.220Well, I wouldn't be able to comment on that.
00:04:13.200I mean, I think the majority – I mean, there are megacities now.
00:04:18.560They're actually defined as megacities because so many people live in them.
00:04:46.320Well, we've – one thing that I bang on a lot about is the fact that we don't live in harmonious accord with the larger biospherical system in which we're embedded.
00:05:04.820And that – the biosphere is our life support system.
00:05:09.320And it's interesting that something like eco – you're familiar with ecosystem services?
00:05:15.280The phrase ecosystem services, that was a way of – it was a scientific way of highlighting the important role that the biosphere or Gaia plays in supporting not just human life but all life on Earth.
00:05:31.000The temperature control, the salinity of the ocean, water cycles and all this kind of thing, carbon sequestration and all this kind of thing.
00:05:42.900It's not widely known about because when we – this is the thing with cities is they're like cocoons.
00:05:48.500And we go about our business totally oblivious to the larger environment that supports us.
00:05:56.220So it's like we've just lost touch with Mother Earth, with Pachamama.
00:06:03.660And so the way forward – and, you know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see this.
00:06:08.660The way forward is we have to live in harmony with the larger biosphere.
00:06:14.260And that means understanding how the biosphere works and learning from – this is why I think the biomimicry movement is good.
00:06:23.160And they're on the right track because they're looking to nature for solutions to various problems of living.
00:06:31.920And that needs to be expanded, that kind of biomimicry movement, that ethos needs – that's – my work is partly about that.
00:06:42.660So in answer to your original question about humanity and the Earth, we have to live in harmony with the larger biospherical system.
00:06:50.820And that means attuning ourselves once again to the biosphere and to the way the biosphere works and getting back to our roots and realizing that we can't just go off.
00:07:03.640You know, in the latest music video I made, I said at one point in there that I felt that mankind has had its head up its own ass for too long.
00:07:14.480And we need to take our collective head out – mankind needs to take its head out of its ass and look to the larger system that we've cut ourselves off from.
00:07:42.200All businesses are jumping on the bandwagon.
00:07:46.420Nature has learned sustainability because life on Earth has existed for almost four billion years.
00:07:52.720Rainforests can sustain themselves with millions of species healthily for millions of years.
00:07:59.040Nature has learned that life itself has learned the art of sustainable living.
00:08:04.020So the sooner we get back in harmony with nature and learn from nature, we're not – you know, you often hear the phrase that we're – even Lovelock mentioned this, that we're stewards of the Earth.
00:08:21.900And this is why I think the mushroom – I'm interested in the mushroom because that – well, that's another story, I guess.
00:08:26.500But that brings you – that can bring you in close communion with the biosphere.
00:08:30.840And I definitely want to get into that.
00:08:32.280But I first want to ask you, how do we become so disconnected from the Earth if humans come from the Earth?
00:08:39.200I guess it's – well, right now, if I'm talking – if I think about my own experience, it's cities.
00:08:47.300It's living in a city and just being surrounded by man-made symbols, man-made information, man-made – it's all – we've surrounded ourselves in a sort of – like a sort of pseudo reality.
00:09:04.980And we've – it comes with the territory.
00:09:07.660If you live in a city, you just walk on concrete everywhere.
00:09:14.560The only time you realize – if you live in a big city like London or New York or whatever, the only time you realize you're in a living biosphere is if – like I said in my metanoia films, if it rains heavily or it's really windy.
00:09:29.760But people don't – you know, they step outside of their apartment, go straight into a car, drive to work, get into an office.
00:09:34.960They said the biosphere doesn't exist.
00:09:37.040You don't know you're part of the biosphere.
00:09:40.340Now, that's the problem with living in a city and being immersed in trivial media and shopping malls and all this kind of thing.
00:09:48.980You don't – people don't even use the word biosphere.
00:09:52.700In fact, it's quite a newly invented word.
00:09:57.360So, we're – it's very important that we become aware of the larger life support system that is Spaceship Earth.
00:10:07.480And the government can't make claims to owning all these natural resources, which according to Agenda 21 for our sustainability, they could even have claims to rainwater.
00:10:16.080I mean, there's some places around the world right now where it's illegal to collect rainwater.
00:10:42.520I wouldn't use terminology like frequency changes, but we're part of Gaia.
00:10:46.520We're part of nature, but our problem – I mean, we are nature, but our problem is that we're disconnected from it.
00:10:55.060So, I think we're – it's – we're going – we're going through an immature adolescent – we're not a mature species yet.
00:11:04.000But, and I think we're going through – you know, like when you go through puberty, it takes a number of years, and they can be quite stressful and weird.
00:11:16.260It takes, you know, maybe centuries for this to pass – to grow up.
00:11:24.340We're being forced to – with climate change now and 7 billion people, we're – and peak oil and all this kind of thing.
00:11:30.680We're being forced to re-evaluate and grow up, which is not a bad thing.
00:11:35.180It's – the system itself is forcing that upon us.
00:11:37.960So, that's why you've got millions of people interested in the Zeitgeist movement and the Venus Project and people looking for new values and all this kind of thing.
00:11:46.660Because the information – the information – I'm a great believer that there's information within the biospherical system to heal itself.
00:11:55.740Just like your body, if you cut yourself, you have all the information and all the parts in there for your body to heal itself, right?
00:12:02.640It needs all the right bits to come together and your body knows how to heal itself.
00:12:07.260I think that's the same principle holds for the biosphere.
00:12:10.800All the information – and I include human culture as part of the biosphere – all the information necessary for the healing is within the system.
00:12:18.580Hey, what do you think of the Venus Project?
00:12:22.060Oh, well, I mean, I was – I got to visit Jack Fresco.
00:12:26.840I was with a film crew and we went and interviewed him back in 2010.
00:12:34.380We met Peter Joseph, the whole Zeitgeist thing as well.
00:12:37.700So, I've been through all that and come out of all that.
00:12:43.200Yeah, he's a very nice – he's a great guy.
00:12:45.760He's interesting because he's – well, he's 96 now.
00:12:55.880I actually asked him when I was there, Florida, at his place, whether he'd ever – he doesn't have much of an interest in consciousness.
00:13:05.240They think – Roxanne Meadows and Jack think that any talk of – any spiritual issues and anything to do with consciousness or mindfulness, spiritual pursuits, they think that's all mental masturbation.
00:14:21.300It's the eco-psychological impact of the mushroom that I'm most interested in and it can get you to perceive nature with new eyes and it has a tremendous eco-psychological impact.
00:14:37.060And I think it's the same with ayahuasca and I think that's their main virtue is their catalyst for change, particularly change in our attitudes towards life on earth.
00:14:46.940So, how far back does the use of psilocybin go?
00:14:53.900Well, as far as I know, thousands of years.
00:14:56.760I mean, it was used – the mushroom was used in Mesoamerica, the Aztecs and the Maya.
00:15:03.740And so, thousands of years as far as we know.
00:15:07.240And if we get to the heart of the psilocybin experience, what is the message?
00:15:42.100But he said a really interesting – I mean, he's a great guy.
00:15:44.360He's a tremendous influence on my own work.
00:15:46.540But he said one of the – he said, and I agree with him, that one of the most important things about psychedelics like psilocybin is this concept of unity.
00:15:57.840And if you look at research, scientific research that's been done into, say, the psilocybin experience and where they interview people,
00:16:10.340because obviously you can't see what's going on in someone's head whilst they're having the experience.
00:16:14.660But you can give them – what the scientific method does is you give questionnaires and then you gather data and you look for commonalities in the experience.
00:16:22.960And one of the things that crops up again and again is a common aspect of the psilocybin experience is the feeling of – the interconnectedness of all things becomes apparent.
00:16:36.980And I think that in itself, it sounds like a simple thing, but I think it's a very virtuous thing.
00:16:43.840I mean, it's an intellectual – it's an idea you hear a lot about.
00:16:48.840But with psilocybin, you really – you perceive it directly, that everything is part of one interconnected fluidic stuff.
00:16:57.380And to have that overwhelming insight where you actually see it, you see it, I think that's a very powerful thing and that will have a big impact.
00:17:08.660Well, another figure that a lot of people see, and I've seen it before on my experience, Jesus tends to show off for many during the psilocybin experience and aliens.
00:17:21.280Well, I think this is the way – I have a kind of Jungian approach to this.
00:17:26.300I think it's the – well, Terence McKenna used to call it the other, that you confront the other.
00:17:32.920There's a feeling – the psilocybin experience can lead to a feeling – an I-thou relationship with a tutorial other.
00:17:44.300You feel like you're in the presence of a higher intelligence.
00:17:47.420And I think that that higher intelligence is part of the psyche, is part of the unconscious coming into conscious awareness, and it will present itself to you according to your unique configuration of your psyche.
00:18:06.220So if you're a very religious person, you know, you'll have a conversation with Jesus.
00:18:12.080So there have been people on taking ayahuasca who don't see jaguars or massive anacondas or anything.
00:18:35.060Yeah, Jodie Foster, the Carl Sagan novel.
00:18:37.300In that, this alien intelligence, if you recall, the way it presents itself to her is in the form of her father.
00:18:46.440Remember that bit where she meets at the end?
00:18:48.620I think that's what the psyche is doing.
00:18:51.180It's – in my book, The Psilocybin Solution, I talk about that it's almost like there are local dialects according to the way your cultural upbringing
00:19:00.540and all the sort of icons and themes that are within your psyche or within your unconscious.
00:19:07.460So if you're very religious, you might see Jesus.
00:19:10.220If you're very interested in nature and Gaia and you take them out in nature, then you might see, you know, animals and trees and what have you.
00:19:22.040So can fungi or other psychoactive plants also be tricksters?
00:19:25.160I mean, can plant consciousness kind of mess with you?
00:19:49.580But I don't think it's – I don't see it as a plant spirit that's there like an entity that's tricking you.
00:19:55.380I think it's – there are – I would go down a psychological explanation for that.
00:20:02.320Parts of the psyche maybe that are disconnected.
00:20:05.200So like maybe paranoia or a bad trip that's all just yourself amplified basically when you focus on it?
00:20:12.300Well, psychedelic means mind manifesting.
00:20:14.980That's what the term psychedelic means, mind manifesting.
00:20:19.600And so what it's doing is that you've got to remember that your unconscious is vast.
00:20:26.020Think of all the people you've met, all the places you've been, all the experiences you've had, all the remarkable experiences you've had, all the horrific experience.
00:20:34.840You know, all your – and that unconscious, it's not like a static retrieval system.
00:20:40.920It's like a living thing and it's – because it's unconscious, it's not in your conscious awareness.
00:20:47.240When you take a psychedelic and also during dreams and maybe other altered states, your parts of the unconscious come into conscious awareness.
00:20:57.820And if you – a bad – I mean, Terence McKenna used to say that a bad trip was where you're being forced to learn quicker than you're used to learning.
00:21:05.020So basically unfinished business, I call it unfinished business, particularly relationship issues.
00:21:12.160I think life really is all about relationships, everything.
00:21:17.820And we all have difficult relationships, yeah?
00:21:20.200We all carry difficult, unfinished business, loose ends, relationships that aren't optimized, let's say, or aren't as harmonious as they could be.
00:21:29.800Stressed relationships and all this kind of thing.
00:21:31.780It all comes into conscious awareness when you take a psychedelic.
00:21:35.760And so that can be – because you're being – that's why they're used in therapy.
00:21:40.120And that can be – and that's why they used to use LSD in their 50s to treat alcoholics, you know, to force them to confront these problems in their psyche.
00:21:51.380So it's – you're forced to confront all this and that's why it can be – so a bad trip is really when you're – it's you.
00:21:57.820There's nothing – there's this – sometimes you get the feeling that people think there's something bad in the actual molecule.
00:22:04.020Like the molecule is a wicked molecule because there's – it's got demons in there and bad things, you know.
00:22:20.920Is that an astral realm that it opens us up to or is it beyond the astral realm?
00:22:27.420I don't – again, you're using language that I'm not familiar with using.
00:22:31.460So I don't know – I don't know what the astral realm is.
00:22:34.400There's a – there are psychological realms.
00:22:38.660I know that within the psyche and they're – they have dynamics of their own.
00:22:44.180And it's like – I think these visions that you get with psilocybin, these fantastical, transcendental, powerful, symbolic visions, I think that's the operation.
00:22:57.480What psilocybin is doing is it's bringing – it's potentiating like a higher language aspect of the psyche.
00:23:05.100So you're going into – Jung talked about archetypes, but you're going into – it's akin to another dimension of consciousness where there are huge ideas, huge themes, and that's why it seems alien-esque because it is like another dimension.
00:23:23.020But I think it's part of – it's something we're – it's not something apart from us.
00:23:26.680It's part of the human – it's what we're – it's part – it's the depths of the human psyche.
00:23:56.680And it's every time you do the thing, if you haven't – if you've gone for six months or 12 months without taking psilocybin, it will surprise you when you take it because it's not like anything else.
00:24:07.580We don't have language to describe it.
00:24:10.660But there is something going on there.
00:24:12.540It feels extremely important and significant.
00:24:16.700So is the experience different if we grow them in the wild versus – or we pick them in the wild versus growing them at home?
00:24:27.320I keep saying that I suffer from chronic biophilia brought on by the mushroom.
00:24:32.060When I first – my mushroom fever period was in 1992, shortly after I discovered Terence McKenna.
00:24:39.500And I did psilocybin a lot, and that was just in my room in this house I was living in.
00:24:44.340And I used to follow his instructions, you know, lie down in the dark and have visions and this kind of thing.
00:24:48.800And years later in the mid to late 90s, I started going on epic treks around the most gorgeous areas of the UK, which that means the Lake District and Snowdonia.
00:25:01.560They're absolutely stunningly beautiful wilderness areas in the UK.
00:25:04.860And I was picking with this guy I call a guru.
00:25:08.920And I was collecting mushrooms out there, and we were camping wild style, far away from civilization.
00:25:17.760You know, I think it was Socrates who said that nothing interesting happens beyond the city walls.
00:25:23.960Lots of interesting things happen beyond the city wall.
00:25:26.020So we were out in the wilderness picking mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms that grow in this country.
00:25:32.740And I think when you take them out in nature, as opposed to the McKenna thing about being indoors, lights out, eyes shut, that's virtuous and you have an interesting time.
00:25:43.620But you also have a fascinating time if you're out in the wilderness and you really – it can be absolutely extraordinary.
00:25:50.420If you're in a beautiful oak forest campfire and milky way above you, it's absolutely stunning, but dangerously stunning because it can induce this chronic biophilia, which is what I suffer from.
00:26:07.260Chronic biophilia and chronic gyophilia, very serious conditions.
00:26:13.740There's also many biblical references to what many say could be psychedelics, such as John Allegro's mushroom cult theory.
00:29:01.040And again, unless you're a philologist and you're an expert on languages, it's an intractable book.
00:29:06.820I just couldn't, you know, understand it.
00:29:08.760It's a sort of book for philologists and language experts.
00:29:13.040But I've never – I suspected, and I'm not alone here.
00:29:20.100I always suspected that he was a sensationalist.
00:29:24.320And the fact that he, as other people have pointed out, the fact that he published – it first got published in a newspaper called The Sunday Mirror in, I think, 1970.
00:29:34.820And that's a rubbish newspaper, you know.
00:31:13.880You know, it's an illusion that magicians can do.
00:31:16.940But he made his career on bending – you know, his mysterious – now, he's got the fact that he never wanted to admit that he'd, you know, conned people.
00:31:27.700And his tell is the fact that about – I don't know, about five – because I detest people like Uri Geller.
00:31:32.760About five years ago, he started calling himself – he stopped saying he had paranormal abilities and mystical powers and called himself a mystifier.
00:32:21.320That flyogaric mushroom must be phenomenal in terms – it must make psilocybin – the psilocybin mushroom look trivial in comparison.
00:32:30.940This must be a divinely powerful, supremely powerful mushroom.
00:32:34.620I didn't get any effect when I tried it.
00:32:37.280And I don't think Ward Gordon Wasson – even Wasson admitted that the psychoactivity is a bit questionable.
00:32:45.740It's not even classed as a psychedelic muskemol, the active ingredient.
00:32:49.000It's classed as a sedative or hypnotic.
00:32:53.300It's not in the same league as psilocybin.
00:32:54.960Anyway, imagine that this – Allegro wrote this book saying that the whole Christian religion and God – it all came back to this flyogaric mushroom.
00:33:03.320Now, in 1976, when they interviewed him, it was legal, that mushroom.
00:33:25.320If you're going to say that this thing is at the heart of Christianity and it's legal to take and they grow within 10 miles of where you live because he lived in Britain, you're going to take it.
00:33:45.600And the fact that he didn't, it's absurd.
00:33:48.360It's like someone writing a book proclaiming that some – ayahuasca is the greatest thing in the world or something and they've never tried it.
00:33:57.380You know, you've got to try the thing and the fact that he – it's a tell.
00:34:01.640So I think my opinion is the same as Jonathan Ott and probably a lot of others, a lot of other critics is he was a sensationalist.
00:34:09.060I don't even think he believed it himself.
00:34:10.640And, of course, Jan Irvin has – he's now – he's republished the book.
00:34:16.180So he's like he's given over to that guy now.
00:34:20.500So he's got to follow that path through.
00:34:23.380So that's why he's coming out of all this scarred.
00:34:27.660That two-hour thing, it was the worst.
00:34:31.720You know, I can't believe – I can't believe – I saw that he'd raised $3,000 to make this film about this wacky theory that Gordon Wasson was part of the CIA.
00:35:28.640So I side with Morris Nichols, who suggested that – and Gurdjieff, who suggested that Jesus came from an esoteric school that taught self-knowledge.
00:35:39.640But Jesus taught to forgive, and I guess that's – it stops you having chips on your shoulder.
00:35:45.780What Jan Irvin said was – what he did at one point was almost, almost unforgivable.
00:35:51.900He quoted Gordon Wasson about how Gordon Wasson discovered this mycophobia and mycophilia with his Russian wife, that she – she had a tradition of liking mushrooms, and he was an Anglo-Saxon who didn't like mushrooms.
00:36:04.360And the way he – Jan Irvin was reading, was quoting Wasson in this horrible voice to poke fun, and that's a terrible thing, because Gordon Wasson wrote some really good scholarly works.
00:36:19.140And I'm indebted to Gordon Wasson, as a lot of people are in the – who are interested in the history of psilocybin.
00:36:25.940I mean, his scholarly work is first class, and so I'm – you know, someone has to speak up.
00:36:36.160I don't know why he came – you know.
00:36:38.160But, yeah, the – all right, I did write some notes down, all right.
00:36:42.460He went on about the Century Club saying it was a front for the – a front for the CIA.
00:36:49.920Well, I mean, it – and then I think he said he got – he got letters, the secretary there, because it's still – you can check on Wikipedia.
00:36:59.660It's for literary, social – wealthy people, you know.
00:37:03.700You can get – they sent him letters or something, or records, you know.
00:37:07.840What are we – to conclude that the CIA have got really lax security, that all these records, you can just get copies of letters from them.
00:37:17.900You know, I wrote down that this $3,000 that Jan Irvin raised, I'd love it if some people started up a Kickstarter project to stop Jan Irvin.
00:37:31.660Anyone out there listening, maybe 99.9% of your audience are really behind Jan Irvin and thinking, who the fuck is this British guy talking here, you know.
00:37:41.220But if there's anyone out there who'd like to see Jan Irvin's project stop, then start a Kickstarter thing to stop – raise money to stop Jan Irvin's –
00:37:51.540But you have to admit that the CIA does have a history of using psychedelics for nefarious purposes.
00:38:01.480He got his second – it's well known that Wasson's second trip to Mexico was funded by the – I mention this in my book – was funded by the Geschwister Fund, which were a CIA organization.
00:38:12.580And they sent a chemist out there under the guise of being an anthropologist or something.
00:38:58.820So Wasson's book, this first book that Gordon Wasson – the idea that – it's just so absurd.
00:39:04.740This was all a sort of contrived cover.
00:39:07.600Wasson's first book, Mushrooms, Russia and History, which was published in 1957, he only met – he only met – and I had the honor of reading it because it's a really rare book and I read it at the British Library.
00:39:20.560It's – there are only 500 books made.
00:39:22.800You know, it's a genuine – it's a – you read that book and you realize that this is someone very interested in the history of – the cultural history of mushrooms, in particular psychoactive mushrooms.
00:39:36.000And then the last chapter is about his psilocybin experiences.
00:39:40.640And then he – he then went on, after he retired from J.P. Morgan Bank, he went on to write a number of important scholarly books about psilocybin.
00:39:52.000So his work is very important and Jan Irving's just – I do not blame – I mean, he contacted – he contacted Wasson's family about the archives or something and they didn't – I can't blame them to – for wanting to keep him at arm's length, you know.
00:40:11.580I don't know what – I don't know what made – what's governing.
00:40:16.000I don't know whether Jan Irving knows it's bollocks or he actually believes it.
00:40:20.640And he's got this stupid thing on his – on his site, this brain program.
00:40:26.300He's got a chart with Gordon Wasson in the middle, all these lines leading out to Hitler and the JFK assassination.
00:40:33.120I'm surprised he didn't have links to Genghis Khan and Stalin and maybe Gordon Wasson was involved in the HIV virus and maybe Gordon Wasson is behind earthquakes or something, you know.
00:40:45.620It's just absurd, absolutely absurd and it just mess – it dirties the whole psychedelic movement.
00:41:32.180And the idea that he had a handler, a CIA handler is just fucking crass.
00:41:39.240Are you someone who's normally into conspiracy or you kind of shrug that off?
00:41:42.580There's only one conspiracy that we should really, really, really, really be concerned about and it leaves all the other conspiracies behind.
00:41:51.060But people don't want to know about it and they think I'm crazy.
00:41:53.500That's the conspiracy of nature or the whole system of the universe, the forces of nature, the laws of nature to self-organize on every single scale and to self-organize life into existence.
00:42:10.320And then to evolve life to the point of consciousness so that we can be – we, you've got this – in this privileged position where we are the universe waking up to itself.
00:46:10.180It's a shame McKenna's dead, you know.
00:46:11.960It's the actual experience and all this crap that people like Jan Irvin's coming out with and you've got some responsibility because you broadcast him.
00:47:15.780I know because I've – well, I don't know.
00:47:18.160I know as – I'm as convinced as convinced can be.
00:47:21.540Having read – like I said, that thing about Allegro, the tell and all that, what I said about Allegro and having read Gordon Wasson's work, he was – you know, his life, the latter part of his life was dedicated to unearthing the use of psilocybin in Mesoamerican culture.
00:47:46.780Well, at the end of the day, if you get something good out of it, I guess that's all that really matters.
00:47:50.920Well, that's what I'm saying, is the experience is the most important thing.
00:47:57.060So, if humans keep up on the bad track we're on, disconnected from nature and the soul, what will we evolve into?
00:49:26.240I mean, you have to – no, it's for everyone.
00:49:30.000No, if you want to – they should – what you need.
00:49:34.260I recently went to – back in April, I went to this forum in America.
00:49:40.880It was partly about the near-death experience, but they also had psilocybin researchers there who have done it.
00:49:46.960You know the latest John Hopkins research?
00:49:49.080They're giving psilocybin to people dying from cancer and this kind of thing.
00:49:52.540And I met all the main psilocybin researchers and I think there's a general agreement and I've been pushing this for, I don't know, maybe the last six months or so in interviews and stuff.
00:50:04.840What we need – because at the moment, people – for instance, there's an interest in ayahuasca and people who've got the money are going all the way out to Peru to take ayahuasca and have these therapeutic experiences.
00:50:14.460Not everyone can afford to go all the way to Peru to take ayahuasca.
00:50:18.000What we need – I call them revitalization centers.
00:50:21.960We need places within culture all over Europe and America where people can go and have a guided – so what I'm saying to you, should everyone – everyone should have the opportunity to take them in a civilized fashion.
00:50:37.740There are ayahuasca churches actually in America.
00:50:40.620There's one in Bendorian I know about.
00:51:02.060Well, yeah, I've come across this idea before and the first thing I think about when people say we must – you know, there was some scientific theory.
00:51:09.680I can't remember the nitty-gritty of it, but the gist of it was that there were certain things about the universe that showed that we must be living in a simulation.
00:51:20.620Well, I guess like the fine-tuning of the laws of nature and the forces of nature if you want to avoid a multiple universe thing.
00:51:27.340So the conclusion was we must be living in a sort of a simulation that's been crafted by some really highly advanced intelligence or whatever.
00:51:37.220The problem with that is it's just pushing the buck because the beings who made that simulation, they'd have to reach the same conclusion, wouldn't they?
00:51:46.440So you just keep – you're getting into an infinite regress.
00:51:55.340The mystery – all my work – all my work is about the notion that this intelligence that everybody's – people are longing for this higher intelligence, right?
00:52:07.220And they see it as – a lot of people are looking for a UFO and there's all this fascination with looking at – staring at pixels on, you know, grainy films and stuff and looking to the stars, waiting for some whirling disc to come out.
00:52:24.360There's an emptiness in people and they're looking for this higher intelligence in the form of a UFO or whatever.
00:52:30.400But all my work, you know, for good or for ill, all my work at the current time, I'm saying that this intelligence that we're looking for, this higher intelligence, it's part of nature.
00:52:46.320You know, he was a very sane man because he used to entertain ideas.
00:52:51.820You know, he didn't say this is the truth.
00:52:53.080He would entertain ideas and say that their ideas, as I said earlier, that they were provisional.
00:52:57.480He pointed out once that these big telescopes in Arecibo looking for alien messages and things, you know, psilocybin mushrooms are growing on the ground around them, you know.
00:53:10.100So it's closer than we think, this intelligence.
00:53:12.700And like, yeah, I wrote an article about this on Reality Sandwich.
00:53:15.680I pointed out that if we received a signal from another, you know, galaxy or whatever, another star, solar system, and it had a sequence of numbers that were the Fibonacci sequence.
00:53:34.460There's this, you know, it's a mathematical, well, a famous mathematical sequence.
00:53:37.600If we received a message that had the Fibonacci sequence in it, just like if it was the numbers of pi, we'd say, yes, this is an intelligence.
00:53:47.160Well, the Fibonacci sequence occurs in nature, you know, it occurs in sunflowers and the design of certain plants and kind of thing.
00:53:54.100But people don't, people do not perceive intelligence within nature.
00:54:00.800I think that evolution is a naturally intelligent process.
00:54:04.940I think that nature is, I think it's a kind of unconscious intelligence that's becoming conscious.
00:54:10.980Well, I think it's interesting that animals have instincts about their survival that humans don't have.
00:54:15.460So it always begs for the question, you know, has our DNA truly been toyed with somewhere along the line?
00:54:22.120I know you're probably not into the ancient alien question, but, you know, it's there.
00:54:25.520It's passing the buck again to say that if you're not looking at the right place, it's like saying that everything else in the web of life is sort of a bit dull and we can explain it all.
00:54:39.440But when it comes to the human genome, something must have interfered with all the whole.
00:54:58.900People should raise their eyebrows about that, should immediately suggest to me that nature is a naturally intelligent system, that all these, it's fulfilling a function.
00:55:12.560So to pass the buck and say, well, there must have been aliens came, you're just passing the buck because they must have evolved on a planet as well.
00:55:21.460The real mystery is nature itself, the laws of nature, the forces of nature and the creative, the sheer creative genius of nature.
00:55:34.160It's got this creative power to evolve a single cell bacterium for three and a half billion years ago into a conscious being like a homo sapiens.
00:55:45.880You know, that's the real amazing thing.
00:55:49.560And to just, to then go into aliens, you're just passing the buck because those aliens would have to explain their existence as well.
00:55:58.340And the mystery, as I say, the mystery is the whole cosmos, is the whole system of nature.
00:56:05.700I guess it's interesting, though, because if we're consciousness, we can have a whole lot of things going on.
00:56:12.920I always say everything can and probably is happening because we are here dreaming, we're experiencing.
00:56:20.020So things could be going on, maybe not in your world, but maybe for someone else, you know?
00:59:12.780The transformations of this guy into a wolf, they didn't use CGI.
00:59:17.360They actually used – I don't know what they're called.
00:59:20.040Special effects, you know, models and what have you.
00:59:24.160This was before – 1981, before they did CGI.
00:59:27.560And, you know, it was a scary change because this guy changes into a wolf.
00:59:31.680But I just – under psilocybin, I just imagined that life might shift in ways we don't understand quite rapidly.
00:59:38.800Because DNA – DNA is an amazing – this is the thing is DNA is an amazing, really amazing thing.
00:59:47.600I always say to people that people are fascinated by crop circles, but the actual wheat, the wheat plant itself is far more interesting in terms of nanotech inside plants.
00:59:59.960You know, the ribosomes, which convert DNA into proteins, it's technology all the way.
01:00:05.380You know, it's a really sophisticated – life is a really ultra-sophisticated technology.
01:00:09.980And there are error-checking mechanisms in DNA as well.
01:00:13.040You know, DNA is like an alien technology in that it's extremely sophisticated and clever and smart.
01:00:19.740So there are all sorts of things that life could probably do that we don't understand yet.
01:00:24.920And I wonder how long this manifestation of consciousness will last because it won't be Earth maybe next time and it will be something else.