Daniel Pinchbeck – Psychedelic Initiations and Ecological Megacrisis

Divine Molecule Talks at Tyringham – Part II Exploring Entheogenic Entity Encounters Hosted by Anton J G Bilton at Tyringham Hall May 29th – June 1st, 2017 1 CONTENTS The Tyringham Initiative – A summary 3 Tyringham Hall – History 4 Objectives of the symposium - Dr David Luke 5 Exploring Entheogenic Entity Encounters – Anton Bilton 7 Programme Schedule 12 Presentation Speaker Abstracts 16 Presentation Speaker Biographies 26 Discussant Biographies 33 Team Biographies 40 2 THE TYRINGHAM INITIATIVE – A SUMMARY The Tyringham Initiative was launched at Tyringham Hall in 2015 as a world-class think-tank for the evolution, expansion and deeper understanding of ‘new-paradigm consciousness’, renowned in its enquiry for exploration, innovation, rigour and integrity. The Initiative has operated as a virtual platform for events and retreats, both initially at Tyringham itself and from 2017 onwards, at other locations around the globe. Through a unique integration of Science, Art and Spirit, The Tyringham Initiative could be described as a ‘Mystery School for the New Renaissance’, becoming both the incubator and the propagator for the ideas that will enable humanity to confront the systemic challenges of the 21st century – from the ecological and social, to the economic, metaphysical and the spiritual. We would welcome any thoughts from the assembled company about potential future collaboration. 3 TYRINGHAM HALL – HISTORY Tyringham Hall was designed by Sir John Soane in 1792 for William Praed, renowned banker and MP. Soane is regarded as one of the greatest architects of the neo-classical period. Tyringham was one of a series of new country houses he designed and the largest of the new villas constructed when his idiosyncratic style had fully matured. Soane records in his memoirs “this villa, with its numerous offices, greenhouses, hothouses, extensive stabling, a great bridge, and the gateway and lodges were completed and occupied in the year 1797, after having engaged a large proportion of six of the most happy years of my life”. The copper dome to the main house and the French Boiseries were later editions, easily contrasting with the predominately Greek style of the original building. In the 1920’s, the then owner, Frederick Konig, commissioned Sir Edwin Lutyens to construct the substantial outdoor swimming pool (now the ornamental pond), the bathing pavilion, the Temple of Music and the extensive landscaping. The Temple of Music received a gold medal for design around 1934 and both pavilions are unique to this country. To each side of the elegant, round basin between the two ornamental ponds are two pillars with leopard statues, designed by William Macmillan. Macmillan also designed the fountain to the front elevation of the house featuring Diana and Apollo. The bridge at the entrance to Tyringham, (although not currently owned) is Grade I listed and a scheduled Ancient Monument. Following Konig’s death in 1940, Tyringham became a maternity home during World War II and was subsequently purchased by the Australia and New Zealand Bank as a weekend club. In 1966, Tyringham Hall was sold to a Trust headed by Sir Maurice Laing and the Tyringham Naturopathic Clinic was opened in 1967 by Sydney Rose-Neil. Anton Bilton purchased the property 16 years ago and made extensive improvements throughout the house which have been enormously sympathetic to the original design. Tyringham Hall has thus been transformed back into the excellent home that Soane intended. 4 OBJECTIVES OF THE SYMPOSIUM, Dr David Luke DMT is a simple organic molecule present in an extremely wide range of animals and probably all plants, though curiously not fungus – which in true mycelial style has its own version (4-HO-DMT). That DMT is also naturally occurring in humans is no doubt part of why it is so often experientially considered to be the strongest and strangest of all psychedelics, delivering half of all high dose users to new, yet curiously familiar alien worlds, where sentient non-human beings await to greet them – “welcome back, we missed you”. Few experiencing these phenomena report anything less than that world seeming more real than this. Science explores, charts, navigates, discovers, and increasingly comprehends the physical world both macro and micro, pushing the limits of outer space, yet asleep at the wheel of our outwards thrusting vehicle, scant regard is given to mapping inner space – which is both within the universe and our personal container of it. And yet what could be more important as a scientific research question (in a materialistic world) than locating, verifying and communicating with beings apparently far more intelligent and knowledgeable than we are? Given that $100M has recently been provided to boost the SETI research project, wouldn’t we expect any such project that already has half the researchers (in this case psychonauts) reporting positive communications, equally if not more worthy of investigation? But where are all the research grants, where are all the scientific papers, where are all the scientists and experts… ah, there you are, all ten of you, welcome back, we missed you! The question of DMT beings, of plant sentience, of interspecies communication, of discarnate consciousness, of perhaps even dialoguing with the divine, is surely one of the most important of all research questions. It cuts to the heart of the nature of reality itself, and the precision tool for the job has been available for more than 50 5 years, but the academy has left it in the pencil jar in the secretary’s office, hiding in plain sight. So what steps should be made on our road to discovery? What is the role of DMT in plant-human co-evolution, and what is its origin? Can we verify this other world and these other beings? Is the DMT world just delusional, is our imagination more tricksy and infinite than we give it credit for…or are these beings somehow real? If real, then what are their intentions, and what is our relationship to them? Is it time to establish an inter-dimensional embassy, or to barricade our minds against ‘the other’? Or are we just finding a new way to dialogue with our (higher?) s-elf? In any case what can be learned from the beings, from DMT, from our study of it – anthropologically (from both the beings and the users), culturally, psychologically, linguistically, pharmacologically, medically, evolutionarily, heuristically, epistemologically, philosophically and well, actually? … or does all this exploration just generate more questions than it answers, a chimeric rabbit hole more labyrinthine than our crenulated brain will allow us to fathom and more obscure than dark matter? Maybe we will find out. 6 EXPLORING ENTHEOGENIC ENTITY ENCOUNTERS – Anton Bilton Entities; God's, aliens… they're certainly not new to us humans. For millennia man has been spoken to by beings and our major religions, misguided or not, are based on these communions. Today we are technologically advanced and can examine these visitations with a greater intensity than our ancestors. We can create experiments that provoke the communion, that allow us to see correlation in experiences, to gather evidence, to ask the entities for answers, to access their realms and to act on their advices. To me this is the most important work we can do. Spending billions with NASA in a search for extraterrestrial life seems almost wasteful when we can spend fractions of that and experience alternate sentient presences via alternate consciousness expanding practises as our ancestors did. For what is life? We deem a biological and material body as imperative. Yet, our conscious self may exist way beyond its occupation of our body. Most people believe this to be true. One night, whilst travelling in the astral and provoked by a particularly sacred moment of a ceremony, words of humble gratitude spontaneously came out of my mouth: "Thank you for my existence." It shocked me. Not my life; but my… existence; and I saw the difference. I've had many entity experiences, the first was at a very sad and difficult stage in my life when I was fifteen years old. It arrived, unprovoked, mid-morning during a school break and in a Saul-on-theroad-to- Damascus way was the most profound experience of my life. It triggered my interest in these messengers from the Gods and since then I've spent much of my time outside my business and family issues seeking ways to make contact with them. Sometimes they're benign, sometimes apathetic and sometimes malevolent. But perception is all and frequently what one perceives to be demonic is also one's greatest teacher. To fear less and be fearless seems to be the key to understanding. An example of this was when a monstrous, horned, ten foot tall demon, 7 screamed down at me, his huge muscles rippling under his red and leathery skin: "You, you fucking humans, you really think it goes you... then God. You're so bloody arrogant. Let me tell you; just as an ant is a God to a single-cell amoeba, and as a dog is a God to an ant, and as a man is a God to a dog then it's goes on in many, many more layers from man before one reaches the Godhead. The ant can destroy the amoeba; the dog can piss all over the ants nest, the man can cut the dog's throat and I can murder you. In that order; it's so simple. And yes, at the end there is the Cosmic Mind; pure consciousness, the "God" of everything and we are all One, but between that and you there are layers and layers of what you call gods and I'm just one of those. The ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, all pagans; they had it right in their multi-God beliefs but you, you've all gone way wrong with your single God theory. Now let me show you what I do as archdestroyer." And he whisked me off my feet by the scruff of the neck and flew me away through a sky of planets to see the Shiva-esque chaos he had wreaked. Wowzers! An introduction to the concept of "layering" and one that not only felt more real than real but also tweaked the intuitive "truth" button that lies embedded in one's gut. "Layering"; differing levels of intelligent beings way more evolved than us. Gods! Not God. Layers of gods. Some more powerful than others. All more powerful than us. Yet all, somehow, eventually or in the everpresent now, at one with the Cosmic mind of all. What is it with these demon teachers and their sermons that makes them feel so real? Their perceived malevolence and our associated fear response seems purposefully designed to jolt one out of ego based judgements and help one move into the fearless witness state. A task often easier theorised about than achieved in such hairy circumstances. 8 What is it with all entity encounters that makes the meeting so profound? Whether it's a Near Death Experience; an Alien Abduction or an investigatory plant medicine/psychedelic trip, the interaction with an alternate sentient presence, an entity, always knocks one's socks off. From tiny flying fairy-like "nurses", through translucent angels, geometric light-beings, two-dimensional faceless plastic figures; snakes; vines; jaguars; alien Greys; talking play-school toys; machine elves; small-mouth huge-forehead humanoids; sexy succubi; coral-like plants; skeletal giants; burning blue light-sabre-ish flames; to the raging fleshy demon encountered above, these entities are purposeful, sentient and intelligent. They know what they're doing. In my view the aliens and entities we see today are the gods of our ancestors and it's solely our greater understanding of technology that makes the difference as the technology of today is the magic of past years. Just as the conquistadors were perceived as gods by the Indians so all descriptions of gods and aliens lie solely in their perceived omniscience by their observer. If they're perceived as omniscient then they're a god; if there's any notion of possible vulnerability then they're an alien. We could spend all day arguing about whether these entities exist or not. They have been as real to me as I am to myself whilst sitting here writing this preface. Of course, perhaps that sense of my own reality might well be misplaced but that's for later in this book where we hear ideas on the nature of subjective reality and our own place in it. For now, let's go with flow. Man has quested communion with his maker or his maker's minions since time immemorial. The religious scriptures and history books are packed with entity encounters. There's probably not a person on earth who hasn't either had or who knows someone who's sensed an entity presence of one type of another. They're here! And it's nothing but our lack of proper fearless investigation into their existence and purpose that's holding us back from full on communion. Nothing that is but their own complicity. 9 Are they benevolent, malevolent; interested; disinterested or simply sharing the stage? Perhaps they're us from the future; highly evolved humans who have mastered time and space and are returning in time in an ethereal nonmaterial form to influence our development. Perhaps they're gods and angels carrying out their Creator's wishes. Perhaps they're a super sophisticated alternate alien species scientifically observing us in the laboratory we call earth just as we observe our sub species in laboratories and zoos. Perhaps they are farmers; tending they're flock before a harvest! Come what may; and given the vastness of the universe it would seem churlish not to accept the possibility of other living entities and that their form may be as diverse from ours as we are to some of the living creatures on our own earth. Just compare oneself to a giant jellyfish or the tiniest of bacteria. We are forever trapped by our senses and the perceived confines of our temporal and spatial environment. What if parallel universes do exist and access between those universes and our own has been mastered by beings unconstrained by material bodies. If matter is just the pimpernel on the skin of existence then imagine the freedom when unconstrained by its limitations. Imagine the freedom of operating in space, mind-space. So; where are we now? The ancients made every effort to commune with these entities; there was no greater work than dedicating one's life in sacred focus on communion with the gods and their emissaries. Monotheism has outlawed these practises on pain of death. 10 Reductionist scientism has ridiculed them. But, too many people sense the presences. Whether it be by default or prayer. Too many people know they're there in the shadows. Our role is to bravely ignite this process, not with dogma nor judgement but with open minded investigation like the great explorers of old. After all, surely those adventurers who sailed on galleons over the supposedly flat horizon in search of a new world can't be braver than our experimental consciousness explorer taking a heroic dose of intravenous DMT or a heart stopping injection of phenobarbital to effect a 60 second NDE prior to resuscitation! We need to explore this arena. We need to test every conduit and pathway available to us. We need to listen to people who have contact, we need to look for correlations in communions and visitations. We need to be open minded and hopeful not cynical. For what can be more important than communion with alternate sentient intelligences and seeking direction when our own intelligence is leading us to ecological destruction. The ancients knew this and communed directly for advice. We must resurrect this process, objectively and with reverence, respect and an open mind. It's these thoughts that prompted me to work with David and Rory in establishing the symposium on Entheogenic Plant Sentience at Tyringham, where great fearless scientific minds could share theories on what these entities could be and where they might be coming from. I hope you find the explanations and ideas as startling, refreshing and mind-blowing as I did. It's time to accept that something's going on … … and then humbly ask for help. 11 PROGRAMME SCHEDULE Monday May 29th 2017 11.00 - 12.00 Arrival at Tyringham 13.00 Lunch and introduction from Anton Bilton 14.30 First Presentation, followed by group discussion Dr Luis Luna - On Encounters with Entities in the Ayahuasca Realm. A Phenomenological View 16.30 Second Presentation, followed by group discussion Dr Michael Winkelman - Visionary Experiences, Entities and Alien Worlds: A Natural Evolved Psychology 20.00 Dinner 12 Tuesday May 30th, 2015 08.30 Breakfast 09.30 Third Presentation, followed by group discussion Prof Ralph Metzner - Entheogens, Radical Empiricism and the Nature of Reality 11.30 Fourth Presentation, followed by group discussion Chris Timmerman - Subjective Experiences and the Sensed Presence Phenomenon in Human Research with DMT 13.00 Lunch 14.30 Fifth Presentation, followed by group discussion Dr William Richards - Ineffability and Revelation on the Frontiers of Knowledge 16.30 Sixth Presentation, followed by group discussion Whitley Streiber - Stories from a Life: a Lifetime of Anomalous and Unexplained Experiences 20.00 Dinner 13 Wednesday May 31st, 2017 08.30 Breakfast 09.30 Seventh Presentation, followed by group discussion Dr Angela Voss - What is the Daimon? An Exploration of the Oracular Intelligence 11.30 Eighth Presentation, followed by group discussion Prof Bernard Carr - Making Space and Time for Mind and Psychedelia 13.00 Lunch 14.30 Ninth Presentation, followed by group discussion James Oroc - Archetypes, Entities, and Past-Life encounters; A quantumholographic explanation 16.30 Tenth Presentation, followed by group discussion Prof Jeffrey Kripal - Biological Gods: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies 20.00 Dinner 14 Thursday June 1st, 2017 08.30 Breakfast 9.30 Eleventh Presentation, followed by group discussion Prof Chris M Bache - LSD and DMT Entity Relation 11.30 Summary Session, led by Dr David Luke 13.00 Lunch 14.30 Departures 15 PRESENTATION SPEAKER ABSTRACTS First Presentation – Dr Luis Luna On Encounters with Entities in the Ayahuasca Realm. A Phenomenological View Seeing and interacting with entities of various kinds is a common motif in ayahuasca reports. Based on several decades of personal experience in a variety of settings I present here a phenomenological overview of my own encounters with such entities, as well as some ideas concerning their possible ontology. I suggest entities to be the product of the interaction of personal and collective creative imagination with something other, intimately linked with the natural world, immeasurable yet real, the nature of which we will perhaps never fully grasp. Second Presentation – Dr Michael Winkelman Psychedelic Entities and Human’s Evolved Psychology: Is “IT” “US?” What are we to make of the beings that are often experienced on psychedelics? Are these noumena, manifestations of a real transcendental ultimate reality, or are they merely phenomena produced by our complex brains, but ultimately nothing more than complex dream-like experiences? We need to accept the experiences of psychedelic entities without subscribing to the interpretations made regarding the nature of the phenomena and its ultimate ontological status. Accepting the data of experience provides an empirical foundation for examining the nature of these experiences and their bases in human nature through a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary examination of the occurrence of entity experiences and their qualities. 16 Taking these entity experiences as data allows us to place them in a comparative context with similar phenomena of consciousness. Psychedelic entity experiences are similar to entity experiences manifested in many other contexts such as: religious and spiritual visions, including experiences of possession, spirit allies, guardians, and animal transformation; shamanic out-of-body experiences and a range of other anomalous body phenomena; experiences of haunting, ghosts and apparitions; the encounters with various entities conceptualized as dwarfs, elfs, “little people,” etc.; the phenomenological encounters of dream experiences; and the phenomenology and neurophysiology of many psychiatric hallucinations, properly speaking. My paper introduces this examination of psychedelic entities with two methods: one a cross-cultural phenomenology of visionary experiences of entities; and two, a review of the neuropsychology of human social capacities, an innate folk psychology of the cognitive capacities of humans and other entities, in order to place the properties of entity phenomena within the context of human’s innate projective and interpretative capacities. What is reported about psychedelic entities is also found in many experiences and cultural traditions, including observations made across many contemplative traditions of the entities routinely encountered in advanced meditative practices - or even in everyday life! Analyzing psychedelic induced entity experiences in relationship to other experiences of encountering sentient entities can show that much of what occurs under psychedelic influences is not a class of experiences that is unique to psychedelics. While we lack adequate phenomenological data for a formal and systematic comparison of various subtypes of entity experiences, the case study approach shows the usefulness and importance of such comparisons by revealing a broad set of commonalities in various kinds of entity experiences. Entities in general manifest principles of humans’ social psychology, but often elevated with cognitive and physical capacities exceeding our ordinary faculties. Conceptualizing psychedelic entity 17 experiences within the broader context of the human tendency to experience the world as having supernatural entities enables us to create a framework to examine similarities among these experiences and in relation to human cognitive structures and tendencies. Their human-like qualities place the experience of psychedelic entities within the context of our evolved human psychology that predispose us to experience human-like entities. The cross-cultural manifestations of similar entity experiences independent of psychedelic stimuli attest to this human experiential reality and point to their biological bases. Our necessity to adapt to a social world in which the internal dispositions of other members of our species—their perceptions, thoughts, intentions, roles, personalities, evaluations and emotions—played a crucial role in shaping hominin evolution. These innate structures made us disposed to interpret the external world in terms of animism, spirits, spirit others and their desires, intentions, dispositions, etc. In essence, humans evolved through projecting expectations of entities with human-like qualities, engaging various innate intelligences, modules and operators that provide humans with unconscious programs for processing data within certain predetermined structures and assumptions. Whether or not psychedelic entities are independent of our own consciousness, noumena that exist independent of our own expectations and projections, humans are predisposed to imagine, project and ultimately create the experience of such entities. Whether these innate projective tendencies are the basis of all psychedelic entity experiences remains to be resolved. What we can be certain of, however, is that humans have a highly tuned set of innate dispositions to perceive entities with capacities that equal or even exceed our own highly developed skills. This includes projection of expectations regarding cognitive, social and narrative capacities onto others, as well as the internalization and incorporation of what we perceive as others’ expectations regarding our own understandings of their behaviors. 18 Comparison of psychedelic entity experiences and other phenomena of entity experiences with known projective properties of the human mind and its creative spirit suggests these may be something on parallel with great creative works of fiction literature and the manifestations of epic dreams. Psychedelics nonetheless remain an important tool for exploring the conditions of these experiences of entities. And situating psychedelic entity experiences within the context of the capacities of humans’ innate psychology does not necessarily explain the source of these phenomenal manifestations. Third Presentation – Prof Ralph Metzner Entheogens, Radical Empiricism and the Nature of Reality Experiences with entheogens can pose a challenge to our worldview and to our personal understanding of the nature of reality. Native Americans and other indigenous peoples speak about going on a “vision quest” to connect with the nature spirits who may become their spiritual teachers and helpers in an ongoing relationship. But how can you connect with spirits, much less learn from them, if you don’t believe they exist? The modern, or post-modern worldview would view spirit beings or entities as “merely subjective”, i.e. without objective reality. Over 100 years ago the American philosopher William James said that radical empiricism would not dismiss any observations just because we don’t have a theory or model to explain them in our current worldview. For that reason, James allowed drug experiences (with nitrous oxide), mystical visions, parapsychological or psi-phenomena and telepathic communications, into science for consideration and further observations. HH the Dalai Lama has formulated a similar epistemology, by his notion of “first person empiricism” – empirical observations made with our own senses. The basic principle of empiricism is that all our theories, ideas and explanations have to be anchored somehow in observations, not just in speculations and ideas, however ingenious. Explanations are 19 always a function of our ideas and theories, and these are always subject to revision and updating when newer observations are made. The history of science has shown there is an inherent resistance to accepting observations that don’t fit the currently existing paradigms. The observations made by people in mind-expanding drug states tend to be rejected by the main-stream psychological and social sciences because the existing paradigms can’t accept the observations made in certain drug states as observations – they’re just “hallucinations”, and they’re automatically dismissed as merely drug-induced brain detritus. The phenomenological attitude of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty allows us to escape from this dilemma and gather observations of internal as well as external phenomena. We can hold the theoretical explanations and speculations in abeyance and continue to gather new observations from repetition under different conditions and from other observers. With the epistemology of radical empiricism, we can be objective about subjective experience. Repeated observations of similar situations by the same observer or similar observers gradually make the observations less “purely subjective” and step-by-step more objective. So the basic formula of radical empiricism is objective = subjective plus one or more. If only one person sees something, it remains purely subjective, like a fantasy or a dream. But if at least one other person sees it and can say “yes, I see it” it becomes a little bit more objective, and this can have profoundly healing implications. One could say the schizophrenic is having unusual perceptions that can’t be confirmed or echoed by anyone else. This was the basis of C.G. Jung’s approach – he would look for illustrations in medieval books on alchemy that would match an idiosyncratic vision or dream a patient presented. So when people speak about “entities” or “spirits” or “demons” or “visions” or “hallucinations” we want to first separate the observations from the speculations. Then we can gather further observations – which might have been recorded in various books or in works of art, and start the process of making systematic comparisons. 20 We also want to separate statements that are observations – things seen or heard or sensed, from statements that are commands or injunctions or entreaties to do this or that. Every individual has the right to assert and practice sovereignty over what we allow into our awareness, and whether to follow some inner impulse or inclination. This is the practice of what Buddhists call “mindfulness” – being attentive to the details of our experience and what actions or thought forms we are being shown. Our intuitions and subtle inner perceptions can be mistaken just like any outer perceptions – and can and should always be subject to repetition and repeated verification. Fourth Presentation - Chris Timmerman Subjective experiences and the sensed presence phenomenon in human research with DMT Human research with DMT is able to provide a unique opportunity to analyse the occurrence of extraordinary experiences within controlled research environments. In our study we assessed the rich phenomenology evoked by DMT and its dose dependency by administering one of three different doses of intravenous DMT and placebo to 12 participants. Results regarding the sensed presence phenomena and near death experiences will be presented along with a detailed view on the temporal dynamics of the DMT state. Fifth Presentation – Dr William Richards Ineffability and Revelation on the Frontiers of Knowledge Reflecting upon and examining the limitations of language and cognition in expressing some alternative states of consciousness on the frontiers of science and their noetic content, this presentation will survey the phenomenology of selected visionary encounters, within 21 and beyond ego-awareness. It will inquire into their origins, relevance for psychological and spiritual development, and implications for medicine, education and religion. Sixth Presentation – Whitley Streiber Stories from a Life - a lifetime of anomalous and unexplained experiences Whitley Strieber describes a lifetime of anomalous and unexplained experiences that continue up to the present day. Seventh Presentation – Dr Angela Voss What is the Daimon? An Exploration of the Oracular Intelligence In this presentation, I will explore the history of the daimonic intelligence through its cosmological function and role in divinatory practices in the West, drawing on Socrates, Plutarch, Iamblichus, Ficino, Jung, as well as more contemporary accounts and sources. Modern scientific expressions of a holistic universe where human minds partake of a universal consciousness or energy rarely address the dynamics of direct, visionary encounter with intelligent ‘others’, and what these encounters may mean on a deeply personal level. When such extraordinary events do occur, questions of ontology and provenance often override hermeneutics as our modern rational minds try to grapple with impossible questions regarding the ‘truth’ or ‘fiction’ of these seemingly autonomous entities. Whether through entheogens, dreams, incubation, mediumship, alien visitations or religious and magical ritual contexts, human beings have always gained information, insight or direction from these ‘others’ manifesting in a myriad of forms, but always experienced paradoxically as both within and without the human psyche. A genius spirit known through 22 the creative imagination yet also sometimes leaving traces in our world, they inhabit a liminal space, the mundus imaginalis as described by Henry Corbin, and play a vital role in mediating between the human and transcendent realms. But what do we do with these encounters in an age for which the ‘imaginal’ –and indeed the metaphoric—has become reduced to the merely ‘imaginary’, the vision to the hallucination? Can we restore a hermeneutics of the impossible, as Rice University professor Jeffrey Kripal so eloquently advocates? Eighth Presentation – Prof Bernard Carr Making Space and Time for Mind and Psychedelia Science has been remarkably successful in describing the material world and claims to be close to a ‘Theory of Everything’, Curiously mind and consciousness are completely absent from this picture, so can the theory be expanded to accommodate the sort of non-material realms encountered in psychic and psychedelic experiences? An important feature of these experiences is that they seem to involve some form of communal space, which is different from physical space but subtly interacts with it. This extended reality, which I term the ‘Universal Structure’, involves higher dimensions and has a hierarchical structure, with the physical world being a lowerdimensional projection. It can perhaps be identified with the higherdimensional space of modern physics, in which the material world is regarded as 4-dimensional ‘brane’ in a higher-dimensional ‘bulk’. Ninth Presentation – James Oroc Archetypes, Entities, and Past-Life encounters: a QuantumHolographic Explanation In the pages of Tryptamine Palace; 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert 23 Toad, James Oroc proposes a unique model for the transpersonal experience that incorporates the recent discovery of Bose-Einstein Condensates - the highest known from of coherence - in biology, and the ongoing scientific re-evaluation of the role of the erroneously named Quantum Vacuum, or Zero-Point Field in shaping reality. Renamed "The Akashic Field" by the systems-theory philosopher Ervin Laszlo in recognition of its information-carrying capacity, the ZPF is increasingly posited to posses a crystalline and holographic nature capable of storing an infinite number of experiences - this talk will examine the possibility that all archetypes, entities, and past-life encounters actually reside in this infinite quantum sea of shared information, and can be accessed under the right conditions by any individual consciousness. Tenth Presentation – Prof Jeffrey Kripal Biological Gods: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies This lecture will focus on four texts: Philip K. Dick’s VALIS (1981), Whitley Strieber’s COMMUNION (1987), Kary Mullis’s DANCING NAKED IN THE MIND FIELD (2000), and Barbara Ehrenreich’s LIVING WITH A WILD GOD (2014). In each case, we will see how the author describes a deeply personal, life-changing encounter with what any earlier culture would have recognized as a deity or demon. Each author engages these earlier religious interpretations but finally moves outside of them to posit actual invisible species in the environment that interact with human beings at their own whims and for their own interests, perhaps, some of the authors speculate, to "feed off" of human emotion or to tame, domesticate or evolve us via sexual communion and interspecies symbiosis. The result is a new set of evolutionary panpsychisms, erotic vitalisms and biological polytheisms that pose a challenge to the reigning materialisms and projection theories of conventional science and the humanities. 24 Eleventh Presentation - Prof Christopher M. Bache LSD and DMT: A study in contrasts around entity encounters I come to the question of entity encounters with a great deal of experience with LSD and less experience with DMT. What I would like to do in this presentation, therefore, is outline the main features of my history with LSD, draw some points of comparison between LSD and DMT around entity encounters, and suggest some possible explanations for the sharp contrasts one finds here. Then I want to open the discussion to those who have more experience with DMT than I to see what we together might make of these differences. Between 1979 and 1999, I conducted a self-experiment consisting of 73 therapeutically structured high dose LSD sessions (500-600 mcg), a full account forthcoming in Stealing Diamonds from Heaven. The journey that unfolded dissolved me systematically into progressively deeper layers of existence but contained relatively few DMT-like entity encounters. Lots of Being but very few beings. To search for why this might be, I will first describe the patterns that emerged in my long journey: the repeating cycle of death and rebirth that drew me methodically into psychic, subtle, and causal levels of reality, into and beyond archetypal reality, into Deep Time and the birth of the Future Human, and into Divine Oneness, the Formless Void, and Diamond Luminosity. In considering why the LSD and DMT interface appear to be different around entity encounters, I will look at: (1) the role of levels of reality; (2) the role of morphic fields; (3) insights from participatory cosmology concerning the interactive arena of psychedelic disclosure; and (4) the role of death and dying in shaping the LSD interface. Summary Session – led by Dr David Luke 25 PRESENTATION SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Dr Luis Eduardo Luna received a Ph.D. from the department of Comparative Religion at Stockholm University in 1989 and was named Doctor of Humane Letters by St. Lawrence University in 2002. He was an Assistant Professor in Anthropology (1994-1998) at the Department of Anthropology of Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC) in Florianópolis, Brazil, and retired from the department of Modern Languages and Communication at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki in 2011. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of The Linnean Society. Luna is author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), co-author with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991), and co-author with Slawek Wojtowicz, Rick Strassman, and Ede Frecska of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (2008). He is also co-editor with Steven F. White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (2000), with an expanded second edition published in September of 2016. Luna has curated art exhibitions in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. He is director of Wasiwaska, a research center for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary art, and consciousness in Florianópolis. Dr Michael James Winkelman, Ph.D. (University of California-Irvine 1985) retired from the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University in 2009. He was President of the Anthropology of Consciousness and Anthropology of Religion Sections of the American Anthropological Association. Winkelman has engaged in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research on shamanism, psychedelics and ritual alterations of consciousness for 40 years, focusing on the universal patterns of shamanism and identifying the 26 associated biological bases. Shamans, Priests and Witches (1992) provides a cross-cultural examination of the nature of shamanism and magico-religious practitioners. Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing (2010) provides a biogenetic model of shamanism that explains the evolutionary origins of spiritual healing in ancient ritual capacities. This biogenetic structural approach to the evolutionary origins of religion is expanded in his co-authored Supernatural as Natural (with John Baker, 2008). Winkelman’s work has shown that shamanism and psychedelics have a deep intersection in human evolution. His research and edited volumes have helped to diffuse ideas regarding how these capacities for altering consciousness continue to be an important part of human experience and well-being today (see Psychedelic Medicine [2007] and Altering Consciousness [2011]). Prof Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. is a recognized pioneer in psychological, philosophical and cross-cultural studies of consciousness and its transformations. He attended The Queen’s College, Oxford, and obtained his BA in philosophy and psychology. Subsequently he obtained his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University, and received a post-doctoral NIMH fellowship in pharmacology at the Harvard Medical School. While at Harvard he collaborated with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert in classic studies of psychedelics in the 1960s, co-authored The Psychedelic Experience and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. His conversational memoir of the Harvard projects in the early 1960s, with Ram Dass and Gary Bravo, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture, was published in 2010. He is a psychotherapist in private practice in the SF Bay Area and Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco, where he taught consciousness studies and personality transformations for 30 years. Author of over 100 scientific papers and scholarly essays, he is the editor of and contributor to two collections of essays on the pharmacology, anthropology and phenomenology of 27 ayahuasca (The Ayahuasca Experience, 2006) and of psilocybin mushrooms (Sacred Mushroom of Visions, 2004). He also compiled and edited a collection of essays and experiences with the empathogen MDMA, entitled Through the Gateway of the Heart (1985, 2012). His books on the psychology and philosophy of transformation include Maps of Consciousness (1971), The Unfolding Self (1998), The Well of Remembrance (1994) and Green Psychology (1999). He is also the president and co-founder of the Green Earth Foundation, dedicated to healing and harmonizing the relations between humanity and the Earth (www.greenearthfound.org). His most recent work is Ecology of Consciousness – The Alchemy of Personal, Collective and Planetary Transformation (Reveal Press, 2017). His most recent writings on psychoactive/psychedelic drugs, both published by Green Earth Foundation, are The Toad and the Jaguar – A Field Report of Underground Research on a Visionary Medicine (2013). And Allies for Awakening – Guidelines for productive and safe experiences with entheogens (2015). Christopher Timmermann obtained a BSc in Psychology in Santiago, Chile and a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Bologna in Italy. He is currently completing a PhD in Imperial College London, leading a project focusing on the effects of DMT in the brain and human consciousness. He is interested in the use of methods bridging the relationship between the phenomenology evoked by the psychedelic experience and changes in brain activity using diverse neuroimaging tools. Dr William A. Richards (Bill) is a psychologist in the Psychiatry Department of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Bayview Medical Center, where he and his colleagues have been conducting research with psilocybin for the past 17 years. He helped to design and teaches in the certificate program at the Center for 28 Psychedelic Therapy and Research, based at the California Institute of Integral Studies and regularly consults with universities and research institutes as they implement new studies with psychedelic substances. He is currently implementing a study with psilocybin, designed for professional religious leaders from varying religious heritages and is especially supportive of the proposed use of psilocybin in hospice and palliative care. His graduate degrees include M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, S.T.M. (in the psychology of religion) from Andover-Newton Theological School and Ph.D. from Catholic University, as well as studies with Abraham Maslow at Brandeis University and with Hanscarl Leuner at Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, where his involvement with psychedelic research originated in 1963. From 1967 to 1977, he pursued psychotherapy research with LSD, DPT, MDA and psilocybin at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, including protocols designed to investigate the promise of psychedelic substances in the treatment of alcoholism, severe personality disorders, narcotic addiction and the psychological distress associated with terminal cancer, and also their use in the education of religious and mental-health professionals. From 1977-1981, he was a member of the psychology faculty of Antioch University in Maryland. His publications began in 1966 with “Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism,” coauthored with Walter Pahnke. His book, Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences has recently been released by Columbia University Press. Prof Chris M Bache is a university professor and author. Classically trained in philosophy of religion at University of Notre Dame, Cambridge University, and Brown University, he recognized early in his career that psychedelics represented a major turning point in Western philosophy. Convinced that the deepest contributions to his discipline would be made by philosophers speaking out of an experiential rather than just theoretical basis, he divided his life into 29 two streams. In the public arena, he joined the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University in 1978 and settled into the quiet rhythms of academic life, teaching undergraduate courses in Buddhism, transpersonal studies, psychology of religion, and comparative mysticism for over thirty years. Meanwhile, in his private life he began in 1979 a twenty-year journey of deep psychedelic exploration that would become the foundation for his philosophical inquiry. With his retirement from YSU in 2015, Chris is speaking and writing more openly about his psychedelic history, bringing the shamanic side of his life forward. Chris has authored 40 articles and three books translated into six languages. In Lifecycles (1990) he argued that the cumulative empirical evidence for reincarnation is now decisive and developed a vision of rebirth based on consciousness research. In Dark Night, Early Dawn (2000) he drew upon his psychedelic sessions to propose an expanded model of psychedelic therapy, arguing that when the deep psyche is highly energized in psychedelic therapy, the healing that results sometimes extends beyond the individual to the collective unconscious itself. He also presented his visionary experience of an approaching global crisis and specific mechanisms in the collective psyche that might be capable of changing the baseline of human consciousness in an unexpectedly short period of time. It was this work that brought him to the California Institute of Integral Studies where he is adjunct faculty and to the Institute of Noetic Sciences where he was Director of Transformative Learning from 2000-2002 and is currently a Fellow. In The Living Classroom (2008), Chris combined personal accounts from his students and scientific research to explore the dynamics of collective consciousness in the classroom, establishing the outline of a true transpersonal pedagogy. He is now completing Stealing Diamonds from Heaven, a comprehensive account of his LSD sessions between 1979 and 1999. Chris is the proud father of 3 grown children and a Vajrayana practitioner. 30 Dr Angela Voss is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University. She has also been an astrologer and tarot reader for over thirty years. At CCCU she directs the MA in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, a programme that seeks to integrate mythopoetic and critical thinking within a framework of transformative learning, drawing on esoteric and wisdom traditions as well as contemporary ‘new age’ practices and theories. Originally trained as a musician, her doctoral research was on the astrological music therapy of the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino. She is the author of Marsilio Ficino (2006) and many chapters and papers on music, astrology, symbolism and neoplatonic philosophy. She is coeditor of The Imaginal Cosmos (2005), Seeing with Different Eyes (2008), Daimonic Imagination, Uncanny Intelligence (2011) and ReEnchanting the Academy (2017). She would call herself a walker between the worlds, in that her vocation is to revitalise scholarship with the intelligence of intuition and imagination. Prof Bernard Carr is Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary, University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics, and he did his PhD with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge. He has worked on such topics as the early universe, black holes, dark matter and the anthropic principle. His recent books include "Universe or Multiverse?" and "Quantum Black Holes". He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between physics and consciousness, and in psychical research since this suggests that there can be a direct interaction between mind and the physical world. He argues that the altered states of consciousness associated with psychic phenomena and anomalous experiences of time may require a higherdimensional model of reality, which he relates to ideas in modern physics. He has been President of the Society for Psychical Research and Chairman of the Scientific and Medical Network. 31 James Oroc is a journalist, photographer and artist, born in the small South Pacific nation of Aotearoa. Since 1998 he has been pursuing and reporting on the cutting edge of extreme sports in more than 40 countries around the globe, his work appearing in magazines, films, and on MTV Sports. He has been a member of the Burning Man community since 1999, and he is also involved in the documentation and advancement of “Alternative Culture.” Oroc resides in New Orleans. Prof Jeffrey J. Kripal 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 editor-in-chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes) and the author of seven monographs, including, most recently, Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago, 2017) and Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics and the Paranormal (Chicago, 2011). He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of science and American metaphysical literature for the University of Chicago Press collectively entitled The Super Story. His full body of work can be seen at http://kripal.rice.edu/ Whitley Strieber is the author of over 40 books, including Communion, the Key and, most recently with Jeffrey Kripal, Super Natural: a New Vision of the Unexplained. His website, Unknowncountry.com, explores the credible edge of science and the unknown, and is the largest of its kind in the world. 32 DISCUSSANT BIOGRAPHIES Giancarlo Canavesio is an Italian film producer, investment banker, and entrepreneur. He is best known as founder and CEO of Mangusta Risk, Mangusta Productions and Mangu.tv. He has produced several award-winning feature films including The Living Wake, FIX, Being in the World, 2012 Time for Change, Starlet and Neurons to Nirvana. He's currently producing the soon to be released films Monogamy and Its Discontents and Weed the People. Dr Robin Carhart-Harris successfully coordinated the first clinical study of psilocybin in the UK and the first clinical study of a classic psychedelic drug in the UK for over 40 years. After being awarded an MA in Psychoanalysis at Brunel University, London, Carhart-Harris completed his PhD in psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol. In 2009, under the mentorship of Professor David Nutt, Carhart-Harris moved to Imperial College London to continue his fMRI research with the classic psychedelic drug psilocybin (magic mushrooms). Over the last four years Carhart-Harris & Nutt have built up a programme of research with psychedelics that includes fMR and MEG imaging with psilocybin, fMR imaging with MDMA and soon an MRC-sponsored clinical trial to assess the efficacy of psilocybin as a treatment for major depression. Carhart-Harris has a review article published in Brain on the neurobiology of Freudian constructs and his work with psilocybin is now published in PNAS and the British Journal of Psychiatry with several other relevant papers to follow. Carhart-Harris has been supported by the Beckley foundation (UK) and the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation, Heffter Foundation and MAPS (US). John A Chavez is an independent researcher that has been seeking to understand the physiological changes that coincide with a 33 "supernatural" occurrence that I experienced in 2013. I am a former admitted materialist who failed to believe anything out of modern, measurable science could be quantified as real. I now believe that a deeper understanding of the endogenous human "hallucinatory" system can possibly provide answers to very important and profound questions. I hold a B.S. degree from San Francisco State University in Business Management. Vimal Darpan weaves 30 years of experience in music, healing, and the shamanic arts to create a unique transmission that inspires, enlivens and transforms. His home is in Australia where he is renowned as a teacher, musician and healer. Bringing people together to create an unambiguous experience of our common Source is the intention, which inspires his work. A skillful blend of ceremony, song, meditation and celebration are the means by which he achieves the goal. Darpan is a spontaneous and engaging speaker with a natural flair for embellishing his talks with interesting stories, anecdotal references and rich personal experience. He delivers a wealth of information within a context which inspires and motivates. His passion is creating positive change by initiating vision and awakening new perspectives. Darpan is currently working on a book which references his many years of experience in the shamanic/healing arts and is available to deliver talks, concerts, seminars and workshops anywhere in the world. Dr Ede Frecska is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. He received his medical degree in 1977 from the Semmelweis University in Hungary. He then earned qualifications as certified psychologist from the Department of Psychology at Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest. Dr. Frecska completed his residency training in Psychiatry both in Hungary (1986) and in the United States (1992). He is a qualified 34 psychopharmacologist (1987) of international merit with 17 years of clinical and research experience in the United States. During his early academic years, Dr. Frecska’s studies were devoted to research on schizophrenia and affective illness. He published more than 50 scientific papers and book chapters on these topics. In his recent research he is engaged in studies on psychointegrator plants and techniques. He is particularly interested in the physiological role of endohallucinogen compounds (DMT, 5MeO-DMT, and bufotenin). Dr. Frecska is a member of several professional organizations (APA, ECNP, CINP), and has received grants and awards from a variety of sources (NARSAD, NIAA). Guy Harriman grew up in England. He went to medical school at the age of 18 but dropped out and built music synthesizers, later studying Electronics and becoming a chip designer for 23 years. He worked for Steve Jobs at NeXT for four years, then six years at director level at Cisco, as well as 8 other startups. Guy retired from the corporate world in 2002, and focused on teaching yoga, as well as working as a therapist. He moved from Silicon Valley to Chiang Mai in 2008, and built his lannayoga.com Healing Center. Guy is the inventor of the spiritual tool called the Ajna Light. It is a unique device which helps people on their own inner journey, no matter what their path is. Since Guy designed the first prototype in 2014, as of 2017 it is estimated over 10,000 people have been on the Ajna Light. Using the flicker effect, known since the Egyptian Temple Sleep, as well as brainwave entrainment and the neuro-physiological process of pulsed melanopsin (traveling from the retinal ganglia cells, to the SCN in the hypothalamus, to the thalamo-corticial region of the brain, and then to the pineal gland through the pineal tract of nerves), the Ajna Light quickly entrains different states of consciousness. It is thought the psychedelic effects are caused by endogenous DMT generation resulting from pulsed melanopsin. 35 Prof Andrew Lees was born on Merseyside and is a Professor of Neurology at The National Hospital, Queen Square and University College London. He has written the authorised biography of the Arsenal and Liverpool football player Ray Kennedy who developed Parkinson’s disease in his early thirties (Ray of Hope, Penguin 1994) and that was made into a television documentary, Liverpool the Hurricane Port (Random House 2011), The Silent Plague Alzheimers (2012 Penguin) and William Richard Gowers (1845-1915) Exploring the Victorian Brain a biography of William Gowers jointly with Ann Scott and Mervyn Eadie (OUP 2012). His latest book Mentored by a Madman; The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions) explains his unlikely association with the author of Naked Lunch and how he followed him into the Colombian Amazon to take yagé in his curiosity to find neurological cures. He has also written essays published in Dublin Review of Books, Empty Mirror, Tears in the Fence and Scottish Review of Books. He is in the top three most highly cited Parkinson’s disease researchers in the world and included in Thomson Reuters 2015 List of the Worlds Most Scientific Minds. Dr Dennis McKenna has pursued interdisciplinary research in the study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens for over 30 years. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon, recently completing a four-year project investigating Amazonian ethnomedicines as potential treatments for cognitive deficits. His doctoral research (University of British Columbia, 1984) focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. Dr. McKenna completed post-doctoral research fellowships in neurosciences in the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health (1986-88), and in the Department of Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine (1988-90). He joined Shaman 36 Pharmaceuticals as Director of Ethnopharmacology in 1990, and subsequently joined Aveda Corporation as Senior Reseach Pharmacognosist. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in Ethnopharmacology, Botanical Medicines, and Plants in Human Affairs. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit research organization focused on the development of therapeutic applications for psychedelic medicines. He was a key organizer and participant in the Hoasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca used sacramentally by the UDV, a Brazilian religious sect. Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of 4 books and over 50 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Dr Jeremy Narby, anthropologist and writer, grew up in Canada and Switzerland, studied history at the University of Canterbury, receiving a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. Jeremy spent several years living with the Ashaninca tribe in the Peruvian Amazon, cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources. Experiences with ayahuasca during his research inspired his first book, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. In the book, Jeremy proposes that indigenous people have developed a deep understanding of medicinal plants and even DNA itself, through ritualized use of ayahuasca, a theory deemed heretical by mainstream science. Jeremy has since written three other books: Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge (2001), Intelligence in Nature (2005), and Psychotropic Mind: The World According to Ayahuasca, Iboga, and Shamanism (2010). He lectures worldwide and sponsors rainforest expeditions for biologists and other scientists to examine indigenous knowledge systems and the utility of ayahuasca in gaining knowledge. He was featured in the documentary DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Since 1989, Jeremy has been working as the Amazonian projects director for the Swiss NGO, Nouvelle Planète. 37 Jerry D. Patchen, Houston, Texas Attorney brings four decades of experience and wisdom to the court room as a trial lawyer having litigated civil and criminal cases in 25 states and various foreign jurisdictions. Jerry’s work includes 40 years of pro bono representation of the Native American Church (NAC) on behalf American Indians to secure and protect their rights to religious freedom. Serving as an Officer in the NAC, he represented individuals charged in various states with possession of Peyote, winning every case. He also represented the Peyote dealers in Texas, who are licensed by the Texas DPS and DEA to dispense Peyote to Indians. Throughout his representation of the NAC Jerry, his wife, Linda, and their three children participated in Peyote meetings with Native American elders for decades. The US Supreme Court in the case of Oregon vs. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990) ruled that police power was paramount to religious freedom rights. The Smith case overruled a 30 year precedent that required the States and Federal Government to balance the right of the free exercise of religion against police power while giving great weight to religious freedom and using the least restrictive means. A dark cloud hung over the continued religious use of Peyote. Jerry created the strategy of requesting the US Congress to enact the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 USC § 2000bb, and to amend the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), 42 USC § 1996 to ensure continued religious use of Peyote by the NAC. Working with Senator Inouye, Jerry provided vital support from Texas DPS and the Texas Attorney General’s Office that overcame the concern of various Senators that the use of Peyote could not be effectively regulated. For his efforts, on behalf of Native American Indians, Jerry was awarded the distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award by the State Bar of Texas. Beginning in 1999, he was on the legal team representing the União do Vegetal (UDV), which successfully secured the right of the 38 UDV to use their sacrament, Ayahuasca, in the US based on RFRA combined with the impact of AIRFA, Gonzales v. Uniao do Vegetal, 546 US 418 (2006). The Santo Daime in the case of Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Mukasey, CV 08-3095-PA (2009), used the UDV case as a precedent to obtain a favorable ruling from an Oregon US District Court. Jerry was formerly counsel and a founding Director of the Heffter Research Institute which is dedicated to promote high quality research of the mind and the effect of mind altering plants such as Peyote and Ayahuasca, and also synthetic compounds. Jerry, with Linda's presence and guidance, serves on the Board of Integral Transformative Practice International (ITPI), the Wasiwaska Advisory Board and they are active supporters of Esalen and the Houston Jung Center. Daniel Pinchbeck is the bestselling author of Breaking Open the Head and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. His latest book, How Soon Is Now?, just released from Watkins Press, looks at the ecological crisis as a rite of passage or initiation for humanity and defines a new postcapitalist “operating system” for civilization. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, Esquire and many publications. He was a founder of Evolver.net and the web magazine Reality Sandwich. He is featured in the 2010 documentary, 2012: Time for Change. Patrick Vernon is part owner of GrainLabs, a film and documentary production company and has himself been involved in the oscar nominated documentary 'Virunga ' amongst others. He is also a philanthropist and an investor in the wider market. Currently he is funding a study at Imperial that looks to explore what is happening in the brain while a person is under the influence of DMT through the use of fMRI neuroimaging. 39 TEAM BIOGRAPHIES Anton Bilton (Host) is an economics graduate from The City University in London. He was the founder of The Raven Group and has also been a founder and director of three other companies that have floated on AIM. He is currently Executive Deputy Chairman of Raven Russia Limited. Outside of his working environment, Anton’s principal interest is altered states of consciousness and entheogenic plant sentience. Max Baring (Video/Audio Director) got into documentaries after studying Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University in the late 1980s, then studying at the Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Max returned to the UK in 1993 and now has over twenty five years professional experience working as a producer, lighting cameraman, director and editor in the TV Broadcast industry. He also produces digital media for the corporate and charity sectors. Max’s work has ranged from mainstream TV series like Grand Designs for Channel 4 and Gold Rush for Discovery, to specialist observation documentary series such as ITV’s Guarding the Queen, BBC4’s Syrian Schools (Winner of the Japan Prize) and the BBC Storyville series Barbados at the Races. Corporate Clients have included the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the City Bridge Trust, and the Institute for State Effectiveness. Dr David Luke (Moderator/Curator) is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich where he teaches an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having 40 published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including five books, most recently Neurotransmissions: Essays on Psychedelics (2015) and Talking with the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds (2014). David is also director of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: Multidisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites, but increasingly has more questions than answers. Rory Spowers is an ecological writer, campaigner and filmmaker most recently working with BBC presenter Bruce Parry on the feature film Tawai. Rory’s last book, A Year in Green Tea and Tuk Tuks, covers the creation of Samakanda ‘Bio-versity’, an ecological learning centre in Sri Lanka. His previous book, Rising Tides, was a history of ecological thought, critically acclaimed by The Sunday Times, The Observer and a variety of magazines. In 2002, Rory founded The Web of Hope, a UK charity and ecological education resource highlighting role models for sustainability, social justice and positive change. Please visit Rory’s blog at www.figtreediaries.com 41 42