Gabriel D. Roberts - The Quest For Gnosis PDF

The Quest
for Gnosis
Gabriel D. Roberts
Copyright © 2014 Gabriel D. Roberts
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1495980145
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the lights of my life, Gideon and Gwyneth

Roberts. May you always thirst for knowledge and live life to its fullest
with verve and integrity. I love you with all of my heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the many wonderful people who have helped to make
this ambitious book a possibility. Transcriptions are a time consuming and
tedious task and I am grateful for transcription assistance provided by the
following people: Hunter Muse, Philippe J M Morel, Wade Stich, Amber
Pollock, Jes Flores, Kieron McDarby, Lee Flax. Thank you so very much!
i
ii
Gnostica Pro Primario
Munientibus Aurei
Seculi
My dear friends, above reads in Latin the phrase, “Gnostic
primer for the pioneers of the golden age”, and that is the
intent of this book, to introduce you to the concept of Gnosis
as you make your own mark on this world. This selection of
conversations and essays has been carefully put together in
order to provide you with many ideas that have roots in
wisdom that was once hidden, perspectives on what they
mean to us today and the practical use of Gnosis in our own
lives. This book is an anthem of illumination, an introduction
into some of the most freeing concepts in modern and
ancient thought from the minds of both the mechanistic
materialist and the modern magus; a cross pollination of the
things we see in common as means to meaning and paths to
promise.
Those who have read my other works know that I came
from Fundamentalist Christian background; a mindset that
clearly set boundaries of what I should and should not
believe. This book may touch on some of those ideas in
conversation, but will not be the primary focus here, instead
the focus is upon equipping you with a new sense of wonder
and understanding of just how big this universe is and just
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
how amazing a part of it you can be. Though you will find
the definition to vary within the pages of this book, the term
Gnosis in its most basic form simply means knowledge.
Going more deeply Gnosis means intrinsic knowledge of a
mystical nature; something that is personal and experiential.
It is my opinion that the best way to understand something is
to take a hands on approach to its investigation, not taking
other people’s word for it. For too long we have taken things
on faith without testing for ourselves whether a truth, or idea
really works; we’ve often paid the price of a fool when it
turned out that what was presented to us was not the thing
advertised.
When I think about the legacy that many of the great
spiritual leaders, martyrs, shamans, philosophers and mystics
have left us, I feel a sense of awe and inspiration. Sadly, the
state of our world leaves much to be desired by virtually every
measure of quality. For many, the grip of materialism has
driven them to excesses that would make the ancient Roman
emperors blush, for others, the grip of fundamentalist
doctrine freezes them in a barbaric tumult no different from
the crusades of the dark ages. The mechanistic materialistic
scientific worldview has led many to an existentialist crisis
while others scoff at anyone who believes anything other than
what the latest study shows is the truth. Meanwhile our
governments run amok, spending money they don’t have to
fight wars nobody wants to extract resources fewer and fewer
of us can afford. In many ways we could be falling into a new
dark age in which sociopathic technocrats coax this lost
throng of humanity into a 24/7 control system in which
privacy, decency, humanity and a bright future are all at their
disposal.
Despite all warnings, the rain forests of this planet are still
shrinking at an alarming rate and with them, the population
of indigenous cultures and rare animals. Now decades deep
and running, the middle east continues to be a hotbed of
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THE QUEST FOR GNOSIS
strife and suffering with war plans being carried out in public
and in secret with new expansions into Africa on the horizon.
Meanwhile Fukushima’s rogue nuclear reactor is filling the
Pacific Ocean with 300,000 gallons of contaminated water per
hour. It truly seems that the Kali Yuga is living up to its
name and reputation. Many harbingers of our doom fill our
minds daily with the latest body count, governmental fuckery
and tales of our heroes selling us out.
Is this the legacy we will leave the earth? Is this the best
we as individuals can do? Are we simply to remain voiceless
under the reign of our worst sci-fi futures come to life? If I
thought this was the case, this book would certainly look very
different than it does now. I can’t claim to have an answer to
the Chimera of deadly problems we face, but I can offer up to
you the thoughts and ideas that are helping me to transform
myself and those around me. At the very worst, it is better to
fight nobly in a battle you may lose than to just let the wave
of arrows nail you to the ground. No, while we still have
breath to speak, hands to write, hold and heal, we shall
continue to blaze a trail through the wasteland, to climb to
that high hill and shine a beacon of hope for those
desperately lost in the valley floor.
Poetic speech is nice, but it does little to stem the tide of
real evil at work in this world. This is why I offer this book
to you; it is a primer for the conscientious mystic, a new
gnostic tome that honors the old gods, but makes way for a
new balance of techno-mystic reason. This is for the practical
magician in the making, the pioneer of the golden age that we
can still bring to fruition. We are the shamans of the
wasteland, the war zone, the ghetto; wherever our tribe has
us, we are the focal points that heal the minds and hearts of
the wounded all around us.
Every single person who I’ve spoken with for this book is
good people. We may not agree with each other on
everything, but in each of them I see a thread of color found
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
nowhere else. Theirs is the thread that must be intertwined

into the tapestry of our newfound Gnosis; they are the fibers
of our unbreakable chord. And in this work, we can find a
common ground, a fragile yet beautiful unity, a powerful
psychonautical compound created to confound and shock the
hellish system we find ourselves a part of. The illumination
we carry together has the potential to keep the flickering hope
of a golden age alive. I have mixed the conversations and
essays to balance the dialogue and provide with the pleasure
and relief of each form of dispensation. So please enjoy this
work, take in what inspires you and suspend judgement until
these voices have been heard out.
May you take as much pleasure in reading this book as I
have had making it with all of these fantastic conversations
with extraordinary people. As always I humbly offer this
work to you, the reader.
Love and Peace, Gabriel D. Roberts
8
The Gnosis of
Odd Edges
Odd and I first met at an art showing in the Redhook section

of Brooklyn. At the time he was running the AV show at
Reality Sandwich and I was struck by his over the top
enthusiasm and open heart. We’ve stayed in close
communication since then and help to support each other in
our endeavors. He’s been working on a film called, Life is a
Videogame, which is based on the work of NASA scientist,
Tom Campbell’s book, My Big Toe. Campbell’s book is a
Theory of Everything and is absolutely fascinating. Odd and
I got together to talk about his film and the ideas that drive it
in relation to gnosis.
GR - So your name is Elliot Odd-Edges?

OE - Yes, my name is Elliot Andrew Edge. OddEdges is
an internet handle that I picked up around 2006 when my
brother and I started uploading videos to Youtube together.
And Um, it just felt appropriate for us as we had always been
making avant-garde films and comedies, sort of strange and
unusual things. So Odd-Edges ended up really taking on a life
of its own and because a bit of a mask when playing with
remix videos which, of course, flirt with copyright
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
infringement. They do that purposefully. The whole idea is to

take something that exists and manipulate it in certain ways.
You represent it as the artist. So it has that kind of hip-hop
element and graffiti culture to it and internet culture is of
course famous for taking on pseudonyms, and then the
pseudonyms if you indulge them long enough will take on a
life of their own. Odd-Edges, now, almost feels like a brand.
For example I don't consider my Facebook page to really be
about me. Of course everyone is going to argue against that.
It's Odd-Edges' page. It's a way on compartmentalizing my
consciousness. There were so many years when I was trying
desperately to be a straight, normal person. And as I see today
that’s failed. Miserably.
GDR - Alright so tell em about the theory behind life as a
video game. Start at the beginning and try to describe in detail
for the kids.
OE - Certainly, lets begin with considering immediately
social norms, when someone says "life is a video game" you
can think of personal realities, political realities, religious
realities. If you want to look at them metaphorically or just on
a higher plane of consideration, you can aptly apply a
metaphor of life as a video game, and each one of these little
things are "Reality tunnels" as Robert Anton Wilson always
said. So that's one way of considering video games, our lives
are little video games and we are characters in them. What's
far more fascinating is the science behind the suggestion of
life being a video game. That science showed up really in a big
way in the 90's with a guy named Edward Fredkin. Fredkin
has a website called Digital philosophy. His whole thing was
founding this idea that reality is information. He was really
the big guy, one of the early pioneers with [John Archibald]
Wheeler who wrote an essay called "It from bit" and that's
written about a lot. Seth Lloyd's book Programming the
Universe. He is an MIT quantum computer physicist, I think.
It's the same notion that reality is information. The big feud
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going on between them now is - is reality physical, or is it

non-physical? That's where the argument is today in this
domain. The idea goes back really far if you want to think
about Maya in Hindu and Buddhist scripture, the idea of the
world being an illusion that is actualized by an observer.
That's the same sort of notion there too.
Particularity the science is what has caught my attention
about this entire thing. You consider our lives, personas,
belief systems, religions and our psychologies, and even our
own process of thinking, it becomes re-contextualized. You
start considering the implication of being in a computer
simulated reality. That's what this is all about, the idea that
reality is virtual, essentially probabilistic in that a particle is
not actualized until it's observed. Phenomena isn't actualized
until it's observed. Until that happens it's all unrendered. Just
like in a video game, a level doesn’t show up until the player
gets there. It's sitting there, but the map doesn't show up until
the player is present. Those are some of the broad stoke ideas
about it. Tom Campbell is the one who really got me
interested in this topic, and he is the one that this film is
primarily about.
GDR - What are the implications of this for the average
spiritually minded person who may go to yoga but that's the
extent of anything that they do? Or, what are the implications
for all religions, people who believe in Allah, or people who
believe in Jesus, how can this be related to them?
OE - Well, to tell you the truth I think this is all of what
these spiritualities are talking about. Whether it's a religion or
a mystical school or even a philosophical school, a lot of
them are talking about an underlying or overlaying reality of
some kind. That there is an invisible world and a visible
world. Somehow, not just in how we interface, but there is a
morality to it, there is some kind of points system. Some kind
of experience points system where if you do good you get
karmic points that encourage your evolutionary growth. On
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
the other hand you have stuff that impedes it. That’s really
the immediate way to think about this. Life is a video game is
a metaphor for the spiritually minded, though not exclusively,
this is most appropriate, its what they are talking about. Every
religion or spirituality is selling a user manual, a walk-through
guide, a strategy guide, because we have all sort of emerged
out of nowhere, if you go by the materialist view, from
nowhere. we have shown up and we don't know what to do.
We have no idea what we are doing here and we have these
local religions and mystical schools and stuff and each of
them peddle the same sort of concepts which is if you do
these practices, these techniques, if you learn these abilities,
this will enhance your spiritual and personal development.
considering this, take the first games of the Zelda series,
Zelda has a really great beginning in that Link, your main
character, shows up in the middle of a field out of nowhere.
this was so revolutionary that Nintendo didn't know if people
would be able to handle it, like they wouldn't know what to
do.
You could walk in four different directions, there were
three different places you could go and a small cave you could
go into, and when you walk into the cave there was a sword
or a shield and there was a famous line that says "it's
dangerous to go alone, take this" It's a classic moment in
video games. Link later has to explore and learn lessons and
find instructions. All these spiritual and religious schools are
really selling us instruction manuals and strategy guides. Some
of them more effective than other and some and more
effective than others, some have a lot of fact, some cultural
clothing, historical clothing, traditional clothing that they have
held on to for many centuries and many millennia but
essentially what they are talking about is what a video game is
all about, you have a lot of free will, you have choice, you
have consequences, what do you do? How do you play? Most
of us want to know how to play.
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We are terrified of being here, it's very confusing, so

where do we go? What do we do? A lot of these religions give
us a past, and essentially that's what they're talking about is
getting some kind of past, getting some tradition and getting
some structure. As long as that path or structure doesn't keep
you fixed, and unfortunately a lot of them do, a lot of them
are completely loaded with traps and the traps sound like
anything from 'there's no god', or 'I am god', to 'there are
many gods' Take your pick, each one has their own banks and
things like that. This is a kind of stripping away of those
things that’s not an outright denial, it's not saying that these
things don't exist, but if you really want to get to the bare
bones then lets talk about the metaphor, lets talk about the
meta reality, that’s' really where our conversation has been
taking us anyway since post-modernism and now
digimodernism on the internet we now have an overview of
all these systems and this is definitely in line with that
tradition.
GDR - Ok, so here lies the chicken or the egg question; If
life is a video game, who programs the video game, and are
they living in a video game in an eternal feedback loop of
causality?
OE - This is a really interesting question that's difficult to
answer. It's almost unknowable. The guy I’m making a film
about is Tom Campbell. He is a hardcore out of body
experience or astral projector. It's really easy for him to
parallel process other realities and he got really into exploring
other physical realities, the non physical realities after he
learned how to quiet his mind with meditation he learned
how to have out of body experiences at the Robert Monroe
institute and helped to develop serious technology for. He got
into this himself and says you kind of bump up into a wall.
The metaphor he uses is a bacteria in someone’s gut, this
bacteria could have a 5 million point I.Q. but it's not going to
know anything that's going on outside of the body because all
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
it knows is that food comes in and that’s that. It's not going
to have any comments on Shakespeare, or meteorology, or
basketball or anything like that. This information might not
be available to us, however, what he implies if its a conscious
system, if it exists outside of consciousness then it might not
be legitimate. His whole thing is that reality is consciousness,
consciousness is information.
Going back to your question here, "who programmed the
programmer', and where they programmed, and how did it
begin?" It looks like it began with a simple rule set. Look at
John Conway’s Game of Life, if you come up with a very
simple rule set of three or four rules, and then you push go
and put some energy into the then you get incredibly complex
structures that show up. That's called emergence in
computation. It's also emergence in nature. You take a seed, a
seed becomes a tree, the tree evolves over time and becomes
a different kind of tree, so you simplicity becoming incredibly
complex over time. This is the degree to which it would be
programmed. It's an evolutionary type thing we are seeing. A
simple university evolved into a very complex one. I forget
the name or it, but a satellite was shot out and photographed
some baby galaxies which were so structured and there were
so many of them and they were completely unanticipated by
cosmology and what it showed was even galaxies tend to
grow in the same way that biology grows. In fact I remember
an interesting fact that a younger galaxy will produce more
stars than an older one. I couldn't help but think of animal
pubescence. A younger creature tends to have a stronger
libido than an older one.
As for "Who programmed them", I don't know, this is
something that makes me very interested. There must have
been some kind of catalyst, for a catalyst, for a catalyst. It's
very difficult to talk about the origin of an Alpha. We bump
into our own naiveté. It's worth our attention and our time. I
certainly don't subscribe to the idea that the universe came
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from nothing. Laurence M. Krauss is very big on the idea that

the universe came from nothing, but even if you take a look
at his description of nothing there is an element of the
physical and the laws of physics are at work in there. So it's
not an ultimate nothing.
GDR - What if somebody says "well, if life is a video
game, and I really like Grand Theft Auto", what if somebody
takes this message and say "great, I'm gonna go blow some
stuff up and steal cars and sleep with hookers" Can we skip
morality now?
OE - I thought of that, The universe is either Amoral, or
BE moral. one of the things that Tom puts forth in his
model, which we go into in the film, he opens his model with
two assumptions; and that is: consciousness exists, and
evolution exists. Then you get the idea that consciousness
evolves. So what makes consciousness evolve? Tom says it's
intent. It's the reason WHY you do something. Why you do
what you do. And you get a lifetime to rack up experience
points. and see if you evolve and 'Level up' People who are
familiar with video games understand the concept of leveling
up. The whole idea he is putting forth is that He is pushing
morality. And the morality is that you can think about
consciousness in terms of entropy. In physics entropy is all
about if something is ordered or unordered and in disarray. If
something has high entropy its very gaseous and you cant
make it do much work. But if its a solid, like a rock, then it
has gravity and inertia you can throw it. It has a focused
point. So what is a high entropy consciousness, what is
dispersed, or chaotic? Well, someone who is neurotic,
someone who has a lot of anxiety, someone who is afraid.
They, as a conscious entity have very few options available to
them.
They are horrified of everything, they have to protect
themselves from everything, and that's the point of their
existence, this exclusive self protection. All the other
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"individual units of consciousness" as Tom calls them, are out

in the world and they don’t have anything to do with you. On
the other hand you have love, what is love when we see it in
action, what is love when its not romantic love where you can
be spurned, and your heart broken, and have all these
expectations that another person doesn't share. If you look at
love that is more like agape, unconditional love in the
Buddhist sense of the term, you have someone who is
cooperative and helps the whole and feels like they are a part
of the human organism as a whole and a part of life itself in
the entire biosphere, and then some.
He puts forth that consciousness evolves towards love,
that is where it wants to go. If you look at what he calls low
entropy individuals then you can imagine some right away,
like Yoda, Dalai Lama or Amma the hugging saint who hugs
everybody and makes them feel good and builds charities on
that. I don’t know if they are, but on the outside they look
like really great people who are doing good things. That’s
what he is putting forth. That its not just a blind video game,
but it exists to evolve consciousness so we can see what
happens when we do something nasty, and it puts itself in
these scenarios like the Sims, where you and I are engaging
each other so we can see what kind of life do you see people
living lives that are miserable. You might get a lot of money,
but you wouldn’t get a lot of love. You don’t get a lot of
companionship, you don’t really connect. In other words you
don’t integrate into the consciousness around you. You are
interested in your own history and narrative. The whole thing
is that of a Buddhist idea where if you don’t move along and
progress, you will be put back on Earth again to respawn and
continue, and do it all over again. Physical reality exists for
this purpose. Consciousness is constrained into a body, and
they face each other, and they have to see what happens and
how do you use your free will. And how you use your free
will will determine the quality of your consciousness and your
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growth. And the more you evolve the more options will be
available to you when you demonstrate you are mature
enough to have more power, and to go into different places
and to try more things.
That's the part of it that I'm really attracted to, actually.
We are lacking a new moral philosophy. We don’t really have
a moral philosophy right now. We have some secular
humanist vision that you are a human being, and I am a
human being, we are brothers and sisters, and your misery
and my misery are connected. I agree with that. But when you
get to the fact that we are embedded in the same fabric of
reality, that when I hurt you I'm hurting the same fabric of
reality that I am. A lot of us don't really think about that. We
just think about negotiation of our own gravitation around
people and circumstances.
GDR - Say if someone accepts this understanding of 'Life
is a video Game' How then should we live? How would this
understanding change the way we view the world, how we
view ourselves, and view our place in the world?
OE - Well, the first thing a metaphor like this does, and
science and philosophy is built exclusively upon metaphors,
the only thing that makes science different in a way is that
they are measurable and we have a record of them, but really
all we are playing with is metaphors, here. 'Life is a Video
Game' as a concept is a new level of magnitude to begin to
look at the human condition and look at personal existence as
a whole. Its just like a video game where you can take a step
back and see the back of your head and you look at yourself
from outside and not be so in-meshed with the local rumor
and hearsay that you are rubbing up against in the form of
ideologies whether they be philosophical, scientific, personal,
religious, or what have you. In that element its valuable. On
the other hand it also gives us some heavy metaphor to begin
to play with. You know, problems like free will, choice, that’s
really it for me. Choice is my crisis. We are in a constant state
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of crisis with choice. really I don’t want people to just sit

there and accept that life is a video game, what I would like to
do is get people to investigate the particular model that’s
putting this forth, and that’s Tom's model, My Big Toe by
Campbell. He is a NASA physicist, DOD physicist. He is a
heavy hitter, private consultant. That kind of thing. HE says
"Don't trust me, find out for yourself". The big thing about
finding out for yourself is that it adds a new level of
engagement.
Human beings are constantly salivating to entertain
themselves. And how we entertain ourselves it though video
games. But at the same time I feel a kind of ubiquitous
disengagement with life. There is a lot of fear, a lot of
repeating yourself and getting stuck in a loop and this is a way
to dislodge you out of that crisis and begin to explore the
question of "maybe this is a video game, am I living my life"
but I definitely don’t want people to take my word for it. I
want people to investigate what Tom and many other and by
association, ME, are putting forward. And what we are
putting forward is that there are certain experiences available
for human beings that aren’t being popularly engaged and
personally I believe its something we should be doing more
of.
In other words, We feel a lot of emotions but we don’t
investigate the hows and whys. We have a lot of experience
but we don’t get into the brass mechanics. What can we really
do as a conscious entity. That question is surprisingly scant in
the dialogue. The dialogue is sort of, Well, I’m a human
being, its been dropped, and as true as that statement is, its
also not true because as a human to say that you don’t
investigate. You just slide it under the rug and say OK I'm a
human being, there's human nature, and I always say human
nature is a bad idea that goes on to legitimize worse ones. Its
sort of a STOP, you don’t really go forward and investigate.
One of the big charges that Tom and others like Russell Targ
18
and Rupert Sheldrake and others at Princeton, and the

Monroe Institute and all the places around the world, what
they are putting forth is that consciousness is non local. Its
not in your head, its not a by-product of your brain, or your
entire body, its something else and it can do more things.
One of the ways I stated investigating if Tom's claims are true
is that I got into remote viewing. For those who don’t know
what remote viewing is, its a practice that a laser physicist
named Russell Targ, PhD who worked at Lockheed Martin
and helped write a text book on quantum mechanics. They
ended up doing psychic research at Stanford for the CIA and
the DIA and NRO and others, they proved conclusively over
and over that remote viewing is real. You sit in a room and
describe an object phenomena what is happening in a place
that you shouldn’t know about. If I'm sitting here I would
know about where you are in California. To the average
person that’s whacky. The average person who has been
raised on rational materialism that consciousness is a by-
product of the brain. But we have decades of research now
that consciousness now is more like we are engaged in a
cosmic google. We are all filtering down into these bodies like
a SIMS like situation. We are all playing the SIMS. Human life
on Earth, Tom calls it TMR 'Physical Matter Reality'. We
occupy both places at the same time, so one of the things
about 'Life As a Video game' is to get people to see that it is
real and natural and it doesn’t require a lot of training. We are
doing it all the time. We know when someone is about to call
us on the phone, before it rings.
GDR - Another question- If we are here to build our
consciousness, that would imply we are conscious elsewhere
and in need of improvement. This would imply, like the
Buddhist idea, some kind of variation of digital karma, or
some reincarnation of eternal individuals and we have the
ability just like any game, sitting outside of it you press the
respawn button or shut the system off.
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OE - I like the idea that life is always optional. You can

always walk off a bridge if it's too much for you.
GDR - I have had a lot of psychedelic experiences where I
have been transplanted, from my perspective it seems, an
eternal space, a timeless space, where I am hanging out with
beings that are timeless as well, and I know them. I was
outside of the rules and regulations of everyday physical life.
This begs the question of how does this parallel with the idea
of enlightenment, the ideas made popular by the Matrix, you
are hacking the Matrix, as it were. How do these things tie
together, and have you had any psychedelic experiences
yourself that have let you to be more interested in this
subject?
OE - I had my first psychedelic experiences before I was
exposed to this conversation. Those I always thought were
incredibly interesting because I did feel conscious of multiple
spaces and multiple times. I could see my body outside myself
and if I closed my eyes I felt very sincerely engaged in another
dimension of reality. That’s always made me very curious
about the whole nature of perception. Can we just change
channels with certain compounds, practices, in other words,
is this compound just squeezing my attention into another
space. I would like to save the question about enlightenment
for last, well, now that we have brought it up lets go into it.
Enlightenment feels like a funky word, for me
enlightenment just means re-contextualization. A lot of these
philosophical schools suggest that there are forms of ultimate
enlightenment, final enlightenment that's it, you are done. Its
over. You either die or you become super human or
transhuman. I'm not negging that. More so I think that
enlightenment is a mysticised word for re-contextualization.
All enlightenment is just re-contextualization In The Matrix,
which I love, watch the audio commentary with Ken Wilbur
and Cornell West, please do because it brings the film to life
again in a way that will keep you up for days. You will love it.
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The idea with enlightenment is that you become conscious of

more than one reality, one you are ignoring. you can consider
dreams, that’s one reality, then you wake up, that’s another
reality. A question is: Is a butterfly dreaming of a man, or is a
man dreaming of a butterfly?
So Enlightenment is tied really close with the idea of
gnosis, of knowledge. What is real knowledge? I think gnosis,
and enlightenment and knowledge are tied really close to
ignorance. If you admit to utter ignorance you create a space
for new information and experience to pop up. That’s not
idealized so much in America these days. In the digital culture
its all about knowing everything. But what is knowledge?
Aren’t we just engaging in metaphor? How often is a fact a
fact etc.? To me knowledge is tied really closely with my
knowledge and my ignorance was revealed the first time I had
a psychedelic experience, and I've had several. But more
important were my psychic and synchronistic experiences
have been even more profound that any psychedelic
compound. I have experimented with what’s available on the
market as well as different forms of meditation and binaural
beats and audio technology and all these things to manipulate
your consciousness I have flirted with all of them and I
recommend them totally. Definitely more than going to the
mall.
The synchronicities, and telepathic experiences, and
remote viewing experiments that I’ve done in community
college where I was grabbing kids and saying "try this" and
they were getting great results, incredible accuracy of 80-90%
accuracy. Spooky stuff. It was one of those things where you
would experience it and you would want a shot of scotch
after. It was so disorienting. I would push really hard on
people is to try it. You have to give it a shot. All of this is
useless unless you are interested in the video game. If you
want to try and see what’s available to you then please do. we
need more people like this. That’s what’s been most
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
disorienting is the dreams. To prove without any doubt in my

mind that information is available to us that is not something
you can perceive with the 5 senses. And when you get into it
and engaged on this level it comes much easier. you become
open to it. its not that you create these meanings. If you are
skeptical, you got to keep a diary and try. You have to do
experiments otherwise you are just going to float from one
weird experience to the next. I’m more interested in treating
my life like a detective mystery. I don’t know how I showed
up or why. I don’t know what I can do or what I am. I think
its a relief when I meet people who have similar attitudes.
GDR - We are all like Link in that field, some people
decide that they really like hanging out in a field and they just
stay there.
OE - It seems like a strange place to go to in comparison
to the knowledge that we have already accumulated about
what we are and what the world is. Its stressful. Its energetic.
I had the same experience when I was Elliot, Elliot was
occupying a body that was occupying a certain space-time in a
relativistic fashion. But it was moving through the Universe.
That was my previous orientation. After the experiences I
have gone through, I had seen other people going through
parallel experiences. Once I was into it I had all my friends to
at least try it. After that there is a complete disorientation.
You realize that’s not really the way things are. Its the way I
had been raised to believe things were that way. For us to
become mature is to explore what we are. otherwise we are
just repeating rumor and hearsay. The noise we pick up in the
neighborhood. Just what everyone is saying and peddling.
That’s stuff I don’t dig because look at the world it has
created. With so much conflict it cant be doing the trick.
GDR - Why is it then that there so often seems to be no
reward. The hero dies long before the journey finishes and
hearts are broken with babies starving to death. All this gnarly
stuff. How does that apply to the idea of leveling up. I
22
apologize if this is harsh, but about the starving Somalian

baby, what are they gonna win?
OE - What they win is a fast track. The whole lesson here
is suffering. The lesson about life on Earth is suffering. Its
not meant to be happy and feel good, best time ever. Its
meant to be challenging, horrible, horrific, and insane and
gross, and grotesque. The thing about it is its only insane and
grotesque is because WE ARE. We think it seems like shit
and we activate that. We actualize that in our lives. That’s the
reason there are starving people. There's nothing
technological or engineering wise that couldn't stop that
happening. We have the technology available to stop disease
and hunger. What’s stopping that from happening? Its
political, social, and economical and sexual ideologies. Its
prejudices that are stopping this. The world looks like shit
because WE are shit.
That’s the way we treat each other and the way we treat
ourselves. It seems bad because often we are sitting around
wanting things for ourselves. If we do things for other people
that becomes its own reward. Even if it doesn’t pay of in the
way we hope and want it to. IT doesn’t always work like that.
You try to give a person advice and they take it and go even
further down in their depths. Sometimes they have to hit rock
bottom before they have a transformation. Nothing spurs
about transformation more than exhaustion. I don’t think
"enlightenment" happens until you are exhausted. Once you
are really tired of You, then you change. It's not the world
that's boring, its not the world that's miserable, it's our
learned pattern of engagement with the world that's
unbearable. The way we treat ourselves and each other.
There's no evil force at work outside of ourselves. That’s the
evil force.
So the idea of the starving child in Somalia is they learn
very quickly what suffering is. They learn quickly about
caring. They learn what the meaning of a gesture is in the
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
sense of "I give you food because I love you" When you
suffer, you learn. Its the tool, the teaching mechanism. As
long as you need to breathe, eat, and get out of the sun you
are going to suffer. That’s the agenda here, you got to survive.
And how you go about surviving, that’s' the whole shtick
regarding evolution. That's the idea Tom's putting forth and I
have been incredibly attracted to it for about 5 years, I have
been testing, and it's working for me. Again, I'm saying give it
a shot. Imagine taking a month out of your life and keeping a
diary and treating it like an experiment and saying OK, I have
lived my life, I know who I am with my personal and this role
that I play. what if I put that aside for a month. What if I
make all my intents love based intent.
In other words I do it for other people. I do it because
They Are. I respect the crisis they are in. I alter myself and see
if I can help and see what happens to my health. I helped out
some people and they gave me the keys to their apartment
and I go there any time I want. Its a sweet gesture. Its that
simple. I wouldn’t have access to that space. I could be
stranded in the heart of Brooklyn in the middle of the night.
Since I put forth the care and love and attention and clean up
their place. I listen to them and I love who they are. They are
very kind to me in return. From that we all get a chance to
evolve. We get to experience each other and interact with
each other. Its that simple.
24
The Gnosis of
Anthony Peake
Anthony Peake is an excellent author and thinker, the kind

that spurs you on and doesn’t mind saying things others are
afraid to say or think. His perspective is always exciting and
insightful.
GDR - What first got you interested in the question of

consciousness and specifically ecstatic states? Was there a key
moment in your life that caused this?
AP - I guess that I have always been interested in the
mystery of how I – a seemingly dislocated source of
awareness – exists within a physical universe. Even as I child
I was intrigued by the “dream state”. Here was a world of
experience that mirrored waking life in every way, indeed it
was so “real” that I failed to ever realize that I was dreaming.
However I had no unusual experiences at that time and, I
have to state that with the exception of the occasional déjà
experience, synchronicities and a couple of weird time
anomalies I have never really experienced any form of
“altered” or “ecstatic” states. For me an “ecstatic state” is an
experience that reflects the literal meaning of the word
ecstasy – ex-stasis, Latin for “out of the body” or being
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
besides oneself. These are experiences that I have written

about but never perceived.
GDR - What is Gnosis to you? Does it have an
application in your daily life?
AP - For me Gnosis is a deeper, inner, understanding of
the conscious experience. This is not generated through
external learning but from a knowing that wells up from deep
within. It happens to me on a regular basis, particularly when
I am writing. I consider this to be very different from the
classic ecstatic experience. In these experiences I seem to
access knowledge that is outside of myself. By this I mean
that I do not remember reading about it or sourcing it within
normal every-day experience. In my book “The Daemon: A
Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self” I suggested that
this “gnosis” was generated by a subtle communication by the
“Daemon”, or “higher self” with the everyday self that exists
in linear time, a being I reference as the “Eidolon”. Both
these terms are Gnostic in origin and the Daemon-Eidolon
Dyad is something referenced time and time again in the
Gnostic texts. However in recent years I have concluded that
there is more to this than simply a channel of
communication. The “gnosis” knowledge has its source not
in the Daemon but in a reservoir of total knowledge that has
been known for centuries as the “Akashic Record”. The
Daemon is simply the conduit by which the Eidolon is given
(limited) access to this informational field. This is usually
supplied on a “needs basis”. Indeed I further believe that the
aim of esoteric learning, secret societies and their associated
mystical/magical techniques are to facilitate this downloading
of information from the Akasha. Modern science has recently
discovered something known as the Zero-Point Field (ZPF)
and it is possible that this is the source of this information.
Indeed there is growing evidence that the physical access-
point to this informational field is the pineal gland and that
the actual facilitator of the uploading is a chemical known as
26
Dimethyltriptamine (DMT).
GDR - How have your revelations and studies about the
power of the mind and its ability to change perception
changed the way you see the world and those around you?
AP - Radically. I now understand that consensual reality,
that is the reality that presents itself to us via our physical
senses, is simply one reality of many others. These can be
accessed by modulating the functioning of the brain. Indeed
In my opinion evidence that the mind can change the nature
of perceived “reality” is evidenced by the discoveries of
quantum physics. In other words there are objectively and
scientifically observed phenomena to support such a belief.
The very existence of sub-atomic particles has been shown to
be dependent upon what is known as the “observer effect”.
Until “observed” a sub-atomic particle as no location in time
or space. When “observed” its “wave-function” is collapsed
into a point position that does exist in time and space. Indeed
recent work by Austrian quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger
has shown that this “wave-particle” duality to be not only
confined to sub atomic particles but can be “observed” with
regard to atoms and even molecules – large molecules. For
example Zeilinger has discovered that the 60 atom molecule
buckminstefullerene shows wave-particle duality. One
reasonable conclusion can be drawn from these discoveries;
that all atoms and molecules – the building blocks of the
material universe – have a deeply significant relationship with
the act of observation by a conscious mind. In other words it
is the mind that modulates physical reality, not the other way
round.
GDR - What is the correlation between DNA, DMT and
the serpent visions and lore of our mystic past and present?
AP - In my recent book, “The Infinite Mindfield” I
suggest that DNA and DMT are related in some deeply
significant way. Following on from the work of Jeremy Narby
I propose that DNA has its own intelligence and
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
communicates with its host organism through the release of

endogenous (that is, internally generated) Dimethyltriptamine.
Indeed recent experiments at the University of Michigan have
shown that DMT is created within the pineal gland of live
rats. In effect this proves that DMT is a natural
neurotransmitter of the mammalian brain and that DMT
“journeys” as described by Rick Strassman’s subjects and the
ayahuasca-stimulated shamanic journeying reported by the
indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin, are natural and can
be generated without any external stimulus. Central to these
DMT/Ayahuasca “journeys” are regularly reported
encounters with “serpent beings”. These entities seem to be
more than simply dream-creations. They have motivations
and are keen to impart information. Indeed these beings seem
to share many of the behaviors and physical appearances of
“aliens” encountered during UFO-abductions. Indeed many
of Strassman’s subjects described DMT-induced
“hallucinations” uncannily similar to the classic abduction
cases.
Can this DMT-induced serpent-imagery explain the
legends of “sky beings” found across the globe? For example
the archeological images of the Sumerian Annunaki show
distinct serpent-like features. In the “Epic of Gilgamesh”
these visitors from the stars shared some of their technology
and medical knowledge with the ancient Sumerians, a belief
that continued into the subsequent Akkadian and Babylonian
civilizations. The similarities between the statuette depictions
of Annunaki individuals and the modern day “greys” of
UFO-lore – and both have reptilian or serpent-like
appearances.
In his book “The Cosmic Serpent” anthropologist Jeremy
Narby drew powerful parallels between the appearance of the
“serpents” he encountered during his ayahuasca experiences
and the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule. Narby
puts forward a very persuasive argument that the serpents are
28
personifications of our DNA and that DNA uses

ayahuasca/DMT to communicate with us. I would like to add
that the Annunaki were a similar personification and that
similar personifications can be found in many cultures across
the globe. In 2005 author Graham Hancock came to similar
conclusions in his book “Supernatural: Meeting with the
Ancient Teachers of Mankind”.
GDR - Do you feel that the ecstatic state brought on by
the psychedelic experience is a human right, or a human
privilege to be afforded to any adult? Why is this important?
AP - If the discoveries of Jimo Borjigin’s team at the
University of Michigan can be reproduced then we have
strong evidence that DMT is created by the pineal gland in a
similar way in which this mysterious organ also produces the
related neurochemical melatonin. This will be proof that not
only is DMT a natural product of the brain but it has also
evolved within us. It is part of our physiological heritage.
Researchers such as Dr. Rick Strassman have suggested that
DMT may be responsible for such phenomena as lucid
dreaming, out-of-the-body experiences and near-death
experiences. In my book “The Infinite Mindfield” I go
further and suggest that endogenous DMT facilitates the
uploading of digital information from the zero-point field and
in doing so creates all “reality”, including the “consensual
reality” of everyday experience. As such the ecstatic states
facilitated by psychedelics are simply different “channels” of
the DMT-facilitated experience. In effect the mind is like a
TV set. Most of us are tuned to just one channel … this
reality. However with a bit of “tuning” more channels can be
experienced.
The idea that the brain is a form of attenuator of reality is
not new. The great nineteenth century French philosopher
Henri Bergson called the brain the “reducing valve”,
something that reduces down to manageable proportions the
incoming (or more accurately, up-coming) digital signals
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
being broadcast by the Zero-Point Field. The English

philosopher Aldous Huxley came to a similar conclusion in
his hugely influential work “The Doors of Perception”. As
such it is clear that such experiences are not only the
birthright of every human being (and possibly other sentient
animals) but also part of our evolution as programmed within
our DNA. I believe that this will be the next great
evolutionary leap. Furthermore I believe that this leap will
soon take place. All we need to do is become aware of our
own inner-potentials and discoveries such as those of Jimo
Borjigin and her team. Once we do so then we will shake off
what William Blake called the “Mind-Forged Manacles” and
open our mind to the total reality that has hitherto been
denied us by our own evolutionary status.
GDR - What are your thoughts on Phillip K. Dick in
regard to his unique psychedelic, gnostic exegesis and what
might his ideas add to the conversation of consciousness?
AP - Philip K. Dick carried on from where Bergson and
Huxley left off. He similarly believed that we are denied
access to the true nature of reality. We are trapped in what he
called “The Black-Iron Prison”. This has clear echoes of
Blake’s “Mind-Forged Manacles” and I am sure that Dick
chose his words carefully in this regard. He was in agreement
with Blake that humanity was deliberately trapped in a world
of illusion and deliberately denied its rightful existence in the
wider experiential universe. Dick called this wider universe
the “Palm Tree Garden” and he was keen to underline the
Gnostic aspects of this cosmology. Taking from his starting
point the Hindu concept of “maya” Phil argued that this
world is a sensual prison, similar in many ways to the model
of reality presented in the Wachowski Brothers “Matrix”
movie trilogy. In his books and short stories Philip K. Dick
returned to this theme time and time again. Of course Philip
K. Dick was not just an author of speculative fiction; he was
an experiencer of the extraordinary. Throughout his life he
30
experienced glimpses of the reality beyond the “Black Iron

Prison”. These experiences culminated in the events of
February and March 1974 and he spent the rest of his all-too-
short life trying to understand what happened to him.
GDR - Along those same lines, PKD speaks of a kind of
evil empire that rules our reality. Do you think this very
Archonic vision of reality could have merit?
AP - Personally no I don’t. I believe that our inability to
access Phil’s “Palm Tree Garden” and what the Gnostics
termed “The Pleroma” is because of our own lack of
readiness. We are our own prison wardens in this regard.
However in my own writings I have suggested that part of us
(our “Daemon”) has already advanced and is existing within
the timeless place that is the “Pleroma”. The daemon has
escaped “Plato’s Cave” (another wonderful Gnostic concept
from the proto-gnostics, the Pre-Socratics). I am of the
opinion that on death we all escape from the “mind-forged
manacles” and glimpse the Pleroma before we return back to
“the game”.
GDR - What do feel are some good ways that an
individual can confront this kind of evil empire while not
embodying a new form of the empire itself?
AP - As I don’t believe in the Archons as such I feel that
we simply need to face-down our own “inner-archons”. I am
of the opinion that the “Black-Iron Prison” is, in fact,
analogous to a first-person video game. The Eidolon is the
equivalent to the in-game personality that interacts with the
in-game environment. The “game player”, who exists outside
of the game within the Pleroma, is the Daemon. The Daemon
has played the game (your linear life) many times and, in
doing so gains experience of the best route to follow. Again
the video game analogy works well in this regard. When we
play a video game for the first few times our on-screen avatar
usually gets killed within a few minutes of the start of the
game. As the game-player we have the option of going back
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
to the start to begin the game (life) again. This time the game-
player remembers what happened in the last game and uses
this knowledge to avoid the dangers and have his or her
avatar survive longer within the game environment. Sooner
or later the on-screen avatar will be killed again and the game
is started again.
Imagine that the avatar, aka the Eidolon, has self-
perception. As far as it is concerned each game is a unique life
and, because the avatar does not “remember” the last game, it
is, as far as the avatar is concerned, the start of a singular,
unique life. However, and this is the important bit) the avatar
sometimes feels as if it has vague recognitions of the
circumstances it encounters. Other times it feels a strong
inner impelling force that guides it away from danger. The
avatar will describe these sensations of danger as being inner
warnings, hunches or, in certain cases, evidence of angelic
guidance. With regards to the vague recognitions it will
perceive them as a sensation known as déjà vu (or, more
accurately déjà vecu … “already lived”). I believe that our
actual life experience is similar to this analogy. The life we
perceive is already encoded within the Zero-Point Field in
exactly the same way that digital information located on a
CD-Rom is used to create the game environment. And in the
same way as in the game, the “in-formation” (using the
descriptor first used by physicist David Bohm to describe the
digital nature of consensual reality) is drawn up from the
Zero-Point Field to create the “Black-Iron Prison”. An
important point to realize with regard to this analogy is that in
my hypothesis the ZPF, just like the digital information on
the CDRom, has within its database the information to create
a universe that can fulfil the outcomes of every decision made
by the Eidolon. In many ways this is an application of the
much-discussed Many-Worlds Interpretation of Hugh Everett
III. I call this game-world the Bohmian IMAX. Indeed in his
unpublished novel “The Owl in Daylight” Philip K. Dick
32
suggested something very similar.

Eventually, after many run-throughs of “the game” the
Eidolon, with the assistance of its Daemon (whose
knowledge banks increase every run through the Bohmian
IMAX), lives the “perfect life” and survives to the end. This
completes the game and the Eidolon becomes at-one with the
Daemon. Effectively to use a Buddhist term, it becomes a.
Bodhisattva. In explaining this I like to reference people to
the movie “Groundhog Day”. In this cult film the central
character lives the same day over and over again,
remembering what he did the day before. In my Bohmian
IMAX model this is as if he is an Eidolon with access to his
Daemon’s memory of previous days (lives). After living
many days the central character lives the “perfect day” and is
allowed to move on to the next day. In my model this
involves finally dying and moving fully into the Pleroma.
In my book The Infinite Mindfield I suggest an advancement
on this model, first suggested in my first book, Is There Life
After Death? In this I apply an idea that Philip K. Dick
touched upon in his later novels … the idea that all human
beings are a single entity experiencing itself subjectively. Many
will recall that a similar sentiment was stated by the late
American stand-up comic Bill Hicks. In simple terms we are
all interconnected because we are all waves from the same
ocean. Each of us contains within us a shard of the Pleroma
and that is part of the greater collective mind.
GDR - How can we inspire a greater body of humanity to
pull away from this seeming black magical spell of
materialism and draw toward a better understanding of our
interconnectedness?
AP - By getting messages like this out to as many people
as possible. We know from quantum physics that everything
is connected, that at a deeper level everything is a unity. In
physics terms this is known as entanglement and it is an
observed physical reality. The Hindu’s call this singularity
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
Brahman, the Cabbalists call it Or Ein Sof and the Gnostics

know it as “Nous” or the “God Within”. When this is
realized, if indeed it should be realized within this reality, then
everything will change. We will realize what we really are.
Philip K. Dick used the Platonic term “anamnesis” to
describe this. It is the regaining of a lost memory or
knowledge. In his novel “The Divine Invasion” there is a
character called Manny. He is God but he has forgotten that
he is God. If humanity collectively experiences anamnesis
then the whole universe will change. What this means in
practical terms I have no idea, but then again I have a simple,
eidolonic intelligence, one that simply cannot comprehend
such a reality.
GDR - As you look to the future, do you see a way in
which we can turn our catastrophic path to a more promising
and loving one, or do you feel like those seeking illumination
should simply prepare for damage control?
AP - As I stated above, I believe that what will be needed
is a large number of human beings to realize that there is
more to the universe than simply the materialist-reductionist
world that lends itself the measuring tools of the present
scientific paradigm. However it seems that those who seek
out greater truths have always been a very small minority and
I see no evidence of this changing in the near future. In my
experience people either “get it” or they don’t. I am of the
opinion that this has got nothing to do with intelligence or
education but to do with an “inner knowing” ….. I guess this
is what we call “gnosis”.
GDR - What do you feel our purpose is in our present
existence? Why are we here?
AP - We are here to learn and to experience. Nothing
more and nothing less.
34
The Gnosis of
Krystle Cole
I've been a fan of Krystle Cole for a while now. She's well
known for her numerous informational videos about
psychedelics. Her website, Neurosoup.com, provides
information for a broad spectrum of entheogens,
entactogens, and other little helpers to the human pursuit for
greater understanding in the bigger picture of life. We spoke
about her perspective on psychedelics and life in general.
GDR - You're a person who has experienced a broad

spectrum of psychedelics. You're probably one of the most
encyclopedic reference points for the breadth of the
psychedelic experience. How has your perspective on
psychedelics changed since the first time you did it?
KC - When I started using entheogens, the first I used was
MDMA -- which is more of an entactogen than an entheogen
-- but that's the first time I delved into the psychedelic
experience. My level of understanding has really grown since
then. It's not just from the amount of other substances I've
done that are stronger than MDMA, but also from life in
general, and everything I do that doesn't relate to
psychedelics. I think that's the case with everyone. We all
grow as life goes on, and so I interpret some of what I've
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
experienced differently now.

GDR - In the non-psychedelic sense, do you have any
regular spiritual practice?
KC - I like to meditate and do yoga. I like to do
meditations that don't involve just sitting there in a traditional
meditative posture because of my back issues. I can do chair
meditation, but I also like to do walking meditations or
meditation during yoga, so I'm moving and concentrating on
how I connect with everything. That's probably the daily
practice I enjoy the most.
GDR - If you had to line everyone up in the world and say
to them, "You have to try this one particular psychedelic," set
and setting taken into consideration, and this would be for
the purpose of changing the world, what, in that hypothetical
sense, would be the most powerful mind changer?
KC - I think that saying that everyone should have to take
something would be unhealthy for a lot of people. Some
people may have psychological disorders, and probably
shouldn't be taking entheogens. I wouldn't say that there
would be something that everyone should have to take.
However, if I were to start life all over again, having not taken
anything before, I would absolutely have to take LSD.
GDR - That's interesting. What is the main difference
that you see between LSD and other psychedelics?
KC - I think that a lot of the entheogens are somewhat
similar, although the head spaces, let's say psilocybin versus
LSD, are different. You said one substance, and it's difficult
to choose one. The best thing about LSD to me was that it
didn't make me nauseous, whereas psilocybin would. It had
the least number of negative side effects for me. Everyone is
different. Of course, I had really high quality LSD. A lot of
things that are out there on the market now aren't even LSD.
They're being substituted as LSD, like the NBOME family of
chemicals. A lot of people are seeing these really negative side
effects and attributing them to LSD. I really liked the length
36
and strength of the experience from the LSD I took.

GDR - You and I both have spent some time with
Hamilton Morris. I had a discussion with him about
spirituality versus materialism. What is your take on the
subject?
KC - I don't label myself as any one thing.
GDR - That's wise.
KC - I believe the experiences I've had are the realest
things I've ever experienced. But it's as if reality has multiple
dimensions. I don't believe I've reached out and touched an
alien entity, or that anything like that has taught me anything.
I center my beliefs within what Ken Wilbur has to say on our
reality. In his "Integral Theory," you have stages of
consciousness you develop through. You have different states
as well that you can experience with things like LSD or
meditation from whatever stage of consciousness you're at.
As you go through life and have different experiences, you
may move up to different levels and higher or more aware
stages of consciousness. Some people are interpreting what is
right for them at their stage, but there are many different
stages. It may not be that anyone is necessarily right or wrong
when it comes to the reductionist scientific perspective and
the spiritual perspective. We're interpreting the entheogenic
experience or other altered states from different stages of
consciousness. That's why I think we're all right at some level.
GDR - I think it was Terence McKenna who said that if

you were to have a cone floating in space, there would be no
two people who could see that cone the same way. If you had
everyone in a circle, even from a million different ways, no
two perspectives would be exactly the same, even though they
are all looking at the same thing. He described the psychedelic
experience as us all being like blind men with an elephant.
One is tugging the tail saying, "This is a snake," and the one is
saying, "No, this is a pillar of some great building."
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
KC - Ken Wilbur has written lots of different books.

Integral Spirituality is a really good one. So is Integral Psychology.
His integral theory is really great if you're looking for a way to
look at reality and understand how everything fits together.
It's not different arguments, but a synthesis and integration of
all arguments thus far. He does not say that he's a psychedelic
user but from everything I've seen, he gets it. However he got
there -- he says he did it with meditation -- it's awesome. If he
was able to put all of this together and experience the one
being we all share that exists always and everywhere infinitely
through the practice of meditation, then that, to me, shows
that meditation is equally as good at getting you there as
entheogens are. Entheogens are my preferred means, though.
I think they're the elevator to the top, whereas meditation is
the stairs.
GDR - It seems like there is a paradigm shift underway in
which more and more people are discovering the story of life.
For instance, the American Dream was a farce; it was
something sold to us as a part of an advertising campaign.
We're finding ourselves realizing the madness of our lives, but
we feel trapped in mortgages and car payments, sending our
kids to college, and then we watch all of our tax dollars going
to bombing people on the other side of the planet. What's the
thing that helps you to keep a positive perspective on that?
What is the thing you would say to people who are just
"waking up," to help them along the path?
KC - Sometimes it's difficult to keep perspective. That's
the first thing. Some people have asked me that question, and
no one can find the answer but you. You just have to try to
have a positive attitude. That helps me a lot. The cup is half
full instead of half empty. Look to all the positive things. But
even so, it's difficult sometimes. Life can definitely get you
down and I think that having a daily spiritual practice has
really helped me. Of course, the lessons that I've learned
through entheogens have really helped me as well. GR -
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What is your purpose behind Neurosoup.com? What is the

common theme? KC - There's a couple of them, but the
main one is responsible use. I'm not advocating for people to
use any substance, but I am advocating for people to educate
themselves prior to using, if that's what they choose to do.
Every substance, whether it's LSD or heroin, has positives
and negatives. No matter what, there is going to be
something that some think is good and some think is bad.
That's one of the biggest messages of Neurosoup, and that's
why I put all that information on YouTube. I don't just have
the trip reports, I have other information about both sides of
the story. That way, people can make responsible choices
about the substances they choose to put into their bodies.
The government tries to make these laws that are saying,
"Drugs are bad, you're going to jail for life if you're caught
with these substances," but they're out there, and everybody is
able to obtain different drugs. In the end, the individual user
is the one making that choice. The individual user needs to be
empowered with the correct knowledge so that they can make
that choice. That's what I'm trying to do.
GDR - This raises the question about your feelings on
personal sovereignty. There are two camps in America that
are at the farthest ends of the spectrum and yet I see where
they are in so many ways identical. Where do you stand on
the issue of asserting one's own personal sovereignty?
KC - I think that every person should have the right to do
whatever they want as long as it does not harm someone else.
I guess that's the best way to really describe it. That applies to
different cultures as well. We look at different cultures and
different beliefs and say, "Well, we don't understand that."
No matter what a person does, they should be able to do it.
Have fun, have great life, experience everything that you want
to. Just don't harm someone else in the process.
GDR - There has been much debate over the last several
decades about what "soma," the true sacred mushroom was.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
There's been many books written about amanita muscaria,

and other people have said no, psilocybin is much more
appropriate because of its rampant availability, and so on. If
you had to pick which one was this inspiring mushroom,
what do you think?
KC - Back when I lived in Mendocino, I learned all about
that because I was collecting specimens of amanita muscaria.
I wanted to learn everything there was about them. I read a
lot of different things but my understanding of soma is that
they would ingest the substance and then they would urinate
and be able to trip from what would come out again, the
urine. To my understanding, psilocybin wouldn't fit in with
that. Have you heard that if you take psilocybin and urinate,
there would be anything left in the urination to actually drink?
It's gross, but that was one of the things I read about soma,
and that's why amanita muscaria is probably the best fit.
GDR - Well you would have to be with someone you
care about to drink their pee. Where's R. Kelly? I need to try
this amanita.
KC - I've heard of people doing amanita muscaria and
saving their urine in the refrigerator for the next day.
Hypothetically, you could drink your own pee if you really
wanted to see if soma was amanita muscario. I've never tried
amanita muscario, but I was with some people who did. I was
almost going to try it but they started drooling and feeling
really bad, and I didn't want to feel like that, so I didn't take it.
GDR - It sounds difficult to go through. I've never
personally experienced it, but according to the trip reports it's
not a sunny day entheogen. It's not just something you jump
right into. You have to plan on feeling like garbage for a really
long time.
KC - I have heard that people do have a psychedelic
experience when they drink their pee. I think that's the
context that soma and the Rigveda was ingested. But how
many trip reports are out there of people who have actually
40
tried it? I know I'm not willing to try it. From the standpoint
of the experience itself, psilocybin seems like it would be a
much better fit. But there's some science there that needs to
be backed up, since the soma and Rigveda were drank, and
have effects that are as strong as drinking urine.
GDR - If they put together a panel of ten psychedelic
masters, people who have really fun the gamut of experiences,
and they said, "We want you to be one of the ten, and we're
all going to drink this pee to see if it's the real one," you
wouldn't join?
KC - I don't know. I don't think so. I already did some
other questionable methods of taking substances. I don't
think I'll try the urine route.
GDR - Fair enough. We'll step away from the pee
discussion then. Oh my goodness. What do you think
happens when we die?
KC - I think I've experienced dying. A lot of people look
at that with skepticism and say, "Well you didn't really die,
you experienced ego dissolution." But at the time, and
looking back on it, I still feel that's what happens when we
die. It felt like a transition. Look at reality as though we're a
coin. On one side of the coin is the little me perspective.
That's the Krystle Cole, the you, the everyone else that's out
there listening. On the other side of the coin is the one mind,
the Godhead, the all that is. When we die, we are one the
other side of that coin, and the part that's us is no longer as
relevant in the stream of consciousness as it was. It's not that
it ever stops because from what I experienced with the one,
with everything, is that there is no time and it just goes on
infinitely. From that standpoint, we always are. It always is.
It's hard to describe some of this, so it sounds vague, but I
think death is a transition into ultimate bliss. It's the ultimate
being of the now and the one. We experience the ultimate
Godhead with entheogens. I'm not afraid of dying. But I am
afraid of dying painfully.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
GDR - Well I think everyone is, yes.

KC - I don't want to die painfully but once I'm dead, I'm
not afraid of going. I think it's going to be beautiful. I've been
there before, so it's just going home. It's what always is. We
don't normally perceive that. We have to figure out a way to
open this doorway within ourselves, go to that other side of
the coin, and experience all that is. I think that's the
difference between individuals who interpret the entheogenic
experience as something that's a hallucination and all in their
head, versus something that is a spiritual experience. It's the
full integration of that. It depends on how everyone interprets
it. That's how I saw it.
GDR - I've been intrigued by the morning glory varieties
of entheogens. And from everything that I've read -- for
instance in Psychedelic Shamanism, Jim DeKorne -- it's
described as something really hardcore. Like some arcane
spirit of the ancient world when we were back in a
matriarchal society, and it's a man-hating entheogen. Have
you ever heard these things? And have you experienced
anything in the datura and/or morning glory family?
KC - I have tried morning glory seeds. I did not
experience anything like that. My experiences with most
entheogens have had a common thread. It hasn't been
anything other than experiencing the one mind that I was
describing before. Of course, you have your hallucinations
and everything else, but there's a difference between what I
would experience when it came to visual field hallucinations. I
could tell it was a hallucination rather than experiencing the
one mind. Whenever I take anything, I travel down the path
in my mind, or in my consciousness, in our soul, our shared
one being. I always go back to where I was before. I always
gravitate toward that. It's a process of getting back there.
Sometimes it's harder to let go than others. Sometimes I have
more anxiety than others. I didn't do a really strong dose of
them. I felt kind of nauseating. I prefer LSD any day.
42
GDR - If you were to fantasize about building an ideal

society, what would that look like? What might you imagine?
KC - There are things we could do to our current society
that would make it more ideal. We could decriminalize most
of the substances that are not addictive and that are spiritual
tools for self exploration, like LSD, DMT, and psilocybin. If
other highly addictive substances like heroin or
methamphetamine continue to be illegal, make the
punishment so that it's not the mandatory minimum sentence
of five years. Do away with the DEA. That would make
things a lot better.
Also, restructuring how society finds benefit in things.
People were raised with television and commercials, now the
internet. There are commercials all over the internet.
Everywhere you go you're bombarded with advertising
campaigns that tell you what is supposed to make you happy,
and that buying stuff is going to make it all better. That's just
not the case. Money's not evil, money is good -- we all need it
to live. But you can't buy things and expect them to all of a
sudden fix your life or make you happy.
Restructuring the way society think about happiness, love,
spirituality, and not being so selfish. That's another thing to
restructure. If we could look at each other as a global
community rather than isolated individuals, and say, "Hey, if I
do something good out there to help these other people, I'm
actually helping myself, because we're all one." That's what
entheogens have taught me. I might sound like a hippie, but
that's what they taught me. I would like to see some of those
things happen in the world. I don't know if that's the perfect
utopia, but I think it would go a long way to improving
things.
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The Many Methods

of Modern Exegesis
In the study of many sacred texts, some may find themselves

trying to find Truth with a capital T within it. Indeed many if
not most holy texts to carry some, if not many truths that
apply to our lives. Depending on our own predilections,
areas of study, understanding of the original language and
many other factors, our view may be slanted or skewed to see
it in one way or another.
The reality of our situation is that most holy books were
written long ago, leaving many to make up information as
seems best to them, information about who the writers were,
what the culture was like and so on. So when we are trying to
establish Truth with a capital T, it becomes daunting to find
truly faultless methods of enquiry. I would like to propose
that there are many ways a text can be seen and used, but this
suggestion must be accepted as a mere observation of the
ways I have personally seen religious texts and not necessarily
a dictation of preferred methods of exegesis. I will be using
primarily Christian examples since that is the area of my
expertise, though undoubtedly these examples are applicable
to any system that has a primary holy text.
44
1 . The most basic way to review material is the simply

take the story as a literal interpretation, trusting that time and
chance have been kind and true to the original. To the mind
of the believer at this level, the words used are words that can
be relied upon and the characters contained therein actually
lived and participated in the story at some point in actual
history. Many who take a Fundamentalist view of holy texts
see this to be the proper and only way that one can achieve
Truth with a capital T. I myself was party to this viewpoint
in my youth as were the lion’s share of my friends and family.
When operating within this framework, one can make a
cosmological rulebook that works to the liking of a great
many people.
There is however a lack of dimensionality within this
framework that prevents one from seeing the nuances that are
hidden when seen at face value. One may relate this as the
way a complex system may be explained to a child; the story
may be genuine and true in its explanation, but lacking the
color and shape that only a more mature mind could
comprehend. The misfortune of our time is that many only
need this most basic version of said story in order to develop
their own flavors of reason. This usually devolves into
superstitions that have no basis in the original intent of the
story they profess to know. Nevertheless, it is human nature
to find a nice, comfortable place in our physicality and in our
minds. The more compassionate among us can empathize
with this sentiment, though it should be said that those who
rest their head on the soft pillow of their own delusion are
prone to be duped, not only by hucksters, but by themselves
as well.
2. Another method of review is at the level of clergy, a
deeper reading into the texts beyond just the stories at face
value and a cross pollination of the ideas of many leaders and
characters throughout the holy text. When one does this,
one may find that there are indeed correlations, types, anti-
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types, foreshadowing and prophecies fulfilled. To many

people, the pastoral level of understanding is the full fruition
of the text; yielding layers of meaning that intertwine the
tendrils of doctrine with the face value of the blunt story.
Within this thought paradigm, the clergy can impress the
basic believer with and understanding of the deeper doctrines.
The issue at hand within the realm of those privy to
advanced doctrine is the sheer amount of variation in
interpretation. According to the Center for the Study of
Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological
Seminary, there are approximately 41,000 Christian
denominations and organizations in the world. It’s easy to
see how many differences of opinion there are as to which
points of doctrine are more important than others. Much of
the discourse between denominations devolves into the “no
true Scotsman” logical fallacy in which an opponent claims
that his or her adversary is not a “true _____”.
Sometimes these fall along lines that pivot on a few short
verses in which the original writer may not be easily
understood. In this case, the argument is then taken to the
root language in which the original (or closest to original)
texts are consulted. The book of Romans, chapter 15
provides an excellent example. In Romans 15, St. Paul claims
that it is God’s pleasure to create vessels for destruction and
other vessels for glory. Theologically, all humans are these
vessels. Protestant reformer, John Calvin interpreted this as a
predetermination of our lives, to be lived like a movie (the
movie metaphor is mine and not Calvin’s) with only the
appearance of choice. The vessels for destruction were
actually made to be broken, simply because God could. In
this case, the broken vessel (person) is sent to hell for their
evil lives that God made them live (according to Calvinism).
The Armenian outlook states that in light of the rest of
scripture, we have free will and will go to hell without God
being morally culpable. To them, the verse simply makes the
46
point that God could send us all to hell if he wanted to,

because, well, he’s GOD!
We can see the dizzying issues that arise within this
contextual background and the limitations that it poses when
trying to find the Truth with a capital T. But for many, this is
as good as it gets and the more sinuous aspects of doctrine
are either avoided, or just accepted for the sake of the greater
message. This was exactly where I found myself stymied
during my crisis of faith in my book, Born Again To Rebirth.
3. Another method of review relates to Astrotheology, a
viewpoint that finds correlations between the movements of
the stars, the nature and characteristics of the signs of the
horoscope and the way that the earth interacts with other
celestial bodies. Those who study Astrotheology have shown
that there are indeed connections to be made within virtually
all the major religious texts recognized today. To the first
two types of people who review the religious text, this may be
seen as heresy, something that is an evil distraction from the
real truth that the literal interpretation conveys.
Yet, one doesn’t have to look to hard to see the
integration of astrological ideas incorporated in belief
systems. Upon my visit to Rome, I saw references to the
zodiac all over with the symbol of a + shaped cross inside a
circle. It was very clear to me as I viewed the great statue of
Moses with horns growing from his head, that this was a nod
to Aries, the Ram. According to Astrotheology, the 12 signs
of the zodiac are broken down into *2,166.66 sections of
years in which each symbol of the zodiac has its age. The
word ‘AGE’ is used liberally in the bible to define an era.
Abram’s (Abraham) era was that of Taurus, the bull. During
the time that Moses went to the mountain to receive the law,
he was furious to find his people worshipping a golden cow
(Taurus’ age preceding his own new age) and destroyed the
tablets he had come down with. Once the new law had been
established, the era of Moses began, which sits in alignment
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
with the age of Aries, the age of the Ram and it’s counterpart,
the lamb. From here on, a sacrificial lamb was the preferred
method of covering one’s sins.
Jesus’ ministry is seen as the age of Pisces, the two fish.
As it is commonly known, the fish theme runs entirely
through the New Testament. There are many references
again to the end of the AGE. “Behold I am with you always,
even until the end of the AGE”. When the disciples asked
Jesus where they should go after he was gone, Jesus told them
to follow a man carrying a water pitcher. Oddly enough, men
NEVER carried water pitchers in that era, it was exclusively a
woman’s job. Astrotheologists see this as a reference to Jesus
pointing out the Aquarian age that is symbolized by a man
pouring out a water pitcher.
This is just a small portion of the interesting and
compelling finds that Astrotheologists have brought to bear
in their common assertion that the stories of both the Old
and New Testament as well as other holy texts are simply
moral stories that hide a deeper meaning which an
understanding of astrology and astronomy are keys to.
The only real danger that may come from this viewpoint is
that there may be a tendency to cheapen the story value, or
even ethical lessons contained in the holy texts used. I feel
that this is not too likely for many, because by the time one
has researched this much outside the comfort and confines of
their own safe dogma, the egg may have already cracked,
leading the researcher to understand that there is surely more
than meets the eye and that perhaps a staunch approach to
dogma is in many ways a blind approach to life.
4. In many ways, Sacred Geometry is the sister to
Astrotheology, or better yet, Astrotheology may fall under
one wing of Sacred Geometry. As Randall Carlson has deftly
demonstrated in his Sacred Geometry video series, “Cosmic
Cycles of Catastrophe” there seem to be many uncanny
correlations between holy texts, the sizes and shapes of
48
ancient structures like the great pyramid and the pantheon.

Did you know that the great pyramid is a scale twin in
measurement to the earth? How did the ancients know how
to do that and to make it mirror what we presently assume
was unknowable; the circumference of the earth!? When the
movements of the planets are taken into consideration and
measured and graphed with our modern technology, we find
the most strange geometric anomalies repeating over and
over. We find octagons on the poles of Saturn, we see
Venus’ cycles making the shape of a pentacle. The
mysterious part about all this is that we are just now able to
confirm what the ancients seemed to know since time
immemorial. Not only did they know these things, but they
stuck these little gems of wisdom into the stories of our holy
books.
To me, I see no danger in gaining more understanding in
these fields, because for the believer, it may simply confirm
that their sacred book is the right one (though all the oldest
books of the major religions have these gems hidden within
them). In any account, Sacred Geometry shows us even
more amazing things than we even knew were possible about
our own story.
5. The Theosophical approach to holy texts looks at the
breadth of texts across all religions and systems and finds the
common theme among them; disposing of hard core dogma
and pulling the ‘secret doctrine’ which had been hidden from
the general public. One may ask why such doctrine would be
hidden and the answer is simple, people in power want to
keep control of the people they dominate. Empowerment is
an ideal that has arisen and been subverted in many times and
places in our history. The term Theosophy comes from
‘Sophia” and “Theos”, which mean Wisdom and God
respectively. It’s simply a nod to having the wisdom of God.
Though many may have quarrel with me associating with
Theosophical ideas, we must remember that good ideas are
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
worth keeping and the bad ideas become self evident to the
astute researcher. But we must give credit where credit is
due, Helena Blavatsky was a pioneer in the integration of
theological concepts from all populated continents.
For our purposes, the focus remains on the concept of
there being a common theme running through all of our
stories. It amazes me when people react negatively to the
idea that we have a common story. To me, it is an
encouragement that all over the world people are thinking the
same thoughts and having the same ecstatic experiences.
This offers a breadth of interpretation and perspective that
just cannot be found from a single focal point.
6. Perhaps the easiest to deal with within these
perspectives is the angle of poetry, prose, mystic vision and
metaphor. Holy texts vary so much between individual books
and authors that the swing between metaphorical event and
literal event can become quite confusing. Is it easier to accept
the story of Jonah and the whale as a literal tale of a man
being swallowed by a sea beast and living for 3 days within it,
or is it more proper to guess what might seem obvious to
others and see it as a moral tale? Taking a story like this, it
would certainly be easier to ascribe broader value to if we
don’t have to try to prove how a man could live under such
circumstance and for the claimed reasons.
In regard to poetry, there is much to be enjoyed in both
the moral rhyme and the rapturous expressions of awe for the
unknowable and the divine. And who would not chuckle at
such phrases like, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so does a
fool to his folly” - Proverbs 26:11
My encouragement to the budding Gnostic researcher is
to hold belief lightly and consider that it may simply be the
way you see things for now. Life changes and with it changes
us, with this in mind a humble approach to the divine works,
yearnings and passions of those lives long past seems most
appropriate. Belief is a tool that you use in order to
50
accomplish something special, supernatural and yes, even

magickal. Like virtually everything else in life, things only
have the meaning that we decide to ascribe to them. One
man’s treasure is another man’s trash.
We must remember that we are pondering mysteries of a
small speck of time in an infinitesimally tiny solar system in
this sea of a universe. We ponder very big things because our
minds have the capacity to attempt to fathom these mysteries.
I can say quite confidently with this in mind that only an
arrogant fool would state that they really know what’s going
on. Therefore, we must be sure to be circumspect in our
review of our tiny mysteries and admire the nuances and even
the poetry of the many ways we can extract meaning from
holy texts.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
The Gnosis of
Randall Carlson
Randall Carlson is a world class scholar and researcher whose

area of expertise is in sacred geometry. His insights on
unfolding ancient mysteries through the language of geometry
have blown my mind.
GDR - What is the study of Sacred Geometry and how

does it affect the way we see our past, present and future?
RC - Sacred Geometry is the study of patterns in Nature,
Art and Life, utilizing practical methods of construction,
geometric proofs and reasoning in the classical sense,
combined with a philosophical, intuitive and symbolical
dimension of understanding. Our perception of the past is
significantly enhanced with the realization of the importance
of geometric knowledge to previous cultures. Modern science
is, in a sense, playing catch-up in this realm of knowing. The
utilization of Sacred Geometry by past cultures implies that
there was a highly developed science of harmony, a
deliberately arranged relationship between the human world
and the world of nature. An awareness and employment of a
system of harmony could be enormously valuable to a world
with 7 billion inhabitants trying to learn to coexist.
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GDR - Does the concept of sacred geometry lead one to

believing that the universe is an ordered construct, lending
evidence to the existence of a creator, or is there more than
one way to view it?
RC - It certainly suggests as much. To the extent that we
can discern the structure of the cosmos it would appear that
geometry does indeed pervade all of creation. It has been
recognized in the dimensions and ratios pervading our Solar
System as well as appearing in the forms of spiral galaxies. It
has been recognized in the ordered arrangement of atoms and
molecules. As to the larger scale structure of the universe,
metagalactic and beyond, our perception at this stage is too
limited to declare with absolute certainty that such is the case,
although it is likely that whatever scale of phenomenon we
are ultimately able to perceive, the forms and patterns of
Sacred Geometry will likely be pervasive.
GDR - Are instances of Sacred Geometry included in
scripture proof of the ‘truth’ of the scripture in which it is
contained?
RC - Sacred Geometry embedded in scripture reveals that
there are additional dimensions of meaning beyond the purely
literal. This has been recognized by Kabbalists, Gnostics,
Occultists and others for centuries. However, it does not
necessarily follow that scripture is then infallible, only that
there were levels of knowledge amongst the authors and
compilers heretofore unrecognized by modern scriptural
exegetes. It most definitely opens the door to an evolved
understanding of the origins of various ancient writings that
have, over time, come to be viewed as sacred and this
includes other works and traditions without being limited to
only those of the Judeo-Christian heritage. The near universal
presence of Sacred Geometry in a diverse array of historical,
cultural and spiritual traditions implies a former unity of
knowledge that has become fragmented through time.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
GDR - Sacred Geometry has gained popularity over time

and seems to be on the forefront of many people’s minds,
capturing the imagination. Many use it to bolster their own
views on god, aliens, and ancient advanced cultures. How
does one keep the integrity of the study intact while so many
people wish to use it for their own well meaning, but perhaps,
misguided purposes?
RC - Sacred Geometry has been perpetuated through the
centuries as an integral part of various arcane traditions,
meaning that it was deliberately withheld from the masses and
reserved exclusively for Initiates and those who were deemed
worthy and well qualified. With the openness and availability
of knowledge in the 21st century much of this knowledge has
become accessible on a popular level. Many unsubstantiated
claims have been put forward by proponents of various
agendas, some valid, others highly suspect or disingenuous,
apparently to create an aura of metaphysical expertise. It is
extremely important not to minimize or neglect the rational
dimension of Geometry that involves the rigorous training of
the intellect and the development of critical thinking skills.
Plato, the presumed greatest metaphysician of the western
world, required any student of his who aspired to attainment
of the metaphysical heights to be well grounded in the
methods of Geometry and in the exercise of the powers of
Reason.
GDR - What do you personally find the most thrilling
about this study?
RC - I find an immense satisfaction in the mental
processes accompanying the study of Sacred Geometry and in
the world of possibilities opened up through the use of
Sacred Geometry as a creative tool. It also immeasurably
enhances ones understanding of the mindset of ancient
peoples who employed the methods, principles and
philosophy of Sacred Geometry in varied ways both
54
artistically and scientifically.

GDR - How does Sacred Geometry relate to
Astrotheology? What does this tell us about the concept of
the precession of the equinoxes? Should we all be studying
our astrological charts more closely, or simply take all this as
mystical units of measurement?
RC - Most, if not all, ancient cultures, held an obsessive
interest in the celestial realm. There were several reasons for
this. To a mystically inspired mind the heavens were a source
of extraordinary wonder and could quite easily be viewed as
evidence of a divine purpose. In addition the motions of the
heavens served as both clock and calendar of the annual
seasons that was essential to the successful functioning of all
agriculturally based societies. Finally, on an experiential level
the heavens were a source of consternation and terror. Over
the past several decades evidence has been accumulating that
human history, like biological history, has been punctuated by
a series of cosmically induced catastrophes. It seems
increasingly likely that for periods of time the heavens came
alive with activity and ancestral humanity directly experienced
the consequences of this activity in the form of great meteor
showers and comet and asteroid impacts on Earth. There is
also the possibility that other cosmic events such as giant
solar flares and nearby supernovas dramatically affected the
human condition throughout history.
As the rhythms and tempos of celestial motion governed
the agricultural cycles of the seasons, so they governed the
tempo of the cosmic seasons. The precession of the
equinoxes represents a great celestial clock by which the
tempo of the cosmic seasons of the Great Year could be
measured and established. This cycle of changing
astronomical geometries appears to provide the gauge by
which the tempo of world altering catastrophes can be
ascertained. That this was understood by early peoples is
demonstrated through their art, architecture, social rituals and
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
religious beliefs. This insight emerges from a study of the

astral symbolism of ancient cultures and is copiously
confirmed by modern scientific discoveries in a broad array of
disciplines. Precession of the Equinoxes provides us with a
model of temporal change. The numerical values generated
from the ratios of astronomical time cycles are the same
numerical ratios manifesting through the forms and patterns
of Sacred Geometry. In other words as there is a Sacred
Geometry of Space, so is there a Sacred Geometry of time.
GDR - People are looking for truth and in so many
instances get sidelined by their own foibles or the star-power
of the latest inspirational speaker du jure. What methods have
you employed to try to stay on point?
RC - Again, I will reiterate the importance of developing
critical thinking skills and the associated powers of
discernment, both of which are the natural outcome of a
study of Geometry. There are broad, general truths which are
part of the collective heritage of mankind. These provide the
raw material for most of the varied teachings of a moral
nature that are propagated through traditional venues and are
accessible to the majority of people. Beyond this, however,
there are very specific teachings, passed down from antiquity,
which deal with issues of a verifiable and testable spiritual
technology. It is this corpus of information that constitutes
the true esoteric tradition. The late Carl Sagan once said that
extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. This is a
good thing to keep in mind when dealing with a lot of the
impressive sounding but very indefinite assertions emanating
from various New Age self-promoters. An authentic teacher
welcomes challenges and doesn’t pretend to have the final
answer to all questions. Any seeker of knowledge should
always check the source of various claims, insisting upon
actual, verifiable evidence, and always be willing to wield the
‘sword of reason’ when aspiring to explore the metaphysical
jungle.
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GDR - What does the term Gnosis mean to you and what
value does it hold in your life? Does it have relevance to us
today, if so in what way?
RC - We are living in a time of Gnostic revival. The early
Christian Gnostics believed that the route to God was unique
for every individual, and that by following the dictates of both
heart and mind, of intuition and reason, the aspirant could
attain to the heights of wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Sacred Geometry was one important methodology employed
in this quest. To the Gnostics, faith was part of the process,
but faith alone, especially in unverifiable dogmas, was
contrary to the goal of enlightenment. We have replaced our
faith in religious dogmas with faith in political dogmas and
our allegiance to the all-powerful institution of the Church
with that of the authoritarian state. The new Gnosis asks
people to think for themselves, to constantly question
‘authority’ and to cultivate their own inherent intelligence.
Through this means the liberation and higher evolution of
Mankind shall be realized.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
The Gnosis of
Dr. Lew Graham
Dr. Lew Graham has spent much of his life studying the
subject of gnosis in all its forms. His fascinating life story and
tremendous wellspring of knowledge in this area makes for a
conversation that is foundational to an understanding gnosis
in a manner that applies to us very poignantly today.
GDR - Who were the historical Gnostics, and how was

their worldview different from, you know, say, the traditional
Christians view ?
LG - Well, the historical Gnostics, were the traditional
Christians. Christianity didn't exist as an organized group.
Early on it was more of a spiritual calling, and a spiritual path.
When the Roman empire took over Christianity and made it
the official state religion. But the term Christianity is very
different from the way it was practiced and understood in the
early days of the 1st century.
GDR - So it was considered more of, kind of a path, or a
choice, like someone would choose to go follow, like within
Buddhism for instance, there are many traditions in which
you can kind of decide which path you want to pursue
according to your own predilections?
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LG: - Well, that's one way of putting it, but really, it was
more of a radical wisdom about direct contact with the
divine, without having to go an intermediary, or to a temple
or change money. In the other social rituals like that. When
Jesus was quoted accurately as saying, "the kingdom of God
is within you", what he was saying is that, 1st of all, Caesar is
not God! And 2nd, everyone who can have access to the
divine without having to go through a group of political , you
know, meddlers and gate keepers.
GDR - Well, that's very apropos; that's exactly the idea
behind this, to bring a modern take on Gnosis in that exact
principle, and allow people to decide for themselves how they
choose to pursue an experience; a direct experience with the
divine as you say. So, with that being said how does Gnosis
affect your daily life in practice, or in theory?
LG - If you consider Gnosis to be what the Greek word
originally meant, which was direct, inexplicable, intuitive
knowing through contact with the spirit world. I would say
that I am pretty much in constant contact; it guides my
decisions, fuels my intuitions, helps me follow my activities
and energies in one direction versus another; Helps with
choices. It would never tell you what to do in terms of the
future but you can ask what the consequences of a particular
path might be, so I do that a lot. And I feel that if you turn
that away If I take step A, what would happen versus step B?
And that’s what I hear actually, when I died I asked the
question:"what's life gonna be like if I stay in this beautiful
place? And then I ask a different question which is:" wow
wow wow, what life would be like if I go back to the body?"
GDR - Right.
LG - So I do a lot of that sort of test; testing of the
spiritual world to get a download, shall we say, of
unexplainable intuitive knowing that's richly detailed,
unerringly accurate and a great source of inspiration and
support.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
GDR - That's so awesome! What method do you use? Is it

a form of prayer, or is it a meditation that you do? Do you
consult various tools like throwing the I-Ching or Tarot?
What do you personally do? how does that work for you?
LG: - Good question! Well, I've been at this so long that
I'd sort of naturally tune in. The 1st step is to get my head out
of the way because the intellect, in many respects, is the only
of really knowing. So I get the chatter out of the way and I
tune in. And I make contact with the spiritual world through
the utterly trustworthy frontal spirit that is our firewall. Jesus
called it the Holy Ghost, New-Agers call it the higher-self; all
the same thing. There is an androgynous spirit that's angelic
in nature, that doesn't have the need for it's own
reincarnation. And in it is the closest access we have to the
spiritual world. So one of my teachers wrote a book called
;"walking in a sacred manner", and that's something I took
very seriously and take on board as a daily meditative practice
which is to walk in a sacred manner by being opened to set in
our seeking.
GDR - In western magic and in those disciplines,
magicians might describe Gnosis as a state of being similar to
Samhadi which is the state of non-mind you were talking
about getting rid of that mental chatter ...
LG - Absolutely! You've have to clear that away first. And
then you can receive messages.
GDR - I talk sometimes about the writings, the exegesis,
of Philip K. Dick, and to me it seems like he obviously had a
bit of mania of his own, yet when one looks at his exegesis,
they are these diamonds of brilliance that can be found within
it. Have you ever perused that? Have you seen what he said,
and is there anything that has struck you? The biggest thing
to me was; he talked about how the empire, kind of this
Archonic empire, is the one running thing. And that we
cannot defeat the empire by using the same method that the
empire uses; violence and murder, and theft, and things like
60
that. Like the idea of causing a revolution to overthrow a

tyrant makes the next person who's up there the next tyrant.
LG - It just is the same pattern, absolutely.
GDR - Right! So where do you foresee, or how do you ,
as changing these kind of patterns? Is that even possible? I
mean, isn't this a part of the traditional idea, to shun in any
way possible the influence of materialism on one’s own
outlook?
LG - Well I'm not sure what you mean by materialism.
It's ok to have things and to appreciate the created world.
This calvinistic idea that you have to be poor and miserable is
something that I reject! I think God is loving, God is happy,
God wishes us to be happy.
GDR - I think so too!
LG - As for Phillip K. Dick, that’s a rich scene of discussion.
He’s sometimes called "the man who remembered the future".
He had an odd psychic pre-conscious way of knowing things and
his short stories were science-fictional, allegedly, but they were
made into movies like Blade Runner and Total Recall, and it
might not really look forward, you probably know that!?
GDR - Right!
LG: But Dick would write things and experience them
months, or years later in which he exactly what he had written
in fiction that would happen to him in real life. Then this
strangest, most mundane possible way so it's like he was
seeing actually the future. Knowing a little bit about his life I
think he was a bit manic. I think he's embellished it but I
think he had a real gift. And it is a candor that I would call
"Gnosis" in that he had an ability to tap into some resource
through which a lot could be perceived about what would
happen in a future time and place.
GDR - There seems to be this dichotomy between the
spiritual type person who says, "we've got to change the
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
world, we've got to change all of these things; we've got to

run around and get people together and make this revolution
of consciousness (and things like that!) but then there's also
this aspect, at least within me, that just nags and says: "well, it
doesn't really matter, per se, because we're going through
these cycles and if we just focus our best towards our own
spiritual growth and progress, that that is the highest goal,
and weather we die in a fire or by some other means,
violently, or if we achieved peace, either way it's kind of
irrelevant to the grander scheme. How do you particularly
view those two things that seem so close but also so opposed
at times ?
LG - I am more in line with your perspectives. And I
have a slightly different take on it. First of all, having died
once, and I remember this life-time, I have no fear of death.
In fact I’m looking forward to it. And here is the reason why
the early Christians were so fearless about death and why
Peter for example, the requested to be crucified upside down.
Because they knew that death was just the beginning of
something else. And what I can say about that is that while
we're here incarnated in this plane. The issue people fall into
is to try to make spiritual matters more like our political
world; struggles and causes in polarity, and that sort of thing.
That may have worked in one point in time but only work to
create a religious empire. It doesn't really work to create the
conditions that advance spiritual awareness and growth. It's
hardly the recipe for wisdom.
What I would say is that a commitment for it to be
heartfelt and passionate is wonderful, but you need to be self-
focused. Everyone seems to be going around trying to fix
everybody else in the world, but the one person they have
control over, and the one person whose free will they can
speak for is their own. So I believe that December 2012
issued in a new time where the ‘save the wales’ group-think
movements begin to die off. And we're having them
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participate in the usual polarity of funneling our energy into

causes. The most important calling is to look into our own
consciousness and advance by fastidious awareness, step by
step, and ultimately allow that to mature, incubate, and
blossom into something else.
GDR - That's such a beautiful concept! So what would
you advise, would be obviously the personal growth aspect,
but we are intimately connected with one another, so how do
we work together without kind of creating a new monster, or
a new movement, how do we get together without turning it
into something that isn't so great?
LG - Well you do it the way nature does, and you create
magnetic conditions. By taking responsibility for yourself
first, so that your own charisma and inspiration are something
that motivates and attracts others. The same way a fertile land
attracts seeds, seemingly. It's just that seeds flourish on it.
Seeds are everywhere. So what you do is to create the most
fertile soil you possibly can for other people to be inspired by.
And to interact with and grow from your example. And one
very important example I believe, is to take 100% personal
accountability for everything one feels, reacts to, and
experiences. The New Age movement has a kind of
subculture. They erroneously use whatever happens to us as
something that we created. I don't believe that. I think there's
a lot of free-will in the world, and a lot of different people are
free-willed by a lot of different forces. But I believe that we
have the ability to create this wrong reaction, or response, for
what we experience in life. So I would say the place to start is
with full personal accountability for everything one feels,
thinks, or experiences.
GDR - That's really lovely! So, can you tell me more about
your experience, your near-death experience, a synopsis from
start to finish how you ended up in this situation where you
passed away for a bit?
LG - I was supposed to be on the United flight 175 on
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September 11th 2001, and I had this horrible feeling in my

gut standing at the ticket counter on the way to board that
would connect with that flight, that would board that flight.
And it was just so horrible that I just said to myself, I cannot
go to Boston? Till I have to go a different way. And I stepped
out of the flight, much to the consternation on the staff,
who'd got me 1st class seats all the way from start to finish all
the way from L.A to Hawaii. Of course I would have never
landed to Hawaii because, you know flight 175 crashed into
the south tower of the World Trade Center.
GDR - Ohhh!
LG - And I had a horrible sense of sadness to the souls
that did perish there. On the bright side I had a recurring
nightmare that I experienced at least once a month for maybe
20 years; of dying in a plane crash. That was the 1st class
cabin that was flying into a city. That nightmare stopped, and
never ever ever came back which is wonderful.
GDR - WOW!
LG - I used to wake up and drenched in sweat and
absolutely rattled, saying to myself, ”That seemed real, that
seemed real! Did it really happen?" And it would take an
hour or two until I eventually get back to sleep and say: "oh
no that was just a dream. It seems so real, WOW!" Anyway,
the following winter, I felt spiritually incomplete. So I went to
New York and I visited the World Trade Center site, everyday
for 5 or 6 days. And it was cold in Manhattan that winter with
a particularly unbearable cold snap. Now the site itself smelt
horrible. I went all along fence and the channeling fence
around it and attempted to make spiritual contact with the
guardian angels of the holy ghosts of the people who died
there, and to usher them on their path, having been started at
that horrible place. And what I discovered in the process was
that a lot of people had mistakenly thought that they were in
hell. They were dead and in hell. And they were still living in
the torment of that miserable hallucination. I think that's
64
probably because they were burned alive. But I sent as much

healing energy as I could to those souls. And over the course
of 5 days I started getting weaker, and sicker, which is typical
of the use of healing energy.
GDR - Right.
LG - Particularly when you spend a lot of it, you feel
strange and tired. But by the time I was getting ready to leave
New York. I was started to feel really sick like I had a flu
coming on. On the plane from New York to the west cost I
really began to feel bad. I had aches like I never had before in
life; no matter what position I was in I couldn't get
comfortable. Everything that ever hurt in athletics, or sports
in my life began to feel like a fresh injury. So I had them all
over my body from, virtually, neck to toe. I got to LA and
managed to get into a cab and hauled to my place in West
L.A, and I went to bed thinking that like when you have the
flu I will bounce back from it pretty quickly. Over the next
day or so, I went to alternate season-chills. I had water bottles
besides the bed and the emergency phone there to make calls.
But every time I reached my hand from under the cover to try
to reach them, I would erupt in such intense chills that I
couldn't even grab anything, grab a bottle of water, or grab a
phone. So I put my hands back under the covers, and I
started to sweat profusely, and so this ultimate Malaria-like
syndrome of fever and chills just kept going on, non-stop,
until at some point I began to have itchy lungs and started
coughing. When I started coughing it felt better but also
worse at the same time and it was like it was inflaming and
irritating somethings in my lungs when I coughed.
GDR - Right!
LG - My eyes were closed much of this time, I opened
my eyes at one point and I saw that there was blood all over
the sheets and I was coughing up blood.
GDR - Woah!
LG - I had no idea. And that continued for a while. I
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didn't know what to do; I couldn't do anything about it. And

the pain was so intense any time I would cough, I would just
kinda huddle into a fetal position in which position I began to
lose control over my bodily functions. Ordinarily I'm a very
prim and proper, well-behaved and a fine person but I had
this feeling of resignation when I realized that I was losing
control over my lungs and my vital functions. I had started to
think there's nothing you can do about it. That's just the way
it is. And at some point after that the room began to change.
I noticed it was filling with 4 beautiful people and tall whitish
angelic beings. And I began to hear a distant exhilarating
music, it's so hard to describe; it's like nothing you ever heard
but It was like salve to the soul. So as I looked I saw the
people all standing there, and they looked familiar but I didn't
recognize, except for my younger brother. I saw those whitish
beings and I asked myself: "what on earth is happening here?”
And I suddenly realized, when I asked myself that question:
"I'm dying!?" and I felt thrilled! I was so happy about that! I
said "at last" to myself basically. I said to myself: "well here's
your new body! I’m not stuck with this old thing anymore,
it's great!”
As I turned to face my love ones in the room I saw my
body was still in the bed but I was not in my body. So I
walked out to my younger brother and said, you know, "do I
have to go?" and he shook his head "no", and so "do I need
to stay here?", he shakes his head "no", and I said "well do I
stay, or go?" and he gave me a thumbs up and a thumbs
down with both hands. Communication was crystal clear.
GDR - Like a telepathic dialogue?
LG - Oh, it's richer than that! Richer than psychic, or
telepathic experience that ever happened. So yes like that!
Without words, but with complete understanding. So at that
point when I said: "so it's up to me", I got this resonating
love washing from above me, and it was divine and energetic
spirit from when I was 5 years old. I recognized it. I didn't
66
see who or what was behind it. But I kind of stood there and
communicated with this divine energy for a while. I asked to
see the past and what I saw was a series of shimmering balls
on the right side of the room. Everything happened kind of
from right to left like Hebrew writing, or Arabic script.
GDR - Right!
LG - And everything was sort of stacked and leaning, to
the left. But I looked in the mirror and each room was like a
hologram. And I realized it was a lifetime. I stuck my finger
into one lifetime and disappeared for weeks or months. And I
came back, and found out where it was. I was just sticking my
finger in this shimmering bubble of recollection, or
experience. And from that point on I can look at each
bubbles, and I can understand everything it was about. What
happened during that life time and how I got to have certain
hang-ups, what I learned. What facet of the soul was
polished. And I remember the funny thing to me was that,
except for 2 spontaneous dreams I've had, all the Money I've
spent going to places like the Yellowstone Life Institute,
various past-life regression therapists; all those stories were
not mine. Everything else was sort of a tale told by wondering
spirit who wanted to have its perspective understood.
GDR - Wow!
LG - I remember how hilarious I found this at the time.
It was just the greatest practical joke, you know...
GDR - (Laugh) I can imagine!
LG - After communicating with this spirit for a while, I
got to the key questions for me. As to that music I loved; the
music is something I believe I can recreate. And I believe it
was based on what Pythagorus called "the Harmony of the
Spheres". There's still some missing mathematics to complete
the 156 cords scale, but I asked about the work I've done
over decades in researching the books that I call my Gnosis
Series, now in their 4th edition known as "Gnosis Onward ".
I asked about the book series wondering did I suss this stuff
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
out right? Did I get the point? And I got the answer, I did!
And so I said :"well, am I finished?" And the answer was:"
No, but there's just more to learn and there's more to
discover." And so I said: "If I stay here in this beautiful place
with my loved-ones and this music and this amazing and
indescribable love, what will happen to all this work I've done
over the decades.?” And when I saw the future flowing kind
of a series of streams from right to left, going from low to
high and I understood, like a hologram between this stream
and that and how they connected to each other. And what I
saw that had been in place for some time was a redundancy
plan. God, or the universe had put a redundancy plan in place
and I could freely go and somebody else who pick up the
work; all the notes and material and sundries I had left
behind. So I said:" oh ok! Great, so no harm!" Absolutely not!
Everything was provided for!
GDR - Wow!
LG - I've then asked the converse question:" Show me the
future if I go back to the body and leave this beautiful place.”
And I saw the same kind of pattern, different patterns this
time. But same pattern floating from right to left, and low to
high. I looked at it and tuned into the period about 5 to 10
years later, and said:"oh my goodness that's gonna be hard,
wow! That's gonna be really hard! And in that beautiful place
with all support and love, the yesterday answer, the telepathic
communication, the ability to just know anything by thinking
about it I said, ”Oh, I’ll go back to body no problem", and
the moment I did, I went from standing up and talking to my
family and I handle tall whitish beings around and
communicating to this overarching presence, to being back in
my blood soiled bed, and in the body in which I said, ”Oh my
goodness, that was a mistake!"
GDR - ( LAUGH) "Why did I not take the other pill!!?"
LG - Exactly, exactly! Because this reincarnation is an
ephemeral fixation from the other side. You look at it and
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you say:"well, maybe yes, maybe no. I'll choose that path
without taking the blue pill, whatever.” But when you’re
actually stuck in the middle of it, the experience is totally
different.
GDR - Yeah.
LG - So, the good thing I found out from that experience
was that there were some discoveries to be made and I knew
the whole game plan. I knew every game of Poker I'd ever be
playing for the rest of my life. Intimately. I mean every hand,
what would occur, I knew the future in great detail. Then
over the next 3 days that awareness began to fade and I
started to panick.
GDR - Did you feel a sense of loss over it?
LG - Oh my goodness! I felt fear! Because if you knew
which way the ball is coming you'd know where to swing,
right?
GDR - Right!
LG - I remember they called me a name when I was out
of the body. And part of it had a meaning like "son". I can't
remember the name, I thought I'd always remember that. I'd
recognize the name the moment I telepathically heard it. It
felt familiar like putting on a comfortable old jacket. But
even that name went away and I began to lose track of what
was going to occur in the future, why it was gonna be hard,
and what I had to cope with, and so forth and so on. Now I
assumed that since I got rehydrated I must crawl on my
stomach after I went back to the body, and got into a steamy
shower to rehydrate. I assumed that I'd get well and
everything would be fine. It wasn't! My memories began to
fade and I'm kinda in the middle of the physical and the
spiritual world. When I meet on of these people that I've
already seen in the future, I get a particular kind of
unmistakable intuitive signal, and will take that signal and I've
had it several times since then and everybody I've met has
been significant.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
GDR - Wow!
LG - ... And they've fit right into the plan. It turned out I
had Legionnaires Disease, a bacterial fungal or mold-like
infection in the lungs. 100% of people who go more than 72
hours without being treated by antibiotics die! I was a rare
exception to the rule. so that was the story of the so called
near death experience. I almost made it out of the body for
good, and it was my choice and I decided to come back.
GDR - I for one am thankful that you here! (Laughs)
LG - (Laughs) Thank you Gabriel!
GDR - What a tremendous story! That is just beautiful! So
what do you feel is, you know after that perspective, and after
a lifetime of study and kind of devotion to trying to
understand purpose and meaning of life; what do you feel
your purpose is here? I mean, does it feel like all of the
tearing, and all of the pain and suffering you had to return to
is the only way to growth? What is the endgame in your
opinion?
LG - The endgame is about spiritual and soul evolution,
acquiring wisdom, which is our job over every lifetime. And
so I do a prayer to my guardian angel every day, or the Holy
Ghost, or my higher-self, or whatever you want to call it! But
I reached out to the spirit world, to the great company of
high-selves, to the heavenly host and to every benevolent
spirits through them, because they are interested in our well
being. And what I thought was the big picture. What can I
contribute over the course of a lifetime? But as I did decide to
come back to this lifetime to get the information I had
discovered, and I'd gained on my way. Not with a sense of
ego, but with a sense of completion and purpose
accomplished. And then within that larger context I thought
it was something I could focus on and do everyday. For
example, I got psychic pinch, shall we say, the intuitive alert
from you yesterday, Gabriel. I emailed and you said, “you
must have felt me thinking about you!”
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GDR - (Laughs) I was!

LG - Yes I did! And I pay attention to smallest sort of
signs and wonders and follow them to the point that I have
completely discharged as best as I can. Whatever contribution
I can make in any situation. While at the same time working
on the overall life-mission of rekindling ancient magic and
reminding people of what used to exist in this world.
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The Gnosis of
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake
I met Dr. Sheldrake in New York a couple of years back and

had already been a fan of his work for a long time. I enjoyed
his approachable nature and sharply subtle wit and humor.
“I’m all for science and reason as long as it is scientific and
reasonable.”, he softly said to the audience, drawing a good
chuckle. Dr. Sheldrake’s work has been the bane of the
Mechanistic Scientist since his book, A New Science of Life was
released in 1983. He maintains that there is a morphic field
that contains a collective memory. This field is outside the
bounds of the material world and therefore is an irksome
notion to many who hold an ‘it’s material, or it doesn’t exist’
viewpoint. I was lucky enough to include this, my second
interview with him.
GDR – I asked a bunch of my people online about

questions to ask you. I picked the best one out of it. The first
one I have is from Sir Penrose’s research on quantum
vibration in microtubules. The long and short of it is that they
believe that the quantum pathways inside the brain that are
the source from which our consciousness comes. But it seems
like it doesn’t answer the question of consciousness, just
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where it might be received.

RS – Well, for years they have been plugging this idea of
microtubules as the place where it is being received, I myself
feel the interface is the whole pattern of brain activity
including the electrical patterns of activity and it’s not just
microtubules which are no doubt quantum processors which
interface with morphic fields, but so are cell membranes that
are whole pattern of activity throughout whole regions of the
brain. So I think they have zeroed in on one little bit. So, I
think the basic idea that there are quantum process that there
is an interface throughout such processes in the brain may be
okay, But I think their extreme specificity about microtubules
is like saying the whole economy depends on the activity of
cash registers in supermarkets. Its true to a point that they are
involved, but it doesn’t explain the whole thing.
GDR – I like the cash register analogy. One thing I have
come across, especially in circles with people talking about
consciousness and psychedelics and spirituality, a lot of
people take your work, and they pick and choose how they
might want to apply it. Could you explain what these morphic
fields are and what they are not in relation to spirituality and
things like that.
RS – Morphic fields are the organizing fields of systems at
all levels of organization including atoms, molecules, crystals,
cells, organisms, flocks of birds, solar systems and galaxies.
Morphic Fields are organizing structures that make the whole
more than the sum of it's parts in self organizing systems.
They have a built in memory by morphic resonance from
similar things of the some kind in the past, therefore they are
basis of collected memory within living organisms, and
basically they underlie the habits of nature, in it's most general
sense my theory says the so called laws of nature are more
like habits. So it's a theory of habits and a theory of collective
memory. It helps to explain the collective unconscious that
Jung proposed. It helps to explain how repeated activities can
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have a particular effect in the context of religion and

spirituality.
Rituals are activities that are deliberately done in as similar
way as possible, like thanksgiving dinner or the passover ritual
or the holy Communion. These rituals are done in similar way
that they have been done before which creates the right
conditions for morphic resonance. I think that morphic
resonance explains part of the power of rituals and mantras
where the same phrase is repeated, and by repeating it in the
present, you tune into yourself and others using that in the
past. So I think it helps with those aspects of spirituality, but I
don’t think it tells us much about consciousness itself because
habits are usually unconscious. It leaves open the question of
consciousness, and creativity, both of those areas are
important in spirituality but morphic resonance itself doesn’t
explain either the existence of consciousness or creativity but
it is compatible with consciousness being an arena of choice.
Morphic resonance is really the habit principle in evolution
we need at least two principles, habit and creativity. So it
explains how; once new creative things have happened,
including new creative spiritual breakthroughs, they become
easier for others to follow. It can explain the propagation of
creative events but it can't explain creativity itself.
GDR – I read a book by the author Peter J Carroll, he
mentioned you, one thing he talked about is that He himself
is an Atheist, however, he believes in things like telepathy and
morphic fields. So going along secondary to the last question,
does one require a belief in god per se, to believe that
morphic fields are a real thing or is it something that can be
separately applied as some people do?
RS – Oh Yes, it can be separately applied. In my first
book A new Science of life I give 4 different theories of
creativity, one of which is an expanded version of naturalism,
or materialism. Morphic fields and morphic resonance are a
part of science and scientific investigation and don’t require a
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spiritual or religious belief, but they leave open the question

of spirituality and I think that the kind of world view I'm
putting forward is compatible with a spiritual world view but
it doesn’t necessitate it. I think its important to have in
science something which doesn’t require a particular world
view or require Atheism. Right now science is inherently
Atheistic; the materialist world view. So it sort of marginalizes
spirituality. I think the new kind of science I'm keen on would
allow for both spirituality and an expanded liberal
naturalism.
GDR – It seems there is an ongoing refinement. Once the
bickering dies down a little bit there seems to be a drawing
closer. Are there things going on now in current research that
are encouraging as far as these trends are concerned? Are we
finding new things or less things that would lead us to believe
that morphic resonance is occurring in the regard to
consciousness and the mind sciences, for instance?
RS - There have been very few experiments directly
looking at morphic resonance. One of the features of
morphic resonance is that memories are not stored inside the
brain, and also that inheritance involves morphic resonance
not just genes and epigenetics. There have been some rather
interesting experiments recently particularly, one involving
mice, I don’t know if you saw the paper on mice where the
father is made averse to a chemical Acetophenone that they
don’t normally encounter in nature, or the lab, they are made
averse to it, they smell it and are given electric shocks to their
feet, it's one of those old style cruel experiments, so after a
while they are terrified when they smell Acetophenone. Their
children and grandchildren are terrified when they smell
Acetophenone, They inherited this fear from their fathers,
even when they have never met, or even when the mothers
are artificially inseminated. So the only way that conventional
science can explain that would be in terms of epigenetic
modifications of the genes in a way that goes far beyond
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anything that has ever been demonstrated. Whereas morphic

resonance would make it relatively easy to explain. I think the
data suggests to me that its a combination of the two, there
may be some degree of epigenetic modification but I think
that the main learning may be transferred by morphic
resonance. That's a very interesting paper that recently
attracted a lot of attention. Another one was some work by
Michael Levin at Tufts did experiment where he trained
flatworms to respond to light in a particular way, they can
learn, they are simple organisms but they have the capacity to
learn. So he trained a population of flatworms then he cut
their heads off and they don’t have much of a brain but they
have a sort of Cerebral ganglia, and the eyes are in the head as
well, so he cut the head and brain and eyes and these worms
regenerated their heads and they can still remember what they
had learned before their head was cut off. So you would have
to say there are some physical memory stores all over the
body, which is possible, or that this is a morphic resonance
effect. It would require further experiments to to decide
between them. But the fact that these experiments have been
done, or reported in the last few months is to me very
exciting because these areas where morphic resonance is
definitely one of the potential explanations.
GDR – So one of the difficulties in things like morphic
fields is how to map these things that are not necessarily in
the traditional material realm. Are there ways that we can do
this in a scientific manner that will allow us to make progress?
I suppose that the worm test is a good example of a
repeatable method; are there others? How can we try to figure
out what's going on in the non-local aspect?
RS – The main thing is to do experiments to show
whether morphic resonance is happening or not. There is
already quite a lot of circumstantial evidence and experiments
on human learning, and animal learning that suggests morphic
resonance is happening. I discussed this at length in my book
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A New Science of Life which came out 2-3 years ago, in

America it's called Morphic Resonance. I have a whole
appendix summarizing the research so far and describing ten
new tests. So the basic tests are when one animal would learn
something in one place and other animals of the same kind
should learn the same thing elsewhere. There is already
evidence this happens with rats. Experiments with people
could show this as well; several have been done. It's not
difficult to do the experiments, the problem is getting them
funded or persuading people in universities to do
unconventional research because there is a big disincentive to
doing anything unconventional in the scientific world because
you can damage your career. The problem is more
sociological than scientific.
GDR – So have you found in your own research over the
years that this has been kind of a detriment that some things
you have promoted? In the original trialogues Terence
Mckenna said your book was a prime candidate for burning,
have you found it difficult to continue your research? How do
you continue on and get around those pitfalls?
RS – Well, there is a lot of prejudice within the scientific
world against morphic resonance and especially psychic
phenomenon like telepathy on which I have also worked. So
there is a kind of narrow dogmatic conservatism, and that
after all is the theme of my recent book Science Set Free, I
think this is a problem for all of science this dogmatic attitude
that has become increasingly predominant. I believe that
science should be a method of free enquiry, I don't think it
should be a dogmatic belief system, and that's what keeps me
going, I really believe in science, I think science has a great
and bright future but not if it remains under the control of
this extreme narrow dogmatism. So there are plenty of people
who want science to move on and change. Not everyone in
the scientific world is dogmatic, though the dogmatic people
are a rather vociferous minority. So I'm encouraged by the
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fact that there are lots of open minded people in the scientific
world, I meet them all the time, but many of them keep their
views private because they are afraid of damaging their
careers by coming out of the closet and speaking more freely,
at least in public. But I think the potential of revitalization of
science is very great, not just in my area but in other areas
too, and that's precisely why I wrote the book Science set
Free to explain what I think the problems are and how we
can move forward.
GDR – I really enjoyed it I thought it was an excellent
work. So traditionally Gnosis , from the Greek, represents an
experience that is not necessarily intellectually based but a
personal experience, for instance if one is to talk about
making love, that is one thing, but to actually experience
making love, after that experience they have gnosis on that
matter. How have you experienced gnosis in that sense in a
modern applicable way in your life?
RS – Gnosis in its general sense has the same roots of our
word knowledge. So there is a sense that we all have access to
knowledge, and knowing through experiencing this happens
every day all the time. A more deep sense of knowing, a sense
of connection with a greater consciousness then our own is
usually called a mystical experience and I have had quite a few
experiences of that kind. Things that make clear to me that
the world is more then just a surface appearances of thing or
just the mechanistic model of things, that’s there is a kind of
mind or consciousness within the natural world and one that
transcends it as well. So I would call that a sort of
contemplative experience or mystical experience. The Greeks
used the word Fyuria, Fyuria meant intuitive knowing. Some
of the gnostics were Platonists, Plato thought that there was a
world of eternal forms and ideas that we can directly glimpse
in mystical or altered states on consciousness, and I think
many of the gnostics in the traditional sense of the word were
rigid in Platonic tradition. I’m not a Platonist myself because I
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don’t think the forms of things are all fixed, I think we live in
a radically evolutionary universe. The Platonic version of
Gnosis is not one I've ever felt very drawn to, but the sense
of the intuitive, mystical, unitive experience is something I
have had myself and I think many other people have had and
that's the root of any spirituality or religion in the ultimate
analysis.
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The Gnosis of
Camron Wiltshire
GDR - What is the study of Sacred Geometry and how does

it affect the way we see our past, present and future?
CW - First we should define Sacred Geometry. Sacred
denotes something of a divine or holy nature and geometry is
the combination of geo, meaning earth, with metry, meaning
to measure or measurement. In other words, Sacred
Geometry is the measurement of nature divine.
It appears from all angles, that life as we know it plays out
according to mathematical templates (ratios and proportions)
embedded within nature herself, or rather, that what we
experience as nature, is comprised of interwoven wave forms
of self assembling and disassembling materia. Materia whose
alchemical operations and interactions reveal patterns (from
the latin ‘pater’ or father) that repeat throughout all
perceivable scales of existence, from the, “sub-microscopic to
the super galactic” as my teacher Randall Carson has
described it. This “hidden architecture of creation”, serves as
the template or blueprint through which the universal
language of mathematics manifests into form.
As for how this realization modifies our perspective of
time and history, I’d say it’s something akin to the key to the
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holy city. Cryptic utterances aside, Sacred Geometry is the

most potent system for comprehending the great Mystery of
life and the operating system upon which it runs. Therefore
all that is, has been or could be, can be best understood
through the modification to our perceptual lenses this
knowledge provides.
GDR - Does the concept of sacred geometry lead one to
believing that the universe is an ordered construct, lending
evidence to the existence of a creator, or is there more than
one way to view it?
CW - “A super-intelligence is the only good explanation
of the origin of life and the complexity of nature’ – Anthony
Flew
“Rather than accept that fantastically small probability of
life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it
seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a
deliberate intellectual act. By “better” I mean less likely to be
wrong.”–Sir Fred Hoyle
Both of the above quotes mirror completely my own
perspective as I tumble down the rabbit hole that is the study
of Sacred Geometry. Such a feat of engineering is not random
and implies some incomprehensible cosmic intelligence has
set in motion this whole as above so below alembic vitrium
show. Regardless of your professed faith or belief system, life
could not function without the supremely complex
coordination of innumerable variables throughout all visible
scales of resolution.
For example, ponder the fact that the following numerical
cipher shows up in so many different scales simultaneously
throughout our galaxy. Our planet rotates on it’s axis relative
to the Sun in exactly 86,400 seconds every solar day. The
Sun’s diameter is 864,000 miles with an accuracy of 99.9%.
The distance from our Sun to the brightest star in the sky
Sirius is 8.64 light years and the distance from it to the
supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is 864,000
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parsecs. Thanks to Scott Onstott for providing such

scintillating infographics and the inspiration behind this
particular revelation.
GDR - Are instances of Sacred Geometry included in
scripture proof of the ‘truth’ of the scripture in which it is
contained?
CW - No, to believe so would be to commit the sin
(missing the mark) of the fallacy of virtue or genetic fallacy,
and falsely presume, that because scripture contains scientific
truth within it, that it must follow then that the book in which
it is contained is therefore sacrosanct-ified “truth” so to
speak. I think this is yet another primary example of our need
to revisit history with new eyes all together, especially
concerning the astro-theological basis of the three dominant
monotheistic religions. All of whose holy days of worship are
devoted to certain celestial bodies. Whether or not the
practitioners realize this is a different matter.
Case in point, here are a few rather curious examples of
technically advanced scientific information being
anachronistically encoded in scripture. Those familiar with
apocalyptic Judeo-christianity are likely also already familiar
with the number of the beast 666. Yet most likely have never
considered that within this allegory there is encoded highly
evolved scientific information which unveils the meaning
behind this oft maligned segment of the book of Revelation.
“Here is wisdom let him who hath understanding count
the number of the beast, for it is a number of a man, six
hundred three score and six.” – Revelations 13:18 KJV
How is it possible that this potent allegory could encode at
least 4 scientific facts of a highly technical nature, which if we
adhere to the current paradigm of mainstream historical
scholarship, could not have been understood by the author at
the time of its writing? Again don’t take my word for it, let’s
begin the exegetical revelation of this encoded scripture.
First of all our planet maintains an orbital velocity around
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the Sun (of God) which equals 66,600 (99.9%) miles per
hour. Don’t take my word for it, to verify this please head to
your favorite search engine and type in Nasa, earth data fact
sheet and access the following information located
underneath the heading titled,“Oribital parameter”. You will
find listed there that Earth’s mean orbital velocity equals
29.78 (km/s) Convert this into miles by multiplying by
0.621371 and the result is 18.5044 miles per second.
Repeat this expansion by the same factor of 60 to receive
another fascinating repetitive number sequence of 1,110.265
miles per minute. Convert this number into miles per hour by
again multiplying by 60 and the result is 66,615.94 miles per
hour (99.9%). Secondarily, we turn our attention from the
Earth’s speed to the Moon’s size to discover the next
correspondence. The Earth’s moon is 2,160 miles in diameter
(99.9%). The cube of 6 or 6.6.6 equals 216. Utilizing
Pythagorean addition, the zeros are understood as merely
place holders denoting scale or orders of magnitude. The
number essence or digital root of the figure is found in the
numeric pattern preceding them. Thus ignoring the
thousandth place holder which would give us 2,160 we here
again we have a 666 correspondence appearing in this
scripture as well as the physical geometry of our planet’s
moon, commonly associated with the Virgin Mary or Isis and
another divine portion of the holy trinity.
Keep in mind that the Moon rules the tides and that
without it life on this planet most likely never would have
evolved beyond a very simple stage of existence, if at all. The
tides are the means by which primary marine life was swept
into the intertidal zone which provided the impetus for
amphibious life and later terrestrial life to evolve, or so the
theory goes. Falling further into this magical scripture, yet
another correspondence presents itself. The Moon is
calibrated so that as it orbits us once a month, it operates
much like a flywheel, stabilizing our planet’s rotation while
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holding our axial tilt at 23.4˚ relative to the plane of the

ecliptic. The complementary angle produced by this
alignment again yields the number of the man/beast 66.6˚
(90.0˚-23.4˚)
This angular relationship provides the procession of the
equinoxes and the solstices, which in turn give us the annual
freezing and melting cycles of the polar ice caps. This process
is critical for the yearly replenishment of the food chain via
the infusion of purified and remineralized water which
nourishes the entire planetary ecosystem’s food chain. Finally,
Carbon based life, which is a vital ingredient for all known
naturally occurring life on this planet.
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Essential molecular essence is again characterized by 666.

Carbon molecules are composed of 6 electrons, 6 protons
and 6 neutrons. All organic life is carbon based. Carbon
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amazingly is a by product of the explosive death of stars

billions of years previous to the creation of the earth.
For those raised in a fundamentalist interpretation of
these scriptures please keep in mind that these revelations do
not invalidate your faith in a higher being that loves you.
Many of this mysterious architect or engineers Suns were
literally sacrificed (transmuted) billions of years before our
planet came into being, so that we might live.
Unquestioningly there is so much more to the
astrotheological Jesus
narrative than previously understood. The beautiful irony
here is that science is proving the existence of God and part
of the hidden meaning encoded within St. John’s revelatory
gnosis. For those subjected to a demonized and irrational
view point of this segment of St. John’s apocalyptic vision I
present the following advice.
“Can we be so naïve and superstitious as to ascribe
evilness to a mere number? If you are scared of the number
666, or attribute it to the devil, you have simply mistaken
what is being said about this number. St. John clearly informs
us in Revelation that 666 is a number of wisdom and a
number of man. If you fear this number, you are but fearing
yourself and fearing wisdom. If there is anything beastly
about this number at all, St. John is asking but one thing of
you overcome your fears.” -Claudia Pavonis
GDR - Sacred Geometry has gained popularity over time
and seems to be on the forefront of many people’s minds,
capturing the imagination. Many use it to bolster their own
views on god, aliens, and ancient advanced cultures. How
does one keep the integrity of the study intact while so many
people wish to use it for their own well meaning, but perhaps,
misguided purposes?
CW - The beauty of the study of Sacred Geometry that it
is self evidently true. Sola fide or blind faith, is usually
required at some level, by those who would take advantage of
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the uninitiated so to speak. Developing your own powers of

critical thinking and immersing yourself not only in the study
of Sacred Geometry but of logical fallacies, sophistry,
disinformation and so on, are vital means for identifying
when you are being fed a load of bullshit by some would be
authority figure or new age con artist.
The 7 liberating arts; Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric,
Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy are also key
components for awakening the eye of the soul and cultivating
the intelligence of the heart. Becoming well versed in utilizing
these implements in pursuit of wisdom can save you years in
your quest for gnosis. Fools gold is just that and what a
shame and waste of one’s precious time it would be, to find
yourself lost in the illusions of another, for lack of a well
honed sword of reason. A necessary means to cleave wheat
from chaff or egotist from sage.
GDR - What do you personally find the most thrilling
about this study?
CW - The implications of the revelations present within
an authentic study of Sacred Geometry and it’s associated
magical and mystery traditions is frankly staggering. I am a
passionate advocate for human liberation and I find that this
multi-faceted philosophical discipline provides the greatest
means for removing the blight of ignorance and violence that
is sadly still so prevalent in the world today. War has
appropriately been likened to, “the death of reason” and so
providing the antidote as best as I can offer is work I am
happy to be a part of. I find it thrilling to know that such arts
exist and that anyone willing to do the work can achieve
gnosis through their labors. Our salvation is there for the
making.
This is the purpose of our work at SGI. Randall Carlson
has devoted the lion share of his current incarnation to
preserving and expanding this liberating scientific knowledge,
and we at SacredGeometryInternational.com have gone to
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great lengths to make it accessible to those who want to

comprehend and apply this sacred wisdom to their lives
through numerous free articles, videos, podcasts and classes
(available for a nominal fee) with the hopes that a new
generation of rational mystics and divine scientist
philosophers, might one day coordinate their efforts in
developing harmonic centers for the spiritual, scientific and
philosophical evolution of human kind.
GDR - How does Sacred Geometry relate to
Astrotheology? What does this tell us about the concept of
the precession of the equinoxes? Should we all be studying
our astrological charts more closely, or simply take all this as
mystical units of measurement?
CW - Astro-theology is defined by dictionary.com as
“Theology founded on observation or knowledge of the
celestial bodies. Religion has been defined as, “a set of beliefs
concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe,
especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman
agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual
observances, and often containing a moral code governing
the conduct of human affairs.” - Derham.
How this relates to Sacred Geometry and the precession
of the equinoxes is something worthy of much consideration.
Short of explaining the mechanism of the third motion of our
planet and it’s utilization in timing the past and potential
future episodes of periodic catastrophe here, I will relay that
we have multimedia articles and videos present on our site
which feature visual aides and animations that help explain
this cosmology to the true lover of wisdom.The best way to
answer this question is to request that readers visit our
youtube channel )(youtube.com/sacredgeometryatl) and
watch our film Cosmic Patterns and Cycles of Catastrophe as
it provides a thorough overview of what is likely the most
important scientific discovery of the 20th summed up with
the following quote again from Randall.
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“A cosmic tempo based on Sacred Geometry, encoded in

myth & mystical architecture throughout the Earth governs
the unfolding of world ages, the rise and fall of civilizations &
is ultimately the very basis of apocalyptic prophecy” – Randall
Carlson
GDR - People are looking for truth, but get distracted
with nonsense very often. What methods have you employed
to try to stay on point?
CW - Experience is the greatest teacher of course. As I
have aged I have gained greater clarity as to why the
manufactured fixation on celebrity is so powerful on the mind
of the individuals who compose the ‘masses’. The “shamans
of madison avenue”, or the magistrates of the great mind fuck
of the military industrial media complex, require incessant
repetition of fallacious logic, narcohypnotic induction and
pure terror to maintain entranced subjugation to their
violently coercive externalized authoritarian systems.
Breaking the trance can take place in so many ways and
beware you don’t find yourself swept up by further tiers of
prefabricated illusion that many systems of mind control and
propaganda feature as fail safes. The best methods I have
found to date are to maintain a healthy skepticism about
anything you hear, and before adding it to your mental
registry, that you vet each aspect as much as possible,
applying critical thinking skills in gauging it’s veracity.
Studying the trivium method (grammar, logic and rhetoric)
and applying this system of mental filtration to any line of
study will yield great dividends for the authentic seeker, and
help avoid contagion from unchecked mental viruses.
Triviumeducation.com is a wonderful resource for getting up
to speed with this ancient and suppressed means for
winnowing truth from lie systematically. There are many
fascinating independent communities developing online now
that employ these methods and thus self-police against
abusive and manipulative thought viruses or propagandistic
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techniques, by providing extensive examples and

deconstructions of common tactics of disinformation and
sophistry as they are employed in various verses of thought
and media throughout recorded history.
I say may the best and most self evidently true
philosophies win out in the freemarket (agora) of ideas. To
this effect I hope that current and future generations can
participate in the various Phight (philosophic) clubs where
neo-renaissance humankind can again engage in open minded
and spirited inquiry regarding the nature and purpose of our
existence.
GDR - What does the term Gnosis mean to you and
what value does it hold in your life? Does it have relevance to
us today, is so in what way? Gnosis is for me the opportunity
to come to know yourself as part of the divine plan and to
cultivate wisdom, strength and beauty in pursuit of
transformative heightened consciousness.
CW - Regarding its relevance to us today, I can only offer
that for all of the immense work which has gone before in
preparing this stage of history; that it would be a shame to
again forget the lessons of the past, and to ignore the modern
prophets who present the will and challenges of the heavens.
Challenges which must be bested if we are to prove our
worthiness to embark upon the greater cosmic destiny that
awaits a liberated populace. A cosmopolitan society fully
awake and aware to the reality that our time here is very
limited given that approximately 13,000 years the world was
remade entirely.
This event has been recorded in geomythology as that of
the fall of the Atlantean civilization. There is ample scientific
evidence accumulating daily independently confirming the
reality that we have in fact lost technically advanced
civilizations previously. Or to quote Manly P. Hall, “Mother
Nature has shaken many civilizations from her back.” With
the information provided by vanguard journalists and
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scholars such as Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, Dr.

Robert Schoch, Robert Bauval, John Anthony West and many
more, it is apparent that our entire conception of history is
overdo for fundamental revision.Thomas Jefferson famously
summarized this heroic call to action when he commanded,
“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Knowledge of
the challenges of our era and the willingness to protect and
expand the sacred sovereignty of humankind is in fact the key
to our species liberation and long term success.
The revelatory gnosis provided in Randall Carlson’s
stunning and apocalyptic vision of periodic world rending
catastrophes is ample inspiration for quickening ones step in
pursuit of divine knowledge. Similarly, the enigmatic Timothy
Leary imagined the future evolution and success of our
species as boiling down to a very critical and simple formula,
the invitation was for us to look again to the heavens above,
S.M.I².L.E and re-member. S.M.I².L.E stands for Space
Migration Intelligence squared = Life Extension.
The key to our future lies in acknowledging that our
planet and multiple civilizations that have lived upon it have
had repetitive periodic destructions visited upon them and
that this knowledge provides perhaps, the greatest paradigm
shift for our species in modern history. If you feel called to
delve deeper and participate in these studies, we are currently
enrolling students in our online classes in preparation for the
work that is to come, we also feature numerous informative
articles, podcasts, infographics, and videos which have been
specifically designed to bring the would be initiate up to
speed with Randall Carlson’s paradigm changing research.
Please visit our website SacredGeometryInternational.com for
more information and to join us in our own quest for gnosis.
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The Gnosis of
Dr. Aaron Cheak
Aaron is a dear friend of mine, he also happens to be a world

class scholar and author. His book, Alchemical Traditions gives
an in depth look at alchemy in cultures throughout the world
and history. He is a foundational influence on my work.
GDR - Aaron, What is Alchemy and how does it relate to

us today?
AC - Alchemy is many things to many people, but to me it
is the art and science of taking something mortal and bound
to death and transforming it into something that is immortal
and deathless. In other words, it is the process of “distilling
the eternal from the transient”, as Baudelaire once said.
Alchemy has always been about turning “poison into
medicine”, but more importantly, of realizing that the poison
is inherently a Gift (and here I play on a dual language pun—
in German, the word for poison is Gift). In other words,
everything that is “given”—that is to say, “reality as such”—
can be taken as a poison or as a gift, depending on our
conscious comportment. “The mind is it’s own place, and can
make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven”, as Milton’s
Satan famously said in Paradise Lost. Every poisonous
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“negativity” contains a hidden gift or offering, and as such is

secretly a gate to liberation.
Transformers of poison, alchemists in the western
tradition sought the “universal medicine”—the agent of all
transmutations that can heal and harmonize all things,
perfecting all bodies, from metals to mortals. According to
prevailing alchemical theory, the elixir allows the divine
“seed” cast in the nourishing “ground” of a species to ripen
into its innate, immortal “fruit”. It is the catalyst that renders
metals golden and humans divine. However, the word they
used for this universal medicine was katholikon pharmakon.
Now, katholikon is a Greek word that means “universal, pure,
whole”; it’s where we get our word Catholic, but also
catharsis (as well as those glorious gnostic heretics, the
Cathars). Pharmakon, however, straddles opposites: it means
poison, medicine, magical spell, philter.
Thanks to the desacralisation of alchemy and the genesis
of materialistic chemistry in seventeenth century Europe,
pharmakon also gives us the words pharmacy and
pharmaceutical (and, curiously enough, it still attaches the
Hermetic caduceus, the serpent-entwined staff, as a symbol of
its medicine). However, modern pharmaceuticals are very
much poisonous medicines. They are not alchemical elixirs,
much less poisonous gifts, and the universal medicine should
in no way be compared to some kind of pill to be popped.
Rather, it is a liberating and perfecting principle; an attitude or
comportment that engages the poison and raises it to its
innate divinity. Western chemistry and biomedicine is largely
antithetical to the alchemical approach because it ignores the
spiritual roots of illness and is ignorant of the biosemiotics in
which symptoms are symbols or signatures of a deeper
psycho-spiritual reality that requires balancing; instead of
taking these poisons as gifts, it masks these symptoms,
destroys them with chemicals, eliminates them with surgery,
thus ignoring and rebuking the hidden gift in the “poisonous”
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symptom. Alchemy, by contrast, embraces death, dissolution

and putrefaction as the first step along the Hermetic path. It
kills to vivify, destroys to create, dissolves to consolidate.
Alchemy embraces and engages death as a path of initiation
and liberation.
In the East, among the Hindu Tantric siddhi alchemists,
among the Tantric Buddhist alchemists of the Vajrayana, and
among Taoist alchemists (alchemical currents which never
died out and which still exist to this day), alchemical
medicines—mineral and botanical preparations—did exist
and were used to promote physical longevity. However, this
was done not to perpetuate worldly existence for its own
sake, but to purify and prepare the initiate’s body for more
intensive spiritual practices. In seeking physical health and
longevity, alchemy sought to “buy more time” to achieve
liberation from the cycles of birth and death here and now, in
this life. This was known as jivanmukti, or “liberation in life”.
Here, liberation is not postponed for some nebulous post-
mortem judgment in the afterlife. Full responsibility is taken
here and now, in this current incarnation, in this body, in this
life. Immortality must be won in the midst of mortality and
death by embracing mortality and death and finding its
hidden gift.
Alchemy is therefore quintessentially tantric in the sense
that it engages material existence at its most dissolute or
“poisonous” in order to transfigure it into a vehicle of
liberation. Alchemy, like Tantra, embraces this world and its
processes in order to transform them into divine instruments.
Indeed, when grasped integrally, alchemy is best understood
as the science of the perfection of bodies, whether material or
spiritual. Ultimately it is the art of forming the spiritual body,
the immortal vehicle of one’s innate divine consciousness.
But physical existence is the starting point. So you begin by
learning how the divine processes work through material
bodies—minerals, metals, plants, animate beings. You learn
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how to make spirits into bodies and bodies into spirits. The
alchemists called these states “volatile” and “fixed”, and all
their symbols play on this. Plato’s Timaeus, for instance, talks
of the bond between “fire” and “earth”, light and matter, the
visible and the tangible. The alchemists speak repeatedly of
making the fixed volatile and the volatile fixed. Above all it is
about developing an essential fluidity between these states,
which is why mercury—liquid metal—is a perennial
substance and symbol in all alchemical traditions, east and
west.
Rather than setting up a duality between body and soul,
rather than clinging to permanence, alchemy embraces the
process of flux and learns how to transform one into the
other with effortless fluidity. In doing this it learns to navigate
the interzones, what the great scholar of Sufi metaphysics,
Henry Corbin, called the mundus imaginalis (the “imaginal
world”), which is not simple fantasy, but an exact ontological
reality that mediates between physical and spiritual realities,
just as the phenomenon of musical harmony exists as a
distinctly perceptible phenomenon “between” two notes,
embracing yet transcending them both. It is the place where
spirits are corporealized and bodies are spiritualized. This is
how you “distill the eternal from the transient” but also how
you create the transient from the eternal. This is why alchemy
is the science of both creation and dissolution, and why it is
the art of transmutation par excellence.
As a universal science, alchemy encompasses all
phenomena, from metallurgy to metaphysics. In this sense it
is nondual, which means that both the physical and the
metaphysical aspects of existence are equally encompassed
within its purview, and it cannot be reduced to either a purely
material or purely psycho-spiritual phenomenon. It is always
both, at one and the same time. The alchemical reality is
holarchical. According to this nondual understanding, the
physical world both reveals and conceals the mysteries of the
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metaphysical reality, which is its foundation. The physical

world—the book of nature—is a theophany, a divine
manifestation or revelation, of the metaphysical ground of
being; it is more primordial than the revelation of scripture,
but both are regarded as complimentary expressions of the
logos. For there is an alchemy of the world (physis, natura) and
an alchemy of the word (logos), but it is the divine structure
common to both that we must learn to perceive through the
natural and scriptural forms.
GDR - In your writing you display a deep knowledge of
deities from around the world, how has the study of these
world religions and myths changed you?
AC - Well, I’ve been drawn to strange myths and divinities
since a fairly young age. It was principally the works of the
great religious scholars of inter-war Europe, such as Mircea
Eliade (comparative religion), Georges Dumezil (Indo-
European studies), Henry Corbin (Islamic esotericism and
phenomenology), Ananda Coomaraswamy (Philosophia
Perennis et Universalis), and Carl Jung (archetypal
psychology) who first drew me to the academic study of
religion. And it was largely because of figures like these that I
decided to officially make “religion” my discipline. Also,
religious studies gave me the most flexibility to dip in and out
of disparate fields, such as classics, philosophy, philology,
history, psychology, phenomenology, and so on. This meant
that I could essentially ignore the standard disciplinary
boundaries. This enabled me to take the whole idea of the
academy in its original, Platonic spirit, where philosophy was
not hairsplitting scholasticism, but love of wisdom. Too many
forget that the original academy was a not an ivory tower, but
a grove of trees outside Athens. It was formerly a cult site of
Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. To me this speaks
volumes about the presiding spirit of philosophy. As
developed by Platonists, Pythagoreans, and Theurgists, the
whole point of philosophy was preparation for death through
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Gnosis of the immortality of the soul. Obviously, modern

philosophy has fallen a long way from these origins, and even
considers this departure “progress”.
It should also be noted that philosophy, while literally
indicating the “love of wisdom” (philo-sophia), also indicates
love of the goddess Sophia, the Gnostic liberatrix. This is also
true in Indo-Tibetan tradition, where wisdom (Sanskrit vidya,
Tibetan yeshe) was no less than the ritually deified initiate’s
divine consort. Here, wisdom is the transfiguring goddess to
whom we are wedded via the alchemical marriage, entwined
like serpents in nondual union.
I mention this to emphasize that the original ramifications
of “philosophy” are worlds apart from the modern,
fragmented condition of the academy, which is intractably
secularized, desacralized, and increasingly eroded by the
cancer of corporate “management” (the dominant force in
academia nowadays). For these reasons, I always felt like I
belonged to an academy of another era, and when I
undertook religious studies, I was never drawn to the
conventional and moralistic “world religions”, but always to
the hieratic arts, the esoteric dimension of the world’s
spiritual traditions: Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Theurgy,
Tantra, Graeco-Egyptian magic, and in more recent years, the
world’s alchemical traditions.
But to answer your question a little more directly:
knowledge of mythology for me has always been about
knowledge of divine archetypes (which are not necessarily to
be equated with psychological archetypes in a Jungian sense,
though divine archetypes certainly have a psychological aspect
or manifestation, which is where Jung’s work is important).
Divinities are very real forces, like gravity or magnetism.
Indeed, gravity and magnetism may be considered as precise
manifestations of the divine principle of “love” or “eros”—
the bonding force in the universe.
The Renaissance magician and philosopher, Giordano
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Bruno, who was burned at the stake as a heretic, called love

“the bond of bonds”, and for very good reason. Whether it is
a stone falling to earth or a lover uniting with the beloved,
there is one underlying reality: the inexorable pull of divine
desire. The Hermetic philosopher, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz,
called this process affinité. It was the principle by which one
nature is drawn to, and through, the forms that lead it to its
innate divine perfection. From quantum gravitation and
chemical affinity, or the bonds of heartfelt friendship, right
down to raw, erotic fornication, the same principle of
attraction applies. This principle of will or desire operates
among chemicals through affinity and repulsion, which is the
most primordial form of choice. But this capacity for choice
evolves. In more highly organized beings, it becomes “will”.
As the primordial desire is refined through the kingdoms of
nature, it creates higher bodies for itself in order to express
and fulfill its divine desire, until the subject and object of
desire become one. In this sense it is the force behind what is
ordinarily understood as “evolution”, which is the self-
revelation of divinity through its embodiments in
phenomenal reality.
Now, the ancients brought this bonding function under
the aegis of goddesses such as Hathor, Aphrodite, or Venus,
depending on the culture. A rose by any other name. But the
principle properly understood applies across all domains—all
kingdoms—and although it is different in its particular
manifestations, it is universal in its implications. What is
more, it can be increasingly understood in this sense the more
we look at its specific manifestations not with a limited,
narrow, fragmenting consciousness, but with the desire to
know and integrate the whole, which is our true nature. Like
is know by like, as the ancient epistemology goes. Divine
consciousness can only be known by divine consciousness.
To know god we must become god. And yet divinity, like the
cosmos as a whole, has an invisible and a visible aspect. For
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in the ancient view, this world is a reaction to a metaphysical

action, and on one level, just like the “invisible” forces
studied by science, it can be known by its effects. And so
“Venus” moves through our world at every level, both visibly
and invisibly, as do all “divinities” (reality principles). And so
through being drawn to the study of different religions,
mythologies, and divinities, this process has itself been a one
of following my own affinitive path, of unfolding—slowly but
surely—my own divine desire and, ultimately, eventually, my
own divine nature.
GDR - What is the virtue of researching ancient
mythologies and old religious rites and practices?
AC - The German integral philosopher, Jean Gebser, once
said that, as consciousness evolves, there is both a gain and a
loss. Clearly the modern world has gained much through the
efficiency of its rational consciousness. However, few would
look at the world today and say we have truly “progressed”.
Rationality left to its own devices has deep deficiencies. One
simply has to look at the world run (or ruined) by economic
rationalism to see the results of a truly deficient rational
ontology.
To evolve consciousness does not mean to abandon the
previous structures of consciousness—the worldviews of
magic, ritual, religion, and mythology—as if they were mere
stepping-stones on the way to somewhere “higher”; they are
not something we can do away with now that we have
“rationality” and “science”. Rather, consciousness is a whole,
and to truly “evolve”, we have to integrate and encompass the
whole, not exalt the most recent part over and against the
others. We cannot abandon our magical and mythical “past”
for our mental-rational “present” any more than we can
abandon our skeleton, our viscera or our heart just because
we currently consider the brain the most important organ.
The great “revolutions of spirit”—matter, life, and mind—
exist as a continuum. All must function integrally and
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interdependently. The value of studying ancient magic and

mythology lies first and foremost in integrating their
ontologies, of crystallizing and concretizing them, as Gebser
says, in order to awaken ourselves more fully to the complete
spectrum of our being.
GDR - What part do you think ecstatic states plays in the
modern spiritual context? What are the benefits of
psychedelic experiences and what are the dangers?
AC - Ecstatic states are vitally important, especially in light
of what I just spoke of in regards to the overwhelming
predominance of the mental-rational ontology and the need
to reintegrate the “earlier” ontologies that form the more
complete structure of our being. Rational consciousness is
essentially egocentric, based on a subject-object dualism that
separates consciousness into a fixed “I” or “self” over and
against perceived “objects” and “things”. To go beyond this
pervasive duality requires standing outside oneself (ex-stasis,
literally “to stand outside”). It is to break down the barriers of
the dualistic world and to experience the world as a living,
breathing, heaving, pulsing entity, brimming with wisdom
both exalting and humbling. Instead of duality as an
ontological constant, there is boundless unity, but within this
unity a fundamental polarity or complementarity pervades, in
which opposites are still experienced, but instead of being
separate entities, they are now two halves of an intimately
related whole, like day and night.
Modern westerners are so acculturated into a positivist-
scientist worldview, in which rationality reigns falsely supreme
and everything that cannot be rationalized is dismissed as
superstition, that often the only way to viscerally break out of
this ontological straightjacket is to take wild psychedelic
drugs. So psychedelics are good for breaking down the walls
that our socio-cultural conditioning has constructed around
our ability to perceive reality in an integral or arational
manner. The floodgates of the spirit have to be opened.
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However, once these walls have fallen, the tools that brought
the walls down are not always useful for anything enduringly
constructive, and one can often flounder in the spectacle of
the psychedelic world unless one has a truly initiatory
directive. One needs courage to actualize the spiritual visions
that psychedelics make clear to our souls.
In effect, psychedelics place us at the top of a mountain
and show us a magnificent spectacle and say: “this is your true
purview”. They give us groundbreaking keys. Then they
place us at the bottom, at the foothills, and the unspoken
imperative is that we must learn to climb. Few take that
arduous journey however, and without any real work on
ourselves, without any spiritual discipline, without using the
keys given to us, future use of psychedelics will seldom take
us much further; they may even delude us into falsely thinking
we have attained heights that we have no real claim to.
GDR - In all of your studies, who is the deity, or deities
that have won your heart? Who do you relate to the most?
AC - In my wayward youth I was mainly attracted to the
sinister end of the numinous spectrum. In other words, I was
a teenage Satanist. This affinity eventually matured into a
serious and sustained theurgical relationship with the god
Seth-Typhon, the Egyptian archetype of war, disorder,
anomaly and strife, but also violent liberation and divine
transgression. Seth was the rupturer of boundaries between
being and non-being, life and death, cosmos and chaos. In
short, not a divine function to be taken lightly.
As a storm god, Seth-Typhon is synonymous with the
divine thunderbolt, and his symbolism is intimately bound to
the eternal axis of the circumpolar stars that never rise or set,
but eternally circumambulate the celestial pole. The
circumpolar stars are universally emblematic of the bornless
and deathless principle in the cosmos. It was from here that
meteors were thought to originate and fall to earth as
thunderbolts. In this fashion they provided the meteoric iron
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that the ancient Egyptians used to make the blades of

initiation in the Ceremony for Opening the Mouth: a rite for
revivifying the dead, animating statues and creating gods.
However, when I took the sacred entheogen Ayahuasca

for the first time, it was not Seth-Typhon that transfigured my
being, but the Nordic world-ender, Loki, the god of cunning
and play. I was deeply and theurgically animated by the one
god of the entire Norse pantheon who, like Seth-Typhon, is
both “of the gods” and “against the gods”; who resides both
within the sacred circle of the Aesir, and who is nevertheless
their inveterate calumniator—the breaker of the divine bond.
Loki is the liberating destroyer in the unfolding cosmic
dramaturgy. As instigator of Ragnarok he is the bringer of the
world’s end, the twilight of the gods, and yet in doing this he
embraces both the declining sun and the dawn of the world’s
renewal—the return to the Golden Age through cataclysmic
destruction.
Many of the intricacies of Loki’s mythology came to
vibrant life in the details of my own personal path in a way
that was both subtle and profound, and above all—
delightfully funny! I have elaborated on these experiences
elsewhere in a piece entitled The Leaf of Immortality. Suffice
it to say that the decidedly “Heraclitian” spirit of Loki, which
mingles opposition and rapture with the zest of a skilled
dramatist, infused my nature with a glee, ecstacy and play that
I was now tasked to integrate into my day to day existence.
In recent years, increasingly dissatisfied with the
rootlessness of modern esotericism, I have begun working
with the traditional framework of Tantric Buddhism. Rather
than a departure from my previous path, however, it should
be seen as a direct consequence. Indeed, the basic continuity
between the divine thunderbolt of Egyptian theology and the
vajra or “diamond-thunderbolt” of Tantric Buddhism always
seemed a natural progression to me. Vajrayana is, literally, the
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“path of the diamond-thunderbolt” (vajra-ayana). From this

perspective, Seth-Typhon is essentially consonant with the
wrathful yidams (meditational deities) who embody the
overmastering power of the sacred purbha, the blade of
nondual wisdom that transfixes and destroys delusion—just
as Seth-Typhon slays the demon-serpent Apep with the pesh-
kef blade in order for the solar theophany to rise each day.
In working with Tibetan Buddhist yidams, one is
essentially undertaking the alchemical process of solve et
coagula, “dissolve and coagulate”, albeit in reverse. You
create the divinity through use of ritual visualizations,
consecrate it with mantras, and then you dissolve the deity
back into yourself, becoming one with its boundless energy.
Most importantly, this allows the enlightened qualities of the
divinity to take root in the deepest ground of your being (the
alaya), the storehouse of karma. The practice is one of
embodying the divine nature quite literally (i.e. identifying
one’s body, speech and mind with the deity’s divine body,
speech and mind). In this capacity, under the excellent
direction of an unorthodox but brilliant Lama of the
Nyingma tradition, I have worked principally with feminine
divinities such as Seng Dongma (the Lion-faced Dakini, the
Indo-Tibetan answer to the blood-thirsty Egyptian goddess,
Sekhmet) and Arya Tara, the Noble Liberator and divine
feminine par excellence. Tara quite literally wrested, opened,
and won my heart in ways that are too intricate to detail here.
Suffice it to say that I learned to embrace vulnerability as the
source of true strength, something I never learned when
focusing on more “bad-ass” masculine deities. In this
capacity, I am ultimately a devotee of Shakti, the feminine
force that rises through my body like an undulating fire, who
melts and entwines my inner nature like a coiling serpent, and
who raises herself through the deathless axis of my being like
a living, dancing whirlwind.
GDR - What is “Gnosis” to you? Is it important for the
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modern man or woman to achieve Gnosis and how would

you suggest they go about doing it?
AC - I take Gnosis in the sense imparted by the ancient
Coptic gnostic codices found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, as
well as cognate currents in comparative theology and
metaphysics. In this sense, Gnosis is knowledge of one’s
divine origin and nature. It is the knowledge that we are
already—primordially, eternally and ever-presently—divine.
Gnosis is, strictly speaking, anamnesis (“remembering”, the
antidote to amnesia, or forgetfulness); it is remembrance of
the divine beauty that the soul already knows because it is
eternal, but which the embodied mind “forgets”, because it is
entangled in corruptible materiality and illusion. Thus, all that
prevents us from realizing, or better, actualizing this
primordial, ever-present and eternal nature are our own
mental and emotional conflictions. The path of Gnosis is thus
akin to “polishing a mirror”, of removing the tarnishes of our
cognitive accretions and emotional distortions in order to see
our true nature unblemished. Thus, Gnosis is much more
about “taking away” than “adding on”, in my experience. It is
a path of abandoning all that prevents us from residing fully
in our true nature, not a path of “acquisition” of something
that we lack (which is how ordinary knowledge is conceived).
It is imperative to point out here that the primordial nature
itself is not tarnished. Just as the sun may be covered by
clouds, the sun itself is not touched or affected by the clouds
at all. So too the primordial Gnosis. By removing the
obscurations, we reveal the primordial light.
GDR - What is the difference between the practice of
Magick and pop-psychology like that found in books like,
“The Secret”? Is there any relevance to either?
AC - Well, there’s a lot of difference. The aims of
authentic magic are often completely at odds with modern
pop-psychology, and dare I say, much of modern “magick”
too. Modern pop-psychology attempts to use “magic” (which
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it equates with positive thinking) to meet the needs of

modern people, which are invariably very pedestrian and
egocentric needs. Ancient magic—and here I refer more to
Theurgy and Tantra as the overarching worldviews in which
valid magical praxis should be understood—sought no less
than to become a living vehicle for the primordial, divine
ground of being, an instrument by which it may effectuate
itself consciously as a force in this world, at once immanent
and transcendent. Paradoxically, this divine consciousness is
the essence or primordial nature of human consciousness, so
by doing this, one becomes an instrument of one’s truest self;
indeed, one effectuates one’s highest nature, but this is not a
“self” that is fixed or dualistically separated from other
“selves”, but an unhindered expression of the very ground of
being without which all particularities, indeed all sentient
beings, could not exist.
In modern magic(k) one commonly uses a symbolic
system to invoke forces named or unnamed, personal or
transpersonal, to effect one’s will in the world. Some
traditions are quite postmodern about it. “Practical” results
trump ontological or theological commitments. In theurgic
and tantric magic, however, one evokes the gods as living
realities and interacts with them as sentient beings with wills
of their own. One evokes them to unite with them, become
them, and thus transform oneself into a vehicle of divine
power. In Theurgy, one “takes on the form of the gods” and
“participates in the divine fire” in order to take part in the
cosmic demiurgy, in effect becoming a co-creator of the
manifest cosmos; in Tantric Buddhism, one becomes divine
in order to embody the transformative Bodhisattvic qualities
of the yidam deities, and uses both pacifying or wrathful
methods to unite with divine wisdom. In both cases, one does
not do this for one’s own petty, human purposes, but to
become a divine instrument, a vehicle of creation and
liberation. To modern secularised humans, this is often seen
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as anathema, for so-called “free will” is a bastion of the

modern mindset, and this mindset desperately clings to its
desires and its precious personal volitions. Curiously, this
condition is strangely exacerbated in “magickal” circles, where
individualism and personal will is exalted as a god in itself.
Magic requires apotheosis, to be sure, but not the apotheosis
of our cherished human perspectives and limitations. Magic
as apotheosis is a path of breaking down and abandoning
everything that prevents our primordial divine nature from
being fully effective, here and now, as a creative and liberating
force. All too often it is precisely our human desires and wills
that are standing in the way of this. Magic is not the
deification of our common self or will, but the raising of
ourselves to the Gnosis of the divine will that acts through us,
and of which we are a creative, magical expression. As we do
this we actually become vehicles by which divine
consciousness knows itself, per Eckhart’s dictum “Mine eyes
are the eyes of god”.
In regards to the false dichotomy of free will versus
predestination, it is perhaps instructive to add here a remark
on the Taoist idea of the yin will versus the yang will (zhi yin
and zhi yang). Whereas the yang will refers to our everyday,
conscious decisions and choices, the will that we identify with
and which we have control over, the yin will is that which
unfolds slowly and unconsciously over time. It is passive yet
inexorable, and is embodied in all the things that happen to
us and which irrevocably shape us, but which we have little
conscious control over. Indeed, we only notice it when we
look back in hindsight, over a period of years, decades even;
we only notice it when we see the patterns, themes, cycles and
processes that have unfolded through our lives over time and
which had nothing to do with our conscious volition. It is
much more akin to the slow unfolding of our “destiny” rather
than the immediate decisions and impulses of our day-to-day
wants and needs. The yin will corresponds to the decisions or
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actions we made before birth, our karma, if you will, which

we have already committed to, which already determine us,
and which, like a seed cast into the earth, plays out in this life
regardless of our personal wishes. This is the will that will
teach us more about our divine path than our individualistic
wants and needs.
GDR - What do you think about the extra-terrestrial
phenomena? Have you had any experience with it, or do you
have any hunches as to what they might be?
AC - My worldview is essentially panentheistic, which
means that the phenomenal cosmos as a whole bears
consciousness and is thus a living entity. From the process of
stellar nucleosynthesis that generates the elements of the
cosmic spectra and thus forms worlds as we know them, to
the evolutive process that unfolds from mineral to man, the
world is essentially alive. In other words, my definition of
“life” is very broad to begin with, and alongside the
alchemists, I view supposedly “dead” things like minerals and
metals—the elements or building blocks of nature—as
conscious, living entities. From this perspective, everything
“extraterrestrial” (outside the planet earth) is already part of a
living, breathing, cosmic organism. To seek signs of
extraterrestrial “life” by narrowing the definition of life to
quasi-biological species akin to humans is not really a burning
issue for me. I am neither for nor against it, nor have I
experienced “alien” entities as popularly conceived.
GDR - In the good old days, there were sex cults all over
the place. After the advent of Christianity, these were
deemed immoral. Now that Christianity seems to be waning
and neo-paganism is on the rise, people are taking their cues
from people like Aleister Crowley who promoted Sex-magick.
Is there anything to this? What role does sex play in ‘seeing
god’?
AC - Sexuality in the service of Gnosis and liberation
forms a perennial current in history, from the ancient
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Egyptian “Festival of Drunkenness”, which celebrated the

pacification of the destructive lioness Sekhmet through ritual
erotic abandon and inebriation, to the ecstatic mystical visions
of Teresa of Avilla, who was penetrated by the rays of Christ
in an explicitly erotic way. Now, although he is not without
interest, I’ve never been terribly impressed by Crowley, much
less Crowleyan “sex magic”, and not for reasons of morality,
but more because I prefer to take my pointers in this regard
from authentic libertine gnostic and pre-Shrividya tantric
traditions rather than modern western occultism. Also, as
Nikolas and Zeena Schreck make saliently clear in their
excellent book, Demons of the Flesh, Crowley was appallingly
misogynistic, a point which is raised not because it is
“politically incorrect”, but because it is in flagrant violation of
the tantric principle of exalting all embodied females as living
avatars of the divine Shakti.
While some of the outer forms of gnostic and tantric
sexual practices may be superficially similar to Crowleyan and
Thelemic ritual, I remain to be convinced that modern sex
magicians within Thelemic and quasi-Thelemic traditions are
anything but slaves to their libidos. While there is nothing
“wrong” with pursuing hedonism through ritual theatrics or
psychodrama, whether it forms an effective spiritual path
whose fruits actually manifest in liberating Gnosis remains to
be seen. While I’m sure there are exceptions to this
admittedly sweeping statement, and while I don’t mean to
disparage Thelemic traditions tout court, the tendency is one
that has actually been confirmed for me by former
practitioners of this path who have recognized this very issue
and abandoned this path for more effective spiritual
Traditions (and here I use Tradition in the Guénonian sense).
But those issues aside, is there something to sexuality as a
tool of Gnosis and liberation? I would say—yes. Once again
it comes down to the principle of using the “poison” of
desire as a gift. Desire can either enslave or liberate us. It is
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one of the most powerful forces at our disposal. There is

good reason that mainstream religions seek to limit desire to
the realm of mere procreation (or worse, demonize it as an
inherently anti-spiritual force).
I find more affinity with the approach to desire taken in
the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tantric
Buddhism. Like other “negative” emotions such as anger or
wrath, desire is not to be avoided but to be used; the energies
of desire are put directly in the service of liberation. Erotic
desire thus becomes a quintessential ritual element for
evoking divine desire. Our being becomes the temple, the
mandala, the inner sanctum, in which divinity is invoked to
living presence, dancing through our bodies, transfiguring our
hearts and minds. In this sense, using desire as a liberating
force directly relates to the practice of raising the serpent
goddess Kundalini through our beings—of turning the
presence that would ordinarily kill us into a vitalizing and
divinizing energy. This itself is a dim shadow of the original
Tantric practices in which human hero-initiates would engage
with dangerous, bloodthirsty, semi-divine feminine entities
known as Dakinis in order to create a mutually beneficial
exchange of power. Here, sexual fluids are exchanged for
siddhis (divine powers or initiatic accomplishments); for the
initiate, pleasure and power become paths to apotheosis,
while for the Dakini, the sexual fluids empower her siddhi of
flight.
The transformation of erotic desire into a liberating force
is thus an alchemical refinement of a “poison” into an
immortalizing elixir. But what of “magic” proper? What of
using desire to “attain” objects of desire? Again, this is
operating on a limited understanding, in my opinion. In the
modern west, sex magic is largely about harnessing the power
of the orgasm and instilling it in a sigil, visualization or other
ritual element that expresses a preformulated desire. The
orgasm is used as a force to somehow empower and manifest
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our conscious will. However, I’ve never felt that starkly

imposing one’s will upon the universe, orgasmically enhanced
or otherwise, is a very wise approach. Or at least, it’s not the
one that speaks to my nature, and my path has taught me to
seek the deeper dynamic of magic elsewhere.
Magic conceived as the dominance of will is highly
egocentric, binds one to a dualistic conception of the
universe, and completely ignores the whole issue of the
refinement of desire (which relates directly to the process of
liberation). For ultimately, one of the things we learn in
refining desire is that the object of erotic or material want is
always an externalization of something that we already have,
but which we have lost conscious access to. It is a veil that
symbolizes something that we must recover from the depths
of our being. For like sunlight broken through a drop of dew,
we are all expressions of the one divine radiance, and
everything that is separate from us is secretly also innate to
us. As in the Cittamatra view, all subjectivity and objectivity
are simply displays of a deeper, nondual consciousness. To
cling to the illusion of separation between subject and object
is to perpetuate the very forces that we need to transcend in
order to realize our primordial perfection.
For some years now I’ve been increasingly struck by the
definition of magic that Schwaller de Lubicz gave when
speaking of the Egyptian hieratic arts. He compared the act of
magic to digging a ditch or hole deeper than an adjacent water
source in order to draw the water to the new source. Once
the receptacle is prepared, the water moves by the inherent
virtue of its own nature. It is inexorable. Water, as its
alchemical glyph illustrates, is oriented downward: its
tendency is to sink, or flow down. Here, the “magic” works
not by virtue of a preformulated will starkly imposed upon
something or someone, but by virtue of the innate nature and
desire of the object that is “enchanted”. In essence, magic is
not domination. Magic is seduction. To perform magic is to
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seduce something into being, to inflame its innate desire so

that it wants to grace the “receptacle” you have so carefully
prepared. There is no dominance, but simply an
understanding of the divine laws, or neteru, the universal
functions at play.
Magic as seduction is essentially “Taoist” in the sense that
it works with the given energies rather than against them,
much as martial arts systems based on Taoist principles use
the energy of a given attack, blending with it and harnessing
it, rather than directly opposing it. More than this,
magic as seduction is the activity of the heart beguiling its
beloved into the desired form. It is not a rigid force of
volition, but the effortless play of Lila. At this level, the
boundaries between magic as apotheosis, magic as
transformation of consciousness, and magic as
transformation of the world, begin to dissolve.
GDR - We will all die one day. There are a million
opinions on what happens afterwards. In your own mind,
what do you hope or believe happens?
AC - Like a wheel in a rut, we will follow the paths we
have carved. Unless we have striven to carve a path that leads
beyond the world of birth and death, we will be born back
into the world of birth and death to reap what we have sewn.
Unless we learn to live with death now, which is the path of
initiation, and of philosophy as learning to “die before you
die”, death will not be a gift but a poison.
How we deal with desire and fear in this life are the keys
to how we will deal with the death process. If all we do is
recoil away from the things that revile, disturb, and terrify us,
and lunge towards the things we like, desire and want, then
we are subject to the push and pull of external circumstance,
which in and of themselves, are simply externalizations of our
internal “poisons” in the Buddhist sense. Again, we must
engage these poisons and transform them into gifts. Our
consciousness must develop the resilience to withstand the
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push and pull of fear and desire, and while this is a

fundamentally internal process, it is also mirrored by a very
concrete, external one. If we do not face, transform, and
transcend fear and desire, we will be enslaved by fear and
desire. It is as simple as that. Eros and thanatos can either
imprison us or open the gate of apotheosis.
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The Gnosis of
Nick Margerrison
I’ve enjoyed listening to Nick’s podcast for a while now and

have always enjoyed his perspective and wit. A conversation
with him is always welcome on the quest.
GDR - In your work with radio, have you ever gotten

frustrated with the everyday crowd asking silly questions?
NM - I try not to see any questions as silly. I'm a big fan
of the question mark, it belongs at the end of all my sentences
really. The finality of a punctuation mark implies a level of
certainty non of us have any right to so, if you're totally
honest, you should always remember you're not sure of
anything. Question, everything. Even that last sentence.
GDR - What can we do to help folks along and get them
excited about the cool stuff?
NM - I think the best way to attract attention to
something is to advocate it and share it as honestly as
possible. Over the last year or so I've enjoyed the freedom the
internet presents us to put over ideas related to what is called
"magick". In my life as a radio talkshow host in the UK I
encountered problems whenever I tried to tackle these ideas
because of broadcast law. It's complex and quite dull but in
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short you can't really discuss it because the guidelines are far
too restrictive. It used to be about protecting the state backed
Church Of England from challenges, life after death was seen
as exclusively being Jesus's territory. Nowadays the cover is
that it's to stop bogus psychics but whatever excuse they use
the fact is you encounter major problems talking about "the
cool stuff".
What I always found annoying about this is that I don't
really think you need the "supernatural" to understand how
things like "magick" might work. The writer Robert Anton
Wilson put it nicely, "Magick has many aspects, but primarily
it acts as a dramatized system of psychology".
GDR - You and I share an affinity for Robert Anton
Wilson’s work. Could you describe for the kids what it means
to be a Discordian? What’s the purpose behind claiming to
be one?
NM - The meaning of that has changed for me and will
hopefully continue to do so throughout my life. I started
saying I was a Discordian because I was sick of people who
were religious claiming they were entitled to special rights.
This explains why I was a "Jedi" before that and toyed with
"Pastafarianism" as well. However, Gods and Goddesses are
funny old things and it was when I landed on a quote "true
communication is only possible between equals" that I
discovered mine, it led me to Eris Discordia, the fictional
Goddess of Chaos who we acknowledge. I remember looking
into it and being delighted that I'd found a parody religion
that would really genuinely confuse people because it's not
entirely clear we're joking. A good satirist doesn't drop the
mask he's using to expose things with.
Nowadays though it's a more complex question because
I've stuck with it for so long there have found more than one
purpose to claiming to be "an Erisian". I was initially coming
from a very "rational" practical point of view but these days
I've started to see "rationalism" as a belief system which we
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should use as a tool rather than a rule. I think if there was a

specific measurable purpose to saying I was a Discordian it'd
become a rational and limited belief system and it's very much
the contrary. Rationalism reduces the world, it's useful if you
want to punctuate your sentences, but consensus reality
refuses to be controlled by any single point of view. No one
has the final irrefutable narrative for you, you're the only one
who can make sense of your world.
Also, although I came in from the other side, the sort of
evangelical atheist side, I'm very uncomfortable with the fact
'the powers that be' seem to want us all to hate religions.
Obviously the history of the world its not quite as the
establishment tell us and the narrative which supports the so
called "new atheism" is a good example, they often push this
idea that religion is the cause of all wars. But, lets look at that
claim, World War 2, not about religion, Vietnam, not about
religion, World War 1, The Napoleonic conflicts, not about
religion. It seems more accurate to say they were mainly
caused by the establishments of the world who find religion,
more often than not, is a thorn in its side when it tries to rally
us to go kill people. For example, in world war two religion
was grit in the shoe of Hitlarian tyranny. Being Christian in
the The Third Reich became an act of defiance according to
one guy I interviewed from the period.
Now, I don't believe in Christianity, or Islam, or whatever
but I like the idea, which they both contain, that there are
limits to what you are prepared to do when the masters crack
the whip. Most religions push a notion of personal
responsibility before your God for your eternal soul. And it's
the people who have this world view who are often the ones
who lead the charge against tyranny because they believe in
this idea of eternal, unlimited, in other words non-rational,
life.
That's part of it for me at the moment but Discordianism
is of course a joke. It was invented at a bowling alley by a
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couple of friends as a satire on, I think, Mormonism. It's a

parody religion. But, like all great jokes, you can play it totally
straight and piss people off who are out to control you.
The best case scenario with it is to have people, including
yourself, wonder if the 'joke religion' bit is a cover for a
genuine cult of some kind. Hidden in plain sight as they like
to say.
GDR - One can’t talk about RAW’s work without
mentioning reality tunnels. How do they relate to our every
day life and what can this concept teach us about ourselves
and the world we live in?
NM - Well, Pope Bob's his real name and reality tunnels
are not exclusively his idea but like you say they're a key
concept for most Discordians. In short the term describes the
filter that lies between you and objective reality. No one sees
"objectively" we all see with our minds, "subjectively". This is
because in order for the outside world to reach you it has to
pass through and be interpreted by your brain and body.
Nothing you see, hear, touch, taste or whatever, gets to you
without first managing to get through that tunnel. You filter
out more than you see and ignore "irrelevant" data by using
our past experiences and our understanding of the world. In
short we use our "reality tunnels" our, "rational mind". We
ration reality like they rationed out food after the war in the
UK.
For example, when confronted by non human entities that
came from the sky, people in the past people would see
angels and demons or, sometimes even, Gods. This is because
they had a reality tunnel where those things were accepted.
Nowadays you'd probably emerge from the experience telling
people you'd spoken to an extra terrestrial. Or, if you firmly
do not believe in such things, you'd say you'd had an
emotional breakdown or whatever. You'd seen a "weather
balloon".
You’ve spoken with prominent occultists like Alan
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Moore. I listened to your interview where gives an account

of his encounter with a spirit. In the middle of it he states
that it’s all just within his mind. What purpose is there to
playing with one’s own head when there might be scary things
bumping around?
"Dramatized system of psychology" quote kicks in here I
guess. Firstly occultism and magick is not for everyone. As I
said before, no one has your narrative written down for you
to learn, you're writing your own story. Some people might
do better to leave it alone, I'm not sure. For me I don't find
my own head particularly scary.
The best way of testing this, I think, is by exploring Lucid
Dreaming. I wrote a series of essays, which sort of put my
flag in the ground as regards these areas, called "Essays For
The Discordian Occultist". Like most things I've written they
seem a bit tame now but if you're looking for five simple
steps to get started for yourself in this realm that's my best
shot at it so far. They are in a very specific order but as is the
nature of these things I don't think most people bother
reading them all, they skip to the magick spell bit usually,
Essay Four, if you go looking.
The first essay encourages people to try lucid dreaming
and kind of explains how to do it. I'm re-writing them right
now actually because the versions I published on Disinfo.com
are a bit pissy in places. Anyway, the point is, if you try lucid
dreaming and it doesn't work out or it turns out you can't
control your dreams once you're lucid, sack it off. The style of
magick I advocate is not for you. It is for people who are able
to take responsibility for themselves and their thoughts. This
is a key part of my current belief system, use your thoughts
and ideas rather than have them use you.
GDR - How does the magickal state of being known as
gnosis help a magician, or anyone else in their ‘spiritual’ life?
NM - Well, I'm not sure I have "gnosis" or even that I
have experienced it. There's this idea in the subculture that
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some people are "awakened" or whatever and I do not claim

to be in that state. In fact, I kind of claim the opposite with
Discordianism. That's very much about the idea of doubt and
the power of the word "maybe". The best three words you
can drop into a conversation with someone are "I don't
know". In the words of Socrates "the only true knowledge is
in knowing you know nothing".
That said I've had moments where I might have been in
gnosis but I'm not sure about them. Also it's insanely
paradoxical so I don't usually tell people that.
As that's the point of the book though, lets give it a go.
Imagine there is a packet of information that you can be told
by something that is an intelligence outside of the human
experience. It was communicated to you in a non-linguistic
fashion, while you were in an altered state of consciousness,
and so, as you use language and stories to remember things,
you cannot really explain it to yourself, let alone others. Nor
can you even fully recall it but you feel you've experienced it.
Like, how would you explain to someone what it's like to
close your eyes and see from every direction simultaneously?
You can't really, and even linguistically it sounds too absurd
it's best left alone, particularly when you mention that's only
one tiny aspect of the experience you're trying to describe.
It's worth mentioning though that it's a positive feeling
and it was digested directly by the only sense organ you can
ever really see anything with, your mind. Also, be wary of any
firm beliefs or abstractions of this communication coming
from "gurus" or whatever. It's something you experience and
no one can tell you if you have or haven't. Anyone seeking to
lay out rules and dogmas about a concept such as that will
betray the fullness of what it is supposed to be that I'm
talking about. Right, so, if I'm still making sense to you,
imagine that, and remember I'm saying that in the same
interview where I told you that it's important to remember
my religion is a complex joke. In other words what I am
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saying here is wilfully irrational so any real rational analysis

will misrepresent it.
GDR - There seems to be an upswell in occult or esoteric
studies and meanwhile governments seem to be trying to
quiet these ideas. Why do you think that may be and why are
these things important to preserve?
NM - Because they seem to believe in them and advocate
them. The "secret teachings" of the mystery schools are a
huge part of our collective history. Nowadays anyone can find
them easily online. Now, that's real a pisser if you want to
control people because these ideas all allow you to take
control of yourself.
As regards "magick" lemme put it like this: they spend
years and years, killing Witches. That's documented. They
burned thousands of people all around the world for the
"crime" of magical knowledge. Then, once everyone who
might have been able to contradict them is dead, they explain
there's no such thing as magic. It's like burning all the people
in the world who can speak French and then telling everyone
there's no such language. Also, as I mentioned before, here in
the UK they introduce laws to limit what you can and cannot
say about these areas. So, it'd be like denying there's a French
language and then, just for good measure, taking anyone who
spoke about French, in the broadcast media, off the air.
GDR - How can the average person experience magick in
their life without going shopping for robes and all the Harry
Potter items?
NM - Well, inevitably I think my series of essays on the
topic is a good starter but as I said, I'm re-writing them and
I'm hoping to get that finished soon in book form. I think I'll
make it cheap and self publish but we'll see.
Pope Bob is a great way in, Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising,
all that stuff.
But the most important thing is to try it. Go buy some
tarot cards, sit down, do yourself a reading with the book and
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do it in the same sense you might play a little game. If it

doesn't give you cause for thought, as I said before, it's not
for you.
GDR - What is a sigil and how does it work?
NM - In short it's a magical picture which has a wish
behind it. Most people destroy them in order to activate their
power, some people think you should display them instead.
People vary on method but although it's an idea which people
claim is very, very, old the version most people are into was
popularised by Grant Morrison's speech at the Disinfo
conference. However, he and most other people, point to
Austin Osman Spare as the one who birthed the modern
version.
Now, here's where some fellow occultists get a little
prickly, I'm not sure if they do in fact "work" but I do know
that they appear to. The distinction is important. I think
magick has to live in that zone where we don't quite know
what's going on, otherwise it's science or a religion. Ramsey
Dukes really nails those barriers in his work, I think in
SSOTMBE.
I've used sigils to do various things in my life but I got a
bit worried about the fact they appeared to work so
convincingly. I genuinely do not know why they seem so
effective. Rational thought might argue "it's just" good goal
setting and a bit of self hypnosis? Maybe it's a way of tapping
into your innate magickal energy? Maybe it's a little fairy who
makes it work called Eris Discordia. I'm not sure.
GDR - If you could sit down and have a conversation
over tea with any person alive or dead, who would they be
and why?
NM - Bloody hell, err. I'm not sure. Probably Pope Bob.
He's been such a huge influence on my life, I love him like a
brother from another mother. But I'm not sure because
sometimes you can speak to people and they're a
disappointment. Maybe he's best left in idea-space where in
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my mind he's reunited with the people he lost in this one.

Hail Bob!
GDR - Do you ever use anything like the Tarot, or the I-
Ching for purposes of personal guidance? If so, how do they
work?
NM - I use tarot frequently. Often I do private readings
for friends but I've never, ever, done it for money, that seems
wrong somehow. I usually stick with the standard "Celtic
Cross" readings because it tells you things you already know
first, before it goes on to hint at your future. So, for me it's a
way of looking at your life as it is and then speculating on
what might come in the future.
If you dabble in it though, remember the famous maxim
of Peter J. Carroll, "divine short, enchant long". Only ask
questions about the next few months or so. Divination can
easily leave you with a curse of sorts and the less time you live
with that, the better. Divination and enchantment are very
similar and you really don't want to accidentally curse yourself
with a crap future. The power of the word "maybe" is a useful
back door for all that nonsense as well.
Again, hard to say how, or even if, they do work. They
certainly appear to for me. There seems to be something
about the mechanic of trusting chaos to be interpreted by
previously established rules. You ask Chaos, The Goddess,
what she thinks will happen. She made you after all, the birth
process is wonderfully chaotic, the odds of you being born
were stacked to the contrary. I guess it's fair to think she
might occasionally give you a hand and a few clues about
what's coming up. But prophecy is overrated, it's often the
case that the best only really make sense in retrospect, when
all the information is available and then they're a form of
history.
GDR - What do you think our purpose is while we’re here
on earth? What would you tell somebody who asked you in
earnest?
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NM - I’m not sure we all share the same purpose. We're

all unique and so should probably all have unique answers to
that question.
Now, I strongly suspect we are part of a larger process. To
me that's kind of obvious, if you stick to the raw data.
Looking at where we are now and where we used to be there
are certain patterns from the past which might indicate it'll go
in the future. Do this is by rejecting this notion that "you" are
limited to the moment society stuck its a label on you and
gave you your name. There were things which preceded that
named baby that at the time were "you" expressed in the
physical universe. The fetus, the sperm, the egg, the matter
which built those things. In some form or other, "you" have
been around physically since the dawn of time. You're not
separate from the universe, you are part of it.
So, what consistent pattern is this process you call your
life following? Well, one of the things we can see is "you" are
getting bigger. At each stage of this process we're involved in
"you" cross the various boundaries we used earlier with
massive comparative physical growth. The sperm and egg are
tiny compared to the baby which leaves the womb. So, one
pattern is, we're growing. Now, if you look around, the
universe is huge, fucking huge! And there's a lot of space left
for us to grow into. If that continues what is the next stage?
Well, it might be, "planetary consciousness" of some form.
Or maybe it's solar consciousness. Not sure but I think the
next stage is not likely to be the passive death many people
imagine but another huge trippy leap into this universe we
can all see around us. And again we will manifest an even
bigger physical size. Then, when you discover yourself
floating around what used to look like a ball of fire, you'll
probably have no clear understanding of this process you
were in now where we had a little chat about a joke religion.
You know, when you realize you are planet earth or the
sun itself, these things will seem less relevant.
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The Gnosis of
David Metcalfe
I first met David when I was writing for Reality Sandwich.

We agreed to meet for coffee and ended up talking for about
9 hours straight, wearing out our welcome at a restaurant, we
made our way to the coffee shop next door, then again to
another restaurant. It seemed like every new discovery I was
making just so happened to be something David was a well
read expert on. Our meeting was certainly one I would term
as a fortuitous occasion. Now David serves as one of my
most trusted advisers when I find myself mixed up. His
credentials as an expert on esoteric studies and his
approachable style of delivery make him a welcome voice in
our quest for Gnosis.
GDR - David, the world seems to be split into two parts;

those who see something mystical beyond the realm of what
we call reality and those who think anything outside of the
mechanistic world is ridiculous, we might as well think
unicorns are real. So how does a ‘sane’ man live in this
paradoxical world? Does something magickal live with us
here and now and how can we tap in to it in a simple way?
DM - Really it's a question of how we approach being and
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Being isn't it? I have a hard time seeing the conflict between
mechanism and mysticism. Looking at those who have made
valuable contributions to society you usually find that people
who bring us to the next level have found a way to integrate
both the practicality of material thinking, with the insights
and integration of more holistic thinking.
In the 14th century the word 'mystery' was used to
describe a craft or art, along with the connotations we have
for it today. From this understanding arose the great
cathedrals, alchemical traditions and powerful works of
practical spirituality like the Cloud of Unknowing. Perhaps in
thinking on these connections, and returning to a place where
our inner and outer experiences merge without giving undue
authority to either side, there exists a simple way to explore
what lies beyond what seems like an ontological paradox.
There's a wonderful quote from Eugene Canseliet, a
French alchemist involved in the Fulcanelli circle, that speaks
volumes to avoiding obfuscation in the process of developing
a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world: " I teach
through books and personal contact. Science and the
university are my territory and not so-called occult circles."
Ignoring popular pundits and teachers who court celebrity
on either side of the argument, and focusing on personal
development and direct contact with those farther along on
the path is the best step anyone can take in approaching these
areas. I find that most conflict comes from commercialism
and politics. Those looking to make a living on spiritual
teachings, or who use them to advance political motives, need
to present something that looks new and add some
mystification to the process in order to keep up the interest.
When you read accounts of traditional training techniques all
the flash and fury is stripped away, most of it involves seeking
stillness and quiet, learning focus, and from those basic
elements (which are quite difficult to achieve in our culture of
distraction) grows realization of much deeper connections.
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GDR - You've reported on Psi-research for Reality

Sandwich; could you explain what Psi-research is, why it’s
important and what implications it has for us in daily life?
DM - Psi is a mathematical variable that stands in for an
unknown, in parapsychological usage it indicates the
anomalous effects that show up in experiments, implying a
need for revising and expanding popular theories of mind to
matter interaction. This includes indications that we are able
to sense future events before they happen, access information
about past events that we have no connection to, sense things
happening far beyond what we would assume our normal
awareness is capable of, and being able to focus on physical
objects and effect them in someway.
Under the auspices of parapsychology also falls questions
of continued awareness and influence after physical death,
Near Death Experiences, Out of Body Experiences,
channeling, possession, and other areas where there is some
evidence that the phenomena occurs, but our current
popularly expressed scientific theories don't seem to support
a mechanism for them. Many scientists, however, feel that
there is really no contradiction between more nuanced
understandings of these theories and psi phenomena, and that
skepticism taken to the level of religious dogma is the main
cause of contention.
Living in an environment saturated with technology, in
which the driving assumption is that more machines and
technical prowess are the answer to global problems I think
that the implications for psi-research are profound. This lust
for technology gives the impression that we are nothing more
than pathetic organisms that need to be superseded yet if
even a small percentage of what is implied by the findings of
parapsychology is true, than we need to radically reassess who
we are, and what we are capable of.
Our techno-frenzy is less than 200 years old in it's current
form, and radical skepticism in the form we find it today has
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only been around since the mid-1970's and represents a

cultural movement, more than a scientific one. Bastions of
the so-called Enlightenment, such as Isaac Newton were
deeply engaged in alchemical practice and their insights came
from combining psychical and mystical research with more
materially focused aims. We've lost something very valuable
by allowing the dogmatic skepticism of a few vocal critics to
hinder our exploration of the human condition.
The history of skepticism regarding the efficacy of
hypnosis, meditation, lucid dreaming, and many other now
widely accepted phenomena points to the fact that those who
rant about the impossibility of widely reported experiences
are usually short sighted, and lack the proper critical faculties
to address the topics they draw such indignation from
GDR - Have you ever personally experienced something
paranormal? Has it happened more than once, never, or
often? Tell us a story.
DM - We live in a holistic field, and I find that the most
beneficial aspect of keeping an open mind is being able to see
the connections that exist at a deeper level, and to be
comfortable accessing them through things like coincidence
and synergy. Even if the dogmatic materialists are completely
correct, we still are able to access the cause and effect
mechanisms of the universe through contemplating the inner
workings of existence.
When I hear paranormal I tend to think of more extreme
examples of phenomena, such as apparitions, unidentified
lights, and that sort of thing, but my experience usually leans
towards more subtle aspects. One of my most treasured
moments was a number of years ago while walking through
the wooded area around an apartment I lived in near Chicago.
As I was walking the natural sounds, the breeze, the
movement of insects, the swaying of trees all began to open
up in an interior vision of liquidity. I saw the trees forming
from upward pressure, the water which had fallen from the
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sky returning to the sky through the material growth of plant

life, the animals, squirrels and rabbits, motive material active
in the same process of consumption and reintegration. It was
a very powerful moment, and since then I've never been able
to see the world the same way, as anything other than a
holistic and cyclical movement.
Recently, as I've spent more time considering things like
sacred geometry and geography, through conversations with
Randall Carlson, Paul Devereux and David Chaim Smith
these brief glimpses of the inner mystery of nature have
become much more solidified and profound. Contemplation
allows us to live within the Mystery, and the entirety of
existence becomes something more powerful and sublime
than brief paranormal encounters can ever capture.
GDR - Among those of us who do believe that there is
something more, there are still massive schisms of belief; how
can a magician and a Born Again Christian relate to one
another? Is it possible to reconcile these seemingly massive
differences in views?
DM - This is another area where I find very little
contradiction outside of flawed fundamentalisms on both
sides. Living in the South I've been amused to hear Born
Again believers talking about their psychic experiences in
terms of Jesus, and discussing prayer, visionary and protective
techniques that any magic practitioner would recognize. In a
recent piece that I wrote on the New Apostolic Reformation
movement I point out how in many ways contemporary
charismatic and Pentecostal Christians are better occultists
than most people claiming that they practice magic. These so-
called new apostles have a deep belief in what they do,
something that most publicly proclaiming occult practitioners
are too self conscious to fully embrace.
The differences we see, again, are largely in terms of
marketing and commercialization, or have been spurred on by
fundamentalist politics which seek to control personal
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experiences. I have family that at times have been very active

in various factions of the Evangelical movement, and it's been
humorous to see them recommend writers and theologians
who have been very influenced by esoteric philosophy in one
way or another. Occultism, as something which people
openly express allegiance to, is almost always more about
identity politics than actual practice. Outer elements of
differentiation are useful in terms of public performance of
culturally significant ideas, but the actual esoteric practice, the
real heart of the matter, is something that happens outside of
any outward manifestation and is possible whatever religion a
person adheres to.
Most of the truly valuable esoteric material comes from
one faith tradition or another, and I think it's a mistake for
any one who is interested in delving into these areas to fall
into the error of dismissing something because it's outward
appearance uses the mytho-poetic structures of a major
religion. Esoteric practice is not about preferences, it's about
discipline and growth towards a realization of union with
reality. To think that one can step out of Christianity, for
instance, and take on the mytho-poetic structure of
Buddhism, Sufism, Thelema or any other tradition and escape
from the rigorous reworking of the self only leads to
complicating things much more than is necessary and taking
on mythotypes that will eventually have to be abandoned
anyway when one advances in understanding.
That's not to say that mainstream adherents of dogmatic
religion won't reject, persecute and seek to dissuade the
deeper journey, or that going to a church on Sunday where
the pastor or priest is discussing football and politics
isn't repellent, but this too is part of the lesson of practice.
There are also situations where one might be drawn to a
tradition which provides access to something that goes
beyond the tradition that they were born into and find
additional light there. The danger lies in mistaking self
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satisfaction for effective devotion, and that can happen no

matter what one professes.
GDR - You’ve done quite a bit of research on Santa
Muerte, the dreaded religion of the drug lords. What can you
tell us about Santa Muerte that may surprise us and what
lessons can we learn through softening our views on The
Boney Lady?
DM - Probably the most surprising thing for most people
would be to realize that She's traditionally associated with
women, wives and mothers, and not drug lords and gunmen.
Even now, if you look at two of the major public shrines in
Mexico City, in Tultitlan and Tepito, you find their protectors
are powerful local women, 'La Madrina' Enriqueta Vargas
Ortiz and Dona Queta Romero.
In Mexico City Santa Muerte has become a driver for local
organizing. Her shrines represent a sort of neutral ground
where people can meet outside of conflicts and
contentions. One of the Mass readers at the Tepito shrine
talks about a time when he was about to be held up and one
of the gunman recognized him from the shrine. After the guy
realized who he was about to rob he put his gun away and
left.
Walmart sells t-shirts with the same grim reaper figure that
in Mexico is used to represent Her, while shirts marketed in
the United States as being related to Santa Muerte look
nothing like how She is portrayed in Latin America. In the
Botanicas that I've visited, most of the owners are Santeros
and have little interest in Her outside of the fact that their
clientelle buy Her devotional items, and I've yet to see a
website in English that fully understands or expresses how
She is portrayed in Her traditional setting. It's one of the most
fascinating examples of contemporary faith that I've come
across.
I find in Her a very beautiful and complex devotional
Mystery, which opens up a relationship with death and
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mortality that is raw and essential. As a folk tradition Her

iconography and devotional practices have developed out of
the immediate needs, hopes, fears, and experiences of Her
ardent devotees, and as a contemporary phenomena the
material aspects of Her tradition offer a unique opportunity
to see how effective the marketplace is in producing complex
associations of belief and experience.
GDR - How would you define the term ‘Gnosis’? What
does it mean to you and where do we go to get some of it?
DM - Gnosis comes from the Greek word for
investigation or direct experiential knowledge. In terms of
spirituality it is differentiated from faith or belief in that it
implies a concrete realization that leaves no room for doubt.
In order to experience it, I'd recommend getting a hold of
some alchemical V.I.T.R.I.O.L. or contemplating Luke 17:21.
The flames of devotion melt the hardened heart, and
allow for the higher understanding to evaporate like incense
which pleases the beloved.
GDR - We’ve spent some time drinking together and
during that time, it seemed there was an inspiration spirit that
even made it feel like a holy occasion. What can we get out of
our intoxicating experiences aside from whiskey-dick? What
about Cannabis, or other hallucinogens?
DM - The controversial, yet often very explicit, Italian
magus Julius Evola discusses the use of intoxication as an
acid to unmoor set behavior patterns. It's a fast track to
ecstatic annihilation, which if rightly applied can aid in
stepping outside of one's set patterns where new experiences
and understandings can open up.
Unfortunately in our culture of nihilistic excess this can
often lead to unwanted consequences and missteps on the
path. Ecstasy and death are closely related, and we have to
realize that if we're not properly attuned to the truth applying
this kind of immediate release from the bonds of self identity
can have very averse effects on practice. One can become
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addicted to that easy ecstatic release, rather than applying it

towards something greater, and developing a fixed state of
union which requires no additional material aids. Because our
society is so focused away from spiritual development, many
find that their first taste of selflessness comes from drugs or
alcohol, but our society also has a narrative in which this is a
path in and of itself, which it is not.
The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, for a time, used
hashish as a visualization aid at a certain point in their
initiation, as did practitioners like Paschal Beverly Randolph,
Blavatsky smoked copious amounts of weed to enhance her
psychic faculties. However, in studying these instances you'll
find that use of a substance was always tied to physical
phenomena, or a physical level of initiation, and was in no
way the end of the path. For those who go further, these
material aids become unnecessary and to continue with them
represents a return to spiritual infancy
Puritanical prohibition and complete hedonism are both
excessive, but fast tracking enlightenment can lead to cracking
the vessel.
GDR - From the seekers perspective, what is the real
meaning behind the term, “know thyself”? How can I use this
for my betterment?
DM - Know thyself is one of the greatest Mysteries.
Today it's often purported as some kind of psychological
mantra, relating to knowing one's emotional state, or
understanding one's identity, however if you contemplate
what is implied by knowing in terms of gnosis, and is implied
by the self in terms of union, this phrase has very, very deep
esoteric significance.
History shows us that this quest does not always lead to
betterment in terms of material well being, many have been
martyred, or have lost everything in the search for authentic
union, but there is no greater achievement and the closer one
moves towards the goal the less material well being matters.
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As an Italian alchemist once told me, the dragons in our

path are real, and I would add, so is the treasure that they
guard.
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How to Survive
The Empire
It takes very little today to get many of us into froth over

global injustice, the rape of the earth, the bombing of
children, the mistreatment of captives; the list goes on and
on. It is as if we are in some kind of violent squeeze, penance
for past sins, or just wicked men behaving
wickedly. Regardless of whom or what is behind the endless
cavalcade of charred carcasses, those of us who look on in
horror feel a sense of grief; inability to change as if we were in
the middle of a living, breathing night terror from which we
cannot awake. But how do we fight this beast of a million
heads that mines our hearts for the last drop of fear and
anxiety it can draw until we collapse, punctured and poisoned
by its necrotizing fangs?
If ever there was a growing sense that we are still under
the rule of a malevolent empire, that time is now.
Phillip K. Dick wrote a manic and brilliant exegesis; his
very own cosmology. And whether we choose to look at it as
total insanity, or a divine inspiration, there are a few points
that struck me deeply as I read them:
41. The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it
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is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a

violent one.
42. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is
a paradox: whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the
Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies.
Thereby it becomes its enemies.
These two points beg the question, ‘How do we fight

something that through fighting will turn us into the very
thing we oppose?’ This the riddle of every peace activist out
there, how to stand against something so vile as to never lash
out and fight fire with fire. How can we Obi Wan Kenobi-ify
ourselves to become unstoppable against this empire?
It would seem that we mustn’t approach this beast on it’s
own terms, but must change the way we see the world and
therefore become transfigured into something that the beast
cannot reach. But we cannot do this until we understand the
nature of the reality in which we live and therefore look for
the hacks and loopholes that will allow us to not be
vandalized as others might be:
48. ON OUR NATURE. It is proper to say: we appear to be

memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like
thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored
thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us possesses
somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a
malfunction -- a failure - of memory retrieval . There lies the trouble in
our particular sub-circuit. 'Salvation' through gnosis -- more properly
anamnesis (the loss of amnesia) -- although it has individual significance
for each of us -- a quantum leap in perception, identity, cognition,
understanding, world- and self-experience, including immortality -- it has
greater and further importance for the system as a whole, inasmuch as
these memories are data needed by it and valuable to it, to its overall
functioning.
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So if we are (in theory) indeed part of a simulated reality,

then we must consider what it all really means. Are the bad
guys in your video game coming to murder you in your
sleep? When you die in the video game, does it trouble you in
your ‘real life’?
We can call this reality many things: A
holograph (Stanislav Grof), a video game (Tom Campbell,
The Edge Bros), A ride (Bill Hicks), Maya or Doxa (Eastern
and Greek thought respectively), but no matter how we see it,
there seems to be a consensus that it isn’t really REAL; we are
here doing something for some purpose (which is up for
discussion what that is) and yet our hearts and minds tell us
it’s not everything that there is to experience. Our
psychedelic experiences show us something different, our
spiritual leaders tell us something different and yet we cling so
hard to this illusion that we can’t sleep at night.
What to do, what to do?
Realize to the core of your being that this life is yours; you
can do amazing things. You can do impossible things, you
can change the world, but it all begins with yourself.
My dear readers, all the craziness you see and hear takes
your breath away and breaks your heart, but it is all a strange
necessity. It's like the the squeeze of birth pains, a
constriction and a purge. I don't know what tomorrow
brings, but as long as good people like us are here to bring
light to the dark, we are still the winners. In fact, we win, no
matter what; whether battered and bruised or somehow
unscathed. We win. Love wins, truth wins. Freedom wins.
Remember your own power and use it to change our reality.
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The Gnosis of
Matt Staggs
For those who don’t know, I write for Disinfo.com and was
invited to write for them by Matt Staggs. The Disinformation
Company has been a pioneer in bringing the strange,
offensive, intriguing and enlightening things of life to a
broader audience and Matt Staggs is the man at the helm,
bringing us a daily dose of the stuff the mainstream might
overlook. A man I highly respect, Matt is always ready to
address the weirder things in life with openness, clarity of
thought and a sense of humor and that’s why his words are
worth hearing.
GDR - Matt, You’re an aficionado of all things weird and

interesting, where did this interest in the subjects on the edge
of society come from, was there a eureka moment where you
found your niche, or did you come out of the womb holding
the Necronomicon?
MS - I could probably point to a few seminal cultural
influences in my childhood: “In Search Of...” with Leonard
Nimoy; the paranormal young adult books of Daniel Cohen
that were always available at my library; my early movie
experience - Jaws, Star Wars, The Thing, Alien. These
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probably set me on the path that I’m on now, but I’ve always
been a bit of a weirdo, I think. I was a socially awkward kid
and didn’t have too many friends growing up.
I spent my time reading, watching television and playing
games like Dungeons & Dragons when other boys my age
were engaging in sports, hunting and other pursuits
considered normal for a childhood in the Deep South. Throw
in a deeply dysfunctional family background, a little bit of
abuse and a lot of bullying here and there, stir liberally and
then mix with an artistic temperament and intelligence in a
setting where you were branded a “fag” for exhibiting both.
It’s kind of a confusing question; a “chicken or the egg”
kind of thing. Did my personal obsessions with weird stuff
make me an outcast, or did being an outcast force me to
gravitate toward weird stuff? I really don’t know. The more
people treated me like garbage the more I retreated into a
comforting world of Sasquatch, computers, occultism,
mythology, horror novels, twenty-sided dice and zombie
movies. Little did I know that the things that made me
practically useless in the eighties would become priceless
commodities in the nerd-driven Internet age.
When I was a miserable kid, I used to pretend to receive
messages from a future me that reassured me that things
would get better. Now, as a reasonably happy adult, I pretend
to send messages back to the past me that things would get
better. In a way, I’ve kept up that promise to that scared,
angry boy.
GDR - What are your thoughts on the Mechanistic
Materialist worldview that now dominates our scientific
world? What are its advantages and what are it’s flaws in light
of what you see as the grand scheme?
MS - Wow. Heavy question. When you look at the current
“Skeptic” and “New Atheist” movement, you can clearly see
a bunch of frightened, angry people trying to stuff what Sartre
called the “God-shaped hole” with a new faith that they
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hardly understand. It’s always funny to me to have people

lecture me about science that they themselves understand no
better than I do. Why should I take the word of a - say - an
IT professional on the nature of reality just because he spends
a bunch of time reading Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers?
Some of those guys go full-on fundamentalist crazy if you
poke their sacred cows a little too hard. They raise hell about
the need to listen to experts on this or that subject, without
even once questioning what makes themselves an authority.
Do I really need a geologist’s opinion on UFOs or
transcendental experiences? For that matter, what does
Dawkins know and how is it that his opinion is any more
valid than mine? (And that’s with me clearly accepting that
I’m not much of an expert on anything.)
Skepticism, rather than a tool in the “critical thinking”
toolbox, has become a subculture with its own set of
predefined belief systems. There’s not an open discourse on
certain subjects, and on top of it, most of them tend to prefer
low-hanging fruit. Why criticize the claims of big pharma or
government when you can take potshots at some poor guy
out in the sticks who claims he has seen aliens? And potshots
they are.
The irony is that I’m a pretty skeptical guy myself, and I
reap the benefits of science every day. We’d probably agree
on alot of things, I just don’t think that there’s any reason
why you have to be a browbeating dick about the stuff you
believe. Further, just because you don’t believe in the
aforementioned guy’s UFO story, it doesn’t mean that you
can’t draw benefit from it if you can get off your high horse
and examine it in an anthropological, sociological or cultural
perspective.
GDR - The nature of reality seems to get weirder and
weirder as we see the world through the quantum lens. How
have the discoveries within the realms of cutting edge science
changed, or bolstered your own cosmology?
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MS - I’m basically a monkey when it comes to things like

physics and mathematics, and I’m going to get bogged down
if I try to focus on specifics. I can say that they’ve convinced
me that the “real” world is something we probably don’t ever
experience in its entirety, and that it’s probably much weirder
than we could ever believe. I like it that way. I’ve learned to
relax and enjoy the ride.
GDR - In a world where it seems we are beset on all sides
by the alarmist voices of people like Alex Jones and the
lackluster corporate media represented by CNN, MSNBC and
FOX news; what are your keys to keeping a level head and
parsing the shit from shinola in the information age?
MS - Obviously, question everything. Really think about
things, and calibrate your bullshit meter as much as you can.
Realize, of course, you’re going to get fooled from time to
time again, and you probably already believe a bunch of lies
without realizing it. The other thing I could say would be to
try to find numerous sources and perspectives on important
matters and gauge to what extent they agree, and disagree, on
the essential facts.
GDR - What are your thoughts on the
UFO/Extraterrestrial phenomena and what; if anything
should we do about the implications of their presence, or lack
thereof?
MS - UFOs are one of history’s most enduring mysteries,
and there is a lot to unpack if you begin to really examine the
phenomena. To what extent are people misidentifying natural
phenomena? What about man-made objects? Or hoaxes?
How about experimental crafts, government psychological
operations and other black bag shenanigans? After you get
through that, you have to wonder if the “alien” perspective is
the right one. How about time travelers, or extra-dimensional
beings? What if, like John A. Keel thought, things like
Bigfoot, little green men and elves are all manifestations of
the same intelligence somehow co-existing beyond our
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senses?
GDR - What writers have inspired you the most in your
own life? Can you cite certain books, or quotes that have
helped you turn to the next page in your own life?
MS - It’s hard to answer this because my answer changes
from day to day. I’m a big fan of Jon Ronson’s works of
narrative journalism. He expanded my horizons to what is
possible when it comes to examining “weird” beliefs without
turning people into targets for derision. Robert Anton
Wilson’s books, particularly the “Cosmic Trigger” series were
influential. So was John A. Keel’s body of work.
Paradoxically, books like Michael Shermer’s “Why People
Believe Weird Things” played a big role as well. Albert Camus
and Herman Hesse were big ones, and so was Viktor Frankls’
“Man’s Search for Meaning”. Finally, the works of Carl Jung
and Joseph Campbell have been influential in the way that I
live.
GDR - December 21st, 2012 came and went and many
people have felt disappointed (at least in the New Age-ish
community) that nothing seemed to happen. Do you
personally feel like something did occur, or was it total horse
shit? Where do we lead the faithful now and prevent another
2012 letdown from occurring once more?
MS - Something did happen in the sense that it got a lot of
people thinking about what “the apocalypse” meant.
Incidentally, it really means “unveiling.” Otherwise, it was a
case of the post-millennial jitters.
GDR - What does the term ‘Gnosis’ mean to you and
how can it be positively applied in our lives and the lives of
those around us?
MS - I have personally appropriated this term for
knowledge beyond science, and beyond explanation: Personal
psychological and spiritual insights about the nature of being.
I have my own ideas about who I am and what I am meant to
do, but if I try to put them into words then I run the risk of
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sounding like a lunatic.
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The Transcendental
Object
Preparing a Moka pot of coffee this morning, I decided to

continue my reading of Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero
With A Thousand Faces. The primary thrust of the book is to
show the world-wide correlation of all holy texts from tribal
tales to what we consider canonized texts of antiquity. There
is indeed a unifying theme of the human experience, the drive
toward religion and the seeking of a personal quest for
enlightenment.
Terence McKenna once spoke of what he referred to as
the transcendental object at the end of history as the unifying
vision that all seekers see in the hallucinations of mushrooms,
LSD, DMT, Mescaline and Ayahuasca. He described this
object as the same thing, but looking different. In describing
this monolithic object, he cited the mathematical concept of a
free floating cone in blank space. He added that if we were to
imagine this simple object viewed by many, we would see that
no two people would see it in the exact same light, shape and
form. In fact the view of that simple object would not be the
same for any two people. It's almost as if they were not seeing
the same object at all.
And so, we understand that our views are very different
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even though we may bear witness to the same experience.

In my psychedelic and spiritual visions, I have often seen a
massive rolling curtain of eyes, holy and mystical, floating in
an endless sea of stars and bejeweled with every fine thing the
eye can view. It was not a view of god per se, but a view of
things as they are in a way the the two natural eyes cannot
perceive. I've thought this for a long time now, that the
objects we envision are metaphors to help us along in our
path.
I wanted to see god, but instead I saw the whole universe
bursting with galaxies swirling and mathematical theorems
played out like a symphonic movement of sound and light. It
took some time for me to realize that I was indeed seeing
god, because god is everything.
Joseph Campbell says this about the matter of god and
our perception of it:
"We do not particularly care whether Rip van Winkle,
Kamar al-Zaman, or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their
stories are what concern us: and these stories are so widely
distributed over the world—attached to various heroes in
various lands—that the question of whether this or that local
carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a
historical, living man can be of only secondary moment. The
stressing of this historical element will lead to confusion; it
will simply obfuscate the picture message. What, then, is the
tenor of the image of the transfiguration? That is the question
we have to ask. But in order that it may be confronted on
universal grounds, rather than sectarian, we had better review
one further example, equally celebrated, of the archetypal
event."
In other words, to be hung up on the religious event as an
historical fact is to miss the point entirely. See again his
quoting from the Bhagavad Gita and compare it to my
description of my own psychedelic experience:
The following is taken from the Hindu "Song of the
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Lord," the Bhagavad Gita. The Lord, the beautiful youth

Krishna, is an incarnation of Vishnu, the Universal God;
Prince Arjuna is his disciple and friend.
Arjuna said: "O Lord, if you think me able to behold it,
then, O master of yogis, reveal to me your Immutable Self."
The Lord said: "Behold my forms by the hundreds and the
thousands- manifold and divine, various in shape and hue.
Behold all the gods and angels; behold many wonders that no
one has ever seen before. Behold here today the whole
universe, the moving and the unmoving, and whatever else
you may desire to see, all concentrated in my body.—But
with these eyes of yours you cannot see me. I give you a
divine eye; behold, now, my sovereign yoga-power."
Having spoken thus, the great Lord of yoga revealed to
Arjuna his supreme form as Vishnu, Lord of the Universe:
with many faces and eyes, presenting many wondrous sights,
bedecked with many celestial ornaments, armed with many
divine uplifted weapons; wearing celestial garlands and
vestments, anointed with divine perfumes, all-wonderful,
resplendent, boundless, and with faces on all sides. If the
radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the
sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One. There
in the person of the God of gods, Arjuna beheld the whole
universe, with its manifold divisions, all gathered together in
one. Then, overcome with wonder, his hair standing on end,
Arjuna bowed his head to the Lord, joined his palms in
salutation, and addressed Him:
"In Thy body, O Lord, I behold all the gods and all the
diverse hosts of beings—the Lord Brahma, seated on the
lotus, all the patriarchs and the celestial serpents. I behold
Thee with myriads of arms and bellies, with myriads of faces
and eyes; I behold Thee, infinite in form, on every side, but I
see not Thy end nor Thy middle nor Thy beginning, O Lord
of the Universe, O Universal Form! On all sides glowing like
a mass of radiance I behold Thee, with Thy diadem, mace,
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and discus, blazing everywhere like burning fire and the

burning sun, passing all measure and difficult to behold. Thou
art the Supreme Support of the Uni-verse; Thou art the
undying Guardian of the Eternal Law; Thou art, in my belief,
the Primal Being."
It is as if we see things like god in whatever way we will
best understand, though we see it so differently, it is the same
object at the end, timeless and wonderful. Campbell provides
further detail:
"The disciple has been blessed with a vision transcending
the scope of normal human destiny, and amounting to a
glimpse of the essential nature of the cosmos. Not his
personal fate, but the fate of mankind, of life as a whole, the
atom and all the solar systems, has been opened to him; and
this in terms befitting his human understanding, that is to say,
in terms of an anthropomorphic vision: the Cosmic Man. An
identical initiation might have been effected by means of the
equally valid image of the Cosmic Horse, the Cosmic Eagle,
the Cosmic Tree, or the Cosmic Praying-Mantis.
"The Song of the Lord" was made in terms befitting
Arjuna's caste and race: The Cosmic Man whom he beheld
was an aristocrat, like himself, and a Hindu. Correspondingly,
in Palestine the Cosmic Man appeared as a Jew, in ancient
Germany as a German; among the Basuto he is a Negro, in
Japan Japanese. The race and stature of the figure
symbolizing the immanent and transcendent Universal is of
historical, not semantic, moment; so also the sex: the Cosmic
Woman, who appears in the iconography of the Jains.
Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they
must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, of their
reference. no matter how attractive or impressive they may
seem, they remain but convenient means, accommodated to
the understanding. Hence the personality or personalities of
God, whether represented in trinitarian, dualistic, or Unitarian
terms, in polytheistic, monotheistic, or henotheistic terms,
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pictorially or verbally, as documented fact or as apocalyptic

vision, no one should attempt to read or interpret as the final
thing. The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol
translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is
supposed to convey. "For then alone do we know God truly,"
writes Saint Thomas Aquinas, "when we believe that He is far
above all that man can possibly think of God."
"To know is not to know; not to know is to know."
Mistaking a vehicle for its tenor may lead to the spilling not
only of valueless ink, but of valuable blood.
Finally, we see that the transcendental object at the end of
history is indeed another version of this story; a newer form
of the old revelation that continues to carry us without our
former religious trappings into a vision of the eternal and
divine.
These are wondrous confirmations that can unify
humanity if properly understood. If we truly understand that
dogma is cement trying to float in the sea of all that is ever
changing. The key is to float with the change and know that it
is still THE experience to be visaged, the thing to know, the
thing to believe. Breaking apart the cement that we are in and
stepping away from dogma in this sense draws us closer to
the transcendental object, the mono-myth, the one true God.
Just as Krishna revealed himself to Arjuna as Arjuna
would best understand, so does the true God reveal itself
unto us in whatever form we may receive best.
This to me is a miracle and a fine example of the endless
love that the universe (a term I interchange with God) has to
share with us.
What a marvelous experience this life is, what a great
chance we have to learn from each joy and sorrow,
understanding that we are a part of God just by nature of our
very existence. Though we may see things so differently, we
are all viewing the same timeless event unfolding.
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The Gnosis of
Thad McKraken
Thad McKraken is an unabashed magician and writer for

Disinfo.com. His book, The Galactic Dialogue tells the story
of his wild and fascinating experiences in his occult study and
practice; he’s also wicked funny and full of humble, yet
poignant insight. Since he’s unafraid to talk about the weirder
stuff, I knew I had to share my conversation with him here.
GDR - Thad, how did you come to the idea that there
were inter dimensional beings that you could talk to? What's
the purpose of doing something that seems so strange to the
average person?
TM - Well, what I've really been forced to entertain
repeatedly throughout the course of pursuing these things, is
that the idea that consciousness must be confined to a body
and exist within a linear time-stream is a primitive one. I'm
not sure why humanity became so obsessed with this concept,
but repeatedly I've been shown quite deliberately that there
are conscious entities which are sort of perceiving us from a
third person perspective and can interact with us, often
without us having any knowledge of it. Hell, it appears they
can project thoughts into our heads and manipulate us like
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puppets to a degree. They've been trying to beat this concept

into me in dream states for years, and it's funny because it's
always in this manner where they can't believe I have such a
hard time grasping it, like they're sort of fucking with me, why
on earth is this so difficult? That's just how lost we get in
these roles that we're playing down here.
I started taking psychedelics at age 18 and I have an
insanely strong reaction to things like LSD and mushrooms.
Total art world invasion. Because of that I started playing
around with Robert Monroe's techniques for astral projection
which is something that was recommended to me by my
mom. This is the sort of thing that happens.
Now, I think you're referring to the magick, contacting
your Holy Guardian Angel thing though. Probably because of
the astral projection, a being showed up in my room one
afternoon, at roughly the lowest part in my life and
hypnotized me awake, telling me I needed to start practicing
magick. Long story, but yeah, something showed up in my
room one day and basically clapped it's hands and
transformed me into an occultist. I'd read about sigil magick
and basic chaos magick, but would have never tried it without
that otherwordly instigation. I needed to be pushed into the
pool.
I think the primary reason anyone should honestly pursue
this is because our world of consumerism is crumbling. We've
advanced as informational creatures far quicker than imagined
with recent technology and we barely understand the
implications of this just yet. We need to use this increased
knowledge base to undermine the established internal orders
of control, which have everything to do with materialistic
thought. As long as people think this level of reality is all
there is, they are subject to control by the authority of man.
Once you're answering to another internal authority, you're
far more difficult to manipulate which is why the people in
control hate it so much. Bad for the bottom line. Mainly
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though, this stuff is cheap kicks. How many kids are going to
be able to afford this lifestyle they're being sold by the media
these days. Not many. Fuck it. You can talk to planets, that's
better than bling. Sort of what Jesus was saying if I'm
remembering correctly.
GDR - It's funny, because if my ideas from Born Again
To Rebirth are correct, Jesus would have been handed the
magickal masterworks of the Zorastrian traditions and
followed up with an upbringing (most likely) in Alexandra,
which was the knowledge capital of the word during that
time. Based on this, Jesus would have embodied the best the
world had to offer, being both naturally talented and educated
in the best shamanic and magickal arts available. It also
blows my mind that the average person might be offended at
the idea that Jesus was some kind of great wizard, but if you
look at the Qabballa and the Jewish traditions surrounding
these practices, you find that the whole bible is like a secret
magick text covered up with Aesop's fables type stories to
soften the blow. Never in the Bible is there enough given for
the reader to really effectively practice anything, but it's there.
I've had similar experiences in my life where I was told I
was supposed to minister. At the time I thought it meant
Christian ministry, but when you think about it, healing
people and helping them solve their own problems by way of
intuitive shamanism/magick is exactly the same if not loads
better than what some person on the street might think of as
ministry. With two specific instances in my psychedelic
journeys, 'they' hurried up to me and said, "Ok, we don't have
much time! We've got to get you moving and doing your
work!", a second instance came where I was called to the
desert, a call I have yet to heed, but I will. Since then I've
been treating my life like school, studying furiously and trying
my best to surround myself with people who can help me
fast-track my experience and knowledge.
If the consensus model of the universe is correct, this life
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is just a construct, a game, or an illusion, one that we can

hack, is this ultimately the way you see it? If so, who do you
think the others are? Are they the programmers? Are they us
when we're not in the time/space constraint?
TM - Well yeah, thinking about it as a game or an illusion
is right on point. Just recently I had an experience while doing
what I call occult ganj-i-tating where I had the typical eye in
the pyramid type visions emerge spontaneously and this
projective force was just beaming upside down pentagrams
into the minds of our subconscious through the media. So of
course, this pissed me off and I set the pentagrams right side
up again with the force of my will which took some effort.
The inverted pentagram of course represents materialism
over the spirit with the normal pentagram representing the
inverse. Why am I talking about that? Well, because right
afterward a voice came into my head that loudly proclaimed:
"this movie is being filmed in the 5th dimension", which
ended up being the title of a Facebook post which I also
ended up throwing on Disinfo.
I understood it immediately because earlier in the week I
was in the same state and found myself in a hypnagogic realm
surrounded by shrouded monks who started chanting: "it's
only an act" over and over again ritualistically until it was so
loud that it jarred me awake thinking, no shit. So, life is like
an exotic film is the metaphor du jour in my camp because of
that. What are you tapping into through lens of that
metaphor? Well, the director I suppose. The writing team.
Maybe both.
The 5th dimension thing makes sense as well, as I've been
shown in multiple visionary dreams a model of third, fourth,
and fifth dimensionality of consciousness, which has come
through metaphorically as the holy trinity as weird as that
sounds. In 4-D, all of our perspectives are tied together,
which makes for the most absolutely awesome cut sequences
in the living film. You can go from one person's perspective
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to another, and back again, between speices. Explore how

different singular events and how they had an affect on
multiple people's lives.
And I think you're absolutely right when you say they exist
completely outside of time, which is what people who try and
pin down UFO's get totally lost. This whole thing is like a
movie to them. They can go back and watch it again, re-edit
the beginning, trim out 20 minutes, re-cut it. All of time is
one singular work. When you think about human history, this
sort of conscious experience lost in time is absolutely infinite,
and events from a thousand years ago are still influencing the
world today. Great film making, which is I think the point
and I think magick is not only trying to tap into your role, but
trying to let the directors or writers know which path you
would prefer. The holy trinity of dimensional perspectives
should be working in tandem to blow your own mind or
something like that.
GDR - It's funny that you should mention the film cuts
and time being one piece that we perceive as a moving
thing. This was the crux of Phillip K. Dick's experience
which he catalogued in his book, "Valis". Long before
anybody was really toying with the idea that this life is a video
game, etc, PKD was saying that this reality is a construct of
information. He also talked about how he found himself in a
wild crunch where he was himself in Biblical times and the
present simultaneously. Mind blowing stuff. Us being
ourselves RIGHT NOW in layers of time. What a mind
blowing concept. So the directors who we can't quite nail
down are running this show, which begs the question; are the
machine elves of Terence McKenna and the Greys of Whitley
Streiber and the angels of the religious books all the same
thing? Why the contrast in the way they appear, the
malevolence of some and benevolence of others? Getting
caught up in this mix doesn't seem to get us any closer to 'the
truth', or does it? How can we clearly collaborate? Do we all
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have to become master magicians? That seems, well...an

impossible feat. Where does that leave everyone who doesn't
want to go mad with study for the next two decades in a weed
fueled journey?
TM - Yeah, and I read Phillip K. Dick, Terrence
McKenna, and Whitley Streiber when I was in my late
teens/early twenties, really as a means to try and understand
the experiences I had on hallucinogens, which were so
incredibly weird. I actually saw Terrence McKenna lecture
right before Whitley Streiber at this thing called the Whole
Life Expo in Chicago one year while I was in college. As a
psychedelic pseudo-jock from Ohio, I felt more out of place
around the new age crowd than pretty much anywhere I'd
been. Terrence ruled, Whitley wasn't as good, but the main
reason I mention this is because they both wrote about their
encounters and there was an insectile component to both to
them. When Terrence went balls out with shrooms in the
Amazon he was communicating with this entity that
presented itself as a preying mantis. Whitley's grey guardian
came across as a spider. A sex goddess spider I might point
out. When I first moved out to Seattle I had this experience
on acid where I sort of got the vibes that the spider was my
spirit animal. Years later after dabbling in magick, I start to
get increasingly insectile vibes to my hallucinations and the
concepts start to flesh themselves out more. I even wrote
about a chapter in my book where I was tripping on shrooms
and I had this spontaneous multi-eyed vision where this entity
seemed to be indicating to me that the creative intelligence
behind the insect world was also responsible for things like
crustaceans and all other kinds of sea creatures like sea
spiders and what not. Just nuts, they had this incredible sense
of community among them and they sort of sang in unison in
this telepathic language outside our perception. Total
shamanism stuff.
And them I'm having all these "life is a movie"
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communique recently, and I'd sort of forgotten that was the

basis for Valis, because I read that so long ago now. When
you just mentioned it, I was like, oh shit. The main thing I
remember about that book was the super surrealist film
sequence and how much it's one of the best things I've ever
read.
I bring this up because it does beg the question.
Consciousness is all part of a continuum, so were visions such
as these fueled by reading things like Terrence and Whitley at
such a young age? I'd sort of forgotten that they'd both talked
about insectile forms of intelligence until I stumbled across
some interviews with them in recent years. The power of
suggestion is so demonstrably weird in terms of human
psychology and how it shapes experience, which is sort of
why I write what I do. I think it potentially actually creates
psychic experience by expanding linguistic parameters for
what is possible with the human experience, which is sort of
limitless.
As far as how do we start to right the ship of humanity,
we've got to get away from consumerism, and there really
isn't much of an effort to veer in that direction at this point. I
think though that wealth inequality and environmental decline
just might finally push our hand. Just recently I was told in a
ganj-i-tation session that "we're being forced to wake up".
And that's sort of where western magick differs from the old
shamanic traditions. They're trying to stay as far away from
western society as they can so they can get back to the old
ways. We're (I'm at least) trying to use the very creations of
materialism to subtly bring it to it's knees.
We have to continually demonstrate to the kids that you
can get bigger kicks by tinkering with your inner world than
you're ever going to get from a mansion or a gold encrusted
Jesus neck chain or a cocaine orgy with prostitutes. It's going
to take long periods of time I imagine, but there's a
hundredth monkey thing we can maybe get moving in my
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lifetime. I personally feel like maybe a subtle veil has lifted

and this stuff is going to be increasingly "permitted" moving
forward.
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The Earth Liquidation

Warehouse
I've just woken up from the strangest dream. I was an actor in

a comedy sketch show where I was a salesman in a furniture
liquidation warehouse of some kind; the sort of place where
everything was ridiculously cheap and the sales staff were
extremely dubious. The actress across from me who played
the part of the 'mark', the sucker that I made the sale to was
very convincingly playing out her part, asking about the
quality of the product. We were both actors, but she, even
though she knew my rushed and hoarse voice was forced for
dramatic effect was actually buying the $1,200 coffee table. I
don't have any reason to think why we would have actually
gone through this much effort to put me in a cheap suit with
my hair slicked back and my refined salesman's rasp barking
off how I would never think to allow this dear woman to pay
even 75% off, no, no, for her I would cut her an astounding
deal of 80% off.
In this dream everything was in caricature, like a bad
Hunter S. Thompson trip sequence left on the cutting room
floor; too searing for public consumption, too much of a bite
into the Western consumptive psyche to be deemed worthy
of airing. On the ceiling of the liquidation warehouse, there
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played a projection over and over of our spinning planet,

spinning faster and faster, expanding to cover the whole of
the ceiling, then shrinking down and spinning faster until it
moved to the next continent; the message to the buyer was
clear, "We travel across the globe and stop at nothing to get
you the best high quality bargains at a fraction of the real
price." But in this comedy sketch, another woman comes up
having already paid the price on a no-refund, 'the deal was
too smokin' to last' sale, upset that the veneer on her just
purchased dresser set had begun to come unglued. I as the
slick salesman kept my present mark engaged while joking
that the woman with the dresser set had poor taste and
should have picked the dresser set I had suggested, implying
that she had gone with the suggestion of one of my more
unscrupulous liquidation cohorts. And somehow in this
sketch, my newest mark doesn't even seem to pay attention to
the complaints or poor treatment of my old mark, adding
comedy to the sketch. She buys into my sale of this deal of a
lifetime as I begin to shark around for my next sale, above my
head the big world spins round under my control for the
second rate hypnosis of the buying masses.
The laugh track ensues and the sketch goes dark. Where
the comedy stops is the reality of our present situation. Like it
or not, many of us have taken on the role of the mark in real
life. We pay the price, ignore the signs and act on impulse. I
mean what could go wrong? Sure we see that the selling floor
is peopled with gawking buyers and the salesmen are not to
be trusted, the evidence is standing right in front of us, but
we continue to be reassured that the people complaining have
something wrong with them. We want so bad for the illusion
to stay in place that we make ourselves believe it's true and
good.
This isn't just about climate change, this is about us. This
is about the way we choose to see the world and as surely as
we live and breathe we collectively are consistently choosing
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not to see, not to step away from the liquidation racket. Just
like a Shakespearian comedy, there is sure to be a fair amount
of tragedy and so it is with us. At the time, I lived in Astoria,
Queens and braced myself and my family for hurricane
Sandy. I posted a few goofy quips about it on my social media
and tried to shake off the fear that we were going to be
decimated. We stocked up on food and water and made sure
we had candles and the like, but when the storm came, it was
truly scary. We watched on television in real time as a man
walked around in his house with his lights on while his house
was surrounded by 3 feet of water, BEFORE the storm had
even made landfall. His was surely washed away over the
course of that night, if not horribly damaged.
As a new day dawned, the real horror show ensued.
Bodies floating in the boroughs of the greatest city in the
world, dozens and dozens of houses flooded, yet burned to
the ground. Elderly people without food, power of methods
of communication, in untold numbers, trapped on the second
floors of apartments and assisted living centers. It was awful
to hear about. In the past few days I've spent my time
watching the body count rise and the tragic reports continue
to come in. I went to work at a popular spot in Brooklyn and
served up drinks to the bedraggled crowd, feeling sick to my
stomach about the situation, but determined to make them
feel warm and welcome when many had been without hot
food, lights or heat, did my best to serve them with a good
heart. When I got off work, I checked my social media feed
to find comments like, "oh my god! I just love dancing in my
car whenever (generic pop song) comes on!", next feed says
something about how smarmy our presidential candidates are,
more drivel, more distraction. I tried to shake off my self-
righteous indignation when I posted real photos of what went
on and people commented that they must have been faked.
Didn't they know or understand that NEW YORK CITY was
partially under water?
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I tried to keep my cool and stay positive, but the next

night as I again went in to serve up comfort, I couldn't help
but sear at the thought that the night seemed just like any
other before it when there was no horrible danger, no death,
no tunnels under water. Just like that, the two-bit spinning
hypnotic dance of the little world on the ceiling of the
liquidation warehouse had gotten us back in the mood. Was
our attention span that short? Was our empathy that shallow?
Was I a jerk to even think that it might be wrong to bitterly
observe as I had? The answers are not easy to attain and the
perfect path is not clear to us all, but what is clear is the
necessity for us to change in virtually every way.
Taken seriously or not, the 2012 meme was a gift, a
reminder that we are not in control of this world, but we are
certainly poor stewards of it and will soon be displaced if we
stay our present course. The liquidation warehouse of our
culture and our own minds will be swept away in the flood of
reality as the veneer of our past impulse buys peels away to
show us that we bought utter garbage, unsuitable for
purchase at any price. So now the question extends to us all,
was hurricane Sandy enough to shake us loose from our
buyers daze, or will we still play the part in a play that has
become all too real? We know we are acting out something
artificial, yet we do it anyway, will we leave the tragic comedy
behind, or unwittingly become the real 'mark' of our own
hustler schemes?
Of course that the hurricane was not enough to wake the
masses to the fact that our way of life may soon come to an
end. Financial materialism and "FTW" outlook are the old
ways. If we stay like this we will surely die a miserable death,
or even worse, continue to live a miserable life. Western
Christianity, Materialist Social Darwinism and the rest of the
pillars of our modern world must be abandoned. There is a
way forward with the help of a return to earnest scientific
work, psychedelic perspective and immediate rejection of ego
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driven selfishness and submission to the Archonic forces of

our present mental paradigms; those salesmen of the dystopic
vision.
The choice is up to each of us. Hopefully we will take
what has gone on and run with it, refuse to take part in our
part of the sketch, change what we know must be changed
and don't fall prey to the pressure of the norm, the spinning
eye-treats that so easily distract, hopefully we decide to step
off the show room and buy into something real.
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The Gnosis of
Hamilton Morris
Hamilton Morris is one of my favorite people. He’s a

scientist and an explorer, a journalist and philosopher, a
snappy dresser and a sharp witted investigator. His
documentaries have exposed untold thousands of people to
some of the more fantastic mysteries of our minds. Ever
since we first did an interview for Realitysandwich.com we’ve
stayed in touch and enjoyed the benefits of each others
perspective.
GDR: “There’s two…traditionally there’s two

explanations of the form of gnosis. One explanation is that
it’s intrinsic or kind of personal knowledge that came about
from personal experience. And then the other is, is generally
seen as a state of being; a meditative state or state of non-
mind. As you’ve gone through all of these experiences with a
psychedelics and altered states of consciousness…what is it
that you’re seeking? Is there a holy grail in your own mind?
HM: A holy grail? There are certain scientific questions
that I’d like to answer and there are certain aspects of
perception and cognition that I would like to explore.
Scientifically I don’t think it’s useful to set a large ill-defined
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goal because it doesn’t put you in a position to arrive at

meaningful conclusions. Even the smallest scientific
investigations don’t necessarily produce meaningful
conclusions. A superficially small, hyper-specific scientific
question can still contain an enormous amount of ambiguity.
For example, if you give LSD to a rat and its head twitches in
a specific way, is that head twitch caused by a psychedelic
experience that is somehow analogous to the psychedelic
experience humans have when they ingest LSD, or is the head
twitch signifying something entirely different?
The head twitch could be a result of activating the same
neurotransmitter system, the exact same 5HT2A receptor, but
does that mean that the qualitative effects of LSD in a mouse
are comparable to the effects of the same material in a
human? And if the head twitch represents something entirely
different, is it still a meaningful predictor of psychedelic
action? What if an alien race responded to capsaiacin as a
psychedelic and saw that spraying it into the nostrils of
humans made us sneeze and then concluded “Humans
respond to the psychedelic effect of capsaiacin with a series
of sneezes.” It’s a similar situation with rodents, psychedelics,
and head twitch…and that is a seemingly small, simple
question.
GDR: “Doesn’t that lead into the bigger question? This
concept could easily be exchanging a rats head for a humans
head, because even if we sit down and talk about our
experience we cannot be inside the head of another individual
and see as they see. This is the whole idea behind the
subjective truth of the matter or the subjectivity of the
experience. It changes from person to person.
HM: Of course and that is the quintessential stoner
question, “What if the red I see isn’t the same that you see?’”
GDR: Right.
HM: And that is also a complicated question when you
start talking about qualia or private language, you can spin
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these topics out into very large philosophical questions but,

again, my main goal is to try and keep things focused on
small, specific questions about the physical world so that I
can harbor some small hope of discovering a meaningful
answer. As soon as you start to spin out into the bigger
questions, at least for me, it turns into a despairing,
unfulfilling pursuit.
GDR: Right and it becomes too many rabbit trails to be
able to follow down, right?
HM: But that kind of thinking is not something that
scientists or materialists are immune to! I have a friend with a
PhD in neuroscience who works at a prestigious lab and she’ll
say that sort of thing as well, “With all of this research, what
have we really learned about consciousness?” I think once
you start asking questions like that you are distancing yourself
from the purpose of neuroscientific investigation. You’re
falling into linguistic traps by asking large ambiguous
questions that are not actually scientific questions and may
not even be meaningful questions in the first place. If you
want to understand these things you’ve got to start very small
and you’ve got to stay small and then maybe, over the course
of decades, you can begin to have a more sophisticated
understanding of what tracts and what neurotransmitter
systems might play a role in mediating depression in certain
people. Even then there will be exceptions and inexplicable
variations. When I see the astonishing complexity in the
smallest biochemical questions, that is when I really start to
think asking the big questions is not going to be a useful way
to spend my time.
GDR: Right, so when you’re spending a lot of your time
trying to simplify and get down to the nitty gritty to get little
tiny answers to little tiny questions, that can lead to
something good. I read your sleep study article and you
describe how you had consumed, I forget the name of the
chemical that you were talking about but it had some sort of
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relation to muscamol…”What was it called?”

HM: Gaboxadol.
GDR: “Right and after you had taken it, you had the
chemicals checked out and then you found that it might have
been a chemical that caused brain lesions and so then you
went into a whole section where you psyched yourself out
into worrying if you’d totally scratched up the insides of your
brain forever. I wonder, when you take the clinical approach
does it take any of the romance away from the ecstatic
experience are you able to stay with the so called magic of the
moment?
HM: Absolutely not.
GDR: So you’re still able to take away from it and, and,
and when you go into an ecstatic state you allow yourself to
just soak in the moment rather than trying to over-analyze
it?”
HM: Even if I wanted to diminish the romance and over-
analyze subjective experience as much as possible, if I made
an ongoing effort to conceptualize all life as a meaningless
collision of molecules, which I intellectually believe it is, I am
not capable of experiencing it as such. I simply cannot strip
the beauty and mystery out of these strange, ecstatic
moments. But I often hear that as a criticism, that this sort of
technical or scientific analysis prevents one from reveling in
the raw animal pleasure of direct experience, or whatever, and
you know that’s just a classic anti-science argument,
unweaving the rainbow. It didn’t hold any weight when Keats
leveled it against Newton and it doesn’t hold weight now.
GDR: Right. Conversely there’s a lot of challenges that
arise when you out yourself as a psychedelic investigator, you
have to be able to show that you have the scientific prowess
to stand your ground and say, ‘I know what I’m talking about
guys; this is what I’m studying.’ Right? It’s a fine line because
you can’t necessarily please everyone.”
HM: Well because people only see the results of my work
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and not the work itself it is easy to dismiss it and say, “Oh
this guy just smoked a joint, I have also smoked a joint,
therefore I have the same qualifications as him and should be
him and have his job.” Science provides a buffer from that
attitude because the people making those sorts of criticisms
are also, without question, scientifically illiterate. In some
sense it’s a futile endeavor though, you know that Bertrand
Russell quote
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can
never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what
he hears into something he can understand.”
Even if I spend weeks working out the best way to
execute some kind of chemical analysis to introduce objective
information into a journalistic project, to some people it will
always be, “This guy just smoked a joint, I have also smoked
a joint, therefore…”
GDR: It seems that the psychedelic community takes on a
religious tone as far as how things should be done. I’ve seen
that first hand, I’ve come from a religious background and
I’ve definitely seen a religious tinge to a lot of things which
has turned me off. Actually, our initial interview confirmed a
lot of suspicions that I had and bolstered a lot of ideas that
were bugging me at the time. It’s very interesting, you often
find that ayahuasca groups have a very set way in which they
like to do things and it becomes a dogmatic thing. But the
experience itself is so personal that even from the agnostic
point of view you would come across it and say, ‘Well, there
is no meaning except for the meaning we assign to things and
therefore we can make something into a spiritual occasion if
we so choose.
We can ascribe value to something, but it doesn’t
necessarily mean that it holds that same value in the eyes of
other people. I wonder, what is it that you would like to
contribute to the the psychedelic experience for posterity on a
philosophical level. What does it mean to you? What is its
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purpose in your life? Aside from the clinical perspective I’m

talking in a personal sense here.”
HM: I would like to contribute through the introduction
of new chemicals that may have some scientific or therapeutic
value, essentially by following in Shulgin’s footsteps in some
small way. Thus far I’ve done very little in that regard. In my
writing I hope to set a certain tone about these subjects that
bridges the gap between formal scientific analysis and
conventional science journalism. Most science journalism
people are exposed to is essentially a press release that serves
to promote a university. The journalist simply repeats this
information, sometimes with a bit of minor criticism and
translation of technical terminology.
But I feel good science writing can do something very
unique, something more than translation, it can introduce
new scientific information in the same fashion as formal
scientific research but it can do so in ways that would be
unacceptable in academia. There is a lot of untapped potential
in science writing and there are very few science writers I am
aware of who really take advantage of the possibilities.
Alexander Shulgin and Primo Levi are the two science writers
I admire most, and it’s not a coincidence that they both wrote
about their own work as opposed to rehashing the contents
of a press release.
GDR: This is an excellent segue to an ongoing conspiracy
theory that is prominent in the psychedelic community.
There are a lot of claims being made about pretty much all of
the founders of the psychedelic movement going back to
Wasson, claiming that the psychedelic movement was
propagated by US alphabet agencies for the purposes of mass
mind control and cultural manipulation. According to the
theory, psychedelics were introduced into the general public
as a distraction to make us a bunch of soft-headed hippies
who would be convinced that they could change the world
just by having good thoughts and intentions. In your
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estimation, is there any credibility to this theory? Do you

think it’s really that cut and dry? Does this theory reveal the
‘true history’ of psychedelics in the West?
HM: I don’t think that’s actually the case, but it’s a really
provocative idea and one I had not considered seriously until
recently. I think most would agree there is a disconnect
between perception and reality, without getting bogged down
in a discussion of what constitutes reality if it is not a sensory
phenomenon. Historically there has been a lengthy debate
over what the best word is to describe psychedelics, terms
such as hallucinogen, entheogen, illusionogen, delusionogen
have all been used and reflect various biases. Many of us are
familiar with a sensation of psychedelic omniscience coupled
with an inability to articulate exactly what it is we have
learned, if it cannot be mentally articulated or linguistically
communicated then it is very hard to evaluate exactly what, if
anything, has happened. I think we have to be open to the
possibility that what we perceive as “mind expanding” could
just as easily be mind contracting, that drugs which are
thought to provoke subversive thinking could actually serve
to pacify users with “self-exploration” or “mind-expansion”
that is nothing more than a masturbatory excursion into a
world of fantasy. I am not saying this is the case, just that it
must be acknowledged as a possibility.
I was in Africa for a month earlier this summer and there’s
a similar story people like to discuss, that drug distribution is
entirely controlled by the South African government because
drugs pacify people and they want the poor tranquilized and
engaged in a meaningless cycle of drug acquisition and
consumption so that they are easier to control and exploit. I
don’t think that either the South African government or the
American government really had such a large-scale organized
plan, even if they were involved in some shady deals with
controlled substances. What I’m trying to say is that
regardless of intention or distribution network, drugs could
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have that effect. But I don’t want to go into this, ‘Oh Wasson
worked or…’ what bank was it that he worked for?”
GDR: Uh, JP Morgan, I believe.
HM: Right, yeah, so Wasson worked for JP
Morgan…therefore…what? Many of us live long lives, we
work many places and meet many people, once you start
saying “This person went to this university, this person knew
that person.” It’s guilt by association, you can draw any
connection you want.
GDR: I’m sure between us we could find quite a number
of dubious connections! (laughing)
HM: I’m sure, that is true of anyone who gains a certain
degree of social prominence. The same thing is certainly true
of Shulgin, he also knew everyone. That’s one thing that
never ceases to amaze me as I go through life speaking to
scientists and people in the underground community;
everyone knew Shulgin. Not some, EVERYONE knew him.
Chemists and agents in the DEA knew him, people designing
chemical weapons for the government knew him, chemists
working in the pharmaceutical industry knew him, doctors,
psychiatrists, and therapists knew him, all the underground
chemists knew him. I hate to even say this because someone
might take it seriously but if you wanted to you could make
an argument that Alexander Shulgin orchestrated virtually any
historical event relating to CNS active drugs over the last 60
years.
GDR: So when it comes to the psychedelic experience,
many people develop their own kind of ritual, or way of
doing things. Have you developed any personal procedures
that you like to do that have been inspired by your
psychedelic experiences…I don’t know if it’s like…do you
ever talk to a mushroom before you eat it…or do you ever
kind of do some sort of little crossing of yourself or do you
just go right in? I guess what I’m trying to say is that
everybody seems to go about a particular way of doing things
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that makes it, its own special method or ritual and do you
think a personal ritual developed is an ok thing to do or is it
on the other end totally important to have? What are your
thoughts on that?
HM: I think it really just depends on what the purpose of
using the material is, what the dose of the material is and your
personality and how you approach that sort of thing. I’m not
the sort of person that takes a high dose of LSD and goes to
a concert. I really don’t take psychedelics very often at all.
I’ve used LSD three times in my life and I haven’t used
psilocybin containing mushrooms in years. So for me, the
main area of interest is exploring minimally tested or
completely untested compounds, and when you go into that
area it’s not so much a ritual as a methodology that is required
to accurately evaluate the activity of the compound and to do
so while putting yourself at minimal risk. So that includes
things like discontinuing any medications that could interact
whatever they might be, putting yourself in the position
where you are physically safe if something unanticipated were
to happen, and taking detailed notes so that the time and risk
you have taken have some value.
GDR: “That makes sense. Have you ever had any
thoughts or epiphanies that you hadn’t had before a specific
moment in an ecstatic state that you brought back with you,
that you’ve carried with you ever since. Can you tell us of any
experience like that?
HM: Often the things I value most are very specific, small
things, almost like the same things I value most in science. I
have those sorts of classical psychedelic revelations, especially
when I was younger and first starting to explore classical
psychedelics. I would have thoughts like, “Everything is made
of love” or “Love is the fundamental force connecting
everything.” And it would feel very important and powerful at
the time, but it’s such an abstract visceral concept that it’s not
entirely useful outside of the experience in consensus reality.
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As much as I’d like to, I can’t quite feel that right now when I
say it. I don’t feel much emotional or intellectual connection
to the statement, “Everything is made of love.” Although it
seems like a fine thing to say or think.
But the specific, small things have been immensely useful
and they are things that I do connect with and often they
have to do with life choices academically, professionally,
dietarily, whatever. You know it’s not always something as
dramatic as, “Everything is made of love” sometimes it’s,
“Oh, I really do need to apply for toxicology PhD programs
in the fall.” Or “Despite its seeming lack of adverse effects,
using ambien nightly as a hypnotic is not sustainable and
should be avoided.”
GDR: Right (laughing)…well that’s funny because I think
sometimes we miss the fact that people are so very different.
As much as I would like to have the analytical mind in the
same manner that you have I just don’t have it…I can view
things from a kind of materialist viewpoint, but I’m also a
natural born mystic. I was totally meant to be that person
who goes out and experiments with weird stuff just because
it’s a mystical experience…like I’m in to it…and so it’s so
nice to be able to have that perspective that you have, but it
amuses me highly because every time we talk the thoughts
that you talk about are so foreign from my own.
But I think this is one of the lessons we can be taught by
the psychedelic experience is that we can have a unified event
occur and all of our perspectives can be so different, but it
can also work that way. We don’t all have to think all the
same thoughts and to me this is why the arguments that come
about in the psychedelic community seem trivial at times
because a lot of it’s coming down to the way we see the
world; as Robert Anton Wilson would say, “our reality
tunnels.
GDR: What are you looking forward to in the near future
here? Do you see things on the horizon that may drastically
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change based on your perspective in pharmacology and the

people you know and the research that’s going on? Is there
anything that we can look forward to…get excited about?
HM: Yes, there are some major changes taking place that
are very exciting, in New Zealand scientists are now allowed
to create new drugs explicitly for recreational, non-medical
use. That’s a huge deal. The first above ground labs are
emerging that are dedicated solely to producing new drugs for
no purpose except the promotion of joy and the betterment
of well people, that’s very exciting. And that has the potential
to be a huge development from a research perspective. Think
about the immense impact Alexander Shulgin had in one lab
and then imagine if you have twenty chemists working on
their own investigations in a similar line and you would have
the potential for huge strides in psychopharmacology and
medicinal chemistry. A lot of important things are going to be
discovered, even if only by accident.
GDR: Ray Kurzweil is famous for his view on a
singularity between technological advances and the human
brain. What do you think about this? Will there be a loss of
what makes us human, or might it make it easier for us to
find some digital way to change our consciousness?”
HM: I think at the very least dramatic life extension is
within the realm of possibility, but I’m not expecting a
sudden development that allows humans to become semi-
immortal. As for the digitization of consciousness and
memory, I don’t know enough about computer science to say
if something like that is really on the horizon, but my guess is
that we are a long way off. To be honest those sorts of
speculations don’t interest me all that much because they are
so detached from the real issues we are currently facing. It
would be great if we could digitize memory and live forever
as cyborgs, but it is certainly less of a priority than developing
effective treatments for depression or schizophrenia.
There are a lot of smaller, specific not so romantic
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problems to address. I hate to be so pragmatic, but I do find

it a little bit ridiculous to like spend all of this time seriously
fantasizing about sci-fi immortality scenarios when depression
prevents millions of people from living functional lives. And
just because we solve one problem doesn’t mean it will not
create other problems of equivalent severity.
The antiretroviral drugs that are used to treat HIV are
literally life saving, HIV is no longer a death sentence, but
because people can now live for decades with HIV there is
also the possibility that these people could transmit the virus
more times in their extended lifespan if they are not cautious,
this is purely hypothetical but its interesting to consider the
possibility that a treatment could actually increase the
prevalence of a disease.
GDR: What does the concept of Gnosis mean to you?
Does it have any meaning at all? What does the value of
personal experience have over just hearsay?”
HM: I think that there is a huge value in personal
experience. I just got back from Texas today and I was
interviewing a pharmacologist who seemingly had never
ingested a psychoactive drug. This pharmacologist was
studying an antiretroviral called efavirenz to evaluate whether
or not it behaved like LSD, and his method of investigating
this question was extremely elaborate animal experimentation
to determine how efavirenz impacted place preference, head
twitch, discriminative stimulus, and so forth and yet all of this
fails to address the core question of whether the drug is
psychedelic. Whereas if he had ingested this drug, which is
not a controlled substance, he could have conducted the
experiment with a completely different level of
understanding.
GDR: Yeah, that makes total sense.
HM: The same is true for psychiatry. This may be an
unorthodox view but I think it’s unethical for psychiatrists to
encourage patients to use drugs they have never tried
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themselves. You can dramatically interfere with someone’s

functioning by dispensing an anti-psychotic drug in a cavalier
fashion and I think that sort of cavalier dispensing of
psychoactive drugs by psychiatrists would not happen in the
same way if they had personal experience with the substances
they deal with.
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Was Jesus a
Mushroom?
A question was posed to me about the possible validity of the

work of Dead Sea Scrolls translator, John M. Allegro. This is
definitely a discussion worth having in our quest for Gnosis.
JM - Hi Gabriel, What's your take on John Allegro's "The

Sacred Mushroom And The Cross"? I've managed to get a
copy, but it's proving to be a tough read. There does seem to
be a little controversy surrounding it (vis. Jan Irvin), but one
rarely finds any mention of it in one's quotidian quarters. -J.
McDougall
GR - What is really at stake (at least for me) in the
question of Jesus being a mushroom is this: Does the
message and power that comes from the archetypal idea of
Jesus change if he is in fact a mushroom? The short answer is
a resounding 'no'.
We only need Jesus to be fully operating in the flesh if we
believe the entire story of the canonized bible and its
inerrance as a holy text. In my book, BORN AGAIN TO
REBIRTH, I spend a chapter discussing many aspects of
Jesus' life that have been rarely looked at, such as the identity
of the Magi and what wisdom they may have supplied him
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with.
If you have studied any aspects of astrotheology, you will
undoubtedly see the many correlations between astrological
events and the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus as a
god-man in a long line of historical god-men
We certainly live in astounding times with an ever-
expanding compendium of information at our fingertips. The
Internet has greatly increased our ability to access information
on an exponential scale. The limitations of being stuck with
just one source of authority on any given subject are a thing
of the past. However, with the truth comes half-truth,
quarter-truth and outright misinformation. As faithful
Americans, we have been trained from a young age to respect
the authoritarian version of the story when it comes to
virtually everything. We have been trained to think in a linear
fashion: We think along religious lines, judging others for not
behaving in step with our own systems, we think along
political lines, voting for a particular party in an effort to push
our agendas and support those elected officials who (though
we may not agree with everything they do) will get us closer
than the other side would toward reaching our political goals.
What we eat, how we exercise, what we wear and every other
aspect of who we are is a result of this two-tone world we've
been groomed to accept and propagate.
The truth has had a hard time dealing with our black and
white views and has something to say about it.
Let's face it, for everything that we are knowledgeable
about, there is other stuff we're just guessing about. We're just
as full of shit as our counterparts in any given argument. The
more we admit that we don't have it all together in regard to
the meaning of all things, the closer we will be to the truth.
It is my belief that real truth, or something quite close to it
is possible, but I believe that our monochromatic mindset has
limited the spectrum of our own sight. Like it or not, those
you disagree with probably have a point among the partisan
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bickering and straw man diatribes. Like it or not, there's

reason somewhere in there, even in the minds of the most
vacuously dim individuals.
The truth is like a diamond among garbage. Imagine the
world of information as a giant dump. It really is an
information dump, overwhelming in its mixture of all thought
and belief, turning it to a metaphorical greyish-brown,
steaming, stench of the collective mind-spew of humanity.
And dotted among the ridiculous and appalling is a tiny
diamond of truth. It sits there and sparkles under the ashes
and refuse, never crushed by lesser thought or knowledge, it
waits with the patience that only the timeless know. Each of
us sits on top of his or her pile of garbage and diamonds,
thinking, or hoping somehow that our own collection of
diamonds is great enough to obscure our mess and shine
brightly enough to pierce through the muck. We look across
at those we would see as our opponents and point at their
trash, calling out the dirty diapers and old pizza boxes of their
logic, knowing we've amassed slightly more than them.
I do believe that our understanding of whom we are and
our potential as a greater body of humanity is done a
tremendous disservice by this game of whose garbage stinks
worse. It brings us no closer to the truth and perpetuates our
spirit of superiority over others, our disunity and ultimately,
our impending destruction. We are responsible to change our
cosmologies accordingly. You are just as responsible as I am
to change the old ways. It is imperative for our growth as a
species.
The problem comes from our vantage points, our ability
to see through the eyes of another. It's really really hard to
have empathy when you disagree with somebody. This is
where the age old "being open minded" debate comes into
play. The term is now a byword for being a dirty hippie who
wants to smoke weed and have multiple sexual partners. The
goal of being open minded is not to muddle oneself in
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mediocrity, but to parse the facts from the fiction and being
willing to admit to ones own serious pile of bullshit. If we
understand this, then we realize that being open minded is
not the bringing in of new ideas, but more like stripping away
our own mental dross. When we eliminate that, we make
room for those diamonds that others have to offer us. By
being "open minded" we have added truth and eliminated the
garbage that was there before.
It frustrates me to no end to see smart people argue along
their party lines or personal talking points. It makes them
look like dummies in reality. People who could contribute to
each other's improved outlook are now vilified and eliminated
as voices of caring wisdom. Insults come out and the
argument becomes about the mental superiority of one over
the other rather than an actual pursuit of truth. What is that
worth? It doesn't do anyone any good at all. Meanwhile the
truth stands on the sidelines tapping its foot and looking at its
watch, wondering when the useless bickering will end.
One truth is the relativity of truth. It's got to be accepted
that even if we were to come to some grand conclusion about
the absoluteness of all things, there is a possibility that one
day, all of that will be proven to be illusory. This is why the
person who screams that they know the ultimate and perfect
way should be held at arm's length until fully vetted. The fact
that truth in many occasions is situational should not deter us
from its pursuit. Getting closer to the truth is always better
than staying defiantly on your pile of filth.
There is a sequential nature to the discovery of the truth
and the older I get, the more I see how complex some
realities are. The world is in transformation and so are we. To
remain mentally static is as vile an atrocity to the gift of
human existence as suicide. I've spoken to many people
whom I've known for over a decade who speak as though
they have not had a new thought in that time. I'm astonished
when this happens. What have they been doing?
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So what's the point? I see a world possible where people

are constantly picking through their own information and the
information that others offer them and digging for diamonds.
I see them sharing what they've found and our collective
efforts yielding benefits to us all.
What I see now is very far from that. I see people taking
the weakest parts of other people's arguments and
discrediting them because one point doesn't stand up, while
diverting their own inadequacies. It's a shame. We have so
much to learn and so much to share. What is the harm in
learning more, exploring more and having a bit more
empathy?
I of course am guilty of the very things of which I speak,
but at least I'm in the process of digging through my own
garbage and making way for diamonds. Look and don't stop!
Make life an adventure!
I'm speaking in generalities because this applies to
everything. So next time you decide to write somebody off
entirely, really consider if it's because of your ego, or some
need to be superior, or protect yourself from new
information that might rock your cosmological boat.
I think if we can all improve on this, we would see
immediate benefits in our ability to solve problems
worldwide. And now, more than ever, we need to rid
ourselves of garbage and share our diamonds.
If you can understand that all standpoints in a discussion
about the nature of life and especially religion are fraught with
garbage and diamonds, you can understand how you can take
the good lessons from Jesus and leave the stuff that doesn't
work behind. If you can do that, it doesn't matter if he was a
wolverine, a turnip, or a pickled herring if the message is well
received.
To many people, this is just too much and the baby must
be thrown out with the bath water, but I don't think that is
necessary.
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The benefit of Allegro's book is that it broadens one's

mind to the possibilities that are out there; that the truth as
we once knew it may have been anything but, or just a sliver
of the whole story. As far as Jan Irvin is concerned, I think
that many of his ideas furthering Allegro’s have merit, but Jan
himself is not the kind of researcher I would recommend.
The mushroom itself (According to Allegro and debated
by Terence McKenna) is the Amanita Muscaria, which is not
pleasant to consume. I personally have made dear friends
with psilocybin mushrooms and the little people who seem to
come along with them. They have provided me with a
spiritual experience full of love and compassion that no Ante-
Nicean creed could ever give me.
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The Gnosis of
Simon G. Powell
I first became aware of Simon’s work by watching his

documentary, Mana, in which he described his ‘biophilia’
which came as a side-effect of his consumption of the
psilocybin mushroom in the rural regions of the U.K. His
passion for spreading the word about the healing effects of a
well thought out psychedelic trip resonated with me and I’ve
followed his work ever since. As an internationally known
spokesman for the psychedelic experience, his perspective is a
welcome guidepost on our quest for Gnosis.
GDR - Simon, you’re well known for your love of

psilocybin mushrooms and the positive effects they have on
the human mind. What was the turning point for you
between just going along like everyone else and taking the
time and effort to put out your book The Psilocybin
Solution?
SP - What inspired me to write The Psilocybin Solution
was the bout of ‘mushroom fever’ and ‘chronic biophilia’ that
I suffered in 1992. Basically, I had a series of visionary
mystical experiences induced by mushrooms gathered from
London’s Richmond Park at that time. I had also been
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reading Terence McKenna’s The Archaic Revival and, like

him, felt curiously compelled to spread word of the
mushroom’s extraordinary visionary power, particularly its
ability to make one feel more connected to nature. That such
a powerful and long revered resource was growing naturally
and abundantly in London’s wild spaces at a time when
ecological destruction was on the increase seemed very
auspicious to me and worthy of a book or two. Certainly I felt
the mushroom had great historical/cultural significance in as
much as it could help reorient our species toward a better
relationship with the biosphere. The bottom line is that the
mushroom can heal—both psychologically and culturally.
Sometimes radical means are needed to kick us into
wakefulness so that we can see how alienated we have
become from the rest of the web of life. The mushroom cuts
through all that is spurious and false and can retune one to
nature and to what is truly valuable. In that sense it is, at the
very least, a potential remedy for what is sometimes called
‘nature deficit disorder’. More than twenty years on from
those early days of inspiration I still feel the same way about
psilocybin. It has a tremendous eco-psychological potential
that has yet to be harnessed by culture.
GDR - Do you think that the psychedelic experience is a
panacea for our cultural ills, or that it is right for some and
not right for others? Either way, who do you think should
decide what people take mushrooms?
SP - No, they are not a guaranteed cure-all for our
personal ills nor are they a guaranteed cure-all for our cultural
ills. After all, the experience is temporary. What they do offer
is a brief entry into an elevated mode of being and awareness.
The important thing is to integrate what you have learned, to
work on what was shown to you. If you don’t do anything
with the experience, then it will really count for nothing and
will fade with time. As for controlling the mushroom, the fact
is that they are part of our ambient ecology and therefore
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utilizing them is our birthright, just like foraging for wild

blackberries or enjoying the sunshine is part of our birthright.
I think the most crucial element prior to seeking the
psilocybin experience is intention.
The mushroom has a long revered history—and for good
reason as it is spiritually volatile. Psilocybin is akin to spiritual
fire. Like physical fire, how one intends to use it can
determine the difference between being burned or being
inspired. For this reason, the only function of the state it to
inform and educate people. Certainly the state should have no
remit to criminalize people for using psilocybin mushrooms
(which is currently the case).
GDR - In Dennis McKenna’s book The Brotherhood of
The Screaming Abyss, he says of his brother, (pioneering
author and speaker on psychedelics) Terence McKenna that
he had a horrific trip on mushrooms that was so bad, he
never took them again. What can people do when they are
looking at psychedelics as a sacrament to deal with the fact
that someday these plant teachers may burn us?
SP - Actually, Dennis did not include that in the published
version of his book even though there was a pre-publication
audio version of him reading that admittedly striking story. As
far as I know, Terence’s ex-wife had a problem with these
claims and so that section was removed. As I recall, in the
published version Dennis says that Terence only used
mushrooms rarely in the last decade or so of his life. In any
case, bad trips, or at least uncomfortable experiences, do crop
up with psychedelics. However, it is important to realize that
there is nothing ‘bad’ inside the psilocybin molecule.
What psychedelics like psilocybin do is create a temporary
new interface between you and your unconscious. This means
that an array of unconscious material (think of buried
traumas, unfinished business, relationship problems, and
such) is brought into conscious awareness. This might be
painful. You are forced to work through issues. Thus, I think
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McKenna had it right when he described a bad trip as a

situation in which you are being forced to learn more quickly
than you are accustomed to. As General Zaius says to Taylor
in Planet of the Apes, careful what you go looking for as you
might not like what you find!
GDR - Have you had any contact with the “Others” as
many have within the psychedelic experience; the self-
transforming machine elves, the earth spirit, etc. Who do
you think they are and why do they want to communicate
with us? Why are they communicating with us here and now
when there have been centuries of silence in contrast to scale
in which people are meeting them now?
SP - I currently take a Jungian view of all this. There is no
doubt that psilocybin can catalyze an experience in which
there is a felt communion with a tutorial Other. Which is to
say that one can find oneself on the receiving end of
communicative visions behind closed eyes and one can sense
some sort of higher guiding wisdom. In fact, one can become
verily bombarded with lessons, messages and insights. There
is most definitely an ‘I thou’ relationship there. The tutorial
influence is autonomous and has a life of its own and for this
reason it can seem like one is in communion with a separate
entity of some kind. But in my opinion the Other is really a
manifestation of what I call the Higher Self. In other words,
deep within the psyche (and bear in mind that inner space is
likely as vast and as complex and outer space) there are
unconscious self-organising processes which can typically lead
to intuitions, insights, insightful dreams, and moods.
What happens with psychedelics is that these unconscious
self-organising processes are boosted and come into
conscious awareness and we thence experience the Other, the
Logos, the Gods or whatever. But it is really us, or at least a
higher creative potential of the human psyche that is
emerging. Not that I rule out ambient spirits or hyperspatial
entities, but those kinds of interpretations just seem rather
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fanciful and overly sensational to me. I therefore think that

the Other is part of us. We are closer to the mystery than we
realize!
GDR - Alan Watts once said in light of the psychedelic
experience, “If you get the message, hang up the phone”. It’s
obvious we can’t all be on psychedelics all the time, so we
must cherish the time we spend with it and value its
experience. How can we know when it’s time to put
psychedelics away?
SP - People often quote Alan Watts on this. The thing is,
how can we really be sure it’s time to hang up the phone?
For how long do we hang up? And how do we recognize
when the phone is ringing again? I am sure that a mushroom
voyage, say, at least once year (which hardly constitutes a
habit!) will invariably be instructive. And I am also sure that
had Alan Watts again taken psilocybin in his latter years, he
would have had new insights. I think everyone must find their
own way. One thing I feel sure of and which is worth
reiterating is that one has to integrate what one has learned.
Failure to do this will lead to more and more alienation. If
that is what Watts meant, then I concur with him.
GDR - Have your experiences with psychedelics changed
your perception of time and mortality?
SP - It is difficult to ignore mortality the older you get. My
current thinking, undoubtedly inspired by my many
psilocybin experiences, is that we are all partial reflections of
the Whole. Which means that when we die the unique
reflection of the Whole that was us, ceases to manifest. But
the Whole (and its ‘beingness’) continues. This implies that it
is our relationship with the Whole that will be involved in any
‘connected continuity’. Maybe our lives are to the Whole what
our dreams are to us. A dream we have will cease when we
wake up but there is a ‘connected continuity’ with us as we
reflect on that dream and make sense of it. The same kind of
principle may well apply to our lives and the Whole. As for
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time, well my teleological ideas about nature and the ultimate

destiny of life are tied to vast timescales and such conception
has again been influenced by psilocybin. And there is also the
experience of being out of time, of being in eternity. That has
happened to me many times with the mushroom—although it
remains a mystery to me.
GDR - What does the term ‘Gnosis’ mean to you? How
can we attain it? How can we spread it?
SP - When I was in my early 20s I became very interested
in Gnosticism. I read a popular book by Elaine Pagels on the
Gnostic Gospels and there was also a UK TV series that I
watched that was all about the Cathars and the Gnostics. I
recall that gnosis refers to ‘higher knowledge’ or a ‘higher
understanding’ that comes directly without the need for
priests and church hierarchies. Which is to say direct
illumination stemming from some higher source. This is what
I found so interesting when reading extracts of the various
Gnostic gospels. It is like they were saying that Jesus was
effectively a state of mind (akin to the Buddha-nature
perhaps). This ties in with my current understanding of the
unconscious, that there is a wisdom to it and that it can guide
us once we are in harmonious connection with it. I guess this
is why I spent so long on the trail of the mushroom—I
intuitively felt that it was a direct link to some kind of spiritual
reality buried within us and not tied to institutions, hearsay or
dogma. Of course, psychedelic plants and psychedelic fungi
are not the only methods of accessing higher states of mind
and experiencing gnosis. There are lots of ways. If one is
interested in these kind of thing, you have to find the ways
that work best for you.
GDR - What is the legacy that we should seek to pass on
to the next generation? What wisdom do you want to leave
behind when you are no more?
SP - This is where long term thinking comes in. One of
the most important things we all have in common is the
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biosphere. It is the life support system that sustains us. The

biosphere is beyond religions and borders and flags and
ideologies. The biosphere is our shared home. If we are to
have a long term future it is imperative that we ‘fit in’ with the
rest of life on earth. To ‘fit in’ requires that we align ourselves
with the same biospherical principles that evolved aeons ago
and which still prevail.
A good example of such an essential life principle is
symbiosis. Symbiosis is everywhere. It is evinced by the
mitochondria in our cells (they have their own DNA), by
chloroplasts inside plant cells (which also have their own
DNA), by the fact that most plants are associated with
symbiotic fungi, by the symbiotic pollination of plants by
insects, by the symbiotic interaction of genes and gene
complexes, and by all manner of symbiotic relationships that
one finds within ecosystems. All out greed, all out resource
grabbing, and the valuing of money and profit above all other
considerations cannot persist indefinitely because it does not
make sense within the context of a finite interconnected
biosphere. It is not symbiotic behaviour. Currently we are
more like parasitic leeches than symbiotic partners with the
biosphere.
Thus, we have to build and install a new set of values
within culture, a set of values wherein wealth is measured not
in terms of money and profit for a lucky few, but in terms of
shared well-being. Buckminster Fuller had it right when he
spoke of Spaceship Earth. The biosphere is indeed akin to a
spaceship—and a fantastically well equipped one at that with
all manner of life support systems. We have spent so long
holed up in cities that we have lost touch with this larger life
support system. Worse, we are relentlessly dismantling that
system. So we really have to forge a new relationship with the
biosphere. That is what my work is aimed at achieving. The
mushroom is a sort of special fuel that can be made use of in
such paradigm changing endeavors.
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The Gnosis of
Jeremy Johnson
Jeremy is an excellent scholar and writer, presently working

on his first book and editing for Realitysandwich.com. I was
deeply impressed by his kind demeanor and lucid insight at
the Jean Gebser conference in Los Angeles. He has become
a good friend and a good mind to bounce ideas off. After
this chapter, you’ll see what I mean.
GDR – When was the first time that you had what you
would consider a moment of gnosis, of experiential change in
yourself that drastically blew your mind to change the
direction you were heading, what, when did that first happen
for you?
JJ – For me it was much more subtle, it was more of a
kind of a general pull in a certain direction; so like when I was
in high school for instance you know I had a lot of friends
and, there was a, you know substance issues and all that stuff,
and um part of it was an interest in this kind of magical world
view where chaos magic and shamanism were like the buzz
words and we were like passing along like Daniel Pinchbeck’s
um, Breaking Open the Head and uh you know the classic
stuff and kind of from reading everything, and for me
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actually, a bigger part of that, a sort of grounding part of that,

was my interest in eastern philosophy.
GDR – Right.
JJ - And it was beginnings like that and Taoism. So I mean
all of these ideas sort of permeated a kind of sense that the
world is a stranger than what it appears to be, and that for
those of us who are fortunate enough or maybe just, I don’t
know, open enough, we can experience interesting things that
kind of lie outside the boundaries of, you know, a material
paradigm; that you know we go to work, we go to school, we
make money and then certain things happen. I mean just
little, little things, synchronicities coincidences. Those sorts of
things kind of kept me open to that sort of, I guess, world
view, this alternative world view. But actually I can think of
one moment that kind of affirmed all that. I was doing
meditation in high school to Tool, and I don’t know if you
listen to Tool but…
GDR – Sometimes, yea.
JJ – For somebody, yea, for somebody who is really
getting interested in this stuff, there kind of interesting codex
of, you know, cryptic messages and allusions to gnostic ideas
and so forth.
GDR – Right.
JJ – An allegory of course, (laugh) that’s how I found Alex
for his work. So now having had this kind of meditation
experience where after about 67 minutes into like Lateralus,
right toward the end, I had this kind of union experience with
the song. I don’t know how to explain it except that later on
when I learned more about meditation and concentration
techniques, you can kind of, if you heighten your
concentration enough you can sort of join with the thing you
are meditating on.
GDR – For sure.
JJ – So I think I had a kind of like union experience with
that Lateralus song, which kind of blew my mind at the time.
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It kind of made me go like, hey! If I do something with my

consciousness, if I focus it, if I practice that this technique,
there’s going to be some kind of insight that be claimed; and
it is not just written in a book you know. This is not just like,
oh it would be nice if angels are real, and prayers and god…
no this is something that I can actually experience.
GDR – Right.
JJ – That I can, that I can develop and cultivate a
technique that can channel that. That was actually like my first
experience. But I mean, I guess growing up with that mindset,
of like my whole upbringing was kind of littered with little
moments like that.
GDR – That’s very interesting because, you know, I don’t
really, I’ve done a lot of different psychedelics and things like
that, and have experienced you know spiritual ecstatic states,
but ironically one of the things that was most powerful me,
for me, in recent history was when I was alone, living in the
woods and, you know, I smoked a large amount of marijuana
and, just laid down and put my headphones on and listened
to a couple of choice songs and I, it was, I almost went out of
my body on several occasions like there was that that rattle
that happens, because it became so rapturous. The music
itself, like you were describing; it, the space between myself
and the music disappeared and I was was no longer me. I was
the song being sung. I was the dancing of the notes.
So that is amazing, and it doesn’t surprise me especially
because of the rhythmic nature of Tool’s musical style in
many ways emulates the shamanic drumming techniques and
things like that so I could see how that would easily get you in
there. And they are the kind of people who, who probably
plan that stuff. (laughter)
JJ – Probably, probably yes. (laughter)
GDR – Tell me, how do you feel Taoism relates to kind
of the, the general principles of gnosis in the modern context
in the way that we’re kind of used to discussing?
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JJ – That’s a good question: Taoism. I especially like

William Robert Thomson’s interpretation of the Tao
teaching, but I think the fundamental idea is that this way, or
the water-course way, or all these metaphors for the Tao
explicitly states that intrinsic to our nature is this supreme or
natural intelligence, but/and we can only get out of the way,
or re-align ourselves, or fall into it, or um harmonize
ourselves with this course. We can kind of bring out that
knowledge into everyday life and work with it. So there is a
deep sense of harmony and a deep sense that like there is
nothing really wrong with us. There is nothing that we have
to necessarily achieve. It is a matter sort of tuning into the
natural course of this reality, or this multiverse. And so I
guess for me that sounds a lot like gnosis because the whole
idea of gnosis is you are, you belong in the stars. You are star
stuff, in a kind of cosmic esoteric sense and you can return to
that. That is your home and you just need to gain the right
kind of knowledge in order to return. So I mean that
superficially I guess it is similar but it is just a way of kind of
encountering the world in a very natural way. Not on a
naturalistic way like what scientist would sort of describe, but
a deeper sense than that; a sense like that of your primordial
nature is already part of all of this. Just, you know it is really
difficult to see that because you need a very clear mind, right?
The whole metaphor of polishing the mirror. So, I don’t
know if that necessarily entirely harmonizes with the gnostic
historically, but it my mind it does anyway.
GDR – Right. Though I think there is this strong
correlation between some of those concepts and, and present
ideas in magic. You mentioned chaos magic, and one thing
about chaos magic is the idea of, of whatever it is you are
trying to connect with, the one of the best ways to do it is to
identify with it so much that your sense of self disappears;
just like we were talking about with the musical experience;
where you disappear into that which it is. Which is a direct
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connection to shamanism as well, because when a shaman

wants to embody the panther they cease to be a human; they
become the panther.
GDR - And again that is the same kind of state that they
try achieve in voodoo and, and those sorts of things where
the self entirely disappears and one becomes something else.
In that way there is a kind of possession from which someone
must be brought back out. And this is one of those things I
think that is the experiment in training our mind to change in
such extreme ways. I think that even, you know, occultists
like Aliester Crowley, I feel like almost his life was a work in
which he just used his own body and his own mind as a case
study. to see what you could do with it. And of course he did
all kinds of extreme stuff and wasn’t necessarily the nicest
guy. But the example of that sort of idea is a very archaic
concept.
GDR - So I can see how all these things come together. I
know that you and I participated at the Gebser conference.
JJ – (affirms) M-Hm.
GDR – What do you think Gebser’s contribution to the
concept of modern gnosis, of intrinsic knowledge and
understanding and kind of the evolution of consciousness;
what contribution do you believe he has to make on this
conversation?
JJ – I’ve thought a lot about this and I think there is
always going to be, another way to put it. (laughs) I really
shouldn’t make this until I got a focus point of my study, but
just the simple fact of Gebser was alluding to what he called
the structures of consciousness; these different modalities of
perceiving time and space. And that he was alluding to some
kind of huge transformation, you know, going on in our day,
where it would no longer be rationality. It will no longer be
mere intellectual knowledge. But we would be tapping into, or
apperceiving, or directly, his word for it was, “concretizing,” a
mode of existence which he called you know, the “integral”
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or “whole.” And if you look at his writing in The Ever

Present Origin and some of his letters with a number of other
individuals, it sounds a lot like the kind of prime experience
for some kind of heightened state of consciousness. That is
analogous I think from my readings of other hermetic texts.
So at least in my mind anyway Gebser is offering a kind of
highly intensified form of conscious. He is suggesting that as
a species we need to head toward this. We need to realize this
in a real way if we are going to survive this crisis. And I think
the prescience in his work, is the idea, the whole idea of crisis
and mutation. So like the idea that in evolution things aren’t
just going to get better because they can. They are going to
develop a custom kind of type of catastrophe and are going to
have to figure out a way through that catastrophe; through a
leap in understanding. And it is that idea of this leap, or this
mutation, into a higher understanding that I think is very
much analogous to the individual as a practitioner and they
are trying to develop some kind of realization. But for us it is
much more prescient because we are dealing with a world
crisis. We are dealing with global meltdown and economic
and ecological problems. And here he is saying that there is a
new form and complex way of thinking; a kind of gnosis. He
mentions this in a great letter towards the end of his life. He
says, “This is not intellectual thinking. This is not conceptual
grasping. This is not about the ego, but kind of rendering it
transparent to this greater consciousness that we actually
already are”.
GDR – Right.
JJ - That’s why he called it The Ever Present Origin. So I
mean you can trace these ideas. You can kind of see he is
fighting his own language for, in my biased simplified way of
understanding it, gnosis, or again some kind of heightened
consciousness that a lot of the great mystics around the world
have described, and here he is making it contemporary. So I
found it really important because he is very intellectual about
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it and is saying that whatever this is, it shines straight through

the intellect. It renders it transparent to something greater.
And that is a kind of meditation even while reading him, I
have had, you know, moments of kind of insight through just
contemplating that idea. Like even when I am reading right
now, even if conceptual knowledge isn’t what he was alluding
to. So to tie back into the original question. I had a moment
where I was reading about the magical structure as it emerges
into the mythical structure; and there is this picture of this
Minoan prince who is standing in a grass field, and behind
him is this mountain scape, and above him, are the starry sky.
And he is standing there kind of like half into the sky; his
torso that sort of like in the horizon and then his lower half
his legs are in the grass. And Gebser mentions that, “oh yea,
as you can see here that in the art of the time there alluding to
this transformation of consciousness where he is standing
within the magical vegetation of interconnection.” That is the
way that he described it. Magical consciousness is a kind of
shamanic inter-connectedness where one point is connected
to all other points.
GDR – Yes.
JJ – And his torso is reaching up in to the sky as he alludes
toward the emergence of mythical time, and the cycles and
seasons nature and the astrological systems of knowledge that
would emerge. Here he was just sitting, just standing there, so
I had this insight that the human being is a recapitulation of
this whole process of emerging from this vegetation of nature
in a kind of, some parts may be transcending sometimes
realizing, recapitulating the same structures at higher and
higher levels of intensification. So, I had a ‘holy crap’
moment, I can’t describe it in language; even everything I said
right now doesn’t really map it out. It was just a moment of
clear insight and I felt like I stumbled upon whatever Gebser
was stumbling upon. For just a moment and it just left me
completely elated. Here I was simply reading a book and yet I
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felt that I had realized something about the nature of

consciousness of the human species.
GDR – Because we always hear about interconnectedness
and how we should love each other and so on and so forth
but it is a whole other thing when, you are in that place and
you’re like, oh wow! It is funny that from so many directions
people are saying a lot of the same stuff. I mean this is what
Helena Blavatsky referred to as the secret doctrine; which was
the unified theme among all traditions, and we see this. Also
in sacred geometry. We see things like this over and over
again with variances of the same symbol, or of the same
archetypes, and they’re all pointing to a similar thing.
So do you think that our present spiritual evolution and
our pursuit of gnosis, and of integral living in which the
analytical mind and the luminous mind connects and
integrates entirely is a choice we make? Can we make this
thing happen, or is it something that we just have to allow to
happen from generation to generation?
JJ – I think it’s probably a mix of both. It always has to be
a combination. Just from barely experiencing these things in a
kind of non-conceptual way, it doesn’t feel like I have much
control over them. You know, but what I think is the choice
is this, sort of open up and respond to it. And I think we’re
being pressured right now for whatever cosmic reasons,
whatever complex social and ecological crisis, or even
personal existential crisis as a civilization right now trying to
figure out ourselves awash in the meaning of the cosmos. We
are being pressured to respond and I think this goes back to a
contemplative path for me because you can meditate, yes.
You can definitely achieve states of high concentration and
bliss and so forth, but I don’t know if we can just consciously
step over, or if it has to be a kind of dialogue with this
greater, higher mind, or if it requires something we don’t yet
understand.
The deities and the presences and the intelligences that we
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meet in these altered states would have already achieved

them. I think there has to be a kind of conversation that takes
place with us and them, a choice to allow them in, a choice to
step up and open up and be vulnerable. To look past
ourselves and see through, as Gebser says letting the ego be
transparent to this greater mind, or greater cause that we are.
That’s all definitely choice. But it is also definitely just
allowance and surrender; and we don’t often talk about that
in western dialogues with this whole idea of gnosis? It sounds
great, “Oh I can do this all myself!” But I think there is
definitely a element of complete and total surrender to this,
this higher mind, this higher consciousness, that we definitely
have to you know, keep in mind and definitely consider.
GDR – Right, because I think most people are busy
talking about their favorite variety of microwavable pizza!
(Laughs)
JJ – (laughs) Yes. Ah then.
GDR – So which leads me to the discussion on the value
and/or dangers of the psychedelics today. I always find it
interesting because a lot of people who have done a lot of
psychedelics will then they say, “no, this isn’t for everyone
else. This is just for me because I am smart enough to do this.
I am good enough to do this.” I have a two-fold question.
Have you any had psychedelic experiences with entheogens,
and if so what did you bring back from that experience and
what would you say to people who kind of say, “No, you
shouldn’t go there. That’s not the right way to go about it.”
Where is the balance in that?
JJ – Yea, yea, there is. I, You know I have oscillated on
this question over the years because I have taken
psychedelics. The strongest one I have taken was Salvia
Divinorum and the experience that I took back from that
kind of interesting. I seemed to be joined with a plant
consciousness. And it was interesting because I was in
Manhattan at that time. Storming an undergrad at Fordham
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University and there is nothing very organic about that place,

but for some reason that is where that experience took me to.
And I don’t know if I would say that that was the most
transformative experience that I’ve had. I’ve actually had a lot
more of a contemplative, practicional experiences for me. Or
even while reading or while meditating, or while doing both
and having these insights and having these deeply affirmative
moments.
Psychedelics have never been a central thrust of my
practice, or passion of my exploration; but they have always
been a very important supplement or weigh station. And I
definitely say that, or extend that idea to others because you
know they are very powerful, but for me it’s more of a
question of how can we bring that into sustainable everyday
mind, everyday heart, you know everyday practice. And for a
psychedelic experience you know, it so, it’s so powerful; it will
rip you out of your body sometimes in my cases. I’m sure, so
I’m sure there are cases like your “Sleuthing An Immortal
Goddess” experience. Even like that one for you was more of
life journey culminating in that moment in that experience
and affirmed what was happening with you. You know what
was going on all along. So that is my question, not necessarily
to say or speak against psychedelic users but as a temperate
and cautious perspective into how is this affecting your life,
you know…
GDR – Right.
JJ – You know the rock quote like, “You must change
your life.” But HOW is it going to change your life? How is it
going to change your everyday mind?
GDR – Right. For 27 years I was a very devout
Pentecostal Christian and I constantly sought a direct
connection with the divine. And I did all the things I was
supposed to do. And felt like I had committed myself more
by doing missionary work and taking the road of poverty,
attempting the more pious path, yet I still found myself in this
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position where I didn’t really have the kind of contact with

the divine that my heart told me that I could have. And not
until I had a strong psychedelic experience with 5 grams of
psilocybe mushrooms did I actually get to that place. And
once I saw it, my heart glowed in a new way, like I finally had
gotten through. And even like in my story of Sleuthing The
Immortal Goddess, that was a path and it was like the
psychedelic experience was a weigh station.
Graham Hancock has been very vocal about saying this is
a choice that every human should have an inalienable right to.
To be able to explore their own inner space and understand
themselves from a psychedelic perspective. And many people
say, “no, you shouldn’t, it’ll make you crazy and you are going
to chew people’s faces off, or something!” But the reality is
many people’s spiritual path begins with a psychedelic
experience. And I guess the thing that people like Terence
McKenna would argue, is that because they are boundary
dissolving entheogens, it’s kind of like being in the emergency
room and you are about to die! And you need strong
medicine to get you out of that state; that catatonic western
culture induced state. And so many people have had that
experience, myself included, where the cultural reset button is
pushed and it can’t ever be undone.
I think that there are so many different uses for it. But one
of the things about it is the issue o this is initiating such
dramatic change in the lives of people; I mean you have
heroin addicts who are gaunt and dying, and they go through
an iboga (ibogaine) treatment and they never touch the stuff
again because they had such a transformative experience.
That is a miracle! That is healing!
JJ – Oh Yea. Yea.
GDR – And I just wonder, if we were to remove that
psychedelic from the conversation, it would seem unfair.
JJ – Yea, for sure. And again it’s not that they shouldn’t be
used at all. There’s multiple uses for them and I think there
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has to be kind of an application of wisdom in what they can

and can’t do. And also they’re mysterious in themselves and I
think they will never have a limit, like art. But, I think they
have to be respected. and where you are and what your place
is. Like for instance: like, you know, if you are a recovering
addict, I that could be hugely transformative and as a culture
right now, it can be hugely healing. And if we can agree on
that social level, we may see that this is a great way to break
down that barrier; that great,“Berlin wall”! We need to break
it open and that is part of the power of psychedelics is that
they will definitively do that, and help you through that and
initiate you. It is kind of a cliché to describe it, but I always
liked the concept that, after an initiative experience, then the
question is posed as to how to bring that into your everyday
life, how to embody that.
GDR – That’s when the real work begins, sort of speak.
JJ – Exactly.
GDR - There is a lot of work that has to be done.
Psychedelic just provide that reminder that there is something
beyond us, even if it is within the confines of our mind. There
is something beyond our standard perception that is worth
pursuing and worth understanding and that’s where I think
people can become lost and say that it is the end all, be all.
Which I don’t think is the case at all. I think it rather is the
beginning of an initiation. Have you ever read Robert Anton
Wilson’s book Prometheus Rising?
JJ – Prometheus Rising; yes, that’s one of my favorite
books.
GDR – So can you describe for me how the concept of
say the reality tunnels would relate to what we’ve been talking
about as far as changes in perception and so on?
JJ – Yes, it relates to my presentation at the Gebser
conference as far as this bizarre kind of internet age we live in
with all these perspectives and reality tunnels; depending on
your social network really. But I really like that because it’s
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such an applicable modern example that anyone can

understand.
GDR – Well it seems that people want to love and hate
the internet. But frankly I think that the internet is one of the
things that is catalyzing the fastest growth in this kind of
initiation, both on the intellectual and on the spiritual level. I
think that the internet might just save humanity in some way.
JJ – (laughter) I like that! That was a thesis that I
developed and, I didn’t really develop it myself, but one you
can explore in Goddard College. And basically the idea is like
what if the internet is some kind of altered state of
consciousness that we are now continuously plugging
ourselves into every single day and it is becoming part of our
environment. How is it changing our sense of reality; our
anthology? Blurring online/offline, public and private, you
know our sense of self is now split up into these different
avatars. Even if it is just web form or you have a persona and
you are exploring something that you haven’t explored
before, you know there can be kind of powerful experience in
that; and that was revolutionary for me.
It’s interesting because it brings me back to a lot of post-
modern thought, but in a more positive sense. I don’t know if
you’ve read, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, by Jorge
Ferrer, but it is a great critique of depth psychology; Carl
Jung, and the whole human potential movement. But in its
place, instead of saying like, “all right,” maybe all of these
ideas of one reality are over exaggerated and limiting because
there are infinite ways to experience that unity. And so Jorge
Ferrer takes that concept of Ivan Habib (who is a Muslim
theologian, probably one of the greatest; a kind of Thomas
Aquinas of his time) and his concept of the infinite ocean, of
being. Where basically the divine is kind of an infinite
shoreline that we are always in contact with. And there’s all
these different permeations and points of contact in which to
experience it. And it’s just constantly morphing and shifting
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so that there is no real way to be stable about it; but that’s not
the point. Everything is sort of this flux of creative, creative
encounters with, you know, the other, with the divine. So I
really like that idea, and I, you know, I think Robert Anton
Wilson’s concept of reality tunnels kind of works well with
that concept; and I think it definitely just deeply affirms it.
Lorenzo Hagerty from the Psychedelic Salon wrote a book in
like 2000/2001 about the internet,”The Spirit of the
Internet”. And the idea is that the internet is basically a
cyberdelic plant. Basically a psychedelic technology that we’re
all plugging into. He explores that concept as an interesting
interpretation of the net. So I mean, here we are with all these
different perspectives,and I am wondering if this is sort of
what it has been all along, but we have just come into it now.
The whole idea, it has been ever present. James Hellman
describes the reality of the psyche as this sort of infinite
churning multiple persona being. I love that idea I think that
maybe the internet may be unleashing the psyche into its
fullest extent; to an extent it hasn’t been able to before. And
as much as we want to hate on the internet, or some people
do, and has legitimate problems, we forget that centralized
ego is not the point. Western individualism and the whole
train of thought with print media has led us down this path
where we have this centralized cult of self.
That is in the midst of being broken down literally and
virtually into avatars and into fragments. But this is a very
mythical idea to be broken down, right. This is a very
shamanic concept. To be taken into the astral plane or the
underworld and split apart by demons and consumed.
GDR – Right.
JJ – And thus reborn. So for me like when I hear that
people are getting split up into multiple personalities and
‘you’re getting distracted here and you’re getting distracted
there’, I think there is a way to get more contemplative about
that experience and consider it a kind of break down. Again
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this is a social address, not necessarily individual. Maybe it

would be good to step away from the internet once in a while.
But as a social thing, as McKenna even said about
psychedelics, I think the internet as a social phenomenon is
working to break down this ego, and to throw us, whether or
not we are ready, into this multiple-persona and multiple
reality tunnel existence were everything is morphing and
shifting; and we don’t know how to swim. And we have to
figure out how to float, or if we are going to sink. And I don’t
know, is that a choice? I am not sure. I think we kind of have
inadvertently done it to ourselves. Maybe it is a choice on a
higher level of consciousness, that we forced ourselves to
forget as we’ve been thrown into this incarnation. Who
knows? (laughter) That’s more heavy (unintelligible 36’10”)
now.
GDR – I’ve been talking with a couple people about the
work of Phillip K. Dick as a kind of a modern mystic, almost
like a seer. He’s obviously had problems of his own, just like
we all do. But he seemed to have able to prognosticate things
that were going to happen and see what was going on. But
one thing that he did that was so amazing was he wrote his
theological exegesis in his book VALIS and one of the most
powerful things to me was his talk about this idea of the
empire; this kind of mental prison that we have all been put
inside of. And again, not to be cheesy, but a Matrix style
environment in which we are being misled and fed off of.
And so this empire is kind of running the show. And we are
still growing and becoming more illuminated even though we
are within this empire kind of beast. But what he talks about
is that you cannot destroy the empire by using the techniques
of the empire. The empire is built on violence. So therefore
you can’t overthrow, let’s say you can’t go through some sort
bloody revolution per se without creating a new kind of
dictator or dictatorship. And it seems to even be the case with
the way we live now, with even the United States, here we’ve
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been seen, at least in our own eyes, as the saviors of the

world; with world war I and world war II. And yet in our
own way we have become the empire, the tyrants who are
ruining a lot of things in the world. So that’s a long hand way
of leading up to the question of, ‘if we cannot destroy the
empire by its means, how can we change the world that we
are in since we are here?” I mean, I feel like we have a sense
of purpose, or some of us sense that, some people feel like
they don’t have a sense of purpose. But I feel like we do have
a purpose. What do you think that purpose is and what is the
best way to go about trying to initiate genuine positive change
toward an enlightened, evolved kind of mindset that we’ve
been talking about?
JJ – Hm.
GDR – Solve the world’s problems Jeremy.
JJ – (laughter) Oh, man! Tall order! But I wish we had
actually Aaron Cheak here for a moment because he would
definitively be able to contribute something about alchemy…
GDR – Well he has his own answers. (laughter)
JJ – Yeah, (laughter) yeah. I think it is a very alchemical
concept never the less, the whole idea that; is it a prison that,
you know, that this divine light is trapped in matter? You
know the very gnostic idea of this emerging reality. Or is
there a way to work with that prison? Is there a way to not
necessarily fight fire with fire, but find some other kind of
fire. And for me anyway, that’s the fire of storytelling; of
narrative and imagination and creativity. So I think one of the
things we can do is, what we are doing here, and I think what
a lot of people are doing in their work in their own
perspective ways, is creating these alternative reality tunnels
that are more attractive than the ones we are, they are
entrusting. And, you know, I think part of it is journalism,
part of it describing their own, you know, tales of awakening,
of transformation. Part of it is also mythologizing. I think
mythology and general narrative like, it is a very deep
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structure of the mind, and it might be a very deep structure of

reality. So I think the more we tap into that creative
imagination and find a kind of meaning through the, you
know, the kind of existential wasteland that we’re in with the
breakdown of, you know, western civilization as a an effective
narrative that people want now. I mean it is not really
something that is as much a powerful attracter in my mind
anyway.
We’re all having a crisis; people are depressed probably
more than ever, you know. There is a sense of angst and
anxiety in even, you know, in recently the whole 2012 thing; a
sense of apocalypse. Darda described that as terrorism as kind
of autoimmune disease, we’re literally destroying ourselves.
So, I mean, in my mind anyway, the cultural imagination of
the west is already self-imploding; already deconstructing
itself into oblivion. So as artists, as writers, as creative type;
even if not a creative type, I’d say like, read the stories that
you want to see, you know, into existence. Go buy that book.
Go like affirm that author, because you are participating in a
kind of genesis, you know, a kind of pro-creative energy. So
yeah, the artist, I think, the art and the culture is where it’s at;
and the innovation of course too. I mean there is so much
practically we need to do, right? Like there’s the practical side
of things about, well we need to create alternative currencies,
we need to create sustainable urban environments, and so on.
But I think behind all of that again is a world view that needs
to be cultivated first. And it’s the artist; it’s the people that
can imagine a different world. Who can project themselves
into that space first as a kind of anchor for others to do the
same and amplify that. I don’t know if that is going to be
effective enough at this point, but it is the only thing I know
personally how to do.
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What is
Magick?
In an attempt to not sound absolutely crazy to anyone who

might see me mention magick, I’d like to bring some
illumination of what magick is. This may prove to be a
challenge because the term itself is a moving goalpost of
sorts. To some, magick means a man on a stage sawing a
woman in half as an act of illusion. Ironically, this can also be
seen as a metaphor for our own subjective predilections
toward illusion in all aspects of our life.
In order to explain this correctly, I must try to get you to
set aside what you think you might know about actual magic
and allow yourself to hear me for what I’m saying
unencumbered by preset notions.
The Buddhist might say that everything is Maya (illusion)
and the ancient Gnostic might say the same, but with the
twist that this material construct is a kind of incubator for us
to occupy ourselves while Archons feed on our thoughts and
feelings without our knowing it (think, people being batteries
for the machines to live off of like in the film series, The
Matrix). Whether these ideas are true, or not the metaphor
that they produce is indeed powerful. In many different
ways, these concepts can be seen as true.
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Ok, on to actual explanation.

Magick is first a method of transforming the world you
see by changing the way you see the world. This requires one
to willfully change hard-wired behavior and practices through
mental gymnastics. Much of this involves understanding and
playing with the thought-form.
A thought form is the primary way we construct ideas; it is
exactly the formation of our thoughts. A thought form can
also be in some ways associated with what Jung referred to as
archetypes. Archetypes are overarching themes and images
that we associate with primary things in our life. For
example, for many, our fathers represent an image of what
God might be like; If our father is cruel, then we may see
God as inherently cruel. The thought form of who God is
creates a landscape for our reality in a highly subjective and
personal fashion and may be entirely incorrect in contrast to
the actual truth of the matter.
But we are not looking for truth with a capital T here,
because of the paradoxical nature of truth itself. It is like the
problem scientists have with the idea that the observer
changes the results of behavior simply by nature of
observing. Instead we are looking to change the nature of
our thoughts and tinkering with the wiring we have in our
minds.
So how exactly does one manipulate one’s own thought
forms and for what purpose? This is the crux of the magical
practice. One must in many ways trick one’s own mind,
which is no small feat, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be
done.
Think of a time in your life in which you radically changed
stances on a subject. Did the way you see the world
change? Did some kind of transformative experience catalyze
this change? In one way, or another, something changed the
wiring of you mind on that particular subject. In one sense,
you received gnosis (experiential understanding) on that
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particular thing. But the fact that this experience happened to

you through your particular lens means that it may not have
happened to others in the same way, even if the experience
has happened to many people. For instance, no two people
lost their virginity in the same way, but all were transformed
by the experience in some form. The event is highly
subjective and personal, though many themes may be similar
within the broader context of the experience.
The greatest act of a magician then is to transform one’s
self and therefore change the world that they see. In
changing our perception, we change the nature of
reality. And this toying with perception can change the world
from something banal into something divine. Regardless of
our cosmology, we can see how this happens to everyone,
hence my assertion that everything is magick. If you ask a
Kung Fu master what Kung Fu is, he might say the same
thing.
In many ways magick is a western term for a traditionally
assumed eastern idea, but our western traditions have much
to contribute, though they have been stamped down and
literally burned in books and people by two millennia of
monotheistic suppression. The stigma is palpable and yet our
disciplines of science came through these occult channels
from ancient sources. Astronomy and Astrology were once
one and the same, Pharmacology, Chemistry and Herbalism
were once Alchemy.
So in short, the manipulation of one’s own mind to
achieve a specific goal in one’s self, or in the world around
them is the core of magick. To those who might think
magick to be a foul and odious working with demons and
other fancied creatures, this is a misunderstanding brought
forth by a long tradition of slander. Consider what it means
to work on yourself in such a way that your goal is personal
growth for the highest goal of society through your own
contribution. Consider this quote from the much maligned
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and misunderstood book, The Black Pullet:
“Do you feel, my son, do you feel this heroic ambition which is the
sure stamp of the children of wisdom? Do you dare to desire to serve only
the one God and to dominate over all that is not God? Have you
understood what it is to prove to be a man and to be unwilling to be a
slave since you are born to be a Sovereign? And if you have these noble
thoughts, as the signs which I have found on your physiognomy do not
permit me to doubt, have you considered maturely whether you have the
courage and the strength to renounce all the things which could possibly be
an obstacle to attaining the greatness for which you have been born?”
At this point he stopped and regarded me fixedly as if waiting for an
answer, or as if he were searching to read my heart.
I asked him, “What is that which I have to renounce?”
“All that is evil in order to occupy yourself only with that which is
good. The proneness with which nearly all of us are born to vice rather
than to virtue. Those passions which render us slaves to our senses which
prevent us from applying ourselves to study, tasting its sweetness, and
gathering its fruits. You see, my dear son, that the sacrifice which I
demand of you is not painful and is not above your powers; on the
contrary, it will make you approach perfection as near as it is possible for
man to attain. Do you accept that which I propose?”
If I have explained myself correctly, you will understand

that magick is simply a broad term for one working on the
improvement of one’s self for the betterment of self and
humanity at large through the manipulation of one’s own
thoughts and ideas, questioning every notion and challenging
each one in practice and critical review.
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The Gnosis of
Peter J. Carroll
Peter J. Carroll is known as one of the founders of Chaos

Magic, a modern interpretation of what magick is. His books
have launched a wave of thought that integrate cutting edge
science and the oldest methods of ecstatic states in a manner
that leaves room for each person to make their own
interpretation. His views on Neo-Panthiesm have greatly
influenced my own views and I hold him in the highest
esteem. Author and breakthrough thinker, Robert Anton
Wilson has described Peter as, “The most original, and
probably the most important, writer on Magick since Aleister
Crowley.”. With that, I offer up our conversation as an
important meditation on our quest for Gnosis.
GDR - If you were to attempt to give a cursory

description of Magic to someone who knows little to nothing
about it, what might you say?
PC - I wouldn’t give a cursory description, no scientist or
priest would give a cursory description or a one liner if asked
about their field of endeavor, they would give an interminable
lecture, so here goes with an abbreviated one at least…
I take the high ground, for me the universe runs on magic,
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science represents the study of fairly high probability and

reliability phenomena, magic looks at the anomalies and the
exceptions, the weird stuff, the unreliable but occasionally
astonishing phenomena in the realms of religion, psychology
and parapsychology. If we develop a bit of magic that tends
to work most of the time by a plausible mechanism then we
redefine it as science. Science = How? Religion = Why? But
Magic asks the question ‘What?’ Thus it enquires into the
nature of phenomena, what do they actually do?
GDR - In your book, The Apophenion, you warn readers,
saying the book of magic also contains a certain amount of
physics. Due to the broad domination of scientific
materialism, I’m sure many a physicist would scoff at the idea
of physics leading one to a belief in magic. Have you made
any converts among your peers in physics? What do you say
to them?
PC - Our Physics stands on two main and somewhat
mutually-contradictory pillars, the classical –relativistic which
depends on strict causality and locality, and the quantum
which depends on indeterminacy/probability and a degree of
non-locality. Adherents of the former have no truck with
anything esoteric, adherents of the second have varying
degrees of sympathy for it. I know quite a number of
professional scientists who have keen esoteric interests and
quite a number of esotericists who think that the quantum
perspective provides a suitable, and perhaps the only credible
model for ‘occult’ ideas these days.
GDR - What is the difference between Black Magic and
White Magic?
PC - ‘Black magic means the other guys magic’ as the old
quip goes. Black magic can mean the exploration of the
Saturn god-form in Chaos Magic, i.e. learning the lessons that
mortality and death have to offer. Other than that it just
tends to mean stuff that someone disapproves of on ethical
grounds.
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GDR - Are the Illuminatti real? What does the term mean
to you?
PC - Originally the term seems to have meant groups who
conspired to support The Enlightenment generally and took a
rationalist, humanist, anti-clerical and anti-monarchist view.
Now it can mean either people who have newer radical ideas
(for example Chaos Magicians) or supposed conspiracies with
exploitative agendas in politics or finance.
GDR - Is there a difference between a ghost, a demon, an
alien, or a DMT ‘machine elf’ and why do they seem to have
an interest in what we are up to, even offering help or advice?
PC - I severely doubt the existence of disembodied
gaseous vertebrates; however I know we have astonishing
abilities hidden inside our heads, in what some psychologists
have called the unconscious or subconscious.
GDR - Can you explain the difference between Ideology
and thought forms of belief? How do we self diagnose
whether we are operating in one or the other?
PC - Philosophy arises mainly from biography. However
we need to remain aware of the mechanisms by which this
occurs and work out why we hold beliefs and ideologies and
how much utility we get out of them. Nothing has ultimate
truth.
GDR - By your own definition, what is Gnosis, why is it
important and how do we achieve it?
PC - Gnosis as defined in Chaos Magic means altered
state of consciousness achieved willfully. Hey, you don’t want
to go through life in just one state of mind all the time or
remain dependent on external stimuli and ‘entertainment’ for
alternative states do you?
GDR - What are the benefits of Magic? Conversely, what
are the dangers?
PC - Personally I’ve defined Magic broadly enough to give
me the freedom and motivation to delve into science,
religion, art, psychology, history and quite a few other realms
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in search of knowledge, interest, and inspiration. Plus

defining myself as a magician means for me that only
excellence will suffice for important matters, it gives me a
tremendous motivation to attempt things others might shy
away from. However I have noticed that some people abuse
the idea by using it to bolster their own self image without
actually achieving anything much at all in their lives.
GDR - It seems we are already on the fast track to the
singularity with our constant attachment to our phones and
computers. How may we use this growing connection
between human and machine to improve and increase our
own shamanic power for the general betterment of society?
PC - I don’t buy the Singularity idea. Simply increasing the
volume and speed of data achieves little but confusion and
distraction; it does not necessarily imply an increase in its
quality. I think it likely that we will experience diminishing
returns for our excessive data rather than an enlightening
singularity.
GDR - You’ve famously stated, "Magic will only be free
from occultism when we have strangled the last astrologer
with the entrails of the last spiritual master." Assuming that
magic is the best and most useful way to tap in to our own
potential to generate change in the universe, how can we
liberate ourselves from the bonds of religion and what is
commonly referred to as spirituality while achieving success
in exploring our inner-space. Where does the common man
beginning his journey out of lifelong bondage of ideology
start without falling back in to a new one? Where does the
true journey of illumination begin?
PC - Question everything. Look for the utility of any idea
and for the conditions under which it doesn’t apply or gives
poor results.
GDR - In Liber Null, you speak about the 5th Aeon in
which humanity either falls into a dark age, or embraces
magic as a technological boon that can lead us into the
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Aquarian age. Which do you presently feel is more likely and

what can we as individuals do to point this world in the right
direction?
PC - We will have to take a great deal more care of this
planet’s resources and ecology and climate and keep human
population and consumption to sustainable levels to avoid
catastrophe over the coming decades. Plus we need to address
the more stupid religious, economic and political ideas that
currently worsen the situation.
GDR - What happens when we die?
PC - Our bodies disintegrate and become recycled into
new organisms. I rather strongly suspect that the same
happens to the rest of us, a few ideas and tendencies may
become recycled also but the illusory self disintegrates just
like the body. Even the Tibetans who have studied this for
many centuries do not really expect much of the ‘self’ of even
their top Lamas to reincarnate. Don’t worry about ‘being’
dead, for you have no ‘being’ to ‘be’ dead with. Nevertheless
it does seem that for a short period after death, before bodily
disintegration really sets in, some last thoughts seem to
become telepathically projected occasionally, I’ve had several
direct and indirect experiences of this with family members,
including the transmission of important last minute
information, previously undisclosed.
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The Gnosis of
Maja D’Aoust
Some people come into your life who simply exude

something so kind and generous, a glow of goodness, Maja is
one of those people. A brilliant author, orator, radio host,
mother and snappy dresser, Maja does it all with a soft and
strong grace. I’ve had the pleasure of attending many of
Maja’s Magic School sessions at the legendary Theosophical
Society’s Besant Lodge and have learned a great deal from her
insights. She delivers a message that confirms the presence of
magic in the world, but pulls no punches when discussing the
how’s and why’s of the world being so messed up. It is a
privilege and an honor to have her grace the pages of this
book and I think after you see our conversation, you will
adore her as well.
GDR - Maja, what does the term Gnosis mean to you in

the classical sense and what does it mean in the present
practical sense? Does it have any value to us now and how
may we achieve it?
MD - The way I view Gnosis probably isn't the same as
most in the "classical" sense. Most people would say Gnosis
is "wisdom" or "knowledge" as it is of course the root of our
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word "know", which actually means to "recognize", or think

again, or remember. Technically gnosis is the act of
remembering what we have forgotten. But my own journey
into the word Gnostic led all over the place. First it was a
book. I came across the Gnostic Gospels and of course
couldn't believe all the extra bible stuff in there and had to get
to the bottom of what "gnostic" was. Looking it up doesn't
help. It is at the same time, a word that describes things, A
group of people that had a religion, a body of religious
literature and then gnosticism that was a religion. So it seems
this is a verb, a noun, an adverb and an adjective. But what
does that mean. The Gnostics seemed to think the world was
evil, all matter was corrupt, and our job was to free the light
inside of it and ascend to heaven the only place that beauty
lived. The Gnostic Gospels are from Christians, or a branch
of christians, who had additional stories about Jesus that
didn't quite jive with some things in the new testament.
So to me the term Gnosis, because it is so many things is
really a reminder that all things are everything. To achieve it
we have to find the connections and unifications underlying
all matter in the universe. Piece of cake, right?
GDR - A lot of people may be confused about what
magick really is; what is your definition of it?
MD - My definition of magic is an engagement in an
alteration of perception which allows the perceiver the ability
to see/feel more of reality than otherwise possible. Much like
when the sun and rain combine to reveal the rainbow
beneath, magic is anything that can provide an increase in our
perception to see the true nature of the universe.
GDR - People often associate magick with bad stuff, but
how do the big religions relate to magick? Do they ever use it
without knowing?
MD - ALL religions without exception use, or base their
rituals and principles upon magic. From the Eucharist to the
miracle of the Maccabees, to the dismemberment of the
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Buddha, magic pervades every messiah and all altars in

religious temples around the globe. The word Magic comes
from the same root as MAGI, as in the wise men/women or
priests (the root of my own name, Maja contains the
same). The words magician and priest used to be the same.
GDR - How can one have a belief in magick and still be
considered a reasonable person when it comes to everyday
life?
MD - This is VERY possible and achievable under one
condition. you can not BELIEVE in magic at all. You have
to just do it, perceive it and participate with it. That way, you
aren't just speaking from your posterior. If you actually DO
MAGIC it is not necessary to BELIEVE in it, because you
have a direct experience of it. Just like you would sound like
an idiot if you tried to write a paper on the Ocean, and in fact,
have never been to the ocean. MAgic is not separate from
reason anymore than anything else in the universe. It makes
perfect sense. People sound ridiculous talking about magic
when they have in fact, never experienced it and are just
trying to sound spooky or powerful. It is the same with God
in my opinion, you don't need to believe in God, just
experience it.
GDR - What was your introduction to magick as a real
thing? How did it change your interactions with others?
MD - I have been blessed to have experienced magic from
the time I was a child. At that time it was through illnesses
and fevers mostly. I have always just been confused when
others didn't know what I was talking about. The only thing
it changes in my interactions with others is that people's
reaction to the mention of magic allows me a better sense of
knowing when I'm wasting my time. So Magic has afforded
me the ability to save tremendous amounts of time that
would have otherwise been lost on nincompoops.
GDR - What pitfalls does the modern magician face today
and what methods do you employ to avoid them?
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MD - Judgment and scorn, mockery and attack, mistrust

and fear are always the pitfalls of the magician, but I manage
to avoid these by not paying them any mind (and working
hard to get my mind off of them) and continuing along my
way.
GDR - Can you give me an example of how magicians can
help shape and influence culture for the better?
MD - USE YOUR MIND. Any magician holds sway and
influence by organizing their consciousness to divine will. If
you want to influence culture, be of service to people. Help
people. Heal people. Listen to them. INSPIRE them. By
being inspirational in your life and how you live. A great
example of a magician who did this is Ghandi. To
understand that, try and bend your brainpan to include the
yogi's in the magician category, because yogis are magicians.
GDR - When people hear the name Aleister Crowley, or
Helena Blavatsky, there is often an immediate backlash. How
are these two prominent characters of magick in general
misunderstood and how can we parse their good stuff from
the bad?
MD - Crowley worked hard to make propaganda for
himself, as did Blavatsky. Their infamy comes from hard
work. ANYONE I have ever heard have a bad reaction to
either of these two had never READ or had any direct
experience of them whatsoever. I have arduously taken to
the time to read MANY volumes of writing by both and
found them to be extremely intelligent, original, perceptive
magicians, who it is true might have had some nefarious ideas
thrown in here and there, but really, which one of us humans
has never done that? While I don't agree with everything
either of them said or did, you can not mistake their
genius. Anyone who can come up with their own system of
magic or their own religion is doing ok in the thinking
department.
GDR - What is the relation between magick and
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psychedelics?
MD - As I stated, I see magic as an increase in
perception. Obviously, psychedelics can increase our
perception. The trick is, you MUST remain CONSCIOUS
while engaging, or you simply get posessed, and there is no
magic or will or discipline in that at all is there?
GDR - How do you stay positive in a world that seems to
be increasingly full of bad juju?
MD - All bad juju can serve as a reminder that the
opposing force is equally present. For every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction. Each proton requires an
electron as every asshole has a saint. Bad juju, demons, and
black magic are as much evidence of GOD as anything more
froofy and rainbowy.
GDR - Are you keen to the concept of the Aquarian age
being a golden age? If so, what should we be doing to make
that golden age come about?
MD - All time is now. The idea of getting to a better
place is illusion. The golden age is in your heart for all
eternity. No person, time, drug, food, or magical happy land
will make everything perfect. Everything is already perfect.
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Sleuthing an
Immortal Goddess
There are few things more powerful than a mystery that begs
to be solved and for me one had been lurking in my mind for
a couple of years. It’s not the kind of mystery that reveals
itself by traditional means. For me, it has been an internal
mystery in the pantheon of my mind where gods, demons,
machine elves, archetypes and ghosts all coexist as thought
forms.
I’ve come full circle in my process of self-discovery and
have accepted the possibility that there may be gods etc. in
reality. This does not require for me to descend into the
bonds of dogma, but to acknowledge that something divine
can and does occur even in life today. Magic is real; miracles
are real. The thing I am sure of is that a very real
transformation for the better has taken place and continues to
do so. There is an absolute correlation between my
experiences with DMT and my rocket ride of rapid revelation.
For the sake of brevity I’ll only account 3 moments that were
integral.
The first was when I had finally ‘broke out of the waiting
room’ of the initial stage of a DMT experience. The
challenge as many know is the difficulty of getting enough in
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fast enough to get ‘all the way there’. So when I finally did, I
met the most curious group of people; The Trickster, The
Engineer and The Feminine Aspect. In common machine elf
fashion they bombarded me with all kinds of whimsical and
happy thoughts that utterly confounded. They themselves
looked like whirling, constantly morphing balls of energy.
At the time I was most interested in the trickster who felt
like the most kindred spirit to me directly, but SHE, HER,
The Feminine Aspect, whatever she was in the background
allowing the trickster to have his show off time. But out of
all of them, she was to be the most influential and driving in
the last 3 years of my life.
The second experience involved 5 dried grams of
psychedelic mushrooms in the quiet gloom of my Queens
apartment. As the mushrooms began to take hold, I felt the
need to get as close to the earth as possible, but being in New
York, going outside and laying face down on the pavement
among the throngs of people wasn’t really an option so my
hardwood floor was the best I could do. As I lay there I sank
right through the floor out of my body down, down, down
into the earth where the soil became invisible, as easy as
passing through air. And there in the center of the dark was a
giant rainbow snake, which I immediately recognized by feel
as HER.
As I floated in this gloaming aether she told me that I was
supposed to go to the wilderness and she would meet me
there. She then showed me a vision of being in the
wilderness with a big scruffy beard, washing myself in a
rushing body of water. She said, ‘come to the forest and let
us take care of you. Everything will be ok. Little did I know
how clear, accurate and powerful this vision would become as
my final year in New York came to an end with a move to
Los Angeles and a marriage that was unraveling.
I had never heard of a rainbow serpent, but was surprised
and shocked to know that the Aborigines of Australia
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worship a great rainbow serpent as the creator of all things

and a bringer of wisdom. In Gnostic cosmology, the serpent
in the garden of Eden is the hero of the story who teaches
mankind that the one they believe is the creator is actually an
impostor who wishes to enslave them by forcing them to live
in either fear or worship and feed off them by way of their
emotions.
My studies continued at a feverish pace and these visions
from the Tryptamine world haunted me with cryptic calls to
the wilderness. I didn’t understand, but it was becoming
clearer and clearer. In Joseph Campbell’s classic book, The
Hero With A Thousand Faces he describes the Heroes
Journey, a hermetic voyage that all the great spiritual leaders
and heroes of mythology had taken. It was his assertion that
this was an archaic call for us as individuals to take the heroes
journey. Having coupled this concept with the nagging image
of The Hermit of the Tarot, it seemed like a very real thing
that was happening catalyzed by the psychedelic call of the
divine feminine.
Through a series of events I found myself at the end of
my marriage and desperate for work after 8 months of
unemployment. I made my way to Northern California to
work as a farm hand. Inexplicably I was alone in the
wilderness living on a mountain and using the local creek to
wash myself. I was taken care of when the rest of the world
didn’t work. I was safe in the lonesome womb of nature with
a big scruffy beard! With 40 days in the wilderness without
running water, a toilet, real showers, or an abundance of food
I returned to Los Angeles as a new man. One that was
leaner, one that was tougher, one that had learned to sleep
alone in the woods with a knife and a flashlight.
When I got back to my friends, Albert and Macy (names
changed to protect the awesome) in LA, we decided it was
high time to do LSD together. I had tried it before, but the
batch was bunk and nothing happened. This time, I had
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returned with the goods from a friend I visited in San

Francisco who said it was some of the best stuff she ever had.
So we headed to a private park in Pasadena as the Acid began
to kick in. We settled in a big open field and enjoyed the
sunshine and people watching. A woman in the distance
pulled a baby from her baby carriage and folded the child into
the grass as it lay helplessly. The trees waved like a thousand
Chinese women doing Tai Chi. The ground bent and flexed
beneath me like it was a giant, breathing memory foam
mattress.
After we felt we had worn out our welcome we returned
their home where I was staying and sat by the fire allowing a
bit more of the crazy to come out as we tripped hard. Macy,
who for the better part of the day teetered between
discomfort from the trip and a bit of worry to total joy,
laughter and wonder decided it was high time that I make my
return to the world of DMT after a year and a half hiatus.
The tone of the room grew grim as Albert and I had the
sobering realization that we might have to take that big leap,
the blast into lightspeed and machine elf mystery. The look
on Albert’s face is something I’ll never forget, his eyes big as
saucers gazed at the floor as if he had just gotten death
sentence test results. Macy in an uncharacteristic fit of
boldness asked me again if I really wanted to pass up going
through it. I said yes and tried my best not to think about it
until the time actually came. I went to the bathroom and
watched the walls breathe in and out as I had a pee. I washed
my hands on the swollen towel, the carcass of a cookie
monster slain and walked to the couch where Macy and
Albert had prepared the wax bong. They lit it and put the
DMT in, I breathed in as long and deep as I could and held it.
As the LSD and DMT met they dissolved my body into a
hundred-thousand electric bees and with the Snap, Crackle
and Pop I was thrust into a giant domed structure the size of
a sports stadium. And there in that vast expanse where I was
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alone the walls and ceiling shimmered with diamonds, rubies,

bone, ivory, emeralds, sapphires and every other precious
thing in blinding shades of white. Then she arrived in the
corner of my mind’s eye, HER, SHE, The Divine Feminine.
I yelled out in the physical, “it’s her! It’s her!”. She was the
one from my first big trip, she was the serpent in the center
of the earth who called me to the desert; it was HER!
She said to me as she tread across the roof of the dome,
“Of course it’s me, dummy! I’m she who dances to keep the
world full of splendor.” Her implications meant that without
her dancing, all beauty in the universe would disappear and be
lost forever. I was not allowed to see her, but could only see
the imprint of her foot as it tread, like the wind leaves its
imprint on dunes. As she tread across the dome, the roof
rained all the fine jewels as they fell toward me like floating
feathers, dripping pearls like milk. The vision waned and I
returned to my LSD state, which was beginning to fade and
told Albert and Macy about my experience.
She told me that she had called me to the wilderness in
order to set my path in motion, that it was what I needed to
hear at the time. She also said that this was just my rite of
passage, that the real work was just beginning and I was
finally ready to take a much bigger voyage.
I told David Metcalfe and Dr. Aaron Cheak about my
experiences and was shocked to hear that my experience with
the divine feminine was a dead ringer for visions of Tara:
She who has the Face of a hundred completely full moons of

Autumn, laid one upon another.
She who is shining intensely with the completely diffused light Of a
multitude of thousands of stars.
She who fills Desire, Direction and Space
She who has the power to squash down the seven worlds with her
Feet, and summon all without exception.
She to whom Indra, Agni, Brahma, Pavana
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And the Various Great Gods make offerings

She who is Bliss, She who is Goodness, She who is Peace,
She who is the embodiment of the field of experience of Nirvana's
Peace.
Dr. Cheak informed me that visions of Tara involve jewels

dripping from her feet. I was absolutely floored that I hadn’t
just had some random hallucination, but had quite literally
had an encounter with the divine feminine, the resplendent
rainbow serpent,the Gnostic Sophia, it was HER!
Now it seems more clear to me that she’s right here
helping and guiding with grace and beauty. Where she leads
me, I do not know, but I will go with a new glow of love that
emanates to all those around me. Compassion and a fervor
for a life lived well. It was her all along. It was her.
222
The Gnosis of
Daniele Bolelli
GDR: So... you're called the “Drunken Taoist.”

DB: Sure.
GDR: Why is that? What's the story behind that?
DB: Um... Drunken Taoist I guess, you know how in
Kung Fu movies you've got the old drunk guy who looks like
crap and always manages to defeat these burly, strong,
younger, better, faster attackers and nobody can quite figure
out how. The Drunken Taoist is the power of weirdness. It's
an unorthodox approach, that no one can quite figure out
why it works, but it does.
GDR: Right. Those are actually my favorite of the Jackie
Chan movies, are the Drunken Master ones.
DB: Right. Right, exactly.
GDR: [laughs] That's pretty awesome. So, you wrote the
book. “Create Your Own Religion.” Can you give us a
synopsis of why you put this book together?
DB: “Create Your Own Religon,” in a way is Bruce Lee
applied to religion. In the sense that the Bruce Lee approach
of researching your own experience, discarding what is
useless, keeping what is useful and adding what is specifically
your own. That's a perfect approach to knowledge in general,
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and in this case it seems healthy to apply for all facets of life,
and religion definitely being one of them. You know the
Bruce Lee approach is a martial art style. Martial art styles
during these days were very much like organized religion,
with each one feeling we are the best, we have the best
methodology.
GDR: Yeah and that's kind of what religions do as well:
we have the best Jesus, we have the best Buddha, we've the
best Muhammad. [laughter]
DB: Basically the create your own religion thing is the
same way as martial arts, traditionally they all had this attitude
of “we have the only way to the truth.” In this case applied to
combat, obviously in a bigger scenario religions do the same
thing. And how do you test the claims? How do you decide
which one makes sense and which one doesn't, if any of
them? And so the Bruce Lee approach is just to put it to the
test. So in this regard what I did was take a few key topics of
human life that all religions discuss, look at what some of the
beliefs out there about them are, you know such and such
religion argue this, and such and such religions argue that.
Look at the consequences, of what kind of results do those
beliefs lead to, and then evaluate based on the evidence. And
you know some stuff makes sense to me, seems great. Some
other stuff seems like unhealthy crap.
GDR: Right.
DB: In some cases, some religions may have a good
answer, and some others don't, in some cases maybe you
don't find any good answers any where and you create your
own.
GDR: Right.
DB: So in this process you basically do a job of just being
honest about looking at what the evidence is case by case.
Rather than making a claim, an absolute claim of such and
such ideology holds the truth and nothing but the truth, well
let's look case by case.
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GDR: Right. So it kind of sounds in some ways like either

a pantheist or a theosophist or even a chaos magician's
approach to it where you use what works and discard the
things that don't.
DB: Exactly. Absolutely.
GDR: Right. That's pretty interesting.
DB: In that regard everybody does it already. You know
even if you pick the strictest followers of every organized
religion they will tell you that they follow the religion but the
reality is that they pick and choose the stuff, the stuff they like
and the stuff they don't out of their own tradition.
GDR: That's true.
DB: So if you're going to do it any way, out of your own
tradition, you might as well be honest and use all traditions.
GDR: That's funny, you know, because when I was a
Pentecostal Christian, obviously we were American
Pentecostal Christians and we thought that our doctrine was
the best. But, when I was doing research for my book “Born
Again to Rebirth,” I found out that there are forty-thousand
different sects of Christianity in the world, and they all think
that they have the right one.
DB: Of course.
GDR: So the death count going to hell is pretty high I
suppose, if you were to look at it that way.
DB: Yup. Big time.
GDR: There are two modern definitions of the term
“gnosis.” There's the the ecstatic state, that's similar to
samadhi or non-mind.
DB: Uh huh.
GDR: And then there is the traditional view of experience
based knowledge and understanding. What is gnosis to you
and how might you utilize it kind of, in your world view?
DB: Well I mean, I guess, I don't use the term, so
terminology wise I may be slightly off because it's not a term
that I routinely use, but as far as concept, both concepts
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actually sound quite appealing. Because if it's not experience

based then what is it based on? That's why to me, anything
that's not based in experience I'm naturally suspicious of,
because it means it's based in hearsay essentially. It's based on
somebody else telling you how things are and going on it by
faith, which is like, well, why? If it's not your experience then
it sounds really cheap. So, the notion of experience based
knowledge clearly resounds very strongly with me and that's
what “Create Your Own Religion” in many ways is all about.
And an ecstatic, more mystical approach is also one that
makes perfect sense. Both apply.
GDR: So have you had any experience in ecstatic states of
your own in which you feel in one way or another you may
have more contact with the divine? Or something to that
effect?
DB: As far as experiences where things click, where
suddenly you see the outside of our ordinary perceptional
things, yeah, quite a few. Some are somewhat random, some a
little more looking for them, but yeah. What's interesting is
that, as real as these experiences are and feel, there are just as
many experiences in which nothing clicks, where you call out
and all you get is a dead stone silence, and there's, it feels,
with real convictions you feel there is an absolute lack of
anything out there. And a lack of any type of connectivity in
the universe where it does feel like it's just all random chaos
and nothing else. So it's tricky for me because it's not you
know the believers or people who strongly believe one thing
or another; people who don't believe in any of this stuff that
strongly feel there is nothing to believe in. Agnostics feel like,
“well I don't have enough evidence to believe or disbelieve.” I
feel that I have plenty of evidence to believe and disbelieve at
the same time, which makes it slightly confusing.
GDR - Right again, we're butting into an idea that
magicians have is to put yourself into the position of a
believer wherever you might be in order to achieve your own
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particular goals and purpose so that you might actually, uh

kind of like the apostle Paul said it "I have learned to be all
things to all men" which in a strange way is sort of the same
idea. As a writer and educator, what would you say are the
most common pitfalls in ideology you find your students and
readers getting caught up in. how do you help them out in a
gentle way.
DB - I think allegiance to any ideology is a disease because
it's, ideology are filters through which you perceive reality.
The fact is reality is more complicated than any ideology. So
even the best ideology in the universe and that being too rigid
and too limited to take into account all the possible variations
and experiences and things life can throw your way. So
ideology can give you structure which may feel reassuring and
nice in a way and it also limits what you can cannot be, what
are you willing to take in as experience and what you cannot.
GDR - Right, that makes sense. So how do we. In this day
and age, it still seems like everyone has a yearning and this
sense of awe. A friend of mine said she visited some nuns and
though she didmt believe what the nuns believe but she felt
this sense of emptyness that she didnt have that deep kind of
desire, or that rapterous interaction with the divine which she
so much found. How do we find that without getting caught
up within a dogma.
DB - Well I mean I think the man's approach in one
approach. If you are not caught up with dogma you can try
millions of approaches including some even more uh, the
beauty of being flexible is you can truly take on shapes.
Including the shapes that may look not as flexible to the
outside someone else is just stuck in the role forever. You
may just be getting the experience of it. but to me at the end
of the day it's like, the beauty of this is that you can
experience multiple lives. You can speak many languages, so
to speak.
GDR - Right, so there's kind of an inner pantheon that
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you can call upon to become one thing for one moment and
one in another. I think that's really scary for a lot of people
especially when everybody want to pin things down and feel
safe.
DB - Right and the problem is that it makes perfect sense,
and it's sweet but life is not safe and just where it sits. And so
safety to a large degree is an illusion, identity is an illusion
allegiance to an ideology is an illusion. These are all things are
very understandable that people feel that way but at the end
of the day they are still traps
GDR - So yeah it's funny beaus in my own process Ive
gone through so many different layers of illusions and traps,
and one of the hardest things growing up as a fundamentalist
Christian, I was told 'it is not I, but Christ who lives'. So
there's like the death of self. And so the way that I got out of
it was one of the things that I realized, was like 'wait a second,
no I can make decisions and I can have control over my life
and make those decisions' but the paradox occurred is that
there is kind bolstering or reassertion of my sense of self so
now to try to back up on that and I have to get away from
that once again but from a non-dogmatic stance. It's been one
the harder things for me to try to figure out.
DB - Right, of course. Especially if you are born at that
way it's tough business. (?)
GDR - Right, so I was wondering, because of your
background studying lots of different philosophies and
religions, if could you summon up any spiritual leader from
antiquity or now for a conversation over tea, or the beverage
of your choice, who would it be?
My all time idle is a guy ikkyu sajin. He was a Zen monk
from the early 1400s and he was a pretty wild guy. He was the
legitimate son of the emperor of japan and he been sent to a
monastery as an alternative to being killed in his palace and he
was five years old. He grew up in this very stone severe
environment he had an amazing grasp of Zen but precisely
228
beause he loved zenzen he hated what Zen Buddhism had

become.me. Which is sort of boring bureaucracy, so then he
kind of spends the rest of his life traveling around as a
wondering teacher, equally dedicated to Zen, women and Saki
and he was quiet a fun guy.
GDR - That's pretty awesome, Zen women and Saki. Who
needs anything else right? This is interesting because it
reminds me of some of my own journeys I've been going
through and you know I've been having debates with some of
my friends about whether or not if it's necessary for us to try,
like a Christian missionary might try to convert people. And
so on and so forth. And then when we're talking about well,
we should expand our consciousness so that we don't destroy
the earth and that we're more compassionate people. There's
still the question of ‘should we even bother trying to tell
people things one way or the other’ and the answer I've come
to, and perhaps you can illuminate me, it seems that there's
two primary paths and you make the decisions based on that.
there's kind of the aesthetic path like your describing and we
see you know the pillar monks and from all these traditions,
there are all these aesthetic traditions. The Cathar Perfecti, all
of these groups who are just like wondering mystics who are
like living off what they could find, I've actually been living
that way for the last 3 months and it's been really weird and
wild and it hasn't been easy but I've always found some sort
of fortuitous occasion or connection. Last night, or a couple
nights ago, a guy got me a beer because he said he had a
dream that he saw me and he wasn't hitting on me, he was
like "I had a dream and I saw you" and I said let me read your
tarot and I read tarot and said "Oh this is amazing, let me buy
you a beer!" and I was like "OK!" and I didn't have any
money but I mean this is kind of how those guys operate and
it's crazy, it's crazy to our civilization. But I mean is this one
of the ways that people do this? And likewise, why don't we
all just go to a mountain, I suppose because there's not
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enough mountains?
DB - Right? I mean to me there is also something to be
said about being just because you may not have the same state
of precociousness as everyone else there's something to be
said about searching for enlightenment in the midst of the
everyday world. In the midst of the struggles and the
complications of it all, the lonely hermit on the mountain, I
don't want to say is too easy but it's too, it's an enlightenment
that's born outside of being tested by the everyday forces that
mess people up, its one that is better than no enlightenment
at all and is in my mind actually inferior to actually being able
to deal with all the 7 million contradictions that life entails.
GDR - That's such a poignant thought and this actually
happened to me when I as describing what was going on to a
traveling companion that I had they were like "Well what do
you think is harder? To be out in the desert by yourself, living
beans and rice, sitting by a fire meditating or to have to do
the exact same thing but you're in a city and there's no public
toilets and you have to have money to have transpiration
anywhere. What's the more difficult task?
DB - And also one is more applicable to many other
contexts whereas one is sort of stacking when you are outside
of most regular human interaction, you're outside of jobs,
you're outside most of the same thing which most other
humans live in. So then the question is either you live that
way your whole life or you return to a reality that most people
inhabit then how you deal with it. Is that enlightenment
learned in the desert something that can last if brought back
in or does it only work in it's own space?
GDR - That's kind of the question I'm dealing with now. I
think that the difficult thing is to find a balance and to get too
caught up in the uh, kind of the arrogance of saying "Oh I'm
on a spiritual path" that sort of thing is it's own challenge
within itself. I guess coming back to the question, how do we
help to initiate change for the better so that we don't leave a
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scorched earth by the time our kids grow up? I think that
you're child is slightly younger, I have a son and a daughter
and everyone has that concern for the things in the future and
things like that, and I was reading Maharaj and someone was
asking him "Well what happens when you have these
emergencies and people are dying in the streets" and he says
"Well northing's actually happening." and they're like "Well
how can you say that?" and he's basically saying that in one
way, it's okay. Every thing's already over and we're still all
okay but that doesn't help us when we're all like, we have kids
or we have people we care for.
DB - Sure, Well I'm all for it. And I think it's important
because people are either are very committed to changing
world but they often do it from an idealistic standpoint and
when they meet reality they get bummed out and cynical or
they start out bummed out and cynical and they go "I'm
gonna have fun in my little corner of the world and screw
everything else" and both of them are somewhat losing
propositions because in one case you are idealistic without
real reason and the other way your sense of reality is one
that's sort of miserable and born out of cynicism. The
challenge is to have realistic options. To be able to be so
idealistic that you want to try change the world right here,
right now, but at the same time not having your self esteem
and happiness wrapped up in success, because success is
entirely beyond your control and may or may not come.
GDR - It’s kind of like the idea of the yogi who is within
the world, who participates in everything but is not stained by
sin or as the metaphor goes. That's really poignant. So one
last question because I've asked virtually everyone else this
one question and I've gotten such crazy different answers it's
been really interesting, so what do you believe, since we don't
know for sure, what do you believe happens when we die?
DB - I have no damn idea. Who the hell knows?
GDR - I think that's the best way, because there's no way
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of knowing, well okay let me rephrase that. How do we deal

with living our life in the face of the fear of death? Because it
seems like our culture's so driven by the fear of death, or even
of aging, all of those things.
DB - Of course, there's no idea of what the hell happens,
and it happens to everybody and it's scary as hell it's the
ultimate evidence that we don't control shit.
GDR - I’m gonna put that on the back of the book, it can
be your review of the book. That's so perfect.
Yeah and there's a guy if you wanna check out on my
website danielebolelli.com there's a section that says essays,
there's one called "In the beginning there was fear”.
GDR - Cool I'll look that up.
DB - I mean it's tricky because most people try to,
because the prospect of this whole thing is so terrifying that
most people try just not to think about it and then it's all just
to make up shit. I'm gonna believe that I'm going to be with
all my dead relatives and they'll all come back to life and we'll
all have a great party forever in happiness. It's like "well that's
sweet.
G: Let's wait and find out. So there is one other group
that fascinates me and that's the Agori and they basically
force themselves to be comfortable in and around death
constantly, for the sake of moving past that. And it seems
there is a common theme in all of the great traditions that
kind of has thing where people face their own death. I've
heard of shamanic initiations where people are actually buried
and they're breathing through a tube and they lay buried over
night so they can experience it and move past it. I don't know
if that really helps at the end of the day.
DB - Yeah I mean it's like anything. It's tricky because
how do you go about enjoying every little second when you
know every single thing you have is going be taken away from
you? That's rough. And at the same time if you don't then you
have a miserable life and everything else will be taken away
232
from you anyway. To be able to be so real, you have the

knowledge that you have no control over anything and that
yes, shit will happen and everything will eventually disappear.
Again, who knows what happens after that, maybe it's
awesome but nobody knows right? Based on what we know
we don't know if anything will happen or not if it's absolute
nothingness or who the hell knows. All we know is that what
we know here in this world goes, and then after that, who the
hell knows what happens? The ability to be able enjoy life
right up until the hangmen puts the noose around your neck
and strings you up kind of thing, that's serious enlightenment
right there. Because it's tough, it's difficult of course. And at
the same time if you don't do it there's no real way to, other
than just living a lie and just telling yourself some fairy tales
because you need them in order to be able to function
otherwise the prospect of death is too terrifying. Then if
you're not able to do this kind of stuff, then all of life is lived
in fear and a life lived in fear is not always a waste to some
degree but it's also severely limited in what it could be.
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The Gnosis of
Dr. Rick Strassman
GDR - Dr. Strassman, you wrote the groundbreaking book,

DMT: The Spirit Molecule and were granted the first clinical
study of Psychedelics in 20 years. How did it feel to have that
much riding on the research?
RS - I felt a lot of responsibility but at the same time knew
that the people aware of the research and monitoring it were
relatively few. I wasn’t directly responsible to that many
people, even though the long-term effects of my research
made me feel a lot of responsibility to perform the study with
utmost rigor and care. Besides making certain to minimize the
likelihood of adverse effects, the degree of direct observation
and supervision was quite manageable. I recognized the
importance of my work for the future of American
psychedelic studied, and I wanted to make certain that it was
performed in broad daylight. That way I felt the responsibility
was shared among everyone involved in the process.
GDR - There is much debate about whether or not the
psychedelic experience is entirely within the mind, or possibly
reaching outside of the mind. Can you site an example within
your ongoing research that leads you to a conclusion one-way
or the other?
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RS - At this point, I don’t believe that it is possible to

objectively determine the how much of what we apprehend
under the influence of psychedelic drugs is internally
generated or externally perceived. It makes sense to me to
suggest a spectrum of the phenomenon. There are times
when our own personality predominates, rather than the
awareness of something external to us. At other times, what
we see is more external to us rather than self-generated. It’s
impossible, though, to have a pure culture of one or the
other. Without our personal life experience and biological
make-up, we’d be unable to decipher what it is we are seeing.
*For example, with one of the DMT subjects, Marsha,
saw a profoundly psychedelic vision of manikin-like 1890s
figures on a merry-go-round. With some questioning, we
decided it the vision related as much to her body image in the
context of her marriage than with anything more
metaphysical. Another volunteer in the study, Chris, entered
into a blissful yellow-white light and merged with it with very
few contents that he could associate personal psychological
themes.
GDR - At the time of your research on DMT, you were a
Buddhist. Are you still one and what benefit does your own
spiritual path bring to the table as a scientist, if any?
RS - I’m not an active member of any Zen organization
these days. I practice sitting meditation most days.
Unquestioningly, I would have been unable to pursue serious
study of the Hebrew Bible without my Buddhist training.
While the material that my DMT volunteers reported were
beyond my understanding of Buddhism, the meditation
practice helped determine how we supervised drug sessions.
From the results point of view, the interaction of my sitting—
a spiritual practice coming out of a well-characterized
religion—and how I acquired and analyzed the data as a
scientist were linked. The greatest impact on how I
interpreted our results was on the development of our rating
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scale for the DMT effect. This was based on Buddhist

psychological concepts and pointed to future studies that
could tease apart the pharmacological underpinnings of the
Buddhist Skandhas.
GDR - Gnosis in the traditional sense is an experiential
knowledge that removes the necessity for ‘blind faith’. How
is Gnosis in this sense important, if at all in a spiritual pursuit?
RS - If you are speaking of gnosis as a particular type of
spiritual experience, it may function as a goal of spiritual
practice. However, for gnosis to be important the
information it contains needs to be transmittable. I say this
for at least two reasons: to verify the experience as truly
gnostic, and to educate and exhort others.
GDR - Gnosis in the shamanic, or magical mystic sense is
the same state as Samadhi, a place where our mental chatter is
quieted. How may one achieve this state without the use of
psychedelics?
RS - There are millennia of techniques developed
throughout the world for quieting mental chatter. However,
gnosis is not therapy or some kind of anti-anxiety agent. It is
an insight into God’s nature and activities in the spiritual and
physical realms. This is more difficult to attain than simply
quieting the mind and requires more extreme measures.
Psychedelics may accelerate production of imaginal contents,
but without grounding with the intellect, the experience may
not be nearly as valuable as it might be. So with or without
psychedelics, knowing what one is seeing, how to interact
with it, and how to relate that information back to one’s
fellows requires more than simply the experience itself.
GDR - I have to admit that DMT and other Tryptamines
were integral in my own spiritual reawakening, but I find that
they are not the end-all-be-all of my personal pursuits in this
regard. What are the dangers of seeing psychedelics as a
panacea, or the final say in one’s personal path?
RS - Your question addresses some of the issues I just
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raised in the previous question. Psychedelics are a tool that

may help or may be misused. One of the ways they are
misused is by overlaying one’s neuroses, so to speak, on the
contents of the visions.
GDR - The classic argument by the traditional religious
structures in regard to psychedelics is that their use in a
spiritual context is ‘cheating’. If our rich spiritual history is
preceded by the existence and use of psychedelics, can we
really call it cheating? How do we balance these two things
that seem so connected, yet have such diametric opposition
to one another at times?
RS - I’m not sure if it is possible to make a blanket
statement about “traditional religious structures” regarding
“cheating” when it comes to using psychedelics in a spiritual
context. One of the points I make in my upcoming book,
“The Soul of Prophecy,” is that psychedelics enhance the
imaginative faculty, as conceived of by medieval Jewish
philosophy. They do little to generate novel information, at
least not in most of us who do not have some background,
vocabulary, and concepts that help decipher the visions. That
is where development of the rational faculty, in the medieval
sense of the notion, comes into play. One can use text,
particularly text emerging from a state of mind like that
induced by particular agents—endogenous or exogenous— to
help decipher visions.
GDR - My mother was in a car wreck, had a near death
experience and claimed that she saw Jesus. Is this proof that
Jesus is the only way as the bible claims? What other
explanations are there for such a dramatic experience?
RS - Jesus is interesting in that regard. He appears to
people in dire straits. I don’t believe someone never exposed
to Christianity or Christian cultures would see Jesus in those
straits; rather, they would see the comparable force manifest
in some other form.
GDR - How would you like to see psychedelics handled in
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the future as a society? Graham Hancock for instance claims

that it is a core human right to be able to explore our own
consciousness that we should demand legal access to these
substances. What is your take as a scientist and as a citizen?
RS - Psychedelics are potentially destabilizing, and to
either take or administer them requires a fair amount of
training so as to provide for optimal positive effects and
minimal negative ones. Thus, specialized centers might be
developed where that type of training is provided. The
various settings could include religious, creative,
psychotherapeutic, and so on.
GDR - How does belief change test results and how do
you as a scientist withhold your own predilections of
assumption in order to have the most objective outcome
possible in research?
RS - Generally, test results are difficult to change by belief.
One can design a study based upon one’s beliefs that would
make more likely the yielding of particular results reinforcing
your beliefs. More often, one’s beliefs affect the interpretation
of those results. With respect to our data from the DMT
study, we divided our data into objective and subjective. Or
rather, we had turned the subjective into objective by the use
of the rating scale. So we had objective data to treat with
various analyses. In my scientific work, my conclusions were
aligned with the model in which the studies took place:
human psychopharmacology, psychometrics, and psychology.
I suggested certain explanations for our findings and called
for future research to help answer unresolved questions.
GDR - On a personal note, what do you think happens
when we die? Why do you think we are here?
RS - The founder of Japanese Zen, Dogen, said that our
death is just another moment in time. Life goes on without
us. Our impact has the potential to be immortal, however.
One of my favorite authors is Olaf Stapledon who suggested
that our task on earth is to interact creatively with our
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environment. Maimonides, one of my favorite medievalists,

reminds us that the universe was not created for mankind.
That leaves us quite a bit of leeway.
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Why Should We
Even Try?
Have you ever felt yourself slip into an existential funk in

which you ask, “Why the fuck should I even care? Why the
fuck should I try?” I mean what’s the point? Many of us have
been long disenchanted with Religion, Politics, Love and
pretty much every other institution of this mad consensus
reality that we call life. Take for instance the viewpoint of
Nisargadatta Maharaj, a Spiritual teacher in the Advaita
Vedanta tradition in his exchange with an interviewer:
Q: There is suffering and bloodshed in East Pakistan at
the present moment. How do you look at it? How does it
appear to you, how do you react to it?
M: In pure consciousness nothing ever happens.
Q: Please come down from these metaphysical heights! Of
what use is it to a suffering man to be told that nobody is
aware of his suffering but himself? To relegate everything to
illusion is insult added to injury. The Bengali of East Pakistan
is a fact and his suffering is a fact. Please, do not analyse them
out of existence! You are reading newspapers, you hear
people talking about it. You cannot plead ignorance. Now,
what is your attitude to what is happening?
M: No attitude. Nothing is happening.
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Q: Any day there may be a riot right in front of you,

perhaps people killing each other. Surely you cannot say:
nothing is happening and remain aloof.
M: I never talked of remaining aloof. You could as well
see me jumping into the fray to save somebody and getting
killed. Yet to me nothing happened. Imagine a big building
collapsing. Some rooms are in ruins, some are intact. But can
you speak of the space as ruined or intact? It is only the
structure that suffered and the people who happened to live
in it. Nothing happened to space itself. Similarly, nothing
happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped
out. The goldsmith melts down old ornaments to make new.
Sometimes a good piece goes with the bad. He takes it in his
stride, for he knows that no gold is lost.
Q: It is not death that I rebel against. It is the manner of
dying.
M: Death is natural, the manner of dying is man-made.
Separateness causes fear and aggression, which again cause
violence. Do away with man-made separations and all this
horror of people killing each other will surely end. But in
reality there is no killing and no dying. The real does not die,
the unreal never lived. Set your mind right and all will be
right. When you know that the world is one, that humanity is
one, you will act accordingly. But first of all you must attend
to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in
yourself, there can be no order in the world.
I bring this up because Maharaj is saying there is nothing
to be done because there is nothing. ”Set your mind right
and all will be right” he says as the interviewer poses the
images of death and catastrophe.
So what are we to make of this idea? IF this were true,
then our daily activities and cares about what present to buy
x, or the immediate bill due to y mean absolutely
nothing. We would be better off using our time, ‘setting our
mind right’. Who wants to join a monastery with me?
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Let’s switch gears to Christian theologian, William

Stringfellow who has this to say about our institutions, both
great and small:
According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in
species, number, variety and name. They are designated by
such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones,
authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords,
angels, gods, elements, spirits…
Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in
naming the principalities: “tempter,” “mocker,” “foul spirit,”
“destroyer,” “adversary,” “the enemy.” And the privity of the
principalities to the power of death incarnate is shown in
mention of their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or
the Antichrist…
And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into
contemporary language they lose quaintness and the
principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they
include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all
movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all
traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all
races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford
Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson
Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the
Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union
are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism,
Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and
scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many
more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology,
money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration.
The principalities and powers are legion.
Stringfellow continues on to death:
Death, after all, is no abstract idea, nor merely a
destination in time, nor just an occasional happening, nor
only a reality for human beings, but, both biblically and
empirically, death names a moral power claiming sovereignty
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over all people and all things in history. Apart from God,
death is a living power greater–because death survives them
all–than any other moral power in this world of whatever
sort: human beings, nations, corporations, cultures, wealth,
knowledge, fame or memory, language, the arts, race, religion.
To me, Stringfellow is indeed a fellow with strings that tug
on our existential feelings of futility. His observations have
merit when we see that we do create a monster of sorts when
we create the Ford Motor Company, or any of the other
things in the laundry list. We can see the monsters all around
and in our efforts to make something of ourselves just make
more demons.
So to one learned man, Jesus is the answer and to the
other a change of the perception of reality and our place
within it is the answer. But both seem to show a very strong
dislocation from the world in which we live and its
edifices. So if by one hand we are exercising futility and by
another creating new demons, why might we even make
another effort toward anything? What’s it really
worth? We’re just shitting ourselves right?
The chaos magician might say that life is our plaything and
therefore we should ascribe meaning where we see fit and
leave the rest to chaos, not necessarily without care, but
understanding we can’t do everything and the sardonic smile
of knowing we will all end up as worm food anyway.
But if one moves past the fear of death to where it no
longer hold sway over us, then what? How does our fear of
death control us and furthermore how do those most
brooding about life as we speak of it head plunge headlong
into it through the barrel of a gun, the top of a bridge, or the
slice of the razor?
G. I. Gurdjieff has his own thoughts on the matter.
“There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth
of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life,
try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and
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to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks

soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these
problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin
with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and
what his place is in the world around him.”
So for the sake of argument, we’ve purified ourselves and
set our minds right, understood both the illusory and or
demonic nature of our constructs and chosen a life of
what? Asceticism? Quiet contemplation? The hero of the
grimoire, The Black Pullet ends his story of achieving all
power and wisdom with this statement:
My days passed between work, study, meditation, and walking

exercise. I received a few visitors in my home, but nobody had an inkling
of that which passed in my private life. To live happily, live concealed, as
a Sage said.
After much dancing around with these ideas, I’ve come to

respect each perspective and identify with a number of
aspects of each, regardless of wisdom tradition which each is
affiliated with, but it hasn’t made me feel any better or
brought us any closer to what we should do with our lives in
order to get the most out of it, so here’s my personal
approach:
1. In relationships to all other humans and other living
beings as well: Increasingly improve your output of love and
compassion. Make generosity the benchmark of your life in
whatever way you can possibly think.
2. In relationship to work: Find something that you love
to do and commit to it and lay out everything else around
it. You can’t have a body without a frame.
3. In relationship to whether or not to participate: I
believe it is each individual’s choice how they choose to do
this, but for me I choose to pick up the paintbrush and paint
and make the canvass of my life its own work of art. After
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all, art is not often seen as a necessity, but it can take you to
new places and show you things you’ve never seen before.
Whether real or illusory, the world is a better place with a
couple ‘paintings’ on the walls.
Perhaps there is no world to be saved, no actual causes to
fight for and no actual tragedies. Perhaps our mind is the
only thing and our internal work is the prime thing for us to
work on. If so, I choose for my actions to reflect my internal
process coming to life and translate that to an experience of
creation, evolution and art.
I choose to participate in this walking meditation of sorts
because I have decided I wish to keep growing, learning,
struggling and increasing in love and compassion. I can’t
think of many better ways to do so than by getting into a
vehicle and operating in exchange with all of you out there;
people I will soon be unable to imagine myself without.
Yes, it is permissible to NOT go, to NOT participate, but
I choose to and perhaps in my own way I can make the
perfect demon of sorts.
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The Gnosis of
Abby Martin
For many, mainstream media is a shell of its former self and

journalism is a laughable profession where talking heads
pervade the landscape. But there is one person who stands
out as an actual person with actual passion, that person is
Abby Martin. With a quick wit and a take no prisoners
attitude toward getting to the bottom of a story, Abby has
established herself as THE journalist to watch. Her RT
television program, Breaking The Set has become a staple of
the informational diet of anyone who is trying to see the news
behind the spin. It’s been my pleasure to appear on her show
in support of my book, Born Again To Rebirth and since that
time, we have become friends. I believe her perspective is a
much needed one on our own journey of gnosis.
GDR - Abby, journalism has changed in the past few

decades due to many factors including the prevalence of
social media and sites like Youtube.com. How have these
changes affected your own work as a journalist? What’s
better? What's worse?
AM - The advent of the internet has democratized
information in such a way that anyone who wants to conduct
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the act of journalism can now do so. Decades ago you had to
be working with an established news agency if you wanted to
be taken seriously or even heard as a journalist. Now, if you
simply have a platform you can do groundbreaking
journalism and become world renowned through the power
of social media. The internet has leveled the playing field in a
revolutionary way but conversely, the excess of information
has also made it harder to sort through the disinformation to
piece together the facts.
GDR - What first inspired you to take a more aggressive
journalistic stance than many others that we see in popular
media today?
AM - I never went to journalism school, so my only
perspective from the get go was that of an activist journalist.
As an activist, I was shocked at how uncritical the media was
in regards to corporate and government corruption at a time
when so much is at stake. The erosion of the fourth estate is
the biggest hinderance to a democracy, and there is no point
in tip toeing around issues I consider downright criminal. The
phrase unbiased is erroneous anyway, because every human
has a perspective they bring to the table whether they like to
admit it or not. Some of my favorite journalists are advocacy
journalists, and seeing people like Glenn Greenwald's
passionate reporting have inspired me to be myself. My
passion isn't an act, it's who I am. People either hate or love
it, but the ones whom my voice resonates with makes
everything I do worth it.
GDR - All of us have our own sets of core values that
drive us to fight for what we believe is right. What values do
you live by to ensure that you stand on the right side of
history?
AM - I try very hard to practice the core values of truth,
kindness and basic respect for life. I see so much of the world
acting out of pure greed and selfishness, and it pains me
because I know we can do better. Being the change you wish
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to see is the biggest hurdle of all, and until we put our

personal problems into the perspective of the one organism
our human family shares we will always fall on the wrong side
of history.
GDR - In a world where information comes so fast that it
becomes a blur, do you see society awakening with this flood
of info, or are they drowning in it?
AM - It's a double edged sword. I once heard an anecdote
where someone is approached by a person from the 1800s
and asked what the greatest technological advancement that
has been made is in the 21st century. The person answers: "I
have a device in my pocket that can access the entirety of the
world's knowledge, but I use it to argue with strangers and
look at cat photos."
It's true. Humans get overwhelmed with too much
information and the sheer amount of it available has turned
some people off completely from news. Mindlessly trolling
celebrity gossip websites is much easier to digest. On the
other hand, we have the entirety of the world's knowledge in
our pockets. Willful ignorance is understandable given the
depression that can come along with learning about the
nature of the world, but it's not an excuse. We have the
responsibility to be aware, active citizens who are engaged
with the planet so we can ensure its future survival.
GDR - The word ‘Gnosis’ relates to intrinsic, experiential
knowledge. What value does this term have to you and to the
general public?
AM - I believe human beings are intrinsically good
natured and that the soul is a conduit of love, compassion
and creativity. Unfortunately many human constructs such as
religion, bigotry and even money have obstructed the
connection we have with earth and each other.
GDR - Have you ever had any spiritual or psychedelic
experiences? If so, what realizations came to you? What did
you take away from the experience that stays with you now?
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AM - I am thankful to have never been indoctrinated into

any religion. Spiritually speaking though, one experience that
comes to mind is a time I was doing deep breathing
meditation and had a vision of a woman in the middle of a
bombed out neighborhood surrounded by death and
destruction, watching her children play in a dirty pool of
water. It was such a profound moment because I felt who she
was to the core of her being. I knew her life and saw the
generations of pain and suffering. Knowing how that woman
is the reality for millions of people affected by imperialist
policy, that moment helped reconfirm why I do what I do.
When I was younger I took some psychedelics, and they
helped influence my artistic expression and perspective of
nature. I think psychedelics can be great mental therapy and
it's a shame they are largely demonized in today's society.
GDR - Anyone who knows about you knows that you
have a passion to fight injustices of the “Empire”, using
journalism as your tool, but there is a danger in that as
well. Phillip K. Dick said that: “To fight the Empire is to be
infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: whoever
defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it
proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies.
Thereby it becomes its enemies.” How do we fight the
empire that we now are confronted with while not, ourselves
becoming a part of it?
AM - It goes back to applying the principle of being the
change you preach. We lie to ourselves a lot to justify and
excuse our own unhappiness yet have no problem telling
others how to live a full life. Dick was right in that the empire
has infected those who fight it because in order to do so, we
must pay so much heed and attention and investment into it.
It's toxic. I wish I knew the answer, but unfortunately for
many who do fight, life will be an eternal struggle trying to
figure it out.
GDR - When it seems like the world is falling apart and
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there is no sign of it really getting better, where do you turn

to recharge and find the strength to soldier on?
AM - Hike in nature and make art. I truly think that
everyone has an artistic side of them that is waiting to be
tapped into, and it's just about finding that niche and
harnessing it to the best of your ability. To me, being in
nature, creating art and listening to music are simply the best
therapy that exists.
GDR - What is our purpose in life? Why are we
here? You have the floor.
AM - We're here because we all have something to
contribute. Life is a process of experiences that leads you - if
you let it - to your true will. I know that sounds cliche as fuck,
but I believe it, just because I believe so strongly that I found
my calling. Too many of us end up working our entire lives
doing something that makes us miserable, wasting all of the
human creativity and input that could be advancing society
and making the world a better place.
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Where Do We Go
From Here?
After the release of my book, BORN AGAIN TO

REBIRTH, many things that I have not expected have
occurred. People are asking me what they should be doing
next? It’s been a bit a of a struggle for me to find the right
thing to say to everyone who asks this question, after all we
are so very different and from a myriad of backgrounds. I’d
like to highlight 3 things that are to my mind, keys to personal
spiritual growth and general fulfillment in life. I understand
that this is very broad and make no claims to being perfect or
having a perfect life, but as my dear friend told me last night,
“If you play the part of the shepherd, you’ve got to expect
you’re going to end up with some sheep”. Of course sheep
are the last thing I want. What I want are rams. Those who
stand on the high hill and roam where they please, taking
control of their own life and destiny. That being said, here’s
how we can all turn from sheep to rams:
*Commit yourself to understanding that it is you and you
alone who live and die by your decisions. *
There is nobody else who will have the joys and pains of
your existence like you yourself. Take charge of this fact and
remember that nobody has their shit together. People want to
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judge you and look down on you? Let them, they will just end
up stewing in their own weird stagnant state. Judgment is all
they will ever have while you are making waves.
From a spiritual perspective this means that you are the
final say in telling the fools gold from the real deal. Steer clear
of anybody who tells you that his or her way is the only way.
You just walked out of dogma, don’t fall into a new one.
Remember that you have a direct connection to the creative
spark; your every word is a creation and your every deed is a
magickal act. I mean this most literally. You don’t have to be
rude to other people who are giving you advice; listen and
consider and take criticism where it is appropriate, but
understand that you are the master of your experience.
*Commit yourself to removing distractions and replacing
them with positive disciplines.
Watch less TV and read more. There are things that you
may have always been afraid to explore and learn about,
forget that fear and learn as much as you can about what
intrigues you. You will find that if you are taking in valid new
information (whether you agree with all of it or not), you will
find your mind creating new scenarios of thought you never
had before. This will sharpen your mind and give you
confidence in all situations.
*Try your best to be Learning, Creating, or Loving.
Many people who find themselves in a rut will find that
they are not participating in one of these 3 activities. If you
are busy learning, you will be adding new fuel to your mind
and sparking creativity. Have you ever read a book that
inspired you to do something new? Have you ever gone to an
art gallery and felt like going home and drawing, or painting,
or writing? This is the benefit of learning.
Too much time spent learning something new can leave
you drained, but you may also find yourself in a storm of
inspiration. Now is the time to pick up that creative spark and
use it. Create something new, no matter what you love or are
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good at, you can make something happen. Once you have
made something that will be around for a while, you will find
that you feel better about life in general. There is a sense of
fulfillment that comes with making anything of your own.
Much of this creative energy was fostered in us at a young
age, pasting cut up pieces of paper together to make works of
art for the fridge, gluing googly eyes on a rock and giving it to
a parent. This all used to be an amazing act, but over time and
with onset of adulthood, the magic of creation was taken
away with the drudgeries of life.
Finally, loving is key. We all need to love and be loved.
This doesn’t mean erotic love only. Spend time with people
you have fun with, or care about. Sometimes inactivity with
some good friends is just the thing to take your mind off of
things. Take some time to reach out to that pal you haven’t
hung out with for a while and do something easy and fun.
I’m a guy who told a story about my own struggles and
shared it with others; I’m a storyteller. The biggest message I
hope to convey is that of releasing oneself from controlling
powers that would keep you in a mire of mediocrity.
Take charge of your life and spirituality! It’s you who lives
and dies by it, make every moment amazing!
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
The Gnosis of
Graham Hancock
Few writers can match Graham Hancock's influence as the

author of several breakthrough books of alternative history,
including Fingerprints of the Gods, Underworld, and
Supernatural. His work has been instrumental in challenging
institutional thinking about humanity's lost past, while
bringing the indigenous shamanic perspective to a broader
audience. He's certainly someone to talk with about the
significance of our present moment as we look to an
uncertain future.
GDR - What would you say the message of our time is in

regard to the way we run things here on earth?
GH - I think the whole state of human civilization on
planet Earth right now, in the early years of the 21st century,
has a message for us. It's obvious that we're not fulfilling our
purpose here on this planet. I mean, it's an incredible
opportunity to be born in a human body and to be gifted by
the universe with this amazing, vibrant garden of a homeland
that we call planet Earth. To be given the opportunity to
learn, and to grow, and to develop here, have experiences,
make choices. Yet somehow as a culture -- particularly as a
254
global-industrial-technological culture -- we seem to be

turning our backs on all that beauty and wonder, and creating
a kind of nightmare Frankenstein civilization, which is based
around the ethic of endless production and endless
consumption. We've been taught to define ourselves purely as
material creatures with material wants and needs where the
spiritual aspect of ourselves has been sadly neglected. Very
much neglected by the mainstream religions, which are
supposed to be responsible for that area of human life. I
would say that they themselves are the most culpable in the
severing of our connection with spirit. But also neglected
thanks to our addiction to science, and our belief that
somehow science has the answers to everything. This too has
led to a diminishing of the spiritual aspects of life. And finally,
the big corporations, the profit motive, the advertising
industry, the whole picture of human life that is created in the
mass media -- again this denies our spiritual heritage and
seeks to persuade us we are purely material beings whose
function is to produce and to consume. So I actually think as
a society, as a civilization we find ourselves in a very callous
state, and in that state we should listen to the messages that
our home, our beautiful gem of a planet, is giving to us.
Those messages are that we cannot go on in this way for
much longer, that we are going to have to change our pattern
and our project for the future if human life is to survive. So I
hope that people will take that message and I hope it does
give us all pause for thought.
GDR - Aldous Huxley spoke of us living in artificial
paradises. You said we've made a Frankenstein, and here we
have our artificial paradise seeming to fall apart. I kept
thinking of this as areas of New York City went underwater
during hurricane Sandy. I thought of your book, Underworld,
and the parallels that it raised, because we often think, "Oh
that's not ever going to happen here." What do think the
cultures you've studied from our distant past would say to us
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
today?
GH - First of all I want to emphasize very strongly that I
am not going around the world wearing a sandwich board
saying that the end of the world is nigh. I don't think that we
should embrace gloom and doom. I think there is a danger
that if we dwell on destruction and chaos and misery and
collapse, we are likely to manifest that and bring it down
upon ourselves. I think it is important to look for the positive
in human life. But at the same time, it's important to be
realistic and to realize that we are doing things which are
fundamentally wrong and which are leading us into a very
dark place. If you look at the ancient mythologies all around
the world, there is a memory of a former golden age. Of a
great civilization that was at one time spiritually wise. That
had achieved a very high level of development and that was
destroyed in a tremendous cataclysm. Of course, the best
known example of this is the story of Atlantis, passed down
to us by the Greek philosopher Plato. He says that at one
time Atlantis was a wondrous civilization, but it fell from
grace, it fell out of harmony with the universe, it lost the
mandate of heaven. It angered the gods through its own
arrogance, through its own pride, through its own cruelty.
The planet, which itself is a god, responded to this by
striking Atlantis down. Plato tells us that it was all destroyed
in a single terrible day and a night, and after that he says
mankind had to begin again like children with no memory of
what went before. I have to say, in mythological terms, our
civilization today -- our arrogant, cruel, aggressive, demanding
civilization, the technological civilization of the West which is
going around the world gobbling up resources, paying no
attention to the rights and needs of less economically
privileged people -- this high-tech Western technological
civilization looks very much in mythological terms like the
next lost civilization. The next Atlantis, if you'd like. But my
point is, it doesn't have to be that way. We have choice.
256
That's the fundamental gift of being human. We have the

power of discernment. We can see where things are going
wrong and make the necessary adjustments to put things
right. It requires political courage, it requires individual
courage. It's very difficult to do, but we can make those
changes. For example, a simple suggestion: it would be
possible, for everybody who now eats meat, not to eat meat
anymore. None of us would suffer very badly from that. It's
perfectly possible. I'm not preaching vegetarianism here, but
it's perfectly possible to survive and live a full and rich life
and even to enjoy all one's meals without eating meat. But
huge numbers of people will not make that choice. If you say
to people, "The single best thing you could do for global
warming is to stop eating meat, to stop this industry which
rears and slaughters cattle to provide us with steaks and
hamburgers," well, a lot of people get upset by that. But
actually it is a personal choice any one of us could make. We
could all make it right now. I personally made that decision in
1986 and haven't eaten meat since. And I haven't suffered
one jot from it. I believe I've benefited from it in terms of my
health. If billions of people made that same decision, then
one of the single greatest factors that contributes to climate
instability in the world today would go out of business. That
is a way we personally can take power over the catastrophe
that faces us. But are people ready to do that? So far I see
very little sign.
GDR - We are helplessly distracted. How can we remove
this disconnect?
GH - It's difficult. It is just a plain fact, and I'll state it as
that, that we are all brainwashed. We live in a society that
practices incredibly sophisticated mind control. That mind
control operates through the education system, through
politics, through the advertising industry, through mass
communications to promote a particular ethic and way of life.
Since we take that message in from the day we're born, with
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
our mother's milk, until the day we die, it's very difficult to
step outside that reference frame and find another way to do
it. We easily fall back into habitual patterns, no matter how
shaken we may momentarily be by the latest natural cataclysm
to strike us for a few days or a few weeks.
GDR - In your book, Supernatural, you speak about the
positive aspects of shamanism. We need that kind of
shamanic influence to spread, but I've heard it said, "As a
Westerner, don't put on a loincloth and pretend you are a
native and try to go back to the old ways. We live in a modern
world that needs a new kind of shaman." Do you think we
need a new form of shaman today?
GH - Yes I do think the modern world needs a new,
modern kind of shaman. It's important to emphasize that the
essence of shamanism is the same all over the world, although
the ways in which it is practiced may differ substantially from
culture to culture. The essence of shamanism is altered states
of consciousness. That is the fundamental, universal
characteristic of all shamanism. It is the careful, thought-out,
responsible, targeted use of altered states of consciousness to
arrive at a broader understanding of the nature of reality. I
think it is possible for the West to develop its own relevant
shamanistic techniques to responsibly nurture and encourage
the exploration of altered states of consciousness by adults in
our society. In the very process of doing that, we will
transform and change our society. Another one of those
things that we are addicted to in the modern technological
West is a particular state of consciousness, what I call the
alert problem-solving state of consciousness, which is useful
for science and military activity and Wall Street and running
industry. I have nothing against the alert problem-solving
state of consciousness. It has its place. But our mistake as a
society is that we've elevated it to a pinnacle where it does not
belong, while diminishing all other states of consciousness. I
think that's another reason why we face such difficulties as a
258
civilization. Because altered states of consciousness are a

fundamental human right, a fundamental human need, and
it's right and proper that we should find ways to make it
possible for adults to experience altered states of
consciousness and the transformative changes that can come
about as a result of them. To undergo, if you like, those deep
adventures in consciousness. As a society, we need to not
demonize those adventures in consciousness, not to persecute
and punish them, not to create a modern-day witch hunt, not
to create an internal enemy that we will burn at the stake
because they're not doing what we want them to do. Rather,
we should say that this is an important part of human life
which we, as a society, are neglecting right now, and we need
to find a way to encourage it. You know, the visionary
plants, the psychedelic plants that are used by shamans
around the world are extremely serious business. This is not
something one does recreationally. That's one of the mistakes
we see in the Western world, that these ancient substances are
misused for recreational purposes. They're about deep
personal exploration, an encounter with a widened reality that
is otherwise closed off to our senses. This needs to be done
in a responsible, ceremonial, carefully thought-out way, where
the experience of those who have gone before is brought to
bear to help novices through the process -- a kind of initiation
if you like. I do see signs that this is happening in the West,
that a relevant Western shamanism is beginning to emerge.
But unfortunately the legal structure of our society, which
would send a person to prison for thirty years for
experimenting with their own consciousness, makes it very
difficult to give birth to this new form of shamanism.
GDR - How do we get the attention of the government
and show them that we want sovereignty? Do we behave like
the citizens of Amsterdam when psilocybin was made illegal?
They had huge groups of people came to the courthouse and
soaked the grounds with psychedelic spore water, while
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
surrounding the building with signs saying, "If you don't let
us do this, then your very courthouse will give us what we
want!"
GH - That's a good example of direct action. But I think
the thing that's really going to strike home is if we make our
politicians feel that they're going to lose their jobs unless they
do what we want them to do. That we actually regard it as a
fundamental human right to have sovereignty as adults over
our own consciousness. And unless an elected official is
willing to put that on his platform, we will note vote for him.
I see some give here in the United States, where cannabis use
was just legalized in Washington state and Colorado. This is a
wonderful, highly important development with global
implications and I really would like to pay tribute to the spirit
of democracy, which is still strong in the United States,
despite enormous corporate and governmental attempts to
subvert it. This could only happen in the United States. You
know, on the global stage the United States is a very negative
player. But in other ways, because of the activities that take
place at state level rather than at federal level, it's a very
positive player. The decision of the citizens of Washington
state with regard to cannabis will have implications all around
the world. This is one of the first vital steps in asserting our
right as adults to take sovereignty over our own
consciousness. Now the next fight that's going to come is
how will the federal government react to that? Will the federal
government respect state rights in the US? Unfortunately it
has a poor track record of so doing. President Obama has
himself a very poor track record in getting the federal
authorities to lay off, for example, even medical marijuana
production, where it is legal. There have been too many raids
on medical marijuana plants. My goodness, it'll be interesting
to see what happens. But you know, everything the United
States stands for -- the freedom of the individual, the right of
the individual to make choices about their own body and
260
their own consciousness -- hinges on what happens next over

this issue. Either the United States will be true to its principles
and Washington state will be allowed to do what they have
decided to do without interference from the federal
authorities, or it won't. Let's see what happens.
GDR - Hopefully it goes well.
GH - Hopefully it goes well, because in this way, step by
step, major changes occur. As a society, even if we don't like
the fact that someone else smokes marijuana, once we accept
as a society that it is a fundamental adult human right; if that
adult chooses so to do, then we have no right to get in his
face, break down his door, and send him to prison for doing
it. Once we start to accept that, the acceptance will spread
very quickly. And it will have remarkable effects on other
aspects of life, because this issue of respect for individual
sovereignty over consciousness is key to all other freedoms --
we can't speak of any other freedoms if we don't acknowledge
that basic freedom.
GDR - How do you cope with the bombardment of
negativity and the sense that things aren't going fast enough?
How do you stay positive?
GH - I try to get on with my life and, as far as possible, to
walk the walk and not just talk the talk. In those areas of the
world that surrounds me that I can have influence and that
can have an effect, I recognize that my ability to affect global
affairs is extremely small, as small as everybody else's. But the
choices I make about my own life, how I lead my life, and
what I do with my life, well those choices are under my
control. And I better make sure that those are positive rather
than negative choices. That's something all of us can do. To
consciously seek out, as far as possible -- we're all frail, we're
all gonna make mistakes, make errors. We can't always be
angels. But we can do our best. That's what I'm doing, and
that's what all of us can do. Nobody can stop us doing that.
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
Perception
& Reality
All is dark and we are still, basking in the warm heartbeat of

what we know is our universe. There is only muffled sounds
and darkness in a space in which we cannot tell ourselves
from the space around us. It is an ideal state and we are in a
paradise we will not remember. Then something happens,
something wholly unexpected and certainly uninvited. We are
put in a squeeze and we become very aware that something is
changing. It may possibly the very first time we become
aware of self in the most rudimentary and primal sense. This
paradise in which we have thrived is now purging us into a
cold and vile place in which we cannot float, but are pressed
on the hard surface of an alien plane by alien hands. Little do
we know, nor may we ever consider that this is the very first
epoch of conscious growth. Once the shock of being born
has passed, we are lulled back into comfort by mothers milk
and the swaddle of blankets.
Life is full of changes that challenge us and force us in
directions we are unwilling to go, to heights we are not
comfortable with, to fights we didn’t ask for. It is rare that
we even understand the reason things must be this way. Why
leave the idyllic setting of the womb for the bedraggled and
262
ragged world of the outside? Without our knowledge or

permission fate and chaos sweep us up in a flood of change
that may take us to the merry shores of a deeper Gnosis if we
are ready to learn. It seems the experiences whether
perceived as good or bad bring an opportunity to see the
world in a new way. But each experience adds nuances that
were not there before, each scar is gilded with guidance.
It was Jean Gebser’s vision that humanity is going through
epoch after epoch of revelation, a leap of lucidity that leads us
into unknown territory. Through each new cycle we see the
world a bit more clearly. We can liken this vision to the
evolution of the TV from its inception till now, going to
black and white, to color, to HD and on and on. With each
new revelation there is a fundamental change, we now
differentiate the sky from the earth and ourselves from the
tribe. I might suggest that the Hermetic adage, “as above, so
below” indeed has proven itself to be true and thoroughly
demonstrated in Gebser’s Ever Present Origin. The macrocosm
of the human experience over the ages is mirrored in the
microcosm of each of our lives.
We can surely all recognize that as children, our thoughts
are linear and without much nuance. The child screams, NO!
Meanwhile the parent ideally does their best to curb this less
than attractive behavior. As a child comes to maturity, more
and more enlightenment shines upon their mind, at least in
theory. The potential is there. Within the potential we can
indeed see how this new possibility may reflect upon the
macrocosm of humanity as a whole. It seems quite apparent
that we, like the struggling teen must deal with new
challenges, embarrassments, pressures and changes. It is the
young adult’s choice to engage whether circumstances are
ideal, or whether abuse, neglect and violence must be
overcome.
Gebser’s ideas now walk off the pages of his works and
present us with a true philosophical challenge, we must be the
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
ones who take that next step, we must be the ones who guide
the collective teenaged human mind to mature and truly
conscious decisions. It could be our DaVinci-like work of art
that sweeps across the morphic fields, adding a new
dimension of perception to a world whose vision seems so
limited.
As a child in a Fundamentalist Christian home, I
understood the world to be a set series of situations and
circumstances rigidly dictated by an archaic text. The color
and contour of my vision was monochromatic with its ideals
of good and evil, restricted and allowed. For a very long time,
this suited me well, providing me with the necessary tools to
form a rudimentary flat world on which I could pronounce
myself with pride to be whole. Through no small amount of
tumult and strife, I’ve concluded that the world that I
experienced did not fit the form and function of what was
proclaimed; the shapes have changed and the colors have
bloomed like the moment Dorothy stepped foot into OZ.
It is not necessarily a conscious decision, this changing of
epochs, it is sometimes the unseen hand of providence, that
glimmering moment where we are touched by something
divinely beyond our understanding that reaches out to us to
pull us up. Sometimes this brings us to an about face in our
view of the world. The Apostle Paul had a radiant vision of
transformative power, which forever changed his wiring; the
makeup of his perception. For him, this was the almighty,
this was a divine vision of Christ.
I was transfigured, made new, broken down and
rebuilt. A new lens was placed upon my view of the world, a
view that only closed eyes can reveal.
And now in my dreams and waking state, the lines blur
between the realms that the Buddha and Christ walked in, the
realms that shamans are said to traverse so frequently. I go
there every night and return with shocking insights, love, fear,
and astonishment at the wonder of it all.
264
The biggest lesson I’ve had to learn while exploring the

myriad states of consciousness is to not grip too tightly, to
not try to turn my experience to dogma, but to hold it like a
praying mantis in my hand as it decides for itself what to
do. I am a camera recording all of these confounding events,
cruising along the surface of consciousness like a bird gliding
with the breeze above a placid body of water. As I observe
through this eyeglass, I realize that it is only mine, that every
aspect of what I have known and seen is just a bevel of the
trillion faceted diamond of the collective human experience.
Through my life, the earth has remained fundamentally
the same. People go about their business, the ocean still roars
and the storms still come. Wildlife continues to do as it
does. Yet the world looks so different to me compared to
how it used to look. It is not the world that has changed, but
myself. I have changed my mind through experience,
struggle, study, love, hate and all manifestations that come
with human experience.
We see each other as separate entities, never quite
knowing people’s motives or desires to hurt or help us. Our
individual perceptions are the constructs of our lives, making
them as unique as our fingerprints. Through all of this, I hear
the voices of the Buddha, of the great masters, thinkers,
teachers and Shamans around the world as they proclaim that
this life is an illusion. But even if that is so, it is one of my
own construction and therefore I should consider every
wonder a gift, every challenge a call to live with Gnosis,
intrinsic understanding of my part that I must play.
And so I walk with love, I walk with a student’s heart,
always wanting to learn more and more, knowing that for all
I’ve strived for, I am still a fool looking to get wiser. Our
perception is a soothsayer that we must be cautious of, for
not everything it tells us is true. Consensus Reality is the
playing field on which we all find ourselves, but if we are to
understand the world, we must first individually understand
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GABRIEL D. ROBERTS
ourselves so we may play this game well.
266
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gabriel D. Roberts was born in Tacoma, WA in the late 70s. The

value of seeking the truth wherever it may be found was instilled in
him at a very young age. At 7 years old he was street preaching in
Salt Lake City, Utah and by 10 years old he had traveled to China,
Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Macau and The Philippines as a
missionary. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian
environment, his perspective on the world was greatly influenced by
the Bible and the fundamentalist view of its teachings. Having come
to adulthood, Gabriel moved from his hometown of Tacoma to the
more cosmopolitan Seattle to get his theology degree at Seattle Bible
College. Through his studies and endeavors to live the truth and find
a spiritually fulfilling life, Gabriel felt that there must be something
more to the story than a contest of sin and salvation. After many
years of study and with a lifetime of effort to connect with something
greater, Gabriel stepped away from his Christian faith. The details
and reasons are catalogued in his book, Born Again To Rebirth, which
is available now. Like many others who have had an earnest thirst
for the answers to the big questions of life, Gabriel was not satisfied
to settle for not knowing more. His continued research in the fields
of Science, Spirituality, psychedelics and Anthropology continue to
yield more and more exciting discoveries.
Please visit www.gabrieldroberts.com and stay in touch!
267

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The Quest

This book is dedicated to the lights of my life, Gideon and Gwyneth

nowhere else. Theirs is the thread that must be intertwined

Odd and I first met at an art showing in the Redhook section

GR - So your name is Elliot Odd-Edges?

infringement. They do that purposefully. The whole idea is to

going on between them now is - is reality physical, or is it

We are terrified of being here, it's very confusing, so

from nothing. Laurence M. Krauss is very big on the idea that

"individual units of consciousness" as Tom calls them, are out

of crisis with choice. really I don’t want people to just sit

and Rupert Sheldrake and others at Princeton, and the

OE - I like the idea that life is always optional. You can

The idea with enlightenment is that you become conscious of

disorienting is the dreams. To prove without any doubt in my

apologize if this is harsh, but about the starving Somalian

Anthony Peake is an excellent author and thinker, the kind

GDR - What first got you interested in the question of

besides oneself. These are experiences that I have written

communicates with its host organism through the release of

personifications of our DNA and that DNA uses

being broadcast by the Zero-Point Field. The English

experienced glimpses of the reality beyond the “Black Iron

suggested something very similar.

Brahman, the Cabbalists call it Or Ein Sof and the Gnostics

GDR - You're a person who has experienced a broad

experienced differently now.

and strength of the experience from the LSD I took.

GDR - I think it was Terence McKenna who said that if

KC - Ken Wilbur has written lots of different books.

What is your purpose behind Neurosoup.com? What is the

There's been many books written about amanita muscaria,

GDR - Well I think everyone is, yes.

GDR - If you were to fantasize about building an ideal

The Many Methods

In the study of many sacred texts, some may find themselves

1 . The most basic way to review material is the simply

types, foreshadowing and prophecies fulfilled. To many

point that God could send us all to hell if he wanted to,

ancient structures like the great pyramid and the pantheon.

accomplish something special, supernatural and yes, even

Randall Carlson is a world class scholar and researcher whose

GDR - What is the study of Sacred Geometry and how

GDR - Does the concept of sacred geometry lead one to

GDR - Sacred Geometry has gained popularity over time

artistically and scientifically.

religious beliefs. This insight emerges from a study of the

GDR - Who were the historical Gnostics, and how was

GDR - That's so awesome! What method do you use? Is it

that. Like the idea of causing a revolution to overthrow a

world, we've got to change all of these things; we've got to

participate in the usual polarity of funneling our energy into

September 11th 2001, and I had this horrible feeling in my

probably because they were burned alive. But I sent as much

didn't know what to do; I couldn't do anything about it. And

GDR - (Laughs) I was!

I met Dr. Sheldrake in New York a couple of years back and

GDR – I asked a bunch of my people online about

where it might be received.

have a particular effect in the context of religion and

spiritual or religious belief, but they leave open the question

anything that has ever been demonstrated. Whereas morphic

A New Science of Life which came out 2-3 years ago, in