The Secrecy Behind the Origins of Psychedelics

We have an idea. I actually brought some Sanskrit to show you. You want to see some Sanskrit? Hell yeah. Can you put it up on the screen? It's under the Soma tab. Oh, look at how beautiful that is. There it is. Their language, writing it in Sanskrit, God, it's so pretty. Do you want me to read it for you? Please, you can read that? Yeah. So this was my major in college. So in the very middle there, you can see Imam Indra Gavashira Yavashira Channapisha Akkathya Varsabhi Hisutama. And what he's saying there is this is from the Rig Veda, right? And it's the oldest literature in Western civilization. We think it's among the Indo-European languages. It's the oldest recorded literature that we have. It could be 1500 BC, 1700, perhaps much earlier, like the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek. This is the mother tongue of all the Indo-European languages. And what they write about a lot is Soma, which is both a God and the juice that is pressed from this God. And what they're talking about there is making this ritual potion, very much like the Kukkion that we find among the ancient Greeks. And here, Soma is described as a mixed potion. Yavashira means mix with barley. Gavashira from Sanskrit Go, Gava is milk, mix with milk. And so I've read all the theories that you have about what Soma was, whether it was the Hamanida Muscaria mushroom or some psilocybin containing species or DMT. The way that they describe Soma here is always a mixed potion, which, so in this case, mix with barley and milk. So that would be an Urgot, some sort of... Already they're mentioned. And so that's what Rock Hoffman and Wassen were saying in 1978. We have literature from the 7th century BC. It's called the Hymn Tedemeter, where they record these ingredients of what the Kukkion was. You asked, like, where is the actual evidence? So in the 70s, we didn't have much. It starts with the literature, which is what classicists do. And so there's this Hymn Tedemeter that was discovered in 1777, a year after we declare our independence from Graham's people. And what they found in there in line... Sorry, Graham. We're in Texas, man. Absolutely. Well done. I'm all for independence. I'd like to be independent of my own country, if possible, as well. Well, Texas has taken refugees at the moment, is it not? Well, that's what's happening here. That's why we're here. We're refugees from the country of California, the nation state of California. So why do we know why they combined it with milk? Was it just so that it was easier to consume? That's what we don't know. We don't know why the Kukion was this mixed thing either. But so in the Hymn Tedemeter, they record these ingredients. It's alfi, which is barley, hudur, which is water, and blehon, which means mint. And that's all we had. So it doesn't say milk? You didn't say milk? That was in soma. In soma? Oh, I'm sorry. Which they mix with all kinds of things. And not just barley and milk, but also honey. As a matter of fact, soma is often identified with madhu, which is honey in Sanskrit. McKenna speculated that there was a transfer in culture of psychedelic-based culture to an alcohol-based culture based on climate change and also based on preserving things in honey. And that honey would create mead. And mead, which if people don't know, is an alcohol beverage that's actually made with honey. Mm-hmm. Do you think that this was the case with the use of honey as well, that it's used as a preservative, or was it used to make it taste better, more palatable? We don't know. That's the problem when we're talking about ancient plants and fungi. Plants especially. We don't know what plants they're talking about. So the ancient literature records all kinds of plants across the language. If I could jump in, Joe, you're absolutely right. There was secrecy that surrounded the use of these potions in the ancient world. There's a case from Athens of the potion from Eleusis being used for recreational purposes. And this is roundly condemned by all concern that it should only be used for the sacred and spiritual purposes of which it was intended. So there was a great deal of secrecy that surrounded the use of these potions. And the potions were a doorway or a gateway into another level of reality. And what's fascinating from Eleusis and many other ancient accounts is the way that people come back having lost their fear of death, that they don't regard death as the end anymore. It's just another stage on the journey, just the beginning of the next great adventure. And Brian is absolutely right to draw attention to the modern work with Psilocybin. And again, we find people who are terminal cases who are imminently facing death, losing their fear of death as a result of using Psilocybin. So we can begin to see connections between what we understand about these extraordinary substances in the modern world and how the ancient world used them. That does seem to be a universal theme, this theme of alleviating the fear of death. And this comes up constantly with people that I know personally that have had it, had these psychedelic experiences. They say, well, I feel like I went to heaven. Or I feel like now I understand why people believe there's this perfect afterlife that I've experienced it. You see, a lot of the critics will say that it's some kind of natural human tendency that we don't want to die and that we're afraid of death and that religions provide us with some sort of solace, some sort of feeling of security. But I don't think that washes at all. I think what's striking about the psychedelics is it's a direct experience that the person has. They have an experience. It's not a teaching. It's not something that they're told about. It's not a scripture that they read. It's an experience that they have. And that experience eliminates the fear of death. I think Brian, by the way, having written the immortality key for which I've only provided the forward, I think Brian is absolutely right to be a psychedelic virgin. In my case, because I have used psychedelics and many other substances, a lot of my critics just try to write off all my work, whether it's on Lost Civilizations or on psychedelics. They try to write it all off as the ramptings of a sort of drug-fueled maniac. And I think it's very smart of Brian, very smart of Brian not to put himself in that situation. I hope he will work with psychedelics in the future. But I think he was right not to work with psychedelics before writing this book and to concentrate on the evidence. Well, Michael Pollan, who later in life experienced psychedelics and wrote pretty brilliantly about them, for me, he's one of the more interesting people to discuss it because Michael's an investigative journalist. He takes deep dives into these subjects and his deep dive into psychedelics was incredibly illuminating. And so for him, I really enjoyed talking to him about it and I really enjoyed his book as well. His perceptions of it were really unique because you're talking about a guy who lived his whole life without them and then really dove head first for his book. And converse to that. It's kind of what happened to me when I wrote Supernatural. Apart from one experience with LSD in 1974, I hadn't used any psychedelics until I began to research Supernatural back in the early 2000s. Because I'm a kind of boots on the ground researcher, I felt it was essential that I have these experiences. What I couldn't guess was the way that the experiences would utterly change and transform my life. And I can understand from a level of personal experience why psychedelics do lie at the root, I think, of all the world's religions. And those religions are now busily at work trying to deny that connection. Well, they're not just trying to do it. There's many people in science that are trying to deny these connections too. And it's so unfortunate that the people that are trying to deny these connections or the significance of these experiences haven't had them. I don't think anybody who has a dimethyl tryptamine experience can just dismiss it as being no big deal. It's too crazy. You need to do it, sir. This guy. I mean, just the fact that it's one of those things where everyone who does it comes out of it saying, I can't believe that's real. I can't believe you can just get there that quickly, that three puffs and all of a sudden you're in Narnia. I just can't. And we're not way more intense than Narnia. You're in Narnia and you're in a place where entities are actually communicating with you and speaking to you and teaching to you. I mean, this is another aspect of psychedelics is the moral aspect of psychedelics. Critics and enemies of psychedelics want to associate them with some kind of immorality. But actually anybody who's worked extensively with psychedelics will know that they contain moral teachings, whether it's the mushrooms or whether it's LSD. They cause us to examine our own behavior, our own impact upon others, to question our unkindness to others and to give us at least the push to begin to be better people and more nurturing and more caring people for others. So this strong moral element in psychedelics again is totally ignored by the critics who just want to demonize these substances for reasons that I think are rather sinister, actually. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere, but after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye. Mmm. Mmm.