Sense of Soul - The Magic of Sound with East Forest

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Today on Sense of Soul we have East Forest a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and ceremony guide. He’s a pioneer figure in the psychedelic music space, and is now making his mark in the film industry with, Music for Mushrooms. The documentary documents East Forest’s personal journey, blending his groundbreaking work in guided psilocybin ceremonies with his deep connection to music. A long-time collaborator of the late Ram Dass, East Forest's work seamlessly integrates shamanistic practices with guided psychedelic experiences. These experiences create safe spaces where participants can confront their pain and fears, rediscover hope, and reconnect with their inner selves. For over 15 years, East Forest (Krishna-Trevor Oswalt) has been a thought leader and a grounded voice in the wellness landscape, guiding listeners through long-form compositions that resonate in diverse settings—from community yoga classes to luxury retreats. As the cultural conversation around psychedelics shifts towards mainstream acceptance, with headlines on decriminalization and groundbreaking studies, East Forest’s music has become the go-to soundtrack for this emerging era of exploration and transformation. His multidisciplinary work spans ceremonial concerts, collaborations with Johns Hopkins University's Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research (particularly the neuroaesthetics project), serving as faculty at Esalen, leading meditations, and speaking engagements worldwide. He is also the co-founder of JourneySpace, a platform dedicated to guided psychedelic experiences. As the entertainment industry takes note of the psychedelic renaissance, East Forest’s innovative approach to combining music and sound with personal transformation is leading the way. His work offers not only meditations, retreats, and a weekly podcast (Ten Laws w/ East Forest) but also continues to push the boundaries of how art and science can intersect to create profound healing. For more information, please visit www.MusicforMushrooms.com www.eastforest.org Follow his journey on: https://www.instagram.com/eastforest https://www.youtube.com/eastforestmusic Check Out Sense of Soul’s NEW 2025 Affiliates on www.senseofsoulpodcast.com look for the Network of Lightworker’s!  

Hey Soulseekers, it's Shanna. Journey with me to discover how people around the world awaken to their true sense of soul. Now go grab your coffee. Open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. To be on Sense of Soul we're entering the ethereal realm of East Forest, a pioneer figure in the psychedelic music space. His work offers not only meditations, retreats, and his podcast called Ten Laws with East Forest, but also continues to push the boundaries of how art and science can intersect to create profound healing.

His latest endeavor is the feature-length film Music for Mushrooms, a narrative documentary showcasing the transformative power of psychedelics, music, and community. His recent soundtrack, called Lovely, serves as the musical answer to the film's central journey providing an album to guide listeners on a deep journey of introspection from start to finish. East has over 30 albums and notable collaborations with such artists such as Ram Dass and John Hopkins. He has performed in over 18 countries and is a thought leader and grounded voice in the wellness landscape,

guiding listeners through long form compositions that resonate from community yoga classes to luxury retreats. And he's with us today. Please welcome East Forest. I really think that it's something that's overlooked, like the power of music. Well I tend to agree. I bet you do. I can't wait to hear your story, your journey, how you got here. I suppose mushrooms played a big role in that. And that I had some journeys and experiences with with mushrooms and music that that

aligned in a way that were really really important to me and invaluable and I think I wanted to recreate that in a sense so I started trying to make music to bring myself to those places that I'd kind of stumbled into but that were almost realer than real like they showed me aspects of life that I had always hoped for but hadn't ever articulated or experienced. And my father is very much a rationalist, materialist, atheist. And that was sad for me. But that was sort of my view because that's how I was brought up. And I'm a very sensitive kid and adult too. And so I kind of helped and dreamt

and felt that there was more to life. And psychedelics were the first time that I really felt it. Like truly, there was not, it wasn't an idea or a concept. It felt like I just went somewhere that was very real. And so music played a big role in that. And ever since then, I started working on making music for that space. And then I had a friend that was propelling me

into guiding in that space through music. And we just did that more and more and more over the years. And so then I, after doing that in the underground for seven or eight years, then I started playing out in public a little more. And then that was another like eight or 10 years. And here we are. Wow. So when you're, when you talked about your first experiences of psychedelics, I

mean, was this like in high school, you know, like playing around like recreationally? It was later. Yeah, it was in college actually. Okay. Okay. Yeah. The very first was, was recreational and I stumbled into a really powerful experience. Thank God that was positive. Right. And from there, I think I kept kind of investigating, but not understanding what I was doing. And it took another, oh, almost 10 years for me to then connect the dots to like shamanic lineages and more intentional spaces or ceremonial spaces. So I'm also a genealogist and I got there through, uh, my own ancestry.

It started out and then I started to work with other people and I've probably done like, I don't know, 500 plus trees. I stopped counting, but I found out that I had a shaman in my lineage. Have you done your ancestry in genealogy? Well, my speaking to my father, he got really into genealogy? Well my speaking my father he got really into Genealogy as well, but I don't think we figured out professions. It's more just like people and places Yeah, from and yeah. Yeah, I thought it was really just fun putting together a tree at first as well But then I felt

Like they had stories that I needed to know, like, and I needed to give voice to or just awareness. And that shaman that I found in my tree, I had went to a medium one time and she said, you need to connect with this shaman you have in your lineage. And I was like, how does she know I have? You know, I just discovered this. I said, well, how do I go about connecting with him?

And she says, Well, you need to connect with them how he connected. I don't know anything about this. So she gave me a card and said, You need to go take these shaman classes. And it was through the drum journey. Everyone was all, you know, in this class, there was like 20 of us and everyone's supposed to go meet their spirit animal. And I'm like, no, I know what I'm here for. You know, screw the spirit animal. And so I go down into this earth layer, you know, and there's a hawk and I'm like, no, you know, I want to meet this ancestor.

And I follow the hawk to the like this very dense area. And then this wolf comes out. And again, I'm looking for this man. And sure enough, this wolf stands up and turns into a man. And all of a sudden, I hear the comeback beat. And I was very surprised, but I've gone under, um, so quickly into trance. I mean, the rhythm of the drum, it's usually for me, it's my quickest way in. Yeah. That's the most traditional way. It entrains the brain, you know, so it's, it's getting you into a trance state. And that's probably why we're into like four on the floor music and dance music too as well. And we hear a heartbeat in the womb.

It's the first thing we hear. So it is, we're kind of built to work with rhythms like that. And that is like hands down the most traditional shamanic experiences with a rattle or a drum at the start. Yeah. I was just about to mention that rattle. You know, I had heard that, I don't know exactly where it was, but they had made it illegal to drum, you know, like when they were colonizing.

And one of the reasons why they made the rattle was for that reason. It's like a mini drum. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I have got some, I'm from New Orleans. So I've got some voodoo. I got Marie Laveau in my tree. So, you know, connecting with my ancestors and how they connected.

I found that to be almost music to my DNA. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just know that my grandfather played piano as kind of musical, but beyond that, I have no, no information. And it's just crazy to think that beyond like, I don't know, about two generations, things just kind of disappear.

And it puts into perspective our own lives as well and all the things we're doing and striving for. It is with the indigenous cultures that they had to know, you know, I forget how many generations, maybe like seven generations before, they had to know them all and I feel like we've lost that tradition here. Yeah, no we don't have that kind of connection anymore. Nor do we think about very much how things would affect generations moving forward. Yeah. Frankly, most people only care about themselves and they're not, they're definitely not thinking backwards, but moreover,

they don't really have that information. Particularly in America, I think a lot of people are bereft of a sense of lineage. They, you know, for a lot of people are bereft of a sense of lineage. They, you know, for a lot of people, their parents typically came over within one to three generations and be on that. They're like, I don't really know. It's, yeah, it's a modern affliction for sure. It's too bad. But before, you know, people wrote, they did a lot of writing in the newspapers. You know, when Sally went to go visit Polly, you know, down the road, it was in the newspapers.

So there is a lot of information you can find out. That's cool. Yeah, I find it pretty. And plus you could track so much because like the archdiocese kept better records than the government, you know. Yeah, I think the Mormons have a lot of it too. Some of their libraries. Yep.

They're actually the biggest library for sure. But you know, I know for myself, I can get lost in music. Growing up, I think about how music was always a part of my life and how it can transcend you in time. What was your kind of like genre or did you have one or do you have one besides your mushroom music? I liked lots of kind, I liked almost all music except for I didn't get too much into metal and I didn't get into country and I'd say that's all pretty much true today. But I grew up on the radio and it was in Oregon. And so it was very pretty mainstream

and a lot of school music. But the stuff that opened my mind first was some jazz. I got really into jazz and it was like Bill Evans and an adventure that led into things like Alice Coltrane and more of the spiritual jazz movement. And then into Keith Jarrett and Keith Jarrett became a big thing for me. To this day I'm quite a fan of him.

And then in college I was getting into electronic music like Apex Twin and boards of Canada and starting to open my horizons in that zone. And then I was also getting into hip hop scene at that time was kind of the golden age in my opinion but maybe that's just like because I'm an older person looking back on when hip-hop was good like the roots and back in the day when they're first starting or Tali or most stuff and or even common before he was an actor and so all that influenced me and and then also just like pop music, indie pop music, avant pop music, anything from Radiohead to whatever was sort of coming up.

I love Radiohead. And then I got really into things like post-rock, like Sigur Rós, which I think is sort of an obvious influence on my music. But I really, to this day, I'm quite interested. I like a lot of older music, but I also like listening to what's modern and how people are pushing the limits, sort of innovating with music, both like the sound and the engineering and producing.

And then there's just so much you can do these days. And so when I hear stuff that's kind of original, that usually perks up my ears. Yeah, me too. I'll be honest, you know, we would, uh, trip mushrooms and listen to the doors for like hours. I see that. Yep.

Yep. I got into the doors. Yeah. The doors, man, they were huge when they were in their hay day. I think some people don't realize how big some of those bands really got, but some great like keyboard playing on that band too. I'm one of those people that I've been singing the wrong words to songs for for two decades and, you know, and just really like the beat.

Right. So I'm paying more attention to the music than the words. And then when I pay attention to the words, I'm like, Oh my God, that's terrible that I'm singing that. But, you know, I have four kids, so I talk about them a lot, but my number three is on the spectrum. And he has the best taste in music

and kind of like you, just like very, you know, rounded with lots of different genres. And when he was in school, he liked to listen to the violin. There was a teacher that would play like modern songs played by the violin, and he would come home and listen to it hours upon end. It's really cool, but it helped him center himself. There was something it was doing that was calming his soul. Yeah, well, music is inherent to what we are as human beings.

So I just feel like the more we open up to it, the more it can do its magic and its work. And your son's just very sensitive to that. And so he gets the full benefit of, you know, really giving his attention fully to it. Instruments like the violin or the human voice, things that are a little less defined in particular pitches like the piano, you're certainly synthesizer, you hit a key and that's what it plays. Whereas with the voice or in a violin depending on where the finger is and how you're bowing, it's a little different technically every time. It has these overtones and

it's very human in a way. It's very rich. That's also why it's such a difficult instrument to play because it's so nuanced. But when you hear someone doing it well, there's a lot of information in there. Oh, I love that you said that. So my, my youngest plays the violin. She loves it very much. She is, she doesn't have to even read music. She just can hear something and play it. She likes to challenge herself.

Cool. That's great. Yeah. And my dog likes to sing with her every time. I mean, you will howl the entire time, stand outside of her door. And she's trying to practice. It's really amazing. My other dog doesn't do it.

Um, she doesn't seem to be fazed by it whatsoever, but he, as soon as he hears it, he starts howling and he sings the whole time. Only with violin or any music. Only with the violin. Okay. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, I like that. It's cool.

I mean, at one point I was looking into what types of music dogs like. I like dogs and I was trying to write music that I thought they would like. And people would say like, Oh, my pet, they would send me videos of showing how their dog would always pass out when I put on my music. There's a little bit of research on this and it seems like they like melodies that are relatively simple or, you know, and that's about all I could really get. But the rest was anecdotal, you know, watching what my dog would do when I play certain things. He's also the only dog that I've had who responds really well

to Reiki. In fact, if I have a client here, he'll wait outside my door and the minute I open it, he lays on his back like, my turn. He like knows. He's an old soul. Yeah. Dig it. I love it. So I've been studying like ancient text for some years specifically the Gnostic Gospels which led me to researching in the Bible King David and I'm not sure are you familiar with the story of King David and No, I know the cliff notes of Christianity Yeah, which we're told by man. So he was just like some shepherd boy, David, and he had brothers and some prophet comes to his farm and he, he's playing the liar.

He's just in the, in the field playing the liar. And, um, King Saul at the time summons David to come play the lyre for him and live with him to play this lyre every day and it says he would play the lyre and it would summon these spirits out of him like these demons and would like create like this bubble of protection around him. The lyres talked about through mythology and in many different cultures all around the world. I mean from very very early. But summoning spirits and all this stuff it made me think like they knew something and we lost this wisdom through time. That's in the Bible talking about him playing the instrument. Yeah. That's cool. We are

probably more open to some of these effects. I mean, there's a lot of things in there that you wonder what was really going on. Even just like the Bernie Bush, the Acacia DMT rich plant. But there's a lot of these things where someone goes off and they essentially have a vision and they're like, let me come back and disseminate it to you. And so I have to like quote unquotequote translate it and I think it'd be better if people could have a direct experience themselves and even to this day that's somewhat of people are afraid of that like you know not having control over what you know people are told or what they think their experience is. But with music, it's strange.

It's so popular on the planet. And it's almost like it's market potential is completely saturated, but we don't know what we're doing. Like we haven't fully awakened to what it is music is and how we can use it. Like in ways you're discussing. But it's, it's, it's interesting. It's like, not that it's been like suppressed. It's actually like everywhere, but we're a bit blind to the potentiality perhaps.

You know, I had a rabbi on years ago, fascinating conversation. He blew my mind. I think it exploded that day. he blew my mind. I think it exploded that day. And he talked about how a practice that they still do today, and he is a rabbi in Israel, that you go into this cave, like all rabbis, they've been doing this since Moses and probably before. You go into this cave and you burn the Akash and you don't leave the cave until this fire is out. And he says they would hallucinate like if this was a psychedelic and then they would come out and write and many of the stories and I'm like, wait a second, hold up.

Are you telling me most of the Bible is, you know, accounts of these people tripping? And he said, yeah, most, you know, most Jews know this, these stories that were on different dimensions were happening and were told and written from those experiences. Makes sense to me. Yeah. I think someone was saying there's only two books in the Bible that maybe, like, as you're saying, they've been written and rewritten and translated so many times over time. And you know, I think it was Ecclesiastes and is Job one of them? Is that one of the books? It's difficult after thousands of years to parse

through I think the information and that makes a lot of sense to me that people have these direct experiences of expanded consciousness and altered states in whatever form. You know, we all have this capability, even just like breath work, you know, so I mean, people probably experimented and not to mention things happen to you like hardships or starvation or, and things that do alter your consciousness. And even like Joseph Smith and the Mormons, he essentially, I mean, who knows what experience he had or didn't have, but it's the same kind of idea of like, I was alone and I got this information and now, you know, I'm giving it to you, but you can't see it. Oh, it's destroyed, you know, that kind of thing. Whether or not he was completely fabricating that or he had some sort of personal experience that he

was then manipulating to essentially get other people to join on. But I feel like these days you can have direct experiences. You can have teachers to help you maybe understand your experiences, but they're yours. And you know, the age of the guru in some ways is over. We're here now, the calling is to like do your own curation and work. But having that within a framework and a container that you're not completely getting lost in delusion, self aggrandizement, because you can go that direction too. And where you're kind of like stunting your own growth in your own loops, making

your own justifications. And then you get certain things. Sometimes it could be as simple as, uh, just belief systems, but people often use this for their own power. I mean, we've seen that throughout history. So, yeah, you know, it's interesting. Well, Joseph Smith, I mean, he probably knew a lot of the esoteric teachings from the Freemasons. So I'm sure that he, you know, knew how to get to that level of consciousness. Maybe.

It's just part of being a human being for forever, all around the world in different ways. It's just funny that as we grow as a culture and technologically, there's that suppression where it's seen as a threat. And I think that's important to look at. It's like, well, why? Why is it a threat now? And it's something about like the systems that we're in that help keep everything propped up require our collective agreement whether it's money or really anything they're all just collective agreements and they want cohesions and in some ways the feeling to create control is understandable perhaps that's in a

coming out of a kind of fear they're like what if we can't control people what if people just you know don't we can't control people? What if people don't agree and it's chaos? But there's also a lack of trust there about the nature of humanity deep down and what is the potential? What is human potential truly? And I don't know if we've had a society that I know of where we've let that truly flourish or blossom to see. You know, over the past years I've discovered three different devices that they will actually implant into your body to help stimulate your nerves. Um,

you know, specifically your vagus nerve, they have one that you could hold here when they'll they'll implant. I, my mother-in-law just got one in the back of her head. They put one in. This sounds crazy. Who's they? Who's putting these in your body? I know.

Well, they're doctors. And the reason why is because they're trying to stimulate your vagus nerve so that way it helps the inflammation in your body. Well, I had just, I had gotten some long haul COVID symptom and it was like this, I forgot exactly what they call it, but it's where like the bottom of my stomach was like paralyzed in some way, like it wasn't opening properly. And I did some research that they said they could put how they fixes. They could put this device in your stomach to stimulate this

part of your stomach to open. And then also at the same time, I had someone on who she specialized in chanting and mantra, and she told me that if you make the sound that sounds like a steamboat that vibrates your lip like it stimulates your vagus nerve to open. So I was like, well, shoot, it's either take my doctor suggested prolozac for a month or this so I'm going to go with the other. And sure enough, it worked.

I know like what you just said, they don't want everyone to know that you actually do have the power to create this healing within your body by using sound rather than getting a device implanted in your body that's going to compromise your entire immune system. Yeah. And these are yoga techniques that have been around, right? And it's funny when we hear them repackaged in ways by Western influencers, it's like,

yeah, there's another name for that. That's Yoganidro, or that's, it's like, that's been around. And it's amazing what can be done. Certainly there's economic interests that don't want other solutions, whether it's just against antidepressants or whatnot. But at the same time, people are, we're in a culture that's looking for quick fixes. They don't want to,

they actually don't even trust themselves that they might have the discipline or the, you have to have the belief that it could work. Like the placebo effect is not a negative thing, it's an amazing thing, but it is showing you that your opening of possibility is central to the happening. And we have this cynicism inherently baked into our consciousness as a people

that that's not possible, doesn't work, that we are powerless, therefore I need the pill, or I need the device. It's the thing that's like you turn a switch, I, okay, it does its thing. It's an external influence on me. And we can start from a place of the power of choice, of volition. We see this a lot in pain too. You know, Pain that is connected to psychology, which is an extremely real thing. This isn't just an idea I have. Not only have I experienced it personally, but there's plenty of research on it. Moreover, if you hurt yourself, your brain is interpreting that and telling you you have pain.

It's a brain activity. And yet, even for myself, it took me a long time to believe that I had to go through it myself to actually see like irrefutably, Oh, it wasn't something physical, it took me years to come to that realization, but after I had, I had to exhaust all these other options and now I can, I can see what our beliefs and our subconscious, the role that that really plays and how this amazing spacesuit that we have works. It's incredible.

We're so multi-dimensional. And I think that music, it hits that. You could feel it in your body. You know, you could hear it. If you close your eyes, you might be able to see it. It's the highest expression of human potential besides like what a love is or humor. So music is like in this triad for me and it's vibration.

And you're talking about like this vibration you were doing with your mouth and how that's affecting your health. So music is a form of vibration. Obviously not only can you listen to it and experience it as the pressure waves that's physical but you can produce it within your own body through your voice. We all can sing and on top of that we can do it together and literally harmonize like and in doing that it creates all these like social cohesions and storytelling and myths. I mean it's it's this technology that helps us not just

ground into the human space but bridge into the non-physical spaces, which is emotion, which is metaphor, which is psychedelic, across time and space. Music just bridges to those spaces. And we take it for granted. I mean, it's magic. And when you've experienced some of those potentials in an altered state with music,

even as you spoke to in a shamanic experience at the beginning that was just drumming and that's it. Just like you relaxing and even that. A lot of people don't know that. They don't even know that this is a thing they hear about and like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or that's certain people or that's drugs. It's like, I don't have to tell you, like, it's all there for the taking for all of us. Like, it's just your courage is the doorway.

And you don't have to walk through that doorway. You don't, but it's there. And I don't want there to be barriers that are like from the government or otherwise. It should be like, we should be do the opposite. It should be actually, there's a lot of support and tools and education and access. And it's like, well, there are all sorts of tools for you here.

Let's figure out what might be best for you. Cause it is not true that everyone should do ayahuasca or everyone should do mushrooms. That's not true. We all have unique physical limitations and psychological limitations, but maybe breath work is right for you. Or maybe, maybe surprise, surprise,

just listening to something the music and being guided through a relaxing listening experience that alone I've seen it so many times crack people open and strangely today just listening to something and not multitasking not doing anything else just listening to a piece of music is like a radical act that is counterculture now right we have to like schedule it out it fully is counterculture now. Right. We have to like schedule it out. It fully is counterculture. I mean, if you want to subvert the paradigm of collapse, that is one actual way to do it. Um, it's about reconnecting to yourself and, uh, giving yourself the conditions

that are just conducive to truth. Hmm. Yeah. Very, very true. It's beautiful. the conditions that are just conducive to truth. Yeah, very, very true. That's beautiful. And when you were saying that I can, I was thinking about nature the whole time, you know, how I love to go outside every morning. I have like a ritual and I think it was yesterday morning and it was so quiet and it was shocking quiet. And it was shocking to me,

like it stood out because I was like, where's all the birds? I love to listen to them sing and I kind of know them. I know the different songs that they sing. But it was like this stillness. And at first it was uncomfortable. And then I realized I was uncomfortable. And so I went further and I went further and until I was just in the stillness. And even that was music.

Yeah. I've said the Gordon Hemptons quote many times that silence is the absence of noise, not the absence of sound. And we need to cultivate silence in our lives more. And thinking of silence, again, not as an absence of all sounds, just what is creating that noise in our lives, both literally and figuratively.

We have energetic noise so much, everything from our thoughts and to-do lists and manicness to a refrigerator humming or all the things going on. And it absolutely quite literally affects our cortisol levels and our physical bodies. And that affects your everything. So there's positive vibrations and frequencies and hurt, you know, different hurts. And is there negative?

Well, I'm not tying it to a particular frequency at all. I'm just saying like things that agitate our nervous system. So, you know, think of it like distress. If you're on a busy street and your nervous system is trying to analyze, or it is analyzing all this input, it's like the cocktail effect. And you have the ability to do that. And you have the ability, you hear and you have the ability you hear your name amidst like a busy room you actually like

Your unconscious is paying attention away all the time. You're filtering out, you know billions if not trillions of bits of information moment to moment from your visual acuity to sonic to temperature everything energetic and filtering that down into what we know as waking consciousness. And for myself, when I've been on really chaotic journeys with plant medicines, I have a lot of gratitude for what it means to be in equilibrium of this right now. Like this consciousness is amazing. It's like, wow, I can, if I want to, I'm not in pain, which is a huge gift, and I'm just here.

And that might sound like, oh, that's boring. It's like, are you kidding me? Like, do you realize how little it takes to throw us off where, like if you're in pain, pretty much there's nothing else you can think about, let alone do anything. Everyone talks about your health being the greatest thing, but it's the same thing. Like if you had a jackhammer or, you know, jackhammer or something that's sort of an HVAC system that's actually quite loud,

you never think about it until it gets turned off. And then there's like this sigh of relief. We're like, oh, geez, I didn't realize. So all of this is affecting your body's like adapting and in some ways fighting back to try and get that equilibrium for you. Chemical reaction in your body whether it's you know cortisol or adrenaline or dopamine and and and so it's just you know think about it like stress on the system itself. It affects your blood pressure, reflects you know your state of being. We know that stress you know over time is very bad for like inflammation

and how that can lead to all sorts of physical problems and disease. It's so funny because when you do move into a new house, all of a sudden there's these new sounds. And so you are almost like irregular until you adjust to it and then you don't know it's there anymore. Yeah. And restaurants like the smart ones have acoustical panels. I see,

I love pointing them out to people. They're often somewhat hidden or made to look like artwork. And it makes a huge difference in your dining experience. And the ones that don't have it, it's so obvious because oftentimes like, man, it's hard for me to like hear you across the table, or I feel like a little stressed. Just like, it might feel exciting at first, but you're also just like, geez, it's kind of intense. And the ones that have a little bit of budget, they know they're like, this goes a long, long way for the dining experience to be a better one. I'm going to have to start paying attention.

I want to see. They're usually on the ceiling, but you'll see them and they're there to absorb the reflections of sound bouncing around that make it louder and louder and more chaotic. It's noisy. Yeah. Yeah. So I had on JJ Hurtok, who he actually, him and his wife created an entire CD of chanting the names, the different names of God, which is so cool.

Yeah, beautiful. But so one of the letters in the name of God, Yod-Heh-Vah-Heh, Vav, which is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It's also, each letter means so much, but it's the first three letters of my last name as well, of Ra, is the last part. And so we were talking about it and his wife, Dr. Desiree, was like, you should be chanting your name. And so I started to chant my name. I've chanted my name ever since. But it's a very, very powerful sound. I was like, I never knew this about my name.

So when you said, when you hear your name, I never thought about that. I didn't know this, I didn't understand it, but then I experienced it, and then it became like this truth within me, and it became part of my practice. It definitely lights up my DNA. And actually I ended up finding out that it's a Sanskrit word as well.

Yeah. So I was going to say is like Sanskrit in particular, uh, had a lot of encoded knowledge. Their words are many of them's for my understanding. They're not just the word has a meaning, like we think of as words, but it's the sound of the word is encoding the energy of something. And so something like the Hanuman Chalisa, for instance, it's not just like what the words all mean. It's like it's a spell in a sense of incantation of sound and Va or Ra, this open vowel, we can make, if you think of the word Om,

if you put an A in front of it, Aom, you're essentially saying, like the vowels were able to, that's part of language or part of this human voice box. And I believe to me, an acknowledgement of hidden recognition that came early on of the power of not just speech, but really going one layer beneath that like thought, like consciousness. And what we speak,

what we think, this has been diluted into things like manifestation or the secret, but it's showing you how there is a literal cause and effect from, this is a physical thing when I'm speaking, it's vibrating in my voice box, it makes pressure waves in the room and so forth, those bounce around the walls. And we just think, well, maybe that's where it ends. But I feel that there's a cosmic significance

or dare I say quantum significance of cause and effect essentially. Like perhaps it's about law and it's quite physical and they were understanding this way back. And so it's the power of words essentially of our own potential of having this thing where we speak through sound and song essentially in sentences.

And we used to have, I think even more knowledge about what that potentiality was. And right now, we're stuck in maybe poetry being the highest form, which is like emotional. But it's rare that we think about like the auto-modo, poetic, if that's how you say it, or even just like the vibrational feeling behind sound. like the vibrational feeling behind sound. You know, it makes me think about how like my my mama, my grandma, she would hum. And I can hear her humming very clearly. So when you said that it doesn't just end there, you know, it's I can hear it now, you know, and even when you think of someone who passed, you can still hear

their voice. You know, if you focused on, you know, remembering them, I remember their voice tones. Our voices like a snowflake. It really is the human voice to me is a direct gateway to the soul, that in the eyes, besides us, your energy. But the voice, that's one of the reasons why singing and singers and that kind of thing is how we really connect with musicians in a big way. Because it's just a straight path to the source, which is the soul, which is all of us, to truth. Truth being the highest good. And we're so careless with our speech. Look, this stuff is baked into a lot of teachings, even like the four agreements, more contemporary teaching about being mindful of your word. It's the same idea.

And it's telling us that stuff actually matters, even if you think like, well, I'm in private or it's just in my head or it's like, but what if it, what if you experimented for yourself and to see if there might be cause and effect to how you work with that more consciously? Learned a lot about words. You know, I definitely find the etymology of words. You know, you mentioned the word choice earlier, you know, originally it was Greek for heresy. I found that to be interesting. So it was almost as if

choice was wrong in some way for so long. Yeah, I haven't heard that before. I'd have to look into that, but, uh, I, it's hard to wrap my head around that one. I mean, I'm, I'm definitely a heretic. I'm a proud heretic. I, I call, I call myself divinely defiant. There you go. Yeah. There's this text that I love.

Synostic text is called the Trimorphic Protonoia. And it's about these three permanences. And one is the first thought, which is Sophia, which is a feminine aspect of God. The other is Jesus, which is the Word. And the other is the voice. And the voice is the all the inevitable. And that is the triad or the Trinity. That's cool. Where did you see that?

So it's a Gnostic text. So you could find it like gnosis.org. I believe they have most of the Gnostic texts, but it's the most powerful thing I've ever read in my life. I actually did a video on it. In the Gnostic gospels, they talk more about the Trinity than in the Bible. The Trinity, of course, cannot be without a mother. How can you have creation without mother? So there again, that's heresy. Heresy for pure logic. Yeah.

Everyone's, everyone has come from a mother. Everyone. Yeah. Absolutely. Everyone's everyone has come from a mother. Everyone. Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. So when you're making your music and I have listened to your music, cause we were supposed to connect, I think kind of long time ago. And so I've had plenty of time to follow you and listen. And actually this morning I wasn't having like a very good morning.

I mean, really no particular reason why I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess. And I put on, oh gosh, I remember what the name of the song was. Well, I have an album that just came out called Love You. Oh, was it? But it's a six hour album. No, this one, well it was on your website and there was different tracks. Oh, okay. But I got lost in it.

I really did. In fact, I was like, oh crap, I gotta get dressed, you know, for you. But I must thank you for that because it got me out of my head, got me out of the worry I was experiencing. It took me away from social media. It took me away from social media. It took me away from, you know, all of the fear mongering.

If you scroll even for, you don't even have to scroll. It just pops up everywhere. I just feel like we're at a very, we're at an inflection point socially. And people have, they can, you can curate your own information, but that's about it. Like it's coming at you hard from every angle. And I feel very much the desire to pull away. I don't know if that's a flight response. So I can't, I want to trust that it's healthy, but, or there's some, you know, wisdom in that personally for me, but I'm feeling myself, honestly, not knowing what I want to say.

And so music is a little more appropriate because it's just about feeling. But I'm also, you know, we're kind of mesmerized by the train wreck and yet exhausted by it at the same time. And so there's a part of me that's a bit tired of, I mean, it's hard for me to even put words to of like, not speaking to the core of the feelings of the change and the collapse, instead like talking about other things. And it's like, sure, we could talk about this or that. This feels like what's happening is so fundamental.

And I get the sense that for many people there's a very deep denial or putting a head in the sand that can either appear as kind of veiled optimism, which is like, are you really paying attention? Or truly like not at all paying attention. Just complete cynicism of like, oh, it's all essentially nonsense. I don't know, it's always been that way. It's just nonsense.

And I can understand all of those reactions. And yet it also feels that whatever is happening through collapse is a kind of apocalypse, which is kind of a revelation as a unveiling. And there's so much opportunity in that, like on a personal level for people. And it's on somebody's is like, Hey, let's not miss these doors that are opening for you personally. Like, you know, the systems that are need to change,

want us to not change because they want to stay in power. They want to, they want us to keep it all going, keep the money, everything. They don't want systems to change. People don't want to give up levers of power. So it's like you can, we need counter culture because there's something emerging that is changed. It's like, so we, the way it changes is through us from the inside out. And that's, that's through things that actually might feel quite pedantic in your life. It doesn't, you might be like, you know, just habits that want to shift or beliefs that want to be like more rounded out,

you know, the hardness becoming more gray, the black and whiteness, the absolutism of our tribalism and so forth. And it's like that's actually what is wanting to become more diffuse, which is very uncomfortable for most people. Like no, I want to know it's yes, Vax or no Vax, or it's like it's Democrat or Republican, or it's like, what if the truth often is bits of both or in the middle, or it's like it's moving? Yeah.

Or it's unknown. There's a lot of that. It's like, we actually, we don't fully know this or that and that people It's that it's so uncomfortable that we grasp It's like you're drowning you grab you'll go we're in Boy Scouts And you did life-saving merit badges like you were taught that if you went out to swim someone drowning they will drown you They don't they can't help themselves. They're just like they'll push you down so they can get up It's like so you have to like do these things to avoid that.

And it's human nature. So I have compassion for that, but it's also like, there's an opportunity happening. And I haven't, I wanna like for myself and others, like sing to that. And maybe I need to trust an inherent process. Of course, I can't possibly think that like I'm individually responsible in any way, but it is about thinking about what is each of our roles in the becoming.

And I think it's coming, whether we like it or not, like you can run, but you can't hide. And so there's something happening. And that's just where my mind goes a lot. Me too. I think you're right. It's that unknown, you know, it's that mystery of not knowing what's to come. But yet, I mean, I've been calling for the systems to fall for years. And now that they are, it's like this uncertainty. There is opportunity, you know, and everything has to fall before it's rebuilt. And I do believe there are more conscious people

than ever, right? We're not, we can choose. We can choose what to watch. It's not heresy. We can choose, you know, how we practice what we believe. We won't be condemned, burned at the stake. Yeah. You know, it's interesting that there is this opportunity for all of us to grow from the inside out and whatever happens from the inside is going to reflect in the world on the outside.

And I feel that, uh, your music definitely brought me inside and I needed to be inside. I think that sometimes it's just unconscious too. And there's this heaviness. Uh, yeah, we use music all the time to shift our moods. That's kind of mostly what we do with it. And we don't think about it very clearly, but that's mostly what we're doing. We're amplifying moods or shifting moods. Um, and it's fantastic at that.

Uh, but it's a celebration of the human spirit at the end of the day. And. But it's a celebration of the human spirit at the end of the day. And human potential is about creativity, is about the blossoming of our potential. I mean, that could be the point of why we're here, is to have experiences and to play in essence. And art, all these different forms of art are these really grand flourishes of it. But so is any conversation we have. And we are, we are only creative beings.

Just most of us don't realize that we have our hand on the paintbrush, so to speak. And it's like, do you want to join the conversation or not? Cause it's happening, whether you like it or not. And that's what choice is. You know, that's what, that's what it, that's what it means. Yeah. My choice is trying to find a balance, right? Still being aware of what is happening in the world without letting it eat me.

Yeah. I think that's the, that is the central conundrum of our times. Yeah. Information sickness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know that Ram Dass is a big inspiration for you. Yes. Yeah. I know that Ram Dass is a big inspiration for you.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I did a record with Ram Dass that I recorded in 2018. It's just called Ram Dass. And then we did some remixes, which were awesome, brought in some other artists. And then I did another track with John Hopkins that was on his album with some more Ram Dass. And so it's very alive for me and that's a big part of my community. And I made a movie recently called Music for Mushrooms that folks can see at musicformushrooms.com. And Ram Dass is in it too. I got to tell a bit of my story and share some footage there of working with Ram Dass. And I released that album lovingly. It was on Valentine's Day. It's actually the soundtrack technically to the Music for Mushrooms movie. Okay. It's like kind of like the answer to the film. It's like well here is an album you could use as a tool to go within. But I also there's a part of it

feels like maybe it's the last thing I'll release. It, the things are changing so much that I sense that with AI and the landscape and how it's shifting, it may be. And you know, that's 30 some releases I've done over, gosh, I've been releasing music, quote unquote, professionally for 25 years. But everything has a season, everything has these cycles. And we have to, I think, listen when things want to be quiet too.

So your season of listening may be coming. Yeah, perhaps it feels that way. I don't know what's going on. I feel that way too. I don't know. I feel like I, you know, I haven't always bought into the whole like timeline shift and all this, but I feel like something happened over the last month, I don't, I don't even feel like feel like I live in the same place.

It's an acceleration. For all the OGs listening who were part of the New Age movements for many, many years, back when we had the 2012, that was a big thing. And that was around the Mayan calendar, the Bakhtuns. The Mayan calendar is a very real thing. And people were concerned about the winter solstice, or I should say the solstice, December 21st, 2012, being this end of one calendar into a new. And of course we initially think like Y2K or something like, oh, it's going to be the end of the world. Or instantly there'll be some like crash.

And there wasn't. But if you look back at that date and think about it more generationally, to me, we're completely in a timeline of collapsing chaos. And it kind of started, I'd say around then. I agree. That's sort of around, if you think about it, when the iPhone and internet speech really clicked, and Instagram and all those things really started to take off and our lives became really digitized. It was around that time too. And politically what's happened since then. And so in hindsight, it's like, it sure seems like we're in this thing. And since then it's been like, and this exponential acceleration. Yeah. So you talk about now the last four weeks. I mean, yeah, I, yes, like that seemed to be

getting like more compressed and more compressed and more compressed. Yeah. There's this quickening. I can't even hold on to a belief in any way, even if I'm like, Oh, I really believe that this is the way I like, I can't anymore. It's like, that's collapsed for me that cause I may change in five minutes. I may see something totally different and saying, this is the way, the only way because I would go a long way. If we could all do that, um, it would break down a lot of hate and blame. My former wife had a wonderful, wonderful wisdom that she shared with me once.

And that was this idea, I think I was expressing some pain about letting go. And she's like, well, why don't you just loosen the grip? And I was like, it's the same idea we're speaking about, about these in between states. And it's like, oh, so I can hold and loosen the grip at the same time. And it's just an idea too. And it kind of gives you the freedom. And I just think about what it would mean

to loosen the grip in general. Like in life, at least for me, like I grip a lot of things. And so it's about trust, you know, trusting a happening and not trying to control everything or having to protect against everything. Because it's, you know, a lot of that's an illusion anyway. I think that's why I like music so much though, because you surrender to it. You know, there's not that trying to grasp onto, you know, one... Well, I do like to play songs on repeat though.

It's a felt experience, yeah. And I think that's something we can use more and more of. It's a good medicine for us in a very intellectual mind age. We're just consuming things and, you know and it's been telling us how to feel, as opposed to an endogenous feeling that's occurring within you, being cultivated. Our emotional selves, I think, we're quite out of touch with that.

And, you know, somatic, like the body. We spoke about the wisdom and the power and potential of this nervous system we have. I mean, it's unbelievably the evolution of what we have here. We completely take that for granted. We just think, oh, that's a random thought or that's a random pain or what if it was these doorways of perception? And in these meditations or in these somatic therapies, breathwork, I mean, boy, are they, holy cow. And it's just right there, it's for you.

There's all sorts of free meditations. I have some, my partner, Marisa Roda Weppner, has got a bunch on her website. And play around, it's just your time. Right, yeah. Yeah, and you know, that's another thing. You really do get lost in time, you know, when you're actually aligning with that frequency, you know, when your body's actually becoming one with it. There's no time there. I love that because you really can escape in it. And we all need that

sometimes, especially as busy as our brains can get in the world today. We need all the tools we can get. Yeah. Yeah thank you. So is that documentary out? Because I did watch the trailer this morning. Yeah right now it's only on our website. It's exclusively the only place you can stream it. So you can link to that through me, EastForest.org, or just go to musicformushrooms.com. And it's on a sliding scale and we appreciate the support and we're very proud of it. It's a beautiful story and it's emotional and it's 82 minutes, it's a good length.

Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to meet you and to have this conversation with you. And I look forward to listening to more of your music. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It was great to talk and dive into these subjects. Thank you.

Yeah. Very cool. Have a great day. You too. Since I've saw