TrueLife - The Outlaw Who Became a Mycelial King: Building the Biggest Psilocybin Community in the U.S.

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USThe Lila Code: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4612-3942🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🎙️ True Life Podcast – Episode: Eric Osborne (Sanctuary Psilocybin Church) – The Deep Truth About 3,000+ Journeys, Ego Traps, Community Healing & the Future of the Psychedelic RenaissanceIn this raw, powerful, and deeply honest conversation, George sits down with Eric Osborne — one of the most experienced psilocybin facilitators alive (3,000+ journeys guided, 500+ personal journeys over 25 years).This is NOT another surface-level psychedelic chat. This is the real, unfiltered view from someone who has quietly walked the medicine longer and deeper than almost anyone on the planet.Key Topics Covered:•  Why true “expertise” in psychedelics may not exist — even after 3,500 journeys•  The ego trap that hits almost every facilitator (and how Eric learned the hard way)•  Why the sudden rush of certifications and weekend trainings worries both of us•  The moment Eric was told in ceremony: “Jamaica will be the lighthouse — and you will light the torch” (and how he fought it for a year)•  Getting attacked, smeared, and erased by parts of the psychedelic community — and why he’s now grateful for it•  Why community is the real medicine (and how people heal profoundly before ever taking a mushroom)•  Eric’s personal journey with borderline personality traits, suicide attempts, and discovering he’s a massive empath•  The unseen danger: people triggered into psychotic breaks just by being around high-dose ceremony (without ingesting anything)•  Why Eric went to jail for mushrooms — and still believes they should never be illegal•  Energy transmission, co-processing trauma, Qigong secrets, and purging on behalf of others•  Will the psychedelic renaissance survive the hype cycle? (Eric’s bold prediction using the Qigong crackdown in China as a mirror)•  The real reason psychedelics are controlled: they awaken latent human abilities that dissolve social guardrails•  Why courageous, lifelong community is the only safe container for this workGuest:Eric Osborne – Co-founder of Sanctuary (sanctuary.org), the world’s first public psilocybin churchLinks:🌿 Sanctuary Church & Community → https://sanctuary.org🎧 Join the True Life Podcast community & never miss an episodeIf you’ve ever wondered what this path actually looks like after 25 years in the fire — this episode is it.Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments. We read every single one. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles, The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. Hope the wind is at your back. There are people who talk about psilocybin.

And then there are the rare few who have quietly walked the medicine for two decades at a scale. Almost no one else on earth has matched. Eric Osborne has personally. guided over 3,000 journeys and taken more than 500 himself. He has cultivated, harvested, facilitated, and held space through every season of this movement. From underground circles to the world's first public psilocybin retreat, he founded, Myco Meditations, to co-creating sanctuary, the psilocybin church that somehow feels both sacred and welcoming the moment you walk in.

He's one of the only people I know alive who can speak with equal authority to clinicians, clergy, first-timers, and lifelong seekers, because he served them all safely, reverently, and without compromise. Eric, thank you so much for being here today. How's it going? Wonderful. Wonderful, George. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm grateful you're here. You know, you and I have been friends or connections on LinkedIn for quite some time, but we've never really had the opportunity to sit down and kind of chop it up. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, I've appreciated the way you approached this subject matter from afar, though. So I'm really grateful to be here sharing this space with you. Yeah, I appreciate that, man.

Let me ask you this question. What do you appreciate about the way I approach it? Well, kind of as we were chatting there before, gosh, it's like I don't want this to come across critical of others. That's something I've been working on. Yeah. I'm very comfortable with criticism, both taking and receiving. So I have appreciated your unabashed approach to the, what I believe is the necessary or very important egalitarianism of psychedelism of psychedelic. medicine. Now there is a there is a large subset of the community that does not speak from experience

but portrays itself as highly experienced and if there's anything that I've learned in 25 years of working with this medicine is that it may be impossible to be a true subject matter expert because the horizon is infinite. There is no ceiling. We did a ceremony in September, no, October. I did a ceremony, three gram cap for everybody. I saw things in that ceremony that I've never, I never dreamed, I never imagined. And when you have anything that you can say, I've done this thing, 3,000, 3,500 times at this point, and it still surprises you, then that says to me that, um,

yeah there may not be such thing as real real expertise and i i could be wrong i could be wrong i like i feel like i can handle just about any situation that comes up i had some crazy stuff even this last one that was pretty wild um but yeah i just really appreciate how you I feel like you speak to the heart of this work. Thank you. You know, I try to come from my own experience, and I realize that the more medicine work I do, the more experience I have, the more I realize, I don't have any answers, man. I just have questions. That's it.

That's all I got. You know, and I have more questions. That's it. And sometimes, and I struggle with this, Eric, and maybe I would love to get your thoughts on this. Like, I struggle with judgment because I see some actors in the space and I think to myself. And these are just my own observations. I don't know if they're right. I don't know if they're wrong.

But sometimes I feel so passionately about them, I've got to speak out. And when I see some of these, some of the actors out there, like, it seems to me the goal is to make money. And that is the one. And I want everyone to make money. And I want everyone to be successful. I want everyone to live a life worth living. And I understand there's real value in teaching people the things you know about. But for me, when it comes to some of these psychedelic, some of the schools and some of the people out there that are giving away this certification or having people pay for this certification, I don't thoroughly understand it.

It's like, what are you certifying people to do? You know, I don't know that a year on a Zoom call, or I don't know, I don't know that that allows you to be sanctioned to do something with someone else. And, you know, and I just, I just don't understand it. And sometimes I worry that I'm overcritical about it, but I don't, I don't get it. And it seems that if the intention is to make money, then you can't have the intention. It has to be one or the end. like you can focus on help and make money from that or you could focus on money and get help from that but I don't think that those two things can be equal is that too critical or what are your thought I don't I mean I struggle with as well and you know one of the one of one of the I am so privileged first and foremost I want to say like I am just some Kentucky boy that started taking mushrooms back in 1999 and I was like oh this is the future like I just I just there and so

I just started eating mushrooms like it was a university course and the deeper I got into it the more I believe it is. And so, you know, those retreats in Jamaica, first I was like, I was going to Jamaica as a like a young rasta. I had dreads. I was, I was rejecting white culture. I was like, I fuck white privilege. I want to get away from that.

Like literally, that's why I put on dreadlocks because I wanted to escape white privilege as much as I could. And then I didn't know what that was going to lead to. in terms of my spiritual development. And so, you know, I had a Jamaican that I met up here in the States. We became good friends. This elder, he went back to Jamaica, and I started going down there to visit him and eat mushrooms.

You know, they called me mushroom. If you're really, if you really are good in Jamaica, you get a nickname. Everybody goes to Jamaica, any amount of time gets a nickname. And mine was mushroom. And so, like, I realized, it wasn't even that I realized. It was that it was imputed in me when I was working. working in my lab one night that mushrooms are unregulated in Jamaica, someone needs to present this as the spiritual medicine that it is, that it is, back then in what 2011 that was, it was still

very much focused on recreational. And so I had a number of people who are now very prominent in the psychedelic sphere come and say they wanted to apprentice with me or help. start these retreats and then they really were you know kind of studying what i was doing and seeing where they could take it and so i know for a fact that there are a number of purported leaders in the psychedelic community who at least in you know 2015 and 2016 we're years down the road now but at that time we're not only were they inexperienced but they weren't even taking psychedelics and I struggled enormously with whether or not I should kind of try to communicate that out.

Like, is this my ego? Is this really a harm reduction service to the water population? Because this medicine, while it is exceedingly safe from a toxicological standpoint, phenomenologically, it is unpredictable like nothing else, nothing else. Yeah. And so it's been a real struggle with me. And I've had those folks when I have criticized some of these folks privately and sometimes publicly, they've attacked me. I mean, there have been, you know, there were paid for hit pieces written about me and the Guardian and, you know, psychedelics today took down all, they recorded all these podcasts with me talking about how I was the spirit of the mushroom and how like there was nobody.

that knew mushrooms like me and then, you know, because of some challenging conversations, they just completely took down all of the media that represented me. And that has significantly impacted my ability to help and to spread this work and to be seen as legitimate. And so, like, it's been really valuable from the sense of, like, really getting to know myself because it's really forced me to be like, okay, Eric, who are you without all of that? Yeah. It's been really challenging.

So I'm still, I'm not even in saying the name of that organization. I'm not criticizing them. That's a historical fact. They had their reasons for doing it. And, you know, we both have a different side of the story. And it's all good.

I now have gotten to a point where I thank those people because it has either allowed me to, like I said, see who I am really at my core without the, accolades from third party validation and it has allowed me to not get as swept up in the ego that I might have if I was like some you know widely respected great psychedelic leader because this work itself this is something that I had never heard anybody else talk about but I can speak to from my experience and I've seen this play out for countless facilitators and spaceholders is that it is some of the most ego-stroking work you can do.

Because you feed somebody some mushrooms, and as long as you keep them physically safe and everything goes, and you can help them process and come through that experience and they have a positively transformative experience, you're going to be their hero. You're going to be, oh, my gosh, you brought me this medicine, you did. And, you know, I mean, even without any kind of media hype, like it was, It's one of the greatest lessons I learned from mistakes that I made was starting to think that I was something. Oh, I'm a, I'm a great, I'm a great spaceholder.

I'm a great facilitator. I must be a shaman, right? Like, shut that shit down because it'll just, and so, like, I have learned so much through the mistakes and some of the mistakes that I've made have been, like, I would say, like really strongly publicly criticizing people because the reality is like there's a wisdom to this medicine there's a wisdom to this life and the more we get out of the way of it the better off it tends to play out and now so I'm trying to embody that more and I'm a human being yeah it's the number one thing that I hear when I talk to practitioners or when I talk to

people that are in the space and serving medicine, they often tell me that one of the number one realizations that comes from someone who takes medicine is that they should be someone that serves medicine. And like, I am not innocent of that. Like, I'm like, I have had some giant doses where I'm like, maybe I should be given this to other people. You know, you almost find yourself in the shoes of leery. Like, we should put this in the water, you know?

But, like, it's so powerful because you have this realization that you're part of something more. But I think that the main lesson is, like, you are not the medicine. Right. Like, you, the healing, each individual does their own healing. And I have this idea that anybody that wants to become a practitioner should be automatically moved to the back of the line. Because you haven't learned the lesson yet. Like, as soon as you get that feeling, I'm not saying it's a wrong feeling. I'm not saying it's a bad feeling.

But as I think people who have that thought. I should serve medicine. That should be an instant call to you to be like, wait, why should I be the person that does? That's the first question that comes up. And then there's a series of them that come afterwards. There's a real wisdom in, from what I understand from my studies over the years, is that in traditional cultures, there was a 10-year apprenticeship required before you were actually administering.

And that is, you know, we talk a lot about how much we honor the indigenous and appreciate the, you know, the traditions that these medicines came. out of, but when it comes to some of the real, the real lessons, the real, the things that we don't want to implement, we're pretty good to dismiss it. And we have an online course. And look, Sanctuary does online courses. We have, you know, various levels of training. Our training starts with and continues to always focus back on your work with the medicine. Right. You are first and foremost, like you are, you are here to heal yourself. And if you gain any healing, then slowly bring that out into the world around you.

But it's a tricky, it's a tricky thing that we're dealing with here. There's no doubt about it. And we are so young in this. Like we, as much as we, like, we think we're so wise as a species and culturally, but we are so infantile, particularly with this medicine. When you look at cultures that had worked with, worked with mushroom for thousands of years, thousands of years. And I'm saying, like, just you don't have to.

Believe me, you know, take my experience for it. But I'm telling, like, I'm, I've been so devoted to this medicine. And I still am constantly amazed and astounded by what it is capable of. And I just, I can't see myself as an expert. And that's one of the hardest things that's been when it comes to, like, promoting. It's like, I'm not an expert. I may have more experience than 99% of the world this medicine, but I am far from an expert with it. Man, it's so well said.

I'm going to bring up a couple of people in the chat over here. First off, shout out to Clint Kiles. If you are listening to the sound of my voice right now, check out the psychedelic Christian podcast with Clint Kiles. Absolutely amazing content on there and just an incredible stand-up guy. Clint, I'm so stoked you're here. I'll bring up my friend Gosta. If you're also within the sound of my voice,

check out Gostas page. Gosta has some of the most incredible information on consciousness, AI, and what's coming up. I can't recommend them enough. I'm so stoked you're here. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Eric, it brings up for me this idea of value because if you want to be in the world of psychedelics, of course, who doesn't want to find a way to make a living in the world of psychedelics?

And there's real value in providing courses. There's real value in getting to hold ceremonies. There's real value in getting to help others experience the best versions of themselves or a connection to something bigger than there. but how do you and as someone as you you have found a way to do this you're really good at and you have helped so many people for so long you've even given up your freedom for this so i'm wondering maybe you could speak to the idea of how is it that we we find value in doing something we love if our love is in psychedelics well for me currently it is in the

community building this is another so the trajectory of my working with this medicine I was like, back in the day, I was like full on Terrence McKenna, five grams in silent darkness, don't talk to me. I don't want anything else with me in the mushroom. And I went about that for a very long time. And then, you know, as we hear this, when the medicine told me or when I heard in this space that Jamaica was going to be the lighthouse for psychedelic healing and you were going to light the torch, I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's too big. I can't do it. No way. And it was literally from, in 2011 is when that started happening. and it was a full year of me just fighting it. And every time I would take mushrooms, I was doing like twice a month dosing at that point by myself. And every time I would eat mushrooms,

this is what I would get. And every time I'd say, no, I'm not your guy. You got to find someone else to do it. So eventually it wouldn't stop. So I just accepted and went towards it. And when I did that and I started feeding mushrooms to,

you know, random strangers from around the world, I went into it with the belief that, quiet take your mushrooms just quiet darkness quiet mushrooms you and the mushroom that's it and i started to observe when i would humble myself and sit back and not think that i knew what was best for the space i started to to really watch the process unfold and i like a lot of what i would communicate um around this would probably sound just completely out of left field like unimaginable but I started to see shared experiences I started to see

movement between the groups and there would be this kind of like flow and not having the having the ability to dose people three times over the course of a week you would see this like spirit of the medicine work through the people and they would people would become clairvoyant messengers to each other people would embody triggers and you know if you've been in the space long enough in the group setting you start to see this and you're like okay there is a wisdom here that is beyond anything i can comprehend and so you start to get more out of the way of it what we didn't do very well because of the nature of what we were doing is people would come on retreat that had these powerful experiences

feel the power of that collective consciousness that collective spirit and then they go home. And there'd be like maintained connection for a while, but it would dissipate. And that's where I started to feel like if I'm doing anything that's unsafe, it's that. If I'm doing anything that is not really harm reduction, it is having, giving people these experiences and then sending them off on their merry way, you know, one after the other. And so when we came back to the states, we decided that's we're going to do this that's not how we're going to do it that this is a collective experience not only in ceremony but outside of ceremony i would have experiences down there you know and this is one of the areas i've been critiqued in but i have often and still do uh dose alongside the people

that i'm supporting and i would have these experiences where i would be there you know post ceremony and then after glow and i'm watching all the people around the fire and i'm feeling all of the people who had been there before and I'm realizing like we're not we're not separate but we're not facilitating that connection and so it became just central to the work for me that this must be if it's going to be really truly effective and safe it needs to be done in the container of community and that's what we saw in traditional cultures that's what we're seeing now like it's amazing we see people get enormous levels of healing before they even take the mushroom because they're in a community of practitioners who are embodying that energy there's this one

older lady who came into sanctuary she's still part of it but she's moved to Costa Rica now and she was you know regularly with us for for several years but she was with us in community for about a year and a half, two years before even taking any mushrooms. And she made more progress in her personal life just from being in that energy, just from being in that authentic conversation about what it means to be a human, about how hard it is to be a human, about how we're so much more than human. And to see that, and then when she had her first five-gram experience, and what that opened up for her is like, there's no other way for me to do it outside of community

now and I say that and at the same time, like I understand that not everybody is going to buy into that immediately and that sometimes it requires a process. And I absolutely see this where someone will come into our community. They'll do some work with us for a while and then they'll step out. And then we're old enough now that a year or two years later, they come back and I didn't realize how much I needed this community component. of it. So, you know, it's like that constant give and take. You got to let people, you bring people in, you welcome them in. And then if they want to leave, then like, that's their prerogative. But you know that they're not going to get the full benefit if it's not within the context

of conscientious community. That's really well said. It makes me realize there's that great quote that says the difference between wellness and illness is we and I. And it seems like so much of the illness comes from isolation and thinking that you're alone. And when I hear what you spoke about, about community, I think of wellness. You know, regardless, here's the deal. We have been, we have been, I want to say, let's just say conditioned. Let's use more neutral term. We've been conditioned to believe that it is in isolation.

We've been conditioned to believe that community is where we get triggered and that's when we run and we see this all the time people get triggered and they're like up bouncing out of here you know and then that you see the lost opportunity there and so we have a real challenge ahead of us in reconditioning our society to understand the value of real integrated and courageous community courageous community i can't even tell you how many times even people who were like have been good friends of my well you know like surface level friends and then you you start digging into the challenges of interpersonal relationships and mirroring. And they're like, yeah, no, I'm not doing this.

And it's like, damn, I just, and I've seen it myself. So like full, full disclosure, I have not been diagnosed because I have just never, I mean, I've gone to a therapist and I've seen value there. But when I first went to a psychiatrist at 19, they put me on Zoloff. And I was like, yeah, I'll just smoke weed, not doing this. And so I just stopped taking pharmaceuticals and started smoking pot. that then led to mushrooms and whatnot. But anyway, I would be diagnosed as borderline personality, 100%.

All nine characteristics. It has been a, I have thought about killing myself. I have attempted to kill myself in a multitude of ways over the years. It was really only about five years ago that I started to really truly heal. The mushrooms would help. They would definitely help, but they would only help so much. And I know, like the healing that I have experienced, being able to be as asymptomatic as I am

and I'm like my wife would attest to this like I have I am so much more balanced than I have never been in my entire life and that is because of community and probably if I weren't the one of the chief organizers of this community I probably would have run to from some of the triggers that I saw in myself

or I saw myself reflected in others right so I under I get it. It's really, really hard to sit through all that. It's really hard to sit through all of that. But that is the payoff. That's how we grow, is sitting through it.

So we are the medicine as well as the mushrooms or the medicine is the medicine. Man, thank you for being so candid in that, in that story of all that you've been through. I don't know. I had therapist in Jamaica that straight up said, borderline personality, the only people I would not work with. They are straight up crazy. They are unsalvageable.

It wasn't until, it was like the last year I was in Jamaica because I would like, as long as I'm working, as long as I'm working and taking care of other people, I'm fine. And then when the people would leave, I would just crash. I'd just drink and I'd crash and I'd just go into a pit of despair for a week and a half, two weeks until the next group showed up. And then I get to use all that energy to help somebody. But now that I understand that I am like massive empath, I am constantly soaking up the energy and the information and the field around me. And like that's a whole what I could share and I feel like we would not have space for it here. But what I feel like I could share within the psychedelic community about understanding of the energetic function. And there's probably people that know more about this to me for sure.

But what I have learned about what we are as energetic beings and how our mental health disorders are like so, it's so wild. Like I would see people come down. They'd have all these kind of, you know, diagnosed disorders, and they get into the mushroom space. And I'd see that they were, they were the healers. You guys are the shaman. You guys are the, you know, like, so are the folks who were diagnosed with some of the most severe mental health disorders were some of those powerful psychic healers because they're just constantly. soaking up and processing. And when you can expedite that processing through the mushroom,

then like that just can clear out your own psyche so much. And so I saw, I saw all of that in other people, but I didn't recognize it myself. I just thought I was an asshole. And so like it, it wasn't when I heard that, I didn't even know what borderline personality was,

not raised as I'm not, obviously not a mental health professional. And so, you know, I'd hear therapists say this, that borderline's untreatable and just pure crazy. And so then when I started to realize, like, oh, these nine traits are exactly what I have all of my life, all of my life. I can look back at this and started to move through that. It brought me, it brought the realization of how important it is to communicate out there to, the people who are suffering the most, that you are some of the most powerful people on this planet. It is absolutely this, whatever, diagnosis, this neurodivergency that I have that has allowed me to be the effective spaceholder that I am.

And now that I have community where I can better integrate and understand and share my experience than I am so much healthier than I ever imagined I would be. So I just cannot overstate how crucial a courageous, conscious community is to our real lasting growth with these medicines. And that is why they were always a communal experience. The shaman was not your therapist. You didn't go sit in their clinical office and put on your eyes shades and have a curated experience. you went in and you confronted the fucking demons you dealt with whatever came up and you had people around you who were going to love you afterwards so we got a lot to learn we got a lot to lot to learn here in the space and i'm just i'm i feel so privileged that's what i want to communicate more anything i feel so privileged that i never took my own life um that i did have the reflections that i did and the challenges that i did that it helped me become a who I am because it's what allows me to help more people. Man, I think so many people in this space, especially with a lot of the mutual people that both

you and I know, like, I bet you the majority of people have seen suicide up close, or they have seen the depths of despair of which they do not know how to process and what do you do with that information when you're close to it like how do you process it there's no there's no giving your authority a way to an expert that can tell you how to fix it because only you as an individual can thoroughly understand how to process it for yourself and i feel like probably through good intentions, we have developed these sort of professions of professions of expertise that help people out, but it seems that we have outgrown it. I feel like we have outgrown this idea that you can go and sit in an office and become a

subject-object relationship and have someone dictate to you the problems with your life. you know and a lot of the not all therapies like that a lot of the therapists what some gestalt or some different kinds of therapy actually focus on the individual to get them to realize their own issues and solve it that seems to be the best way to do it but for me psychedelics has been a way for me much like yourself to figure out on my own you know it's like the great philosopher taylor swift hello me i'm the problem you know you got to figure it out for yourself And it's really, really hard without other people that have gone down. So when I hear you talk about courageous community, that really strikes a chord with me.

And I'm really ample to it. I want to bring on, we have so many cool people here. I want to give a shout out to Jesse Munreel. If you guys don't know Jesse Munreel, talk about someone who's doing incredible work in the community. You should all check her out. And the word on the street is, Jesse, there might be some books coming out. Let me get to her comment over here. She says, this is so crazy to me that anyone would think that they could or,

should serve, facilitate after one or two uses. I found myself the opposite. I didn't have the thought right away at all. And when I did even begin to consider it, I feel like it's more likely I may never feel ready enough. It's such a huge responsibility. And there are so many variables you could never be prepared for fully, especially if you jump the gun. I would be so afraid to cause harm or ruin medicine. When I think about this, Eric, I think that we're doing it, in my opinion and who am I to say what's right or wrong. But I think that the the current model of certification is wrong. I think that there should be something more of like the trades do. Like there should be, you should have 2,000 hours under the influence of something. Or maybe

10,000 hours to become a master or something like that. But to really understand the terrain, you have to be on the trail. Maybe you could speak to what Jesse's saying or the idea that Maybe there's a better way to become a facilitator. You would already mention the idea of apprenticing, but I think the 2,000 hour mark seems to be like something people could look at for real knowledge. What are your thoughts? I don't think there's any way around it. I think you have to have time in the space and not just as an administrator of the medicine of it.

Of course. A consumer. You have to. Yes. That's where so when I was instructed as I reflect on it to start those retreats, I devoted myself to every new moon and every full moon for the entire year of 2012 to five or more grams in complete isolation out in the woods. I would go out in the woods. I would have me in a fire.

I would take five to ten grams of mushrooms. And I had some of the most terrifying experiences. My entire thinking behind that or reasoning behind that was I have to have a better breadth of knowledge of the experience. Even then, like, I had been taking mushrooms since 1999 devotedly, and that was 2012. And I was like, I don't know this thing. I can't give this to other people. Yeah. And even still, like, there's, I feel so, I feel so blessed to have gotten through.

And I recognize that there have been spiritual element, spiritual support that has helped me. I could tell many, many stories about how that was evidenced. you know, within Sanctuary, this has been one of the growing challenges that we face. And right now we're operating without our own property. We lease the property where we do ceremonies from and that limits our accessibility to an extent. But like I don't, when I training people in Jamaica, like it would take me probably working with folks like I felt like it was like 10 or 15 retreats of three doses per retreat before I really started to feel comfortable with them. And even then, like, it's been extremely hard for me to hand off ceremony to other people because I'm responsible for those people that I put in charge of a ceremony.

Yeah. So I don't think there's any way around that it has to be hours on the clock, both as a facilitator and a consumer or, you know, within the experience itself. And even still, I'm telling you, I have three grams. I fed everybody three grams. I was like, this is the easiest day ever. I'm just sitting there hanging out by the fire. Like, okay, easy day.

Next thing I know, off the cart has lost the track and, you know, I got to show up. And like, that's why I'm there. That's what I want to do. But it just taught me you just never know. You can never let your guard down. You can never let you. The number of times that I have seen at the end, all right, everything's over. Everybody's hanging out.

You think it's all good. somebody over here just starts going into some kind of darkness or whatever. It's so much. And then I think that the fact that we don't talk about this as a, not just a spiritual experience. I mean, we talk about it like, oh, I'm having a spiritual experience. We're interfacing with another world. We are interfacing with intelligences and energies in dimensions that we cannot see. And it took me a long time.

I'm a very science grounded person. Like I did not want to believe in any of that stuff. And I have seen way too plainly now that we are absolutely interfacing with one or more other dimensions. And that like that's an important part of this conversation. That's an important harm reduction part of this conversation. I've had, I don't know how many people I've worked with over the years who have went into psychedelic therapy. They had some, some kind of otherworldly experience. that the therapist were not able to support or contextualized, and it wasn't until coming

into a container where that was part of the ethos, part of the understanding that they were like, okay, now I can get a better idea of what's going on here. It's important. Yeah. Someone can only take you as far as they've gone. And it's, there's so many different things that can happen in that space. And, you know, I know my good friend Matt Zeman wrote about. a book called Psychedelics for Everyone.

And he would be the first person to say, wait a minute, it's not for everyone, but I think there's space for everyone to be around it, you know, but it's, it really is. Even that, you know, this is something that I've been recently trying to communicate a little bit more out when I have the opportunity. I've had three times. There have been three times that I can easily describe the entire, what happened, where three people who did not take any psychedelics whatsoever were pushed into a schizophrenic break by being around people on psychedelics.

There is an energy exchange. One of them ended up in, like, we, oh, it was craziest week of my life. I ended up and take this lady to a psych ward. I mean, we had to chase her down. She tried to set a house on fire. She was naked on top of a roof. It was, she didn't eat any mushroom. She never took a mushroom one, but she, I didn't know.

I wasn't informed. She didn't inform the people that she joined. She joined to be a support person. This person joined to be a coach. facilitator was a trusted friend of like 15 years did not tell anyone that when they were you know 14 15 years old they had a psychotic break didn't maybe not you know would it have changed my mind about them coming probably not but I saw after the first ceremony I saw and said this person's getting ready to have a psychotic break like oh no watch we'll see and

within three four hours it was fully cracking uh it was and And so, like, that's something that I've never heard anyone else speak to. But I've seen him three times and one of them is my son. My son is, has cannabis-induced schizophrenia. And about two years ago, he came home after I had done a solo session. And we had a conversation and energy was really heightened. I didn't actually know he was schizophrenic at that time because he had been living solely with his mother and he had just moved in with me and kind of a bad relationship where, you know, I didn't, I didn't know a lot of what was going on over there. and he had a schizophrenic break the day after that ceremony.

And I am 100% confident that it was in large part because of that expanded energy in that space. So there's so much that we don't know about here. Yeah. You know, it makes me realize how much my personal opinion about. the psychedelic renaissance right now is that we have seen like the peak of it you know i i think that just in this conversation today like there is so much that we don't understand that it gets put back away you know when whether it's art link letters daughter jumping out of a window or it's someone that's never even taken psychics being around them that has a psychotic break you know it doesn't

take all it takes is a few of those stories you can have a thousand veterans get better you can have a thousand veterans families be healed by something. But it takes three or four of those stories for people to start getting really nervous, for lawmakers to be like, you know what? I don't think it's right for my community. And so it seems to me that psychedelics have always operated in the underground. And they'll always operate in the underground. And they come up and they surface on the mainstream,

the same way a mushroom pops up when the conditions are right and the world needs healing on that aspect. But I don't know. When you look at where we are now, when you see some, some of like the really positive things happening, but you as a facilitator who have seen these other things happening, how do you see the nature of this particular renaissance unfolding? Are we in the midst of it?

Is it growing? Is it contracting or do we even have any understanding of it? What an excellent, excellent question. So, gosh, I've sat with this and thought about this so much. Just before, I want to say that at the MAPS conference two years ago, there was a ketamine, there was a therapist there, a ketamine therapist there who I felt drawn to talk to her. She was sitting with a sign. I forget what the situation was all about, but come to find out, she was a ketamine therapist

who had a psychotic break just administering ketamine to patients. Whoa. All right. So, and like she sat there and cried when I sat down with her and we came to this conversation unfolded and she was like oh my god somebody knows what i have been through and so that experience feeds into your question about where we're at and so there's two kind of two tracks that i've explored here on this subject one is um i don't remember what it was a graph i saw years ago about early adopting of new technologies and how

when a new technology or a new idea is adopted with vigor, then there have become all of these experts and all of these people who, you know, pop up on the scene. Long before, there were those who were nurturing this new idea, this new technology. They may have been working with it for 10 or 15 years, but it wasn't adopted by the mainstream. it gets adopted by mainstream and there's this swell of attention and everybody swears this is the new greatest thing and then the hype dies off and those people who were there 10 and 15

years ago are still there and they actually become the experts so that's kind of part of the hope that I've hung on to is that as this thing bubbles up that when all of that fades away and myself and those who have been there for a while will be understood like, okay, there's a deeper knowledge here. There's a deeper understanding to be explored to people who have really been committed to this work. So that's like kind of a industrial entrepreneurial perspective of how these trajectories go. When it comes to something that is truly societally transformative and something that really empowers the people, there's an interesting example that comes out of China now I read about this I can't remember

where I read about this a few years back and it just like hit me like oh this is what's going to happen with psychedelics so Qigong right in the I think it was in the 80s I forget what the decade was there was a there was a period maybe it wasn't like in the 60s or 70 anyway there was a decade a period where Qigong was made illegal in China the reason being is because when you practice chigong and you get to the deeper levels of chigong and really start to work with your ethereal energetic being that you can manipulate the forces of nature right there are legends that there were these monks who would sit out on the mountains and help mediate earthquakes from their energetic field okay so like and i i could go on and on about how chigong has

informed my psychedelic practice and montak chia if he might's ever heard of him here He is the teacher. He is the teacher. So, Qigong was made illegal because it was the people, the everyday people were becoming too powerful. They were becoming psychic. They were becoming aware of their deeper abilities. It was made illegal. Time goes on. The health of the general population diminishes.

Most of that kind of deeper knowledge about Qigong is this transformative, like really transformative work is lost. And so there's a government. campaign to bring Qigong back into the populace because it's one of the most effective ways to maintain our health without any kind of external experts. We can know ourselves and be in touch with ourselves, balance ourselves, so that we don't need external influences, aka doctors, right? And so they brought Qigong back because the health was diminishing of population. The general health started to really improve through the widespread government and

corporation of chigong practices there became less need for reliance on insurance and you know medical the government sponsored health care and all that and then as people again started to become more empowered psychically energetically spiritually there was another crackdown on chigong and it is becoming it's not illegal yet but it's moving in that direction i think we're going to see that with psychedelics. Your psychedelics are not just like, oh, I took this medicine. I had this experience. It impacted my brain chemistry and now I'm not depressed anymore.

That is not what's happening. It's like I had this medical doctor. I worked one time. He came out of like a whatever, four, six hour trip. He sat up and he goes, of course these things heal depression. I just talked to God for six hours, right? And like what I have come to understand after all of my continued dosing is that, I have to say this in a humble way, but it's like if I want to be true about it, is that, well, we saw in the 50s, there were the beginnings of individuals opening up their own psychic potential with the use of psychedelics.

There's an interesting, I can't remember the title, it's beyond something, there's a 1950s show where they go down and they interview these shaman. And the shaman are like diagnosing people for their medical conditions and finding lost things because they're clairvoyancy. And so then they bring the mushrooms back up and they feed some mushrooms to the host of the show. And they do all these ESP things on him. And he's like going off the charts and his ability to like see the cards, you know, see behind the cards and whatever. And so the healing that's coming out of psychedelics and that we're promoting right now is just like that is just the lowest hanging fruit for these things. the lowest hanging fruit to cure depression, of course. And you can bilocate. How about some of that? Right. And so like you start seeing that kind of experience, get wider knowledge and

application. Well, the powers that be never want those tools to be in the hands of anybody and everybody. And so I don't, you know, I, where does this road go for me? It's been, I've been really curious about that. I don't want to go back to jail again. I can tell you that. I went to jail for mushrooms before. I really don't want to do that again. And so it's been an interesting kind of exploration on how, how do I engage with this? How much do I teach about what I actually know? But suffice it to say that there are much more than just mental health marvels. They are an access point to our infinite self

and that is infinite impossibility and ability you know there's a lot of in the psychedelic community people talk a lot about different tests they go through or ways they've been tested

or some of their experiences but you lost your freedom for it man you believed in something so much you're willing to lose your freedom for it. I don't know if there's anything a bigger test than that. Would you be comfortable talking a little bit about that? I was smuggling mushrooms to Jamaica on two years probation after being arrested for this, my friend. Not the smartest decision.

Well, you know, if they're encapsulated. You can be smart about it. Actually, the first time I took mushrooms to Jamaica, I took a heart. bag of dried mushrooms in my suitcase, just like, almost just like testing, I don't know. I've just, I've just like, yeah, yeah. I am not recommending that. I'm not recommending that to anybody, you know, but I was. That is a bad idea.

That is a horrible idea. Well, back then it was, it was very different back then. Okay. What year was that? 2013 is when I did the first retreat. November of 2013 was the first retreat. and I took down a pound of mushrooms with a pound of shataki and oyster. I had a mushroom farm, right?

So I was growing a bunch of edibles and I took down a bunch of fresh mushrooms and I took a dried pound. And, you know, here's the deal. Like, once you get out of the States, then like Jamaicans, at that time anyway, they didn't care about mushrooms coming in. Now, you know, now it's a very different scenario. Yeah. And I have felt an array of things over that, you know, my hope and my intention at that time. was like to bring to to to maria sabina was a huge inspiration came still a big picture of marius being on my wall over here and and like i wanted to bring back the spiritual respect to the mushroom that i felt like was missing and i wanted to help out jamaica like i've been going to jamaica as a as a lover of the culture for 10 years before i started the retreats i wanted to bring money to that island i hired jamaicans out the wazes zoo and then now i've seen like what's what happens when like now there's like how many foreign

companies down there running retreats and how much that money is actually staying on the island and so you know i've i've felt uh yeah a lot of different things about how that all went but you know as far as the arrest goes i mean this this is also speaks uh powerfully to the harm reduction component um and it's it was a big lesson i learned there you know low dose very low dose at least for the person, what initiated our arrest. We had a good friend, knew this person for like two years, a good friend of my wife's, and then I had two other friends there with us. And, you know, the whole ceremony is because this one, my wife's friend wanted to get

through her habitual lying. And so she took two grams and got a little paranoid and went and laid down her tent and asked if she'd go lay in her tent. I was like, yeah, for sure. And the next thing I knew, like her tail lights were, blasting down our driveway. And we had her keys. Like, we had her keys. I ended up throwing her keys in the, in the ocean down in Jamaica, you know, a few a year or so after that. She had a key magnetized under the bumper of her car. And so you can put, you can put every barricade in place that you want. Yeah. And something can slip through. So the one, the, the, the mistake that we made that night was that everybody had dosed. And so there was no going to try to try to. chase her down. And she, you know, didn't get hurt or anything. She had a small wreck, ran off in a ditch. And like, I was just certain that I was going to prison. I was certain

she was going to die and I was going to prison. That was it. Yeah, it was one of the most terrifying, probably the most terrifying experience of my life. And, you know, fortunately, I knew that the cops were coming. We went in as soon as I could drive, which was about two or three in the morning. I got in the car. We drove to go find her and we drove like an hour and a half, went to her boyfriend's house, trying to find if she got in there or whatever. And the next day we came home where we got a text from her at like 5 p.m. the next afternoon said, I'm okay. I just need some space. And we're like, okay, thank God. And so we went home and we're like, no more black market mushroom because I was selling a bunch of mushrooms at that time. And I was like,

no more. This is bad news. I'm not doing black market mushrooms anymore. I pulled into my driveway, which is out in this middle of nowhere out in Indiana. And the one neighbor happened to be bush hog. And he's like, hey, man, the sheriff was just here said he heard about a mushroom party last night. I was like, oh shit. And I mean, I was mass producing psilocybin. So I burned everything except for a pound. My, you know, genius self was like, you're not taking my personal sacrament. And I hit it in the woods. And they went through everything. They came on a Tuesday, went through everything, didn't find anything. I was like, sweet, we're going to be leaving soon. And this one state cop was like, well, I know you're growing some weed out here

somewhere. I have dreadlocks. And I was like, go look, man, girl. I never grew weed because I was afraid of it all, give away my mushrooms. And he went out into the woods without a dog or anything and found that bag of mushrooms and my bong in a hollow log. And I truly believe, like, I truly believe that that was spirit. Because all the time, we started those retreats in 2013, I was bootstrapping this mushroom farm and selling psilocybin to keep the mushroom farm alive. And all I wanted to do was invest everything in psilocybin legitimately. I was so proud of this work. And I wanted to be up front and I wanted to be, you know, communicating to the public about the power of this medicine and whatnot. And so in 2015, when we were arrested,

I was like, well, my master's is defunct at this point. I'm not going back to teaching or anything like that. So all I had was the retreats and I doubled down on those and anyway. So yeah, I smuggled mushrooms to Jamaica to start those retreats and the rest is history as they say. Man.

I have believed in this so much though. I mean, this is so important to who we are. The oldest cave paintings depict psilocybin mushrooms. Like this is central to who we are as a species. And so I don't perceive, I hope that we can find a place politically, socially, where there's an understanding that these, they should not be illegal. No one should be put in prison for this.

But it is a very specialized skill set. It's not something that everybody should be doing. The number of therapists who have came to me and said, I know that I'm supposed to be a psychedelic therapist. I want to train with you. And then they do it like three or four sessions. And they're like, fuck this. This is insanity. I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, you've got to be a little crazy to do it. Man, I feel bad for saying it's a crazy idea. It's not a crazy idea, especially if you believe in the power of helping others. And the idea, the idea that something you, grow could be so illegal and it's not you know what it is it's not so much that what you grow is illegal it's the fact that the ability of that thing you grow can dissolve boundaries for other people like that's what makes it illegal it's not the fact that it's a plan it's it's the fact that hey this can fundamentally change the way people operate in reality and that's what's so

dangerous about it it fundamentally dissolves boundaries for people and like maybe that gets us back to that idea of some people need those guardrails in place in fact probably the the way for us to function as a society they people need those guardrails they need the identities they need the paycheck they need these things in order to operate and when you start pulling those guardrails down it's like you know what maybe the last 25 years working as a truck driver we're all bullshit I just ruined my life you know like these sort of realizations that happen after a high-dose journey, be it on any psychedelic, they're really destabilizing, not just to the individual, but the family, the community, and the whole authority structure at large.

Maybe that's what happened in the 60s, and maybe that's what people are afraid of now when you pan back and you look at, you know, the modern-day scientists that are bringing people in with eyeshades and very careful with all the words they use. And, you know, we're only going to measure these certain variables, you know, it's, I don't understand it, though. I don't think it has to be that way. I don't think it has to be that way. I mean, we have, we have, um, millennia of cultures who have exemplified this, right? And yet, within those cultures, the vast majority of people would consume psychedelics periodically, very periodically, right? And so it's, it's just like anytime you outlaw something,

then you're going to highlight it and people are going to want to do it more. And so, yeah, of course when you unleash psychedelics on a culture that where they've been told you've been told that this is like the most dangerous thing on the planet and then you take it and you're like oh my god everything is love like what the fuck's dangerous about this and then you start taking it and taking it and taking it and taking it and the vast majority of people if they live in that space for very long they do forget about everything else they forget about oh you got to water the plants you got to feed the dog you got to take kids to school you know and that can really happen so if we that's that's that's That's my sincere hope is that this modern resurgence will do it in a tempered way. And so that's, I have been like pretty critical of the dry clinical approach. And yet maybe that is what will allow us to approach it this time in a more balanced way so that it can be more sustainable. Does it make sense? Yeah, it does make sense.

sense and there's lots of evidence in the indigenous world to show the way in which it's done. I think it makes a lot of sense. And can the biggest part of that that we're missing is that this is a spiritual, metaphysical work that there are, that there is an ecosystem of intelligences out there that we are in cooperation with. And high sciences are starting to express that, you know, quantum sciences or we're starting to find folks who are saying, oh, yeah. I mean, do most people know that NASA was founded by a bunch of a cultist who were like, we're talking to a, you know,

whatever you will call them, interdimensional's. Like, that's reality. And so it's this, it's this like segmentation, this polarization, that there's like an us versus them or a this way versus that way. And I think that's the real, it's, I don't want to say, the danger it's it's the thing that we do need to be the most cautious with around psychedelics is that that boundary that ultimately comes down reminds us that everything is exactly like it should be and so that that can that can dissuade like effective change you to start to just like

okay well everything's like it should be you just kind of accept things as they are and we have just like it's the push and pull that we have to have we have to desire and be motivated towards change and we have to accept everything is just as it should be and so as long as those two things can stay in balance it's like we're talking about this money thing before we hopped on the call yeah something i had it just hit me the other night all right so uh you know like a twin engine jet if i'm if i am a twin engine jet and i have been functioning 90% on my spiritual engine for the last 46 years, which is the truth. I have been 90% just like I live in the spirit world.

I am not paying attention to the material monetary world. Well, I'm just going in a circle. I'm just going in a circle. And same way. If all I'm focusing on is the material aspect of the world, it's just you can spend in the other direction. And so for us to have real forward movement, we have to have that balance of the two. And so there is a way to work with psychedelics in a. balanced way, probably like 5%, maybe, I don't know what the percentage, but a very small

percentage of the people are going to be lifelong spaceholders, really, I have wondered, I'm sorry, I'm kind of getting a little bit of a rant here. It's like, I have wondered, how have I not completely gone off the rails after taking mushrooms as many times as I have? And I think it's because I have this, like what is classified as a mental illness, but is really a spiritual power. You know, I have, I have walked in those worlds so many times and I still can come back to my day-to-day life and go like, do the laundry and mow the yard and all that kind of

stuff. And I don't think that most people can. I'm not saying that to brag on myself, but it's a cautionary tale to people who feel like they're supposed to be, you know, facilitators, lifelong spaceholders. It's very destabilizing. It can be anyway. And so it takes a very special, unique, particular personality, constitution to be able to maintain that for the long haul.

And you, even those people, myself, I just said it so many times that I have to have my community around me to make sure. that I don't go off the rails as well. So, I don't have to have to make sense, but it's kind of what come up. Yeah, I think it speaks volumes. It's, you know, I think of the different journeys that I have done and my experience with them. Being an empath, too, like, I wouldn't be able to serve medicine. Like, I cannot take, I can barely take on the world around me, let alone take.

taking on the problems of other people and helping them untangle those. Like, you actually have to become part of their world in order to thoroughly understand what it is about them. That, see, I don't know. I have great respect for the people that are facilitators out there. I had thought that, and I think there is truth to that. Okay. And you have to be able to clearly distinguish yourself. you have to be able to and one of the one of the like again like we could go into some some real some deep stuff here but you know as a spaceholder as I started to get into the more metaphysical experiential stuff here and I you know I have been a student of this I'm watching the experiences unfold and I'm trying to understand okay what's fundamentally what's going on here what is the thing that psilocybin is doing now there's a lot there's a lot of

lot of things that are happening but like what's the thing there is some thing that's happening here and chigong has has taught me an enormous amount about this but what i started to experience at a certain point facilitating group experiences in the dark is that i could particularly when i would take mushrooms um i would and now i recognize that there was something there was something leading me there was something teaching me. There was a spiritual intelligence that was teaching me. So I would take my mushrooms, I'd have a bunch of facilitators around,

and then I would go and I would take 20, 30, 40, 50 feet away from everybody. And I would let my experience come on and I would find myself, okay, all right, we've moved through it. I'm here. I can feel that we've arrived, so to speak. And then I would start to, I felt like it was like it's my job to assess and understand how to help people. and whatever needs to happen.

And so what I would do is I would go in and like slowly start to move towards people. And I would get to the point where at about 12 or 15 foot away from someone, I could start to feel them. And I could feel, I could feel me outside of my physical body. And I could start to feel them. And over years, years working with this really quietly, not talking about it to anybody, just like, like is this is this even real like i don't have anybody to talk to about this i don't know this i'm just going on my own experience and you would start to i would start to experience where i could either i could choose whether i was going to absorb someone else's information and

that's how i experience all this is just information and i don't i don't i don't put a label on it either like there's like you can be like i don't i don't want to know anybody's personal history i don't want to know what's going on in your world i just want to help if i can help and so i would start to feel like okay here's the opportunity for me to either absorb what they have or they're putting off and process that with them as like it could be a co-processer or it started to be shown to me that i could increase my uptake of this energy and move it into them and when i did that what I would find is that it would often like push people, not push people, it would bring about a purge. It would bring about, so like as I, again, there's so much that you can't put

into words here. But what I, what I've started to understand, and I feel like it's kind of the fundamental thing that's happening with the mushroom is that it allows for a, a, massive uptake and it is to an extent dose dependent that's not the only factor that it's allowing for a measurable uptake of chi or vital energy and it's you know the only places that i have been able to find the phenomena that i've experienced explained in a tangible way or in the deep esoteric teachings of chigong masters and that's what they describe is when you are doing chigong healing and you're bringing your well and your being up with this vital energy, then you have the opportunity to either use that magnetism of this energy that you have built

to, like, pull in the energy of others and help in processing. Like the first place that started showing up is I would find myself getting nauseous around somebody when they would be, I'd be like, why am I feeling? I'm feeling so nauseous. And then the person beside me, like, oh, Eric, I feel so nauseous. and I'd walk away and I would lose that feeling of nausea and then I would go back over and it would just hit me in the stomach again and there became this point where I could like focus in on that and I would find myself purging and then like not infrequently those people would just say oh god thank you Eric thank you and I was like oh my shit I really am purging off there I'm helping to co-process there trauma or their energy disinformation and I'm purging it out and I found that to be like there's historical precedent for that within the shamanic cultures and I found that to be

detrimental to myself yeah it was the Qigong that I learned that where we could we could build up our energy such that we could then share it with others and then when we share it with others and their vessel becomes full then they will then purge out and the same thing would happen people would say oh my god thank you like i'll never forget this one this one lady i was working with she was like um she was like so many things she was in uh she was in my office i called it there was this spot where just like people would go to purge and i always called in my office and uh and she was over there and i was probably 15 feet away from her and i'm just watching her and she's just like got her back to me

and i'm silent like i'm so like i'm so like i'm silent when I'm in this space and as I see her there and she's just like she she won't really like give herself over to it and so I just kind of go into this meditation and I'm just like you can call it praying whatever you want to call and I was just like sending her energy and like encouraging and just like imagining just like this like flow of energy and to the point where she like starts purging and she goes through this her purge thing and like she just turned around and said to me thank you Eric thank you and it's like we there was no communication she didn't consciously know I was there but she she felt it and so like this is where it gets really

it can become real easy for the ego to become like oh I'm the healer right I'm the person doing all this thing when the truth is is that we are all just doing whatever we're supposed to do there is no I there is is just being there is just the we and it's all happening through us and so it's like it's really important as we gain skill um with these capabilities to remember that we are just vessels for consciousness and that it is it is a collective healing that we're here to facilitate amongst each other and that there is nobody that is above anyone else or i don't know there's there's there's so much there so much there. Wow. Like that is a I love that that experience in the way that you were

able to communicate it because it seems to me that's what's happening all day long every day is that you get in someone's orbit and you're either absorbing their there's these terms like psychic vampires or like that person's got bad juju or whatever but all day long like you get around somebody and you feel this thing. Maybe you can't even maybe you're not conscious enough to understand that what you're feeling isn't your own pain, but it's the pain of someone next to you. And you're like, I feel sick. I don't want to be here anymore. I better get out of here. You know, and the people that may be, and we probably all, I know that I have, I've definitely given off those vibes when I'm scared or when I'm in fear or just sometimes probably I don't even

know why, but, you know, it is that felt presence of the other that we're aware of. It's not communicatable in language, but you feel it. it and what you described is this ability to be conscious of it and to not only be conscious of it but to to manipulate it or send it or give it or receive it like that's that's next level man well that's what we all i think we all have these abilities um and and we have to be mindful of when we've overextended ourselves and that's something that i have greatly pulled back from um because i saw the potential ego trap of it yeah it is extremely taxing um and um yeah i mean it's something that i still you know i engage but now the thing about the retreat situation

is that this like this is a schedule you got 15 people coming in every two weeks you got this thing you got to do and now with the church i uh i go when i'm called it's not a it's not a it's not a scheduled thing, you know, and I am learning much more how to just, like, for one, and fully empower people to be their own healer and also not feel like there's a need to rush the healing. I think it'll happen. It'll happen. If there's a situation that really, that I can tell like this, okay, this, I am being called to be of service. this way right now. I'll step up. But I did it, I did it way too much. And so, yeah, there is so much

that I have yet to unpack from all of those experiences down there. It's, yeah. I'm going to bring some, I'm going to bring some people in over here that have some going back a little bit further to our conversation. I don't want to get too far ahead. Let me bring out my friend, Gosta. Gosta, Thank you so much for being here. Again, if you're listening to my conversation and you're on LinkedIn, check out Gosta. I believe he's speaking to the story about the woman in which drove off in the car. And she says, no, he says, no, Eric, you can see through the veil. That makes your ego very fragile and prone to fracture.

The community gives you structure. Any thoughts on that one there? Love that. Yeah, I think that's really powerful. Douglas Harrison, everybody, check out Douglas Harrison. Incredible individual. Douglas, thank you so much for being here. he says can't rehab what has never habituated is where that comes from in the psychedelic paradigm

clink kiles the great clink kiles check out the psychedelic christian podcast he says there are many parallels in this conversation to christian religious leadership many a young man has found god and decides he's now a pastor without spending the time and effort necessary to dawn such a mantle these people often cause harm and trauma well said clinn i think that speaks volumes of where we're at in the psychedelic movement now ghost uh yep then she saw it the inverted world weed is the holy spice it lifts the veil no and the peak isn't yet to come my friend charla everybody check out charla she's doing some incredible work on ai and consciousness charlotte i'm so grateful you're here she says it needs to be taught and guided not just made

readily available without being guided. A lot of truth to that. Douglas, back to my friend Douglas Harrison, he says Western culture paradigm of comfort. And then he comes back with another one over, he says, perfect as it is,

you're killing my cool sounding scientific sound bites about dose and receptors and shit. I know he's cool. He's one of our outstanding members of sanctuary. He brings some incredible wisdom into our conversations. I just want to express my massive love and respect to him. Absolutely. My friend, Charla, over here, you have to be able to hold your own energy independently of others while fully holding theirs. That's well put, Charla. And I think,

I know for myself, I can do more work. And I feel like I'm trying to always be conscious of the energy I hold and what I'm responsible of. And I think that that speaks to the idea of responsibility the great mark young everybody check out the lewis foundation talk about incredible content mark young is always at the forefront of it and his foundation lewis foundation is doing quite a bit of it this is shadow work he says charla coming back again she says everyone's energy has a unique frequency just like your fingerprints when you've experienced someone's energy even subconsciously there was a knowing of who even when the conscious mind doesn't instantly comprehended.

Mark Young putting some links over there. And then I have my friend Rachel Armstrong. What's up? Rachel, thank you for being here. She says, hi there, Mr. Eric. Hey, Rachel. So I also have some comments coming in from the chat over on the Discord over here. This one comes to us from Taos, New Mexico.

It says, Eric, when you've guided thousands of journeys, what still surprises you inside the mushroom? it's it's unpredictability its ability to surprise and wonder that is that is it yeah for me it's you know what it was really interesting to me too eric on some of these journeys is these sort of geometric images that almost feel like another language to me and the more that i see them i don't see them every time but some of this geometry that i see it almost feels like a language of connection i'm wondering if you have any thoughts on some of the visuals that you see or the visions that you see maybe you can expand on that yeah it's interesting so

yeah i experience uh often experience it as as a language as some kind of model of language um and how i myself or how i encourage others is to rather than try to directly interpret it just to feel it let it soak into your being there is a communication that comes through it there's a healing that comes through it and i think there's also a potential for it to be a distraction as well yeah i've heard others speak to that how they've in their journeys have said they came to a point where they thought okay all right this is this feels like this feels like a distraction and i would like to go deeper and and then not uncommonly and having experienced myself kind of moving through the geometry as if it was almost a veil itself that we can go through to

a deeper experience. And sometimes that experience is visual. Sometimes it's not. Some of the most powerful experiences that I've had or heard others share is just this felt sense, this knowing. And then of course there's also another visual world that you can step into. I've always been fascinated by the folks that have open-eyed visuals. I used to know a guy who would have just massive open-eyed visuals when he ate mushrooms, and it was just fascinating to me. I think it's fascinating how everybody has, like, their own distinct and evolving relationship with the experience itself.

You know, mine used to be a lot more visual than they are. it's now moved more into and you know I just I'm tempted to hold back on this kind of stuff but I feel like it's important to start speaking to it where you know I've had multiple experiences in recent years where you know deceased have been communicating and communicating specific messages or have been distinct historical entities that have been communicating and, you know, channeled through other folks. I had the most out of this world dissolved every concept that I had of reality about two years ago with a friend he channeled two of these beings, one of which is.

historically known, and come to find out, I've just come to acknowledge has been communicating with me. I believe through the inception, I believe that this particular entity is the one that has been calling me to this work since, well, since my very first trip. And it's difficult to talk about because we don't have much of a framework. And those who do talk about these things are usually seen as just the absolute utter fringe. I don't know if anybody is familiar with Robert Edward Grant, who is a polymath. He was a successful entrepreneur in several different fields, medicine, and a lot of different interesting creations he brought into this world.

And in the last few years, he has become more open about his communications with these distinct historical entities and has been leading expeditions into Egypt and whatnot. And he's actually, because he is such a highly respected intellect, and he's speaking directly to his experiences, some of which mine parallel than I have felt more comfortable speaking to. But it's still such a fringe thing for me. It's still such a hard, hard thing for me to swallow, even though I'm, I'm like, I'm tracking this thing over several years and it's like, okay, this is, this is what's happening and still, how do I, how do I process this? How to, you know, work with this on a daily basis? So, yeah, from geometry to telepathic communication to interstellar travel without leaving your body, it's all available to us. Yeah. It's interesting to me to think how easy it is to write off somebody for saying something that may sound ridiculous to you.

But if you look back at some of the like Tesla often spoke about voices coming to him and having a spiritual entity tell him how to make these things. Bob Marley himself was like, I don't write any of my songs. John writes all my songs for me. And we start looking back at some of the biggest figures in history. Call it divine inspiration or call it channeling a being. It doesn't sound silly to me at all. It sounds to me as if you are in contact or you are surrounded by an intelligence that's indescribable that wants to get your attention. Maybe sometimes nefariously, but maybe sometimes in order to really help you become the best version of yourself.

Well, I was in the fruits you will know them, Ryan. So, like, that's what we've got to see the outcome. And I, at least within my own personal experience, I can say that I have become a much more conscientious, compassionate person over the years. I know that, you know, I am continually moving into balance. And so, you know, I want to be the best. We are all an example, whether we like it or not. I just want to be the best example.

that I can be and I want to live the most fulfilled, adventurous, exciting life. This life is like that's the thing. Like when I first started to really diving into ceremony, I'm like, what are what is this? I look at people and I see like, I see all these layers and I see all these abilities. And I'm like, oh my God, what? We just thought we're like monkeys. Like we're not, this is not a meat suit. This is not just a meat suit. This is a magical time machine. So, yeah, and just to enjoy it as much as we can. And give praise to the creator.

Like, that's something I'm really, I have held back. I grew up in a very dogmatic Catholic family. And I ran the other direction for a very long time. And I can look back at my life. And, you know, from these, like I said, these distinct entities that are in communication. the ancestors that I've had communication with that I know, at least in my ontology, there is a prime mover. There is the conscious, there is something behind consciousness.

And we can't get behind consciousness to know what that is that's behind consciousness, but there's something in my experience that's behind consciousness that's bringing, that's just like generating, generative of all this. Have you read Thomas Campbell, My Big Toe, Big Theory of Everything? He's a nuclear physicist who went to work for the Monroe Institute and started getting involved in all kinds of psychic phenomena. And then he has written this just, I don't know, a thousand-page treatise on consciousness and the virtual reality machine.

He's a fascinating mind to explore this concept of God in an advanced scientific model. It's really important to me anyway that there is like evidence, there's science. Like I do kind of like, you know, poo on science a little bit, or at least scientism that has this, it turns science into a religion, right?

Right. You know, like the COVID vaccine or whatever it is. Sorry, I don't want to riffle any feathers, but like nobody fucking knows. Science doesn't know. That's the premise of science is that we're, always trying to prove ourselves wrong because we don't know like that's the whole point is we don't know so anytime science tells you like that's where my frustration with the psychedelic sciences is

like robin carterhart harris i love you thank you for all the work that you've done and he wrote a book called how psychedelics work and i'm just like that's not nobody knows we like have an idea we have an approximation of what's going on we have our own interpretation of what's going on but we don't know. We don't even understand the basic fundamental nature of reality. Like, we're studying the brain as if it is the seat of the psychedelic experience. When we've got serotonin receptors all over our body, the majority of which are not in our brain. Yep.

So I love you, science. I love you, science. That's what got me into the mushroom and I will not turn you into a religion. Man, I'm glad you brought that up. Um, you know, I feel like the majority of science that we all see is like company science. There are real scientists out there that love the mystery and are constantly trying to solve and ask questions, but we have somehow allowed science to be co-opted by company science. And it makes me mad when I see brilliant people like Robin, you know, the most, some of those

brilliant minds and silence get poached and then put in a lab where they can make, something profitable. Like that drives me crazy. It's like, dude, this person is so brilliant. And all of a sudden now they're in a lab. Now they're a star. Now they're working on company science. You know, and it's like, I don't think that that is a coincidence.

I think that there's brilliant people out there that see brilliance and others. Like, this person is someone that we could use. And so, you know, it's interesting to see that. You know, there's some of the biggest labs. I think Brian Roth's lab That guy's done so much Incredible work with LSD But that guy's never taken a psychedelic

You know that's that blows my mind to think about Like some of the people with the biggest Possible budgets have never done psychedelics Like how can those two things Eric how can those two things coexist You know and I'm not take anything away from the guy The guy's brilliant And I'm so stoked he's doing what he's doing

But you've never done psychedelics Like, isn't that a giant chunk of part of the problem? I don't know why you wouldn't want to take LSD. Like, I mean, if I had all the free time, I've said that I'm retiring on LSD personally. Like when I hit 70, that's what I'm doing. I'm in LSD. But yeah, I mean, again, I want to keep bringing myself back to that center point of that everything is as it's supposed to be. I don't understand it.

It's like this Brian Johnson thing and his live streams. Like, I don't understand it. And somehow it's perfect. Somehow it's exactly what we need. Which there's actually some really interesting stuff that's coming out of his own personal metrics that he's taken. You know, the anti-inflammatory effects and whatnot. And so, you know, yes, I know a veteran who is in jail right now for 18 months because he got caught growing his own mushrooms. And yes, there is a billionaire who is live streaming his mushroom trips with impunity.

And it frustrates the shit out of me. And at the same time, it is exactly what it's supposed to be. be yeah i think that's part of the lesson is that because i get caught up in that stuff too and probably a lot of what i get hung up on is because of where i'm at but i it just seems to me like maybe maybe it's not for us to understand just to know that there's a plan there for it to work but it is amazing to see that idea of longevity that's another one too that kind of gets me Eric, is this idea of longevity and wanting to live forever. You're already going to anyway.

Like, that's the joke. It's like, oh, you already are. You're already doing it. It's like, okay, we can spend billions of dollars on that. But we're already, it's like psychedelics. Like, yeah, yes, we can study psychedelics at anthem. We sure can. We can spend all that money on psychedelics.

And you know how much like, whatever, we've got like how many billions. of dollars have gone into psychedelic research, is sanctuary had a million, just one million, which is like how much out of a billion, like the amount of lives that we can change, and we're already doing it. Like, go ahead and study the thing that we already know. We already know that this is the most powerful medicine on the planet. Go ahead and spend millions of billions of dollars on that. And we'll continue to fundraise for, you know, five, ten thousand dollars to try to scrape

property. That's what the universe wants. So that's what we're going to get, I guess. But damn, if I'm not confused sometimes. It just seems so easy, right? It's like, oh, get this guy $10 million. Like what we have done with $200,000, we've been worked off about $250,000 in the last five years, right? And we have trained, I don't know how many people, like hundreds of people.

We have given out hundreds of ceremonies. We've changed hundreds of lives for over five years with a quarter million dollars. You give me $10 million and you will see how this thing blows out. You will see shifting the landscape of religious psychedelic culture in an enormously positive way. We could contribute so much to the research because people are actually taking the medicine, having the experience, recording it, sharing it. So anyway, that's a whole band way. There's a big donors out there. We are definitely fundraising.

So if you got 5 million, half million, 5,000, whatever it is, thank you. We're ready. Agreed. Do you see this whole thing? Maybe the way that Brian Johnson and the veterans and yourself and myself and Charlotte and Clint and Douglas and ghost are all coming together is that like we're all participating in this evolution of awareness. Maybe that's what's happening at this moment in time. What are your thoughts? Well, I mean, it's kind of like, isn't that the game?

consciousness evolving to I don't know what is what what is the is there a point that it's trying to get to is it trying to get to that realization of oneness like I think of this whole like automation world that we're moving toward and the universal income and like if those things really happen or like how all this thing evolves and I mean my take is that consciousness is the game like that's that's what this thing is all about out. And so, like, it is a, again, like, we're trying to live forever only to realize that we already do. So, like, what? This thing of awareness, of awareness of our awareness or the lack of awareness of our awareness or becoming aware of our lack of awareness. And it's just a constantly, like,

cycling. Where's Rex? Douglas, come here and talk. If you've ever, if you ever give this guy the mic boy he can just he can just lay it all out for him the most non-dual perfect beautiful picture of everything is just like one big cosmic joke yeah it's so true it's so amazing eric osborne i am having a fascinating time and i'm so grateful to get to hang out with you today and spend some time learning about what you're going on about the journey and i wanted to kick it back to you and uh was hopeful that you could tell people what you got coming up what you're excited about and where people can find you. Yeah, check out Sanctuary.org. You see the site there on the screen. We are launching for the first time our trainings are going to be in an on-demand

format as far as the presentation material, but then what we have that's really exciting are the live calls that we do. I know like six times a month. We have various different live calls that we do for folks who are doing their own work. They want to bring in their experiences and share them and unpack them and, you know, the best way that we learn is to become the teacher, right? And so that's what I want to give people the opportunity to do is to come in and, you know, share their mistakes, share their successes. We have ceremonies, I think we've got like seven ceremonies right now plan for next year. And we have people from all around the country come in for those.

And so those are great opportunities for people to connect. But, you know, really what we're most excited about is through our nationwide trainings and calls and communications and relationship and community building is seeing more and more pockets of people who are under the sanctuary umbrella for protection, not like we're not trying to like be the McDonald's of mushrooms by any means. We love seeing the little pocket communities that are developing, having their own culture and having their own kind of ways of being. We have a general code of ethics that we want people to buy by, which is basically just be nice, be cool to each other, you know, accept everybody as long as they're peace-loving, as long as they're not

violent, then like everybody should come in under the same roof and be able to have conversation and explore what this game of consciousness is. So we've got communities in Maine, we've got communities in Florida, we've got communities in Ohio and Indiana, and here I'm in Kentucky, we've got some stuff happening around Seattle. So, you know, if you come into our virtual world and hopefully you'll connect to our physical communities around the country and find support just to explore yourself, be more of yourself, and help to contribute to this evolution of consciousness. It's so well said.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're within the sound of my voice, check out sanctuary.org. If you're watching this right now, there's a cool QR code on the screen right now. You can just scan it and you can go right there and check it out. Reach out to Eric Osborne yourself. And of course, to Gosta, Charlotte, Douglas, Clint Kyle, Desiree, everybody else. else. Rachel Armstrong, Mark Young, thank you all so much for being here today. I hope everyone has a beautiful day. And hang on briefly afterwards, Eric, to everybody else. I hope you have a wonderful day. That's all we got. Although.

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