hello hello everyone welcome to the double blind magic hour where we cover what’s going on in the world of psychedelics from Insider baseball drama within the rapidly unfolding psychedelic movement to the latest news on Research politics and Beyond I’m Shelby Hartman double blind’s co-founder and editor-in Chief and today we’re joined by two people who really need no introduction the Visionary artists Alex and Allison gray if you don’t know their work I don’t know why but I suggest you Google them right now and look at it um they’re absolute Pioneers in the world of psychedelic art and they also have a nonprofit and church that you should know about called the chapel of sacred mirrors which is devoted to contemplation and worship for Community honoring the practice of art as a spiritual path they’ve been doing events and Gatherings there for decades as well as displaying the works of art by themselves and other Visionary artists and we’re just honored to have them here thank you so much for joining us thank you Sherby thank you for so good to be here we’re so

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honored we’re stoked to have fungi as the official sponsor of the double blind magic hour fungi makes psychedelic alternative chocolates and fruit shws activated with KN and if you haven’t heard of or explored conette I highly recommend it it’s a beautiful plant from South Africa that is growing in popularity it is completely legal and it’s a very heart openening experience some people use it as an alternative to alcohol people also use it in meditation there’s a lot of uses for KN one of the amazing things about fungi is that they not only include K but they also include other ingredients that are intended for sort of gentle stimulation they’re intended for having a good time they can also be used as aphrodisiacs they include a combination of Kaa and also functional mushrooms in their products and from my personal experience I really enjoyed taking these I had a friend over the other day we took some fungi chocolates we did some yoga in my backyard and it was just like that gentle opening and relaxation that we were wanting um as we wrapped our days so whether you’re going to a festival whether you are going on a mushroom trip or you’re just looking to have a good time with yourself at home in your backyard I recommend checking out fungi podcast listeners can get 25% off their first order just use code doubleblind POD at fungi Fungi.com this episode is brought to you by our sponsor psyched Wellness psyched Wellness is on a mission to bring you the healing restorative magic of amonita mascaria mushrooms with their product Comm Comm is a unique legal amonita mascaria extract available for sale in the United States it’s been formulated by Wellness professionals to help you rest relax and keep strpe all without the high you can get some Cal in your life now and save 10% with the code double blind at pywell

wellness.com so what are you waiting for drift into Dreamland with Cal your mind and body will thank [Music] you great introduction by the way thank you for that that was really lovely you’re welcome and I I really am humbled by the fact that you both have supported double blind my dad and I came and visited you and you did a workshop with us and we’ve interviewed you for the magazine and you know I just have to say at the risk of overly gushing that we’ve often said at double blind that we feel like we’re standing on the shoulders of giants and this is many people who have been at the Forefront of advocating for reform around psychedelics for much of their lives and of course we also want to give reverence to all of the indigenous stewards of these medicines but we really see you in some ways as Elders of the of the psychedelic Renaissance at this point um and uh and so we just appreciate you taking the time to to support us new bees well I have to I have to thank you and say that to us you are on the frothy edge of like the media of this movement you know what I mean what you’re doing is very important and it’s very new and uh and it’s very well done and we are honored to be associated with you honestly you you people are doing the work you know to make this movement have a future you know a double blind uh magazine is in the Psychedelic reliquary I don’t know double in the Psychedelic requ whether people I don’t even know that word what is reliquary mean well a reliquary um is a place where you house relics and Relics um there’s three types uh you know of course like the number one type would be genetic material you know of a saint or something like that that’s considered Like A Relic uh so then a second class Relic is something that they wore so something that like a ring or like uh glasses so we have a pair of uh Albert Hoffman’s glasses the day he uh made the medicine April April 16th and then when his glasses yeah his family that’s amazing his family uh along with the the painting which has become a third class Relic because he signed it that’s so a third class Relic is something like a signature or something like that uh so um those three types of relics we tried to collect for some of the Psychedelic Elders like Dr Hoffman we have a hair from hair Hoffman and wow and then and and numerous uh notes and and writings and uh the family also donated uh a beautiful black hat that he liked to wear and it has a very special amazing odor I have to say that uh you never watch the Hat without without telling you every single piece that is in the show which I Alex loves to do uh because he is it’s really it’s our collection but it’s been his prize and he really takes a pride in having magazines from you know the history of psychedelics up to you know the Contemporary brought the edge that’s right and then there’s but there’s also an indigenous section with Incredible mushroom stones and there’s a there’s a can they’re cannabis jars from the uh loan to us from the Cannabis Museum in Ohio and of course do uh um well Baba ramdas ramas is portrayed also in the group of psychedelic Heroes and there many there and and we have a lot of hair that he sent us tied with a thread of neem cly Baba from his blanket you know so wow he was very so so we invite people of course to come to entheon we’re jumping ahead a little bit but that’s a room in entheon is the Psychedelic reliquary and believe me it’s not big enough it’s so packed and so many people have so many relics of the Psychedelic era you know I mean they’re very interested in uh you know preserving this history that’s how important it is to so many people so we’ve been very lucky you know this almost seems like a silly question because you have done so many different things and you’ve played so many different roles within the Psychedelic movement but for folks who maybe are just meeting you for the first time or for probably more folks who have seen your work know your art but don’t know you you know what what would how would you sort of introduce yourselves you know to the community I mean what who how do you how do you see yourselves within this you know Eco this emerging

ecosystem well I mean I you want me to go first you go first okay I see us as Leaders you know of um something for which we’ve long been a stand which is cognitive Liberty you know people should think the way they want to think and they should be able to meet together in groups of others who have similar thinking they’re all different everyone’s different everybody’s unique but there’s a certain um philosophical core that exists in some people and this is why churches exist there’s lots of anger about churches and there’s absolute reason for that there’s absolute reason for that everybody understands that but there’s also a need for it if there weren’t a need for it there wouldn’t be so many and they are not all dying they’re just changing they’re going through transformation and that’s where we come in we consider ourselves an interspiritual art Church a radically welcoming interspiritual art church if you want to really know and so basically all Traditions all paths are welcome all wisdom is you know like encouraged and so we we basically have started the full moon ceremonies in in January of 2003 and we have never missed one we have our 266th and a consecutive and unbroken chain of Full Moon ceremonies coming up this Saturday it’s the 420 church it’s the pink moon is the is the April moon but anyway the theme will be Liberation because April is all about Liberation but anyway it that’s that’s the framework and then the following day is our church where we practice art as a spiritual path we come together we create a wonderful thematic playlist and then we all go into silence and listen to the music and make art for 45 minutes can you imagine being quiet and not talking for 45 minutes A lot of people sounds like a lot of I it’s my favorite hour of the entire month honestly nobody can touch me I can’t be distracted I’m not allowed to go to the phone you know just and it’s a beautiful exercise and I think a lot of people get a lot out of it so we’ve been doing it for a long time following the full moon yeah I mean we’ve noticed there’s really uh magnified kind of Creative Energy field you know that uh when people are all visioning together and working creating together yeah so what I hear you saying is that among many other things you’re advocates for cognitive Liberty and that is a really interesting term and a really interesting conversation that I look into getting into more with the both of you because is obviously well at the risk of stating the obvious you know we’re in this moment of we’re going to medicalize psychedelics to make them legitimate right we’re going to show that psilocybin synthesized psilocybin has promis for depression MDMA has promise for PTSD when we know that even if you go into a psychedelic experience with the intention of healing a particular mental health condition often times a lot of other things happen during the experience too and how do we broaden the conversation to Encompass the entirety of the Psychedelic experience which was what you talk about at your church what you show in your art that it’s not so simple these things cannot be reduced I think that uh you know historians have pretty much found that our civilizations have been based uh in the Psychedelic experience east and west and um throughout the Americas as well it seems that the most ancient uh shamans who were sort of the predecessors of the religions of today where uh many of them you know at adepts with plant sacraments and things uh throughout the world and so now we see um that you know it’s part of the most ancient religious tradition uh Humanity has had you know these um kind of the secrets of the ages you know weren’t uh lost in the books of philosophers but they were woven into the relationship with like mushrooms you know safely outside of the uh you know kind of the ownership of any particular group and so that way you know many could reach truth in their own way you know and uh so I see in Visionary art sort of evidence uh throughout the white cave art that Terren introduced to um the world you know the little running mushroom headed figures carrying mushrooms seeming to frolic over a very crystalline kind of uh landscape that uh they may be sporing and with a kind of understanding and they even have antenna that seem to have some sense of of thoughts uh going to these uh little uh mushrooms and so symbolically it’s very dense uh kind of early psychedelic art you know that’s 8 to 10,000 years old uh and so I think that um what we’re discovering uh together all the the Visionary artists is that they’re part of a longstanding tradition that’s uh been connected with the sacred and we’re witnesses to it this is a a place where we can um store and share our mystical experiences and that helps to other people to kind of reinforce and validate their own um experiences if if they happen to resonate with the work yeah I wanted to swing back also to your your mention of medicine and how the um substance is coming into the culture through healing through medicine and this I believe is good and is happening because you know in order to sort of plead your case this stuff really belongs in the culture you need to show benefit benefit to and healing is benefit so people who have uh relief from uh suicidal ideation or have relief from addiction or have relief from Neurosis or relief from um from depression um they show actual evidence you see what I mean they got to they got to write it down in numbers like this is the amount of people they have to do a study to make it like so you know your Grandma needs this you know Grandma needs this she’s got anxiety around uh terminal illness it’s called old age you know so really as as Bob Jesse has said for decades you know it’s really for the betterment of well people but we’re all getting well you know what I mean the the wellest ones Among Us I think are you know are still working on themselves and trying to be more well so I know that’s what happened with Alex and I we were not under the care of any psychiatrist and we had never been institutionalized but we did have addiction suicidal ideation depression you know uh anger you management you all that stuff is is is just sweeping through us you know or or or withdraw or or all kinds of stuff and yet we were doing pretty well you know what I mean we were functioning but this these these these treatments were really helpful like you were saying in more areas than just those but also to have the life you love you know Vision right Vision what you really want in life and go for it you know that kind of thing I remember speaking to you Alex oh gosh six years ago something like that I interviewed you for a story I was doing for Courts at the time on a study that was giving psilocybin to rabbis moms priests and other religious leaders who had never tripped before and at the time I remember you telling me that um I hope you don’t mind me saying this we can cut it out later if you do but I remember you telling me that um sort of in the early days of what we’re calling the Psychedelic Renaissance um with these conferences and things that you were invited to come speak and you often were bringing up the concept of mysticism and that not everybody really wanted you to be talking about mysticism because we you know people are afraid of a repeat of History so to speak where there’s all this flourishing research in the 50s and the 60s and then it was shut down in the 70s and oh if we talk about mysticism we talk about cognitive Liberty we talk about art we talk talk about dance we talk about Community like maybe that’s going to be too far maybe the culture isn’t ready for that what do you say now six years later are we ready to talk about mysticism are we ready to talk about the full potential of these experiences or should we still be really really careful about how we’re framing what these are supposed to be doing for people I think that anytime you start to talk about meaning and uh healing and all of uh the John’s Hopkins kind of uh work seems uh to regard the mystical experience as [Music] having great significance to the healing process so we could say that opening up to a sacred world uh healing is part of the Entourage effect of that opening and most people in the field understand that it’s a reductionist lens to put a simple medication on it because it transcends the boundaries of uh other medicaments uh that we know of this is kind of a soul medicine and uh we don’t have a comfortable context to talk about that um because we have Psychiatry and some of it would would say talking about the souls okay but it’s more in the sort of the realm of spirituality that we start to uh feel that that’s that’s the real opening for the uh psychedelic Explorer is when they you know see the shores of the infinite and understand that that all of that is their own inner terrain as well it’s equally infinite to the outer infinitude and that’s just a great anchoring uh understanding you know that’s hard to communicate you know with words you know but once one’s been there then it’s why communities meet you know they feel the need to meet other people who’ve had that experience you know or something like that experience that’s so poetic this idea of touching the shores of the infinite and I think I want to get a little vulnerable in this moment because I do see you both as teachers and say that um you know Romos famously said that he went to India to I mean you know this but for listeners who don’t know famously said he went to India because he was doing lots and lots and lots of acid and at a certain point he realized he was always going to come back down again and you know you speak so poetically about the possibility of touching the shores of the infinite and what that opens up for a person in their Consciousness and their sense of possibility but we also see a lot in our culture that people are seeking once they’ve touched that the shores of the infinite they just want to keep going back there they just want to see it again and again and again and again and then you know we one of the sort of elephants in the room with the Psychedelic research is we don’t have long-term studies looking at what happens to people many decades after they’ve had a transformative psychedelic experience and if the benefits persist long into their lives so you know sure we touch the shores of the infinite but then where do we go from there if we want to see real sustainable change within ourselves and within our culture are we romanticizing the idea that someone can just touch the shores of the infinite a few times and then you know their Outlook is going to change they’re going to become a more conscientious Global citizen I I think that the evidence of of transformation in our culture through the use of psychedelics is very evident to us people that are over 70 let’s say and still Advocates and there are many of us really I mean if you go to the Psychedelic science conference with 12,000 people you see people of all ages you see I mean you do see children actually but you see people of of all the mature ages and uh so I think it’s the the evidence is is there because like I was saying we’re you know the things that we’ve been through we find that this substance has helped us through those those things that we you know that we go through in our life and um so yeah what we do well I just wanted to say I understand uh the desire once one has had contact with something um that’s so beyond it it may in some ways be shattering though to your reality so um to try to constantly uh go there even the substances themselves have a kind of a tolerance you know that develops as if to say no you’ve had enough for now you know and and most of the wisdom keep ERS I think would have us integrate what we learned from that experience you know and I always think that there’s a um spirits that are watching you and if you’re an artist or a creative person that there may be creative Angels you know kind of circling around and they’re seeding fertile ground you know with visions and uh so if you uh develop that relationship in a way or open yourself up to it you know that’s a a kind of a your art be can potentially become a spiritual messenger [Music] system is that how you both see your art a spiritual messenger system I I don’t know that I see my art that way I think you know I think Alex’s work does speak to people in that way very literally you know what I mean narratively you know I I refer to the images that I have inside my eyes you know inside my head and uh and also the the processes that I have inside my head about making art that it’s a making process you know it’s something that comes from a thought and goes through symbols and is becomes a thing and so I you know I I have a process that you know I I have uh you know noticed through the years and it’s more of a way of communicating I think in a sense of course I love the responses from people too I love to get feedback and to hear what they you know what their experiences of my work but I think more more the act of making it is really an outward sort of uh communication which has to do with you know chaos order and secret writing and there and their essentialized you know my essentialized worldview that those that psychedelics handed me basically that those were the the most minimal that you had you had these basic categories chaos being the material world where everything is inevitable entropy it’s just everything’s falling apart and beautifully too beautiful colors and in in an array and always royally and always in motion and then there’s order which is the mountains and drains of energy that we see you know in a vast Vista uh when we’re at our highest uh State of Consciousness the Psychedelic state of meditation and um and then there’s the secret writing which is the language of creative expression the stuff the thoughts that become things like my words like Terren would say my mouth noises you know are all symbols of that you recognize because I’m not speaking Chinese you know you you you you see through those windows of uh symbols and uh and you read them and you your mind perceives them and this is a way this is the essential Act of an artist is to be a symbol maker so that’s where psychedelics took me it took me to essentializing and like seeing what is like behind the veil you know don’t we all say that it’s it’s what’s behind the veil and it was seemed like the most make art about the most important thing and that was seemed like what what it was telling me so I’ve done that for for many many years and um you were talking about Romas though who decided to uh go meditate after he see he really changed my trip I’d been tripping along for three years you know doing all kinds of things like people do and when they’re first few years of college and and then I read the rhas book and I got that I should go in a dark room by myself and trip and that’s when I saw secret writing so you know it was like God came to me in that moment I had not been God knowing before that I had been agnostic let’s say but anyway it but then immediately I mean I read the book and it was said that you know he went to you know India to study and that I should it said to me that I should start finding a place to meditate and I did I went to Yogi Bajan and he initiated me himself so you know he brought Kundalini Yoga to America so anyway it was a it was an incredible group of people 20 or 30 years older than me all of them and uh I started meditating when I was 19 so Alex and I do and I think it’s a wonderful uh it is an essential thing to do I mean if you if you’re not doing it it’s just you’re not doing it yet that’s all you know it’s really you know something that you get to and it’s five minutes you know give yourself five minutes you’ll learn so much if you do it every day so yeah I think that along with a creative practice that a um a meditation practice is sort of like the tried and true uh path to integrating some of these um you know amazing experiences that people have and and finding the uh sort of root aware root of awareness you know that you uh uh get to experience in so many ways a friend called me an interdimensional

Smuggler remembered that because you’re bringing because you’re bringing uh Visions from the from the other side into this realm you’re sharing them with all of us

Muggles I’m like I’m looking forward to uh talking with you both more about your creative practices as well as the work that you’re doing at CM but first we’re going to take a quick

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10% so for those of you who don’t know double blind began as a print magazine and it’s still at the heart of what we do I spent my whole career as a journalist before starting double blind reporting on psychedelics cannabis and drug policy more broadly for Rolling Stone Vice La weekly courts I did just about everything in journalism I worked at CBS News covering breaking news a major newspaper small media startups and if you haven’t heard journalism is in crisis but we started doubleblind anyway because we believe in the value of good journalism to educate and hold stakeholders accountable we saw what happened in cannabis Pioneers who put their lives on the line to get patients access to the medicine they needed getting left behind because they didn’t have the capital to compete in the newly regulated market we’ve seen what’s happened in mental health care and Healthcare more broadly whereby Millions of people are suffering don’t trust their doctors can’t afford proper care and just don’t know what to do to get well in our print magazine we feature essays investigations photojournalism and much more by world-class journalists who are going everywhere from the iasa tourism industry in Peru to Laboratories at leading universities we’re supporting people like you on their Journey with psychedelics and we’re covering this movement as it unfolds this is all made possible by our members who in exchange for their support get direct access to psychedelic experts to help them on their journeys of healing and growth workshops and a subscription to our beautiful print magazine subscribe today at doubleblind mag.com [Music] membership so I’d like to go a little bit more deeply into both of your creative practices Allison I thought it was really interesting the way you were talking about this concept of sort of bringing forth the thoughts into reality or I can’t remember exactly how you framed it but it exists within you and then you’re making it real without you and I so I’ve been sitting with iasa for about seven years and I have spoken to people who have been doing it a lot longer than I have and one of the things that I’ve heard uh said to me again and again is the more you sit with it the more intricate your Visions get and the more you remember what you see and are able to bring those things back with you so I’m curious you know you’ve both been artists for a long time you’ve both been doing psychedelics for a long time how is this process of bringing what’s within you outside of you evolved over time how have you learned to sort of take note of what’s unfolding to remember those Visions is there a practice for when you’re in that space to sort of take photographs within you of those Visions to bring them forth like how how does that

work exactly good question you know it’s a a continually evolving um kind of thing because it the first LSD experience that I had in your apartment you know back in 1975 I made my first psychedelic art out of because that was my first psychedelic experience and part of the Hallmark of uh most psychedelic experiences is they’re kind of Unforgettable in their own way they create a a gravity of Consciousness you know just in a moment you know and uh and seemingly uh so many created uh Vistas and and beings and things like that that it it seems uh impossible that it’s not just another uh realm like our physical uh existence but what is the dream world it it opens up all of those questions you know and um so let’s see well you first of all you use a journal that’s one of the things you do and and we always do if we’re tripping and and and in any we we write stuff down when we’re just smoking weed too but I mean we you know it’s good to have a journal a special journal for when you’re tripping don’t you think I have sketchbooks that have vomit on them uh from the from the purging that didn’t quite hit the bucket or something and uh and they have notes that are so fascinating because they’re written sometimes in the dark and over the same you know statements journals like that as well don’t you yeah I wonder how many iasa journals are like that it’s really funny and then occasionally there’s this like uh Moment of clarity and I make a little drawing or something like the pattern was something like this you know and it uh and I could note the colors in the board ERS look at the borders of things I think also remember the feelings you’re having really try to sense along with the vision that you may be uh witnessing the feelings that you’re having at that time and if it seems like wow I may return there boy I you know like like that’s a that’s one to note down or something like that and make notes about color make notes about anything but also the feeling if you can at all put anything into words because it’s why you’re making art is essentially you can’t put it into words but when it starts to resemble that thing again I’ve found that the feeling starts to come back and you start to oh yeah it was like this and when you get more of that in it then uh then you’ve maybe successfully or more successfully TR offloaded the vision into a form that maybe other people could receive the same kind of um blast you know I because I think art is like a battery of Consciousness you know and you’re really weaving the Consciousness that that inspired the work into a manifest format you know for other people to alter their Consciousness with it’s a simple way to alter Consciousness look at Art yeah I I you know I thought I would just briefly give a perspective from the uh a person who makes abstract visual art for all the people out there that may want to create their visions abstractly and uh and and are not um as narrative maybe in their style there’s many wonderful Visionary artists that are narrative in their style and they’re making incredible documents of of visions of you know uh in a in a more uh in their own way and every everyone’s uniique but what I was going to say is that uh I think that psychedelics changed my mind and um and and affected my memory of it in the sense that it’s already embedded in there and so the river of ideas flows by which it constantly does you know it’s like new ideas are always coming um the ones that you pluck out are the ones that look most like your reservoir of imagery that’s in there like how can I make this you know like like on well that’s kind of like a judgment it’s like is this you know like looking like that that image that’s kind of where the choices come in like what you’re going to do and uh this piece behind us by the way is called rainbow ey Ripple and it’s a collaboration I can’t see why yeah it’s a collaboration of Alex and I we did it as a you know on we started it as a live painting in several locations but it not only includes um the eyes which are so you know associated with Alex’s work but it also includes the square Diamond uh recession configuration mandala that I always work in when I call call it order and um and then of course there’s the spectral rainbow RI of ribbons that are roiling which I think is both Alex’s and mine the roiling you know in mind being more like an explosion or you know an uh and Alex’s is always dimensionalized so beautifully right in yours uh the geometry is maybe a little more uh under understandable but it’s but it’s definitely coherent and is the same kind of um web uh and square root kind of recession but that is a um one of the things that art can do is point to the infinite and it can do it symbolically and in an image like this uh you have the eye and uh that’s obviously a symbol of awareness and so you multiply it and you have expanded awareness you know just symbolically you know the unconscious is receiving these kinds of messages when it sees something like this and then uh the light so the the light another association with Consciousness you know something that’s luminous and uh you know brilliant in its own way and uh has its own intensity it’s full chroma and so some of the words oh sorry no no I’m done oh well I was just going to say some of the words that I hear you using are remembering connecting reconnecting feeling remembering the feeling this might sound silly uh especially because I actually was writing about art and studied art before I was writing about psychedelics but for some reason um Alex in particular when I look at your work because Alison I know your work is more abstract I’ve always thought it was representative of exactly what you were seeing I’ve never thought about the feeling component of it what we’re feeling on a psychedelic experience but we do know that in this integration process this period after the Psychedelic experience remembering the feeling is as important as remembering the thoughts as bringing these sort of Revelations of what is alive for you and your body and your life forward in a way that’s meaningful that’s going to create sustained change and one of my favorite things I’m sure you’ve both seen this the bumper sticker it says Earth and then art is in different colors than the E and the H so what happens when you take the art out of Earth eh um this is kind of the sense I get of how some people regard art within the Psychedelic industry movement right it’s like first we’re going to legalize these as medicine we need to make them available in a clinical setting art is nice it’s ancillary but actually what I hear you both saying is Art can be an integral part whether you’re making it or looking at it of making sure that we remember what the heck even happened when we were in that other dimension talking to an alien I mean can you talk a little bit about this why is why is psychedelics without art eh I I want to just I would just want retort that I don’t feel that I’m not painting what I see I am painting what I see I’m painting exactly what I see and we all would be because it it occurs in our mind which has changed from the psychedelics and it has a memory like the remembering in fact the book be here now is actually called Remember be here now and you hear yourself saying Remember to Remember when you’re in that experience it’s like you want to bring it back so you do bring it back in your memory and I see it I see it without the people having the experience or the angels that you imagine in the experience I actually do see uh abstract patterning oh wow in my who doesn’t in their psychedelic experience we all see abstract patterning it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s you know even if I get extra stoned I see it on the sidewalk in front of me you know what I mean the everything seems patterned so it isn’t like that is not literal it’s literal it’s just abstract it’s considered abstract because it doesn’t have people in it the people are having the experience I’m doing the experience without the having I’m just it’s what’s inside you know that’s that I’m that I’m painting I I think that every artist is provides a lens into uh that Dimension and some are uh looking in one uh Direction and dimension and it appears One Way Allison and I say our common subject is Transcendental light you know so uh it’s something that uh hopefully uh comes through now you had a question that was I was about ready to uh answer your question please could you why I said why is our integral to yeah to the Psychedelic experience to the unfolding of psychedelics well of course I see evidence uh there in the walls of tassili you know um the earliest kind of cave art that we know that it it shows up um art is a natural kind of outcome uh of of this intense um visual experience symbolic experience how do you get that out you know it’s like that’s a lot of people want to write about it they want to talk about it they want to meet other people who might have had experience they want to read about it you know um and then one of the other ways is to uh obviously share some of this imagery it’s so dense and Rich I started to think of it as a kind of art theology in itself you know that we the Divine imagination is unveiling itself uh to us in the mystical Visionary experience and uh this is a uh a kind of um miracle in a way and uh then we get to in some way share that uh and and I think the art is like a little Ember left from a burning house that’s all you’re going to get it’s just a little maybe it’s a still smoldering something you know of that amazing uh moment but it could be like a fractal moment it could be a a summary uh statement and I think that that’s what uh the integration process has uh kind of brought us to I see you know like our earliest uh Universal ma uh mind lce kind of experience which we made little notes of and and things like that uh back in 1976 that’s what uh kind of the chapel of sacred mirrors houses that mystical experience and Visionary art in general houses or somehow embodies um the treasury of gifts that we were given we don’t quite have the ability to um manifest directly uh visually yet there may be a way you know in the Elon Musk is coming I’m sure he coming for us exactly the embedded kind of uh yeah embedded kind of technology that can somehow model or read as we’re experiencing our own imagination is there way to

voyerism aneous uh witness it as we experience it I I wouldn’t put it past uh Engineers to to develop such technology and I think it would be amazing to witness the the first time that I drank iasa well we won’t get all into that but I’ll say the next morning I woke up and I said to someone it was the craziest thing I saw snakes and you know where this is going right the person said oh yeah that’s that’s mother iasa she presents herself as to people as a snake um and you know the more I started looking at Visionary art and I’ve talked to you both about Pablo amaringo and we did a story on him in the magazine you start to see oh wow Jaguars snakes entities people are seeing the same things all over the world all across time how do we explain that especially especially when Panthers and and and snakes are not in our life a regular everyday life if you’re living in the jungle I wasn’t in the Amazon no no when I saw the snakes no I was but I didn’t live with snakes I don’t grow up with Panthers I don’t make up those things in my mind because it’s not in my world even though I’m down there I didn’t see any except in my Iowas experience yeah I think that the uh the embeddedness of the archetypes in the medicine experience both uh sort of mythically mystically um and anecdotally and everything like that that seeds the bed of our Consciousness and then the just the access you know the I also have have experienced a lot of serpent energy on iasa and I always Associated it with the serpent that was the mouth and the digestive system the the all because it can affect everything you know it’s the long snake of our own inner being you know and digestion you know that that is also part of it and helps helps us Here’s a thought too I mean just because we as scientists and smart people have never discovered how plants see that this is just a thought it doesn’t mean that they don’t see they they very well may see we were starting to find out about the connectedness of all the mycelial you know Network and and all the trees talking to each other we hear about that I mean we just haven’t discovered yet the language of plants really and how they commun and the huist to think that you know we it’s our right to to discover and understand everything well it’s our right to seek I think that seeking knowledge is very natural natural and and and we want to know more and more maybe we will never know it all cuz we’ll be dead first and then we’ll be with God and God knows all so there you go I mean eventually you’ll know all you’ll know all so speaking of God okay speaking of God we have five minutes to talk about about uh well choose your pronoun uh for God but um no I do really want to uh of course talk for a moment at least about your important work at CM God does not have a pronoun God does should not have a pronoun because God is not a gender if it were a gender it would be two in our world but it’s one so that’s that’s the answer to that okay well I was just joking I know but I I think it’s wor saying that God has no gender God has no face God is God is a force or God is both beyond all genders and uh and within and embodied by all genders you know is within and not other than oneself it’s in and yet is also the Manifest Creative Source of it all and the Transcendent mystery that uh abides um and is the Creative Source our perception of it too I’m going to encourage folks who are listening and watching if you’re watching on YouTube to check out cm to support their work to follow them on Instagram we’re going to get into all the places that you can find them and how you can support them in a little while but can can we give people just a a little bit of of context on km and what you’re doing now and you can’t you know you’ve been doing this for a long time so you’re not going to tell us the whole history of it but what you really wanted people to most know now about what’s going on there oh cm is open anthon the sanctuary of visionary art is uh open three days a week Friday Saturday and Sunday and has a psychedelic requery in the uh first floor and also the all one Gallery which features uh the work of a couple of dozen remarkable Visionary artists International Visionary artists from Ernest fuks and Amanda Sage and Android Jones and Luke Brown and uh uh Jen Stark uh Luis tamman Pao amaringo uh and uh a number of remarkable artists who have loaned uh works and uh who are sharing it uh with community and it it’s quite a remarkable show and then Allison’s in incredible uh work and uh progress of the soul and the chapel of sacred mirrors uh so we have a a kind of a installation of uh of art as well as a 40 acre campus that people could take a walk in the woods there’s a wisdom Trail and then the it’s beautiful I walk the wisdom trail with my dad I recommend it we have a uh uh Hospitality we have a 10-bedroom guest house and it’s open to uh reservations on Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday so people that want to come here and stay overnight can and you just need to you know make reservations and all that can be done online at cosm.org cosm.org and uh you can find out more about our calendar you know we have we have Manda Sage teaching here this week and we have workshops every month sometimes twice a month and usually a figure drawing uh session too so you find out some of the things that we do here and and if you’re in the New York area uh or make it a special trip A lot of people do New York is a great destination and we’re only 60 miles from the city and accessible by Metro North train right to Grand Central Station right like you can walk out oh it’s so Central straight to km like two different two completely different dimensions come on come on a weekend make it a weekend yeah um before we wrap up I am wondering if you would like to join us for a couple minutes of meditation always of [Music] course hello and welcome I’m Sky Weaver resident facilitator at double blind and I invite you into a little bit of breath work here today so the breath we’re going to use is coming in through the nose and out through the mouth so we’re going to inhale through the nose a little extra um inhale here and

exhale nice and long through the mouth that’s it again inhale through the nose little gasp and exhale through the

mouth right and on that exhale just letting everything out couple more times inhale do the nose

exhale good one more

time beautiful and you can continue doing that as I explained just a little bit about this that this is a beautiful breath practice that you can do to calm your nervous system anytime I’m feeling anxious about anything in fact preparing for this video today I did my breath work so inhaling in one more time and [Music] exhale soften that jaw and that tongue one

more nice and just allowing the breath to return back to normal wiggling the body a little bit I’m a big fan of

wiggling and welcome back we’ll see you soon

I felt like I was with you what a great idea I had a magical Vision all right tell us oh just inside inside of a four-faced being and it had so many jewels going up and up uh in its Crown it was really beautiful

I was just thinking of you both and how many years you’ve been doing this work and it’s amazing oh well we love you thank you for doing the work you’re doing lot of lot of time and care to your own personal Journeys so that you can share this wisdom with other people and it’s really inspiring we are so lucky and grateful to have uh friends and um people who connect with the work and um like you suggest maybe it it means something you know we’re all connected on the inside somehow

too so um is there anything else you I mean I know there’s so much to say there’s an infinite number of things to say and feel and paint but is there anything for now that you would like to share with the community before we close out this conversation our creative task as a cosm community right now is to put the 21 foot high faces on the building of anthon which now looks like a big cement block you know but basically it was made very sturdy to handle the weight of uh enormous masks of uh of spirit basically that create one intercon one head with 30 interconnected faces all around the building and so that’s if we can do that that will be one Strang looking building and uh really somehow talk about interconnectedness in a very uh beautiful way I like to just say that the way to interact with cosm if you would like to if you want further uh you interaction with us know that we are uh online for our we Zoom our art church so you can become a f if you’re a future member you can audit and you can become a member and you can participate in the zoom but we do this every month and if you just wanted to you know put art in your life as a spiritual practice or just see what it would be like you feel like you’ve been missing out on art for some reason do it once a month do it with us and a lot of the people who’ve been doing with us for years end up doing it in between times too and so they develop their their art as a spiritual practice and even have become professional artists out of it so you know you start to love it and you start to want to do more of it so you can join us on Zoom for our church even if you can’t make it here we’ love to have you in person as well and uh you can join us on YouTube for the full moon and just you know uh watch it anytime it’s it it’s it’s live but then it it remains there so you can be there you could that’s one way you can do it for almost nothing you can be part of KM and then the best thing to do next would be to become a member it isn’t that expensive we have members from all over the world and it’s a stand for this radically welcoming interspiritual art Church to continue into the future that’s what you do when you you become a member is you become a stand and you can also join the mighty networks which is a CommunityWide um members talk and share art and music and thought and all that stuff so we do that too for all people all over the world and uh so you know be a part of what we’re doing if you like it support it if you can and uh we love seeing you thank you so much for giving us this opportunity what a swell thing to do thank you so much for being here

wow I’m still digesting that conversation if you couldn’t tell I was emotional and just feel humbled by the fact that Alex and Allison have supported double blind really from the beginning um they contain so much wisdom they’ve devoted so many years to their own spiritual and psychedelic paths and have really been an integral part of the way that this movement has unfolded and in making sure that conversations around topics like cognitive Liberty and mysticism don’t get left behind as we essentially look at turning psychedelics into medicines that can be prescribed by doctors um there’s so much more to get into around their work and their life and their story so I do suggest that you check out CM we’ve also interviewed Alex Gray in the past we’ll put a link to that interview in the show notes thanks everyone for listening and I just want to remind you that if you want the chance for us to answer your questions on air about tripping you can send them to Magic hour at doubleblind mag.com or visit doubleblind mag.com slmag hour either way we have tons of articles on our website doubleblind mag.com about psychedelics we also have classes workshops a community you can join and of course our baby which is our print magazine it comes out twice a year and you can subscribe at the link in the show notes if you have thoughts about what we talked about today you have suggestions who should come on you can also hit us up at Magic hour doubleblind mag.com or you can find us on all the social platforms at doubleblind mag I also want to give a shout out to the amazing Folks at human content who are producing this podcast and helping make it possible they do a lot of great podcast other than this one so if you’re an audio file check them out on Instagram and Tik Tok atum content pods thank you to everyone who is leaving great feedback and awesome reviews if you subscribe and comment on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube we might give you a shout out and either way we’ll give you our gratitude full video episodes up every week on YouTube at double blind I’m your host Shelby Hartman special thanks again to our guests Alex and Allison gray our executive producers are Ain Corney Rob Goldman Shany Brook and Alex field from the double blind team who also edits the show our engineer is Jason porzo our music is by Oma to learn more about the double blind magic hour program disclaimer and ethics policy and submission verification and Licensing terms you can go to doubleblind mag.com slmag hour the doubleblind magic hour is a human content and double blind production now let’s take you out on reality by yamano [Music]

[Music]

a got time for you ear Schism today bring the people together is the only plan I

L they make money why we just feel

alone no matter how try we just can’t feel at [Music] home thanks for watching and if you’re thinking gosh I really need more double blind magic hour in my life well you can start listening now by clicking on that playlist button right over there new episodes are out every Monday so please subscribe and join us each week on YouTube and wh ever you get your podcasts