68: Jules Evans on Psychedelic Integration, Ethics, Stoicism and Contemporary Therapeutic Practices

Substack
Jules Evans – Blog
Philosophy for Life – book
The Art of Losing Control – book
Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project – NFP

Timothy Leary 
Stanislav Grof
Terence Mckenna
Jorge Ferrer
Daniel Pinchbeck
Breaking Open the Head – Daniel Pichbeck
2012:Time for Change
Eton College
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Aldous Huxley 
George Orwell
Ian Fleming
Eddy Redmayne
Tom Hiddleston 
Kwasi Kwarteng 
Boris Johnson
David Cameron
The Jam – The Eton Rifles
Acid House Boom
Daoism
Buddhism
Romantic Poets
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Hunter S. Thompson
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
University of Oxford
Microdot LSD
Existentialism
Nietzsche
William Shakespeare
Gabor Mate – Authenticity vs. Attachment
Default mode network
Cognitive therapy
Stoicism
DMT Extended State Trial
Ontological  Shock
Albert Ellis Article – Jules Evans
Martin Seligman Article – Jules Evans
Aaron Beck Interview – Jules Evans
Breaking Convention
David Luke
Roland Griffiths
Religious Ecstasy
Compassionate Inquiry
Alan Watts
ICEERS
Jeronimo Mazarassa
Benjamin De Loenen
Psychedelic Safety Summit
5 MeO-DMT
Psychedelic Churches
Difuso Ibiza
Spiritual Eugenics
Jim O’Neill
Transhumanism
Holotropic Breathwork
Ecovilla
Damanhur
Auroville
Rajneesh
Michel Pollan

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi. Welcome to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today I’m so excited to have Jules Evans. Jules is a writer, researcher, and practical philosopher exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern well being. He’s the author of Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, which examines how ancient philosophy influences cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT.

A former researcher fellow at [00:01:00] Queen’s Mary University of London, He has studied the history, philosophy, and psychology of well being. His work has been featured in the Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. As director of the Challenging Psychedelic Experience Project, he researches psychedelic integration and mental health, bridging philosophy with contemporary therapeutic practices.

Thank you for your time, Jules. Thank you for being here. 

Jules (2): Nice, nice to be here. Do you prefer Giancarlo or Mango? ? 

Giancarlo: Giancarlo Carlo. Is Mango the name 

Jules (2): of the channel? That’s not your nickname as well? 

Giancarlo: No. No. Okay. Mango is the name of the channel and actually it’s, it’s, it’s short for Mangusta. Oh, Mangusta is the mongoose.

It means mongoose in Italian and yeah, we, the first company we created with some partner, we were investment bankers and we create a risk management company and we call it Mangusta because I don’t know if you remember in the jungle book in Kipling [00:02:00] book, there is the Ricky Tikitavi is the mongoose.

Jules: Huh. 

Giancarlo: And, and the slogan was like, stay safe, stay together. So she was very loyal, very brave because he was the only animal that kills the cobra and and, and, and, and come very community oriented. 

Jules (2): So, 

Giancarlo: and also very promiscuous, but we don’t say that. 

Jules (2): Okay. So you, you went from investment banking to kind of the world of wellness, personal growth.

Giancarlo: Yeah. You know whose fault is that? 

Jules (2): A person? I mean, Timothy Leary? I don’t know. Stanislav Grof? 

Giancarlo: Yeah, exactly. The modern version of Leary. Maybe a little bit more. Grof? McKenna? Who? Contemporary. Like, the Rolling Stones magazine, I think it was on the cover, I think. And they call him the modern Castaneda. He’s a friend of yours.

I mean, I don’t know how friendly [00:03:00] you are, but no, but we’re getting, we’re getting close. Are you on Facebook? Yes. Ah. You see, you got, you got there just after three tries. Yeah, Daniel, basically I arrived in New York. My wife gave me ayahuasca in Paris in 2005. And so I was fresh with that experience. And I met Daniel and he had just published Breaking the Head Open.

Do you remember? I read it, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then it persuaded me to to adapt his book, 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl, into a documentary. And so we did with this filmmaker from Brazil, João Morim, we called it called 2012 Time for Change. And it’s, it’s a documentary about these ideas, really. And the main idea is that’s a good introduction to why we’re here.

The, the main idea was that the global transformation comes from personal transformation. [00:04:00] And I really resonate with that. You know, the old metaphor of, you know, if you want to help in the plane in emergency, you put your oxygen mask first, otherwise without your oxygen, you can’t do much. And, and, and and I feel especially today and then I’m going to stop.

I feel especially today that a lot of people wants to help without the oxygen mask. 

Jules (2): Huh. Huh. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So that’s, yeah, that’s why we try to keep this conversation very much personal based. 

Jules: Mm hmm. 

Giancarlo: And, and, and, and so we’re gonna do, you know, even if I hope we’re gonna talk about, you know, esoteric topic, but we’re gonna keep it biographical and chronological.

Jules (2): Sure. Well, I, I, I’m fine. I’d love to You know, learn about you as well Giancarlo and hear about your story. So if you don’t mind, you know, like kind of, I know you want me to tell my story. I love I like doing that, but I love to hear yours too, because it sounds fascinating. 

Giancarlo: But so we have to go a bit longer than an hour.

Jules (2): Well, we, I, [00:05:00] we 

Giancarlo: can speak quick. I’m drinking a lot of coffee here. Okie dokie. Okay. So tell me about you first. So I want to know everything, like from the very beginning, where were you conceived even? 

Jules (2): I don’t know. I grew up in London, kind of upper middle class family. I went to boarding school. So I’m, you know, when I was when I was 13, went to this private school in England called Eaton College, where like Prince William went where Aldous Huxley went, George Orwell, you know, 500 years.

We 

Giancarlo: just, we just keep the old puberty preteens. I mean, like, tell me, tell me a little bit, how were you when you were 10 and 12? What were your interests at the time? 

Jules (2): I was a, I was a little little show off kind of, you know, clown, loved to make people laugh very energetic, kind of sporty little kid, but sporty.

And loved, you know, just loved making people laugh, really. 

Giancarlo: Lots of siblings? Little siblings? [00:06:00] 

Jules (2): No, just one brother. One older brother. 

Giancarlo: Older brother. 

Jules (2): And so we were kind of, you know yeah, we were like London kids. And more sporty than intellectual, yeah? And a kind of performer, really. I like performing.

If I, you know, in an alternative universe I didn’t become an intellectual or anything to do with books. I was like a clown or you know, something like that. Some kind of performer. I think I would have been in an alternative universe. 

Giancarlo: Oh, wow. What was happening at the dinner table with your family? What they’re talking about?

Jules (2): I mean, my parents, they were, they’re smart, I mean, they went to Cambridge, but they weren’t really intellectual. My dad is a businessman, worked in the city of London in the same company his whole life. And so he’s, you know, he’s a kind of city person. My mom was very smart, went to Cambridge when she was 17, but she kind of left her career to bring us up.

So they’re kind of, you know, I would say [00:07:00] center, right. upper middle class, you know, not, not really rich. We lived in an apartment in London where they still live. So, you know, they, they moved to an apartment in Kensington in about 1983. And they’re still there. My father worked in the same company his whole life.

So. My brother and I, and particularly me, are much more, you know, freewheeling. Like, I live in Costa Rica now, I’ve lived in Russia, I’m more, you know, I’ve pretty much worked for myself my whole life. So I’m this unstable element, but my, my, my, my father is a very kind of stable person 

Giancarlo: as a reaction, right?

Maybe 

Jules (2): I don’t know. Yeah, who knows? I’m not sure. So I went to my brother and I went to eating college and that’s just this crazy, crazy environment. It, you know, it’s one of the most intense, vivid phases of my life, and I think that’s the same for everyone who goes there. This is [00:08:00] a, it’s almost a small town.

It’s certainly a village, and it’s all just a school, 1, 500 pupils or so, all wearing tailcoats and waistcoats and bow ties. Just bizarre. It’s 500 years old. An amazing place. I mean, some people hate it, but if, if you’re, if you have nice people around you, if you have bullies around you, then it’s, it’s hell.

It’s like concentration camp. If you have nice people around you and you, and you don’t mind it, it’s, it’s, you’re very lucky. So the opportunities for learning were insane, like, there’s like four or five libraries there in this school, like, and the amount of writers who went there from Shelley to Huxley to Orwell to Ian Fleming you know, all the way up to the present day, the amount of actors, you know, had been there.

So, you know, like [00:09:00] Eddie Redmayne went there lots of others. I mean, you know, Tom Hiddleston, I can’t think of them all, but you know. Lots of politicians went there, so you’re given this idea, whatever you want to do, you can do it. Not only you can do it, but you probably should do it, you know, you should be exceptional.

So you think about, you know, the last, I mean, Boris Johnson went there, Donald, David Cameron went there, Kwasi Kwarteng, who was the last terrible chancellor of the exchequer went there, the Archbishop of Canterbury went there. It’s just insane. Anyway. 

Giancarlo: And it wasn’t too, it wasn’t too classist. Yeah, it was 

Jules (2): very classist.

It was very classist Giancarlo. 

Giancarlo: But so how do, how did if you were not like, you know, eight, eighth of blue blood of, if you’re not aristocrat, how did you feel? Did you feel the discrimination? 

Jules (2): No, not really. But, I mean, there were very, there were very few ethnic minorities [00:10:00] when I, there, when I was there.

There was no women. So it was patriarchal and misogynist and people just a bit afraid of girls. They’re kind of desperate to meet them, but afraid of them. And it was, oh, there was, there was kind of nasty classism. You know, there was a kind of suspicion and mutual loathing with the local town, right?

Because you get into fights and stuff. There’s a song about this by the band The Jam. Do you know the 70s band The Jam? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did a song called Eatin Rifles about a kind of a fight between the locals and the school. So class hostility and class fear and loathing, not very nice. That aspect of it, really not nice.

But I mean, on the whole, no, I mean, I didn’t feel that. I had friends and they had big country houses. You know what it’s like, it’s like that in psychedelia, right? You’re, you know, you meet some people who are loaded, but but no, I, I mean, I think later [00:11:00] on you realize, later on when women start coming into the equation, you realize that money and big houses, Is important ’cause because, you know, interesting.

Interesting. Because it gives you to more beautiful women, you know? That’s interesting. But when you’re a teenager, you know, you, like, you go to stay with a friend, you’re like, wow, big house. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better than you. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Because 

Jules (2): they might be less popular than you or less cool.

Or whatever. Yeah. So, but yeah, there, you know, it was funny. It was funny. So I was, I really enjoyed it. But boarding school can be quite druggy. And when I was there which is like 90 to 95 just after the acid house boom. So you got MDMA coming to IBI a where you live, and then coming to the uk you got acid house parties.

Suddenly MDMA is very available and you have this kind of golden age of dance music. And this affects this freaky little Victorian [00:12:00] school in, in, in, you know, near Windsor. And people, we’d start to go night, you know, raving, smoke a lot of dope, take MDMA, take LSD, take magic mushrooms. And this became kind of an epidemic when I was at school.

So by my last two years, people were taking drugs all the time, including me. I, I would take, you know, I’m, I’m just focusing on this part of the story. This isn’t my whole story, but just because we have psychedelics in common. I mean, I was doing LSD sometimes in classes, you know, I, you know, I was doing it at night, you know, I, or, or we go to, to, to London to go clubbing at the weekend.

So it got a little out of control. We’re talking like 16 year olds, 17 year olds having full on experiences. Which we are not set up to comprehend. And we’re also, it was a very emotionally repressed, this is not an emotionally mature [00:13:00] place. We are emotionally repressed, posh English boys. So, when people started to have difficult experiences, we are not set up to cope with it.

Giancarlo: What about, what about, what about a home? Did you, were your parents believer, religious? There was any spirituality? Were you, were you initiated to, 

Jules (2): My father is Church of England and still is. My school was Church of England. So we went to church every day. 

Giancarlo: But that didn’t help, didn’t help to integrate.

Certainly not. 

Jules (2): No, there was no, there was no kind of, no mystical map, no sense of mystical experiences. But what, what we did was we, I was reading Aldous Huxley and I was reading, you know, Buddhism or Taoism. So discovering this stuff. alongside psychedelics. 

Giancarlo: Okay. So you had a little bit of a map, 

Jules (2): a little bit, 

Giancarlo: a little 

Jules (2): bit, but I mean, yeah, like the [00:14:00] romantic poets and stuff.

Yeah. So we had a bit, but not for any of the dark stuff, really. I was reading like the electric Kool Aid acid test was my favorite book when I was 16 and Hunter S Thompson. And, and that, you know, that comic book called the fabulous furry freak brothers. So it was this like. fun, hedonistic, hippie, psychedelic culture.

Hey, let’s do loads of drugs. It’s really fun. It’s kind of funny. It’s a bit messy, but nothing really bad will happen because we’re 16. Nothing, you know, nothing bad ever happens. But it did, you know, to some of us, bad stuff did happen. Like you know, people had psychotic episodes. People died of overdoses with, with heroin.

People went to prison for dealing. And I had a bad trip when I was in my last year at school, which I did not have the emotional bandwidth to deal with. I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was also smoking dope every day and basically getting kind of strung out. [00:15:00] So I then left, I got into Oxford to study English literature.

I left when I was, you know, so the year after I left school, I was carrying on doing lots of drugs, going clubbing. 

Giancarlo: Do you, do you mind to just elaborate a little bit on this bad trip? Which compound was it? 

Jules (2): It was. A micro dot of, of, of LSD. That’s what I think. But when you’re seven, when you’re 17, you don’t know exactly.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: You just, you remember those kind of things? And probably, probably whoever gave it to you didn’t even know how much could have been 50 microgram 

Jules (2): or if it was even LSD. I mean, it was one of these, which will give you. you know, a stomachache as well. So God knows what it was cut with. 

Giancarlo: And so you went in a dark place, you felt like dying.

It wasn’t as strong as that, 

Jules (2): but I felt blocked. I felt inhibited, self conscious you know, outside of myself, like unable to [00:16:00] communicate, 

And that was very unnatural for me. I’m very, you know, I was very natural communicator. And so this was like a self negation, but it wasn’t a very strong trip. So I wasn’t, you know, in an ego loss or anything like that, but it was at this level where I just felt stuck and blocked.

Yeah, 

Giancarlo: but you remember a difficult one. 

Jules (2): No, then there was a worse one a year later. I went clubbing, took, I think you know, LSD and maybe MDMA, went back to an after party. And there I felt very self conscious again, very socially inhibited. And I got everything out of proportion and thought that I was committing some terrible social faux pas by not speaking.

And this was unforgivable, you know, in a way that people can only really do on psychedelics, completely [00:17:00] out of proportion. And I went to, I tried to sleep that night and I remember thinking very clearly. You, you’ve done it now. Like you’ve broken yourself, like you, you, you’ve broken something and this, that belief became a kind of bit of a fixed belief that you’ve, you’ve damaged yourself, you’re not the same as you were that by the way, I now know is quite common for people who have extended difficulties after psychedelics, which is what I now study this belief.

I’ve broken myself in some way. Like I’ve done something like something changed on that night. And I’ve, I’ve entered a kind of dark timeline. I’m, I’m diminished. I’m damaged. What do I do to get better? And people, I mean, I interview people all the time now with this unfortunate. Kind of a situation and you know, they’re really frightened and they’re like, oh god, is that it?

Have I, have I, have I broken myself permanently? And so [00:18:00] this fear that exists on the psychedelic experience Oh, I’ve done something. I’ve permanently damaged myself. That kind of catastrophizing carries on beyond the trip and can carry on for months or years. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, but so just to finish a little bit with the biography, so you went to Oxford and then you, you, you left after one year, you, you took literature.

Jules (2): Yeah, I did literature, English literature. I stayed my mental health got worse through it. I tried to see a therapist in my second year. 

Giancarlo: Can you, can you elaborate in which way it was going worse, your mental health? 

Jules (2): I was developing this, my symptoms were panic attacks, nightmares feeling like not myself, not losing social confidence.

increasing social anxiety, often feeling like two different people, either very confident and extrovert or kind of [00:19:00] inhibited and stuck in my head, ruminating and just this feeling constantly trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. Why aren’t I like I was when I was 16? Or, you know, like I was for the first 16 years of my life, like this isn’t me.

Giancarlo: But do you think that was linked to your psychedelic usage? 

Jules (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: But did you create an explanation about what on the mechanism that create this? 

Jules (2): I tried, I thought about it way too much, you know, I really ruminated and I was an intellectual. So I was reading. existentialism, or Nietzsche, or Shakespeare, all, you know, just trying to figure it out.

But I had some idea. I was terrified it was neuro physiological, and out of my control. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): I was very, you know, the idea of taking antidepressants was anathema to me. I don’t know why, [00:20:00] but I don’t have a problem with it now. I don’t take them now, but Do 

Giancarlo: you want to hear my theory? 

Jules (2): Yeah, but I should say, I think with probably some genetic stuff as well.

It wasn’t just random. I I later on a close family member developed bipolar disorder, but they didn’t have it at the time. So there may have been a genetic vulnerability, which then got triggered by adversity. And in my case, the adversity was difficult psychedelic experiences. 

Giancarlo: You know, my, my, my interpretation was, which is just a story, right?

It’s just like a metaphor that makes sense to me is that it starts with the Gabor Mate idea of authenticity versus attachment, right? So Gabor says that, you know, in your development years. 8, 9, 10, what you might perceive as a loss of attachment. Because, just because your parents are distracted, you know, it doesn’t mean that they don’t love you.

They’re just like, they have [00:21:00] bigger, you know, like what they think is bigger fish to fry. So at that moment, you feel like you’re losing this attachment. And so you want to get the attachment back and you lose your authenticity because you start behaving age 9. I did that with my father so clearly. You try to make yourself in someone that they would like.

So you get their attachment back. I think in that moment, that loss of, of authenticity create like, like a, like a friction, like a tear. Right. And then, and then you go through life and you keep on reinforcing this fake. version of yourself. Right. And then sometimes you get comfortable with it and, you know, maybe you feel there’s something wrong, but you may be even good at it.

And then when the psychedelic comes, it’s like a rapture. It’s like, it’s like it, it, it takes There is a huge gap between this [00:22:00] identity you have created and the naughtiness that the psychedelic, that the, the immensity of possibilities that the psychedelic brings. Right? By reducing, by reducing the, the default mode network, 

Jules (2): right?

Yes. I think that that makes sense in in my case, I certainly had a personality. that loved entertaining and showing off. It was a very social personality, very much aware of other people and of other people’s judgments and that enjoyed that, enjoyed making an impression on other people. That was kind of my identity.

Giancarlo: That was the authentic, you know, it’s tricky all these terms, but you feel that was your authentic self or it was a constructed self to 

Jules (2): we have different sides to us. But that was the side of me that I liked most. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: and you felt comfortable, yeah. 

Jules (2): So it’s not exactly authentic, but you can get stuck in a role.

[00:23:00] Where so what happened, I think, in the psychedelics, I mean, is, well, one way of thinking of it, it was a negation of that. So suddenly, I, I can’t show off, I can’t be natural, funny, the kind of clown. 

Giancarlo: Who am I? Right. 

Jules (2): Yeah. Who am I? I was like, I have to be, I must be like, so there’s this pressure to be funny.

But so that’s one way of thinking of it, but there’s multiple, you know, you could also, you know, there’s There could be just a genetic aspect as well. There was some latent genetic tendencies to pathology that got triggered. And so to me, I’m like, who the hell is this? And then I had to accept, and it took years, this other side of me, which was introverted, which was more neurotic.

All of that. And I didn’t like that at all, that, that, that knew me. I wanted to be the extrovert me. I thought he could, well, he could do so much better in life. He could get more power, success, women, money. But 

Giancarlo: let me ask, [00:24:00] but let me ask something. The extroverted you were in the enriching, nourishing, fulfilling, romantic relationship?

Jules (2): The, you mean the, the younger me, 

Giancarlo: the extroverted, no, no, 

Jules (2): because he was only, he missed all that. He was a boy. He was a boy. 

Giancarlo: Exactly. You know what I mean? So, so, so that’s why I think, you know, you’re saying, you’re saying I missed my old me, but then maybe there’s things of the new me that is much more nourishing.

Jules (2): Are you sure? But it takes a long, long time to accept that. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): Because what, what, How, how 

Giancarlo: long? Two years? No, 

Jules (2): no, no, no, no. I mean, Five years? A decade. Ten years? It took a decade. Yeah. I didn’t start really accepting myself. I mean, I was getting better in my twenties. But I didn’t really have a relationship until I was 30.

Giancarlo: Yeah, me too. I mean, I can, I can, you know, your lifestyle, you’re very similar to mine and to many people that have gone through a psychedelic transformation, but 

Jules (2): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:25:00] I mean, so there you go. And then finished university. I was fine intellectually, but socially getting worse and worse. Had a kind of mini breakdown.

When I left, cause I’m like, what the fuck do I do now? I couldn’t do a job interview without having a panic attack. 

Giancarlo: When you, when you graduate from Oxford. 

Jules (2): Yeah. Yeah. Wanted to be a novelist. That was my A plan. I had no B plan. Try to write a novel. Turns out I wasn’t, I couldn’t do it. And I was like, what do I do?

And, I ended up going, I was, you know, I worked as a financial journalist and it was very different to my idea of myself. 

Giancarlo: I read one of your blog, one of your newsletter, when you say, I end up talking about the mortgage market. That’s what happens when you do too much drugs. 

Jules (2): Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was writing about the mortgage bond market.

That 

Giancarlo: was so funny. I laughed. Yeah. 

Jules (2): Yeah. Fan brief. And having to put on a suit. And go on the [00:26:00] tube to Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. And I’m not making the money that they’re making. I’m the, I’m the little schlepping journalist who’s making, I was, you know, you’re making 18, 000 the first year and writing about something I didn’t care about at all, completely different to my idea of myself, which is this great writer.

And I have really bad social anxiety. So I was, I didn’t fit into that environment and I was unpopular in it. And that was horrible for me. I’d never been unpopular before. 

Giancarlo: Were you regretting all the psychedelics at that point? Ah, you really say, I wish I could go back and keep the extroverted me what the fuck I was thinking.

My life was well, it was obviously worse. Oh, wow. And how long the regret lasted, you think? I mean, 

Jules (2): look, my life has always been harder ever since. But even now? No, because [00:27:00] because, you know, over the years, you stop regretting and you accept your life. But like, and I think I’d have probably been in a very arrogant asshole.

You know, if something bad didn’t happen to me, if nothing bad ever happened to me. I’d be a bit of an arrogant asshole probably and that’s life like I realize that now you become philosophical like yeah You accept that bad things happen. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, but not just an arrogant not just an arrogant asshole probably alone 

Jules (2): Well, I mean, I don’t think so.

No, you would have a lot of friends. I was an extrovert. I had way more friends 

Giancarlo: No, but not, but not meaningful. I mean, I, I know I’ve been very judgey, but you know, you are on the, now you’re married now. 

Jules (2): Yeah. But only like two weeks ago. 

Giancarlo: No, really? You 

Jules (2): just got married? Yeah. Oh wow. 46 or 47. So that’s very late in life to get married.

How long have you guys together? We’ve been together three years. [00:28:00] 

Giancarlo: Okay. So, so you were regretting is like, what am I doing with my life? And so where are we now? You let it go because 

Jules (2): I had intense regret. For like four years and I couldn’t accept who I was and how my life was But specifically you were specifically 

Giancarlo: regretting to haven’t taken 

Jules (2): those psychedelics that was the traumatic event.

Yeah that I was fixated on. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, 

Jules (2): so it was not so much You know, it’s just like I wasn’t anti drugs or anything like that It was just like that was the bad thing that happened to me and now my life is worse and it’s the same It’s the same for people who come to my NGO now, they’re like Oh, my life changed on January the 4th, 2022.

That was the day I went and did MDMA or whatever. That was the day I went to Peru. Yeah. So anyway, and, and I had to just let that go. I mean, I, at a certain point I was like, okay, you’re gonna, [00:29:00] are you just going to die then? Are you not going to accept your life or are you going to accept this? But this, this happened to me and now I’m still alive and I’m going to live my life.

Yeah. I had that choice. But it gets a bit more weird because I got worse and worse and worse until about 2020, sorry, 2002, something like that. So I left in 99, university trying to, you know, doing this job, real bad social anxiety. And then I had a near death experience. Skiing, I, I had a skiing accident and had a kind of white light encounter.

And in this minute or so, when I was lying at the bottom of this mountain with, you know, broken leg and I guess I’d be, I was unconscious. I was in the immersed in this white light and had this very strong sense that what was causing my [00:30:00] suffering was my beliefs. And that I could let go of my beliefs, like the belief that you’re broken.

And it was like, Oh, look, you have a soul and your soul can’t be broken and you are loved. So there’s this deep feeling of being loved and, and, and loved. And there’s something in us that’s unbreakable, 

Giancarlo: like, 

Jules (2): yeah, they like the soul and that we all have it and we’re all connected to it. So I wake up from this experience.

On the mountain and my, I, I’m like, Oh, I’ve been in a skiing accident. Am I paralyzed? And I try to move my toes and I can move them. So I was like, no, I’m not paralyzed. Oh, I’ve had this incredible experience. And my uncle comes up skis up to me and says, Oh my God. Cause I guess I have my bones sticking through my legs.

And, and I try to tell him everything’s okay. Everything’s beautiful, you know, but anyway, and I felt. I felt so in love with humanity for about two months. I was like, ah, I, I’m [00:31:00] being freed. You know, like winter is over h 

Giancarlo: how long, which year are we now? Maos? 

Jules (2): 2002. I can’t remember exactly. I think so.

Okay. More? 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): 2002. Yeah. Could have been even 2001, but I think it was 2002. I think it was after nine 11. And yeah, I felt, you know, it was rebirth. But then, then the habits came back, the habits of anxiety and depression 

Giancarlo: after two months 

Jules (2): about that slowly, not, not, I realized I needed to strengthen, you know, this insight that what’s causing my suffering is beliefs.

I needed a path, a practice to weaken the old beliefs and strengthen the new beliefs. And so I turned to like cognitive therapy and I turned to stoicism and cognitive therapy. came from stoic philosophy and they’re both based on this idea that what causes suffering is your beliefs and you can change your beliefs and that we have this god within us.

[00:32:00] That can choose this belief or that belief and that gives us this power to adapt, you know, along with other things like we’re, we’re connected to the great divine and the, you know, this mystical philosophy really. And so that helped me, but it still took years because I was so kind of broken really. That it I then went to live in Russia.

I was a free, I mean, that was 

Giancarlo: your story, right? That you were broken. That was your story. 

Jules (2): That was my belief. Yeah. Of course, what I, I was lucky enough to con to connect in my mind to something. Bigger than that. The soul. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful, cathartic moment. Yeah. 

Jules (2): Yeah, really lucky. And very mysterious.

What the fuck? What the hell is that? You know? 

Giancarlo: It’s like a psychedelic experience. Same thing, no? 

Jules (2): Well, yeah, but I suppose it could be. Yeah. I mean, people, people, people have those kinds of experiences. Like, oh my God, being, being freed when they’re stuck in loops [00:33:00] or in caves of of negative beliefs or negative habits.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Anton, Anton Bilton. I know you know, you wrote about him. He, he’s making a, we’re making a documentary and he sponsored a clinical trial on this idea that NDEs and even alien abduction, they’re all DMT release. Indogenous DMT release. 

Jules (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So, so 

Jules (2): Yeah. Okay, but so I don’t want to They’re all accompanied by that.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Or accompanied by that, or a combination, but 

Jules (2): Yeah, but I mean, like, what’s the chicken and what’s the egg? Like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, why would, you know, like, what, you fall at a certain angle and it releases, you know, DMT? I don’t know. It’s just mysterious. I mean, you can look for things that might accompany it.

So maybe that experience was accompanied by some DMT release in the pineal gland, but it’s still mysterious to me. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, totally mysterious. But I mean, the speculation is that when you die, there is this release of [00:34:00] DMT, right? 

Jules (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So when your, your neurobiology is close to shutting down, but not yet. 

Jules (2): Yeah.

Giancarlo: You have this white light and you see your past life and you’re like in between this liminal state. Right. 

Jules (2): I get it. And it’s interesting to me. This is a spiritual reality, which is so powerful. It doesn’t need You know, I mean, I don’t think God is there going, okay, release the DMT. Like God, God can do whatever he wants.

Giancarlo: Yeah. It’s a neurobiological function. 

Jules (2): Yeah. I mean, there might be correlates with it, but I guess what I’m saying is like, you know, when people look for these. material correlates like 

Giancarlo: some people needs the cognitive understanding. I don’t care. Yeah, 

Jules (2): yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that could be part of it, but God can do what the hell of course, of course, of course he wants, you know, of course, of course.

Giancarlo: But so in our Western mind, we need the causation. We need to understand and the helps people to wake up, you know? Yeah, yeah. That’s why I’ve [00:35:00] been supporting. Anton has been, you know, like injecting. people with this, with this, like, you know, an hour of DMT. I went, I went under, I did the, I did the test and he wanted to prove and, and for me, I don’t need all that, you know, I don’t think, but some people do.

Jules (2): There are similarities between psychedelics, near death experiences, and AIDS. Yes. One of the, one of the similarities is it’s not always pleasant. Can be, yeah. So first of all, sometimes people have hell experiences, and that’s true with near death experiences, too. Poor, poor bastards. They, they, they, you know, for me, that affected my whole life, because it made me think, oh, when I die, I might go back there.

And so, like, this is all just like you know, that makes me relaxed. 

Jules: You know, 

Jules (2): like I’m like, Oh, life is better there. So when life is hard here, don’t worry, you know, in a while you’re going to go back to like the pure lands. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jules (2): But if you have a hell experience, you’re like, Oh my God. And then there’s [00:36:00] that afterwards.

So it’s the same with psychedelics and with same with UFO experiences, some, you know, but the other thing is. Ontological shock, you know, which is a phrase from UFO research, but it’s also like well now what what do I do now? So I I wrote a book Well, I wrote I came back and I must write I must communicate and I wrote a first book and It was very ambitious, nothing came of that.

And then, and then, and then finally I, when I was about 35, so much later, over 10 years later, I wrote a book about Stoic philosophy and that was my first book and it did great. Anyway, I guess what I was just saying is when people have these kinds of experiences, they can sometimes think, why am I still here?

What am I meant to do? Yeah. 

Giancarlo: I mean, it’s a soul journey, right? 

Jules (2): Yeah. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: You know, once, [00:37:00] once you get into this idea that, you know, you don’t have to understand it. 

Jules (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): Yeah, exactly. 

Giancarlo: For me, the concept, the idea of the soul journey has been the most useful framework to understand this mysterious, mysterious life of ours.

Jules (2): We a veil of soul making. That’s what Keats called it. 

Giancarlo: Exactly. But so just to finish. So, so what makes you go to Russia? 

Jules (2): Various reasons. My brother at that point was exceptionally successful. He was a 24 advisor to a minister and he, I think he was so successful. I thought I need to get out from under his shadow, 

Go abroad.

And it was also like. I don’t know. I thought, I thought it’d be exciting and just freedom and go somewhere where no one knows me. Yeah. I don’t even get out from London and how it was kind of, I remember like, you know, going to sleep in my [00:38:00] apartment in Moscow, downtown Moscow, and I had a map of the world above my bed and Russia went from the middle of the map to the end of the map and just thinking here I am in this huge country.

When no one knows me, it’s great, like complete, you know, anonymity. And that was. liberating and it let me start my life again as a nobody. You know what I mean? Cause I had to let go. I have this big idea of myself, which like Eton and Oxford had given me and all these expectations. And there in Moscow in 2004, I’m a complete nobody.

Nobody expects anything of me. And and that was nice. 

Giancarlo: That’s another rebirth. And, and so, but what did you, so, and, and then what did, what did you do in Moscow? Then 

Jules (2): I was a, I was a business journalist there writing about the kind of early years of Putin this big economic boom there, lots of money being made.

And, you know, I’m not a, [00:39:00] I’m not a great journalist there because I don’t speak Russian. Yeah. So I’m a, I’m a real C, C level, you know, division three foreign correspondent. But I also, and I’m, and I’m, and I’m reading about philosophy and I’m reading about ideas and gradually I start to write about them.

And when I come back to England, when I’m 30. I start to write about philosophy, mental health, spirituality, and that’s really like the beginning, what’s, what was inside me becomes actualized and public and I start a blog in, so I’ve been writing online since 2008 for myself. Or even 2007. I start to interview famous psychologists and therapists, like the founder of Cognitive Therapy, Albert Ellis.

I did the last ever interview with him before he died. I interview people like Martin Seligman, Aaron Beck [00:40:00] Michaili Csikszentmihalyi. So all these I start to really write about psychology and mental health, but also philosophy. And I become part of this stoic revival. So, people are beginning to get into, more and more into Stoic philosophy, they’re beginning to discover each other online.

In 2010, I come back from Costa, Costa Rica, I come back from Russia in 2007, in 2009 or 2000, yeah I think 2009, I organize a gathering of modern Stoics in in, in California, the first ever gathering of Stoics for 2000 years. I write a Stoic newsletter, I interview modern Stoics. People in the police force or in the military or in banking, all these kinds of different, you know, walks of life.

And I’m, yeah, I’m part of this kind of stoic revival you know, I, I, I start to connect with psychologists, with philosophers, and we’re part of this stoic revival, which, which has grown and grown since then. [00:41:00] 

Giancarlo: And when did you find psychedelic again? 

Jules (2): After that book my second book was called The Art of Losing Control, and it’s about ecstatic experiences.

Giancarlo: Hmm, interesting. The 

Jules (2): Dionysiac. So at the end of Philosophy for Life, I say, this is all very rational, but there was another side to ancient Greek culture. Like Dionysus and the Eleusinian Mysteries. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): And in my next book, I’m going to return to that topic because I knew that people sometimes find healing and flourishing, not through reason, but through ecstasy.

Giancarlo: Exactly. 

Jules (2): So when I was researching that book, The Art of Losing Control, I started to, I went to breaking convention in 2015. I’m like, wow, there’s this psychedelic renaissance. There’s all this research happening. 

Giancarlo: And you met Dimitrescu. Eh? 

Jules (2): Eh? 

Giancarlo: There was this writer, I think he’s something like Dimitrescu, I mean, he wrote, he wrote about the Eleusinian mystery and the use of ergot fungus and psychedelic in ancient Greece.

Jules (2): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I [00:42:00] mean, so I was reading like. That kind of stuff. And I was just interested in ancient Greek culture and its balance of the Socratic and the sac. Yeah. Like this, the, the philosophy, the reason, 

Giancarlo: yeah. 

Jules (2): Yeah. They go and get initiated at these places and, and that was so interesting to me, that balance.

And I think I’ve stayed interested in that topic. And when I’m. In very rationalistic culture. I’m like, where’s the ecstasy when I’m in new age culture. I’m like, where’s the rationality. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I missed that. What, what brought you to breaking convention? 

Jules (2): Well, I don’t know. I just, I just went along in 2015 and when you were 

Giancarlo: writing about ecstatic control.

Jules (2): Yeah. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jules (2): And I met like Robin Carr Harris there. Yeah. David Luke. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): And, you know, saw Roland Griffiths lecturing and I was like, this is a fascinating scene. You’ve got chemists and you’ve got witches and you’ve got [00:43:00] shamans. Yeah. What a, what a crazy mashup. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. theologian and historic and neurobiology and anthropologists, like everything.

Jules (2): And musicians. Musician. Yeah. But I was interested. That was 2015. Yeah, but I was interested in ecstatic experiences. So not just psychedelics, I was also interested in ecstatic Christianity. I became a Christian 

Jules: for 

Jules (2): all of 18 months and was part of an ecstatic church for a Brit. But then I was like, you know, I could have an ecstatic experience, but then my reason would be like, I can’t accept it.

And then I’m kind of part of new age culture, but, but I have a love hate relationship with new age culture. It’s my culture. I, I, you know, I, I love places like Esalen and Aldous Huxley and Stanislav Grof. This kind of, you know, slightly intellectual wing of new age culture, transpersonal psychology.

[00:44:00] But I’m also, I have a very critical tendency in me, so I’m also like, What’s going on here? And look at all this bullshit, and look at all these grifters. And even, but not, 

Giancarlo: but not, but not the Stan gr I mean, what would you criticize of the Stan gr body of work? 

Jules (2): Well, I mean, I, I mean, I, I recently, I spent years researching Aldis Huxley and I, you know, there is, is I have issues with him, with Stan gr well you know, that it’s a mashup of occultism and mysticism and science.

Is he a scientist? If, if, you know, he presents himself as a scientist? But where, you know, where’s the, where’s the evidence for a lot of his theories? Where’s the evidence for his perinatal theory of trauma? Where’s the evidence for his archetypal astrology? 

Giancarlo: Yeah. But you know, I was smiling because, you know, Rupert Sheldrake says that you know, like the secular materialistic, you know, the base of our [00:45:00] paradigm, you know, everything is based on evidence except the beginning of everything.

Right. So they say, they say the big bang, they say, okay, we can’t explain to that. So give us a miracle for free. And then we 

Jules (2): can explain everything else. Sure. I know, but, but I agree. Like, I’m not saying, but if you’re presenting yourself as a, as a scientist, Then, then, you know, and you’re presenting theories of explanation for why people are unwell and how to get better.

It’s ethical to say, what if I’m wrong like, you know, to measure outcomes. So Groff is a huge influence on the psychedelic underground and the overground and new age culture and breath work, but all of, you know, and so there’s countless above ground and underground healers who follow Groff’s. Work you know, including me, I, I, I co edited a book about spiritual emergencies.

It’s directly inspired by Groff, [00:46:00] but when we’re trying to, when we think we’re, we’re healing people with altered states of consciousness, very powerful experiences we need to make sure we’re not causing harm unintentionally. And so how do we do that? We, you know, well, at the simplest, you can ask people, how do you feel now?

You feel better or worse. How about six months later? So, trying to measure outcomes, and like, asking ourselves, what if I’m wrong? Is this, is this, is this really useful? Because an idea might, might not even be harmful. It might just be unnecessary. So, do you need two therapists? Or, you know, all these kinds of things.

Like, and I think, if you do, you know, There’s an, there’s just a good, there’s, there’s an ethics to that, which is, you know, there’s a limit to, to evidence, and there’s also different forms of evidence as well, like, you can just, just saying someone, well, how do you feel now? [00:47:00] That’s kind of a form of evidence.

It’s just a form of feedback. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. But yeah, I mean, the one thing I would say is that, you know, Stan Grof and all the person you mentioned, you know, they’re developing a new paradigm, which is, you know, there’s this idea of like, you know, exploring the subconscious, right? Like in, in, in, in modern science, the subconscious is not part of the equation.

Yeah. And so, and, and so the subconscious now, you know, like also thanks to people like you, you know, the new science of the subconscious is now being developed as we speak, 

Jules: you know, so 

Giancarlo: is, is, of course, Stan Grof was the first one. And I feel now there is more and more as there is more evidence there’s more tests, that is more clinical trial.

People are more aware about the re traumatization. 

Jules: Also, 

Giancarlo: also, also, I mean, we’re going, I’m sure we’re going to talk about it, but you know, there is a lot of charlatans and people that are creating so much problem, but you know, like any industry at the beginning [00:48:00] is a mess. 

Jules (2): Yes, I agree. I mean, the art of losing control was basically saying, look, people have ecstatic experiences.

These are normal and natural. They’re not always good for you, but often they are. And we should find a place for them in Western culture. 

Giancarlo: Correct. 

Jules (2): So I was very much from that tradition of transpersonal psychology and, you know, saw these people as heroes because they’re trying to. broaden the Overton window for Western culture and say, look, let’s find spaces and rituals for this normal human experience.

And these shouldn’t be taboo then, you know, and, and so I’m very, I was very much aligned with that mission. But now, and then it’s happening. So now people are more and more having ecstatic experiences. But it’s, like you say, it’s, it’s messy and it’s, [00:49:00] it’s bumpy and, and sometimes it’s damaging and also creates a lot of, it creates space for kind of charlatans, like you say, or just people that are overconfident and they’re just like you know, I’ve taken ayahuasca a few times.

I know what I’m doing, you know, or you know, or I’m channeling light language. So ecstatic experiences are so unruly, you know, they’re unruly for individuals and they’re unruly for societies. I’m just, I’m just researching this morning for my newsletter ecstatic Christianity and how it’s shaping American politics.

And the idea of divine inspiration, but also the idea of demons and the idea that your, your political opponents are demonic, and this is the dark side of re enchantment and there’s something similar sometimes in new age culture. You can see more and more an interest in the demonic and entities, and that’s not [00:50:00] always healthy.

So how do we balance? The rational and the ecstatic and that’s just, that’s just really interesting, hard question. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah. But so have you ever explored any of the somatic psychotherapies, you know, from Peter Levine, Van der Koos, Gabor Mate? Did you research a little bit that type of psychotherapy?

Jules: Yeah, a little bit. But not, not, not a whole lot. 

Giancarlo: Because for me, for me, that’s the key to maximize the outcome of the psychedelic experience. Yeah. I feel that, you know I think I can’t remember who was the first now, one of the first author is going to come to mind. He basically proposed that, you know, people, when people hear about trauma, they think about being to war, being raped, being kidnapped, being beaten up.

Right. And so a lot of people, when you hear trauma, it’s like, that’s not me. 

Jules: They 

Giancarlo: immediately disconnect, [00:51:00] but then there is another type of trauma that they call development trauma, which doesn’t have to be violent, doesn’t have, is that it’s not that something bad happened to you, but it’s something good did not happen to you.

So you went to the school recital and there is the two names of your two parents is the two empty seats. So in that people, people with real trauma would say, whatever you, you, your food was on the table. You were warm. You went on holiday, you went skiing. Shut up. But, but it’s not true because development trauma can be as pernicious as the big, as the big trauma, right?

So the development trauma I can’t remember it was the first author, but it’s going to come to mind. He says, okay, development trauma is not just a memory in your brain is a neurobiological tear. It’s the way you 

Jules (2): talk about like when it caught. 

Giancarlo: No, Winnicott you know, VanderKost, the body keep the score reviewed that is this idea that development trauma is like a little tear on your autonomic nervous [00:52:00] system.

You know, you can, you can almost visualize it as a, as a little tear, right? So he says that, you know, like, that’s why this, the, you know, this. lineage of somatic psychotherapists, they say, listen, talk therapy is not very effective because you can talk for years, like Woody Allen style, you can talk for 30 years, but the therapist doesn’t, cannot access the subconscious material because he’s subconscious, 

right?

Yeah. 

But, but if you listen to your body, you can actually identify when you activate the development trauma, you can activate where in your body you feel this. Concentration, this pain, and sometimes it’s in your neck, in your throat, in your stomach. And, and Gabor practices called Compassion Inquiry.

There’s all kinds of different somatic work, but basically they scan your body, you activate this development trauma, and then you make friends with this pain and you integrate in the body. is this idea that when you, when you get [00:53:00] activated, when you get triggered in everyday life by anything from work, from society, from, you know, expectation that are not met, all you get this trigger sometimes is a fair response towards an injustice or boundary breaking, but most of the time is a reaction is not a response.

So the reaction is caused by this activation on this, on this, on your nervous system that can be healed. So what I propose is that the psychedelic experience, the ecstatic states or the expanded states, they give you a glimpse of a whole nervous system. You know, it’s like a lighthouse. The psychedelic doesn’t bring you the hill.

It shows you where it is. You know, it’s like the lighthouse. Oh, it’s over there. But then you still have to swim there. And so the, the, no, like Alan Watts says, the psychedelic is the boat that takes you on the other side of the river, but then the journey continues on foot. 

Jules: Is, 

Giancarlo: is, you’re not arrived on the other side, you still have to go to the liner.[00:54:00] 

And so for me, the journey, the therapy is the somatic therapy. Of, of, of, of integrating this pain in the body. And sometimes you get closer and you might revisit the psychedelic experience. And so you have a new glimpse of the lighthouse. Like, Oh, good. It’s closer, but it’s not right. It’s more left. It’s like a compass, you know?

And then I love to pick your brain on this on the integration of the psychedelic in the West. You know, you’re familiar with icy years, right? With Geronimo and, 

Jules (2): yeah, Geronimo, he lives in Ibiza, does he? Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And, and Ben Delon. And so I had them both on the podcast and, you know, they, they very, they explain very clearly, they both spend a lot of time with indigenous in different parts of the Amazon.

And they say, listen, in the West with the medicalization and everything, we as you, as we do as Westerner, we have like the silver bullet shortcut, you know, and we think that this is a product that we take. A psychedelic is not a product, it’s an ontology, it’s a belief system, it’s a process. And [00:55:00] so us, you know, we need to teach the West to integrate this, this, this, this molecule, not just as molecule, but as they come with an ontology.

And so, you know, I just wanted to see, to hear your take on that, you know You are clearly, like most of the people, frustrated with the state of affair with psychedelic today because it is messy and there’s a lot of, you know, pain and casualties even, and as you know, people are going crazy, psychotic episode.

So how do we, how can we, you know, how can we, what can we do to facilitate the integration of this compound? In a more harmonious way in the West. 

Jules (2): Yeah. Well, yeah, as you say, I, I, two and a half years ago, I set up a little non profit called the challenging psychedelic experiences project. [00:56:00] Because I was concerned about that there wasn’t much research and there wasn’t much conversation, public conversation about possibility of harms from psychedelics.

Giancarlo: Correct. 

Jules (2): So we produced, we’ve produced several papers. We being me. with various psychologists like David Luke and and Rosalind McAlpine and others. And we produced a paper, for example, on extended difficulties after psychedelics. What are the most common? And we’ve also produced papers on what helps people recover.

So I think that’s, that’s the first thing I would say is that, you know, we need a recognition that not everyone has, not everyone feels better after psychedelics. In one paper, not by us, but by researchers in Sweden, nine percent of people who take psychedelics in naturalistic settings have some functional difficulties afterwards.

Giancarlo: Which, which percentage, sorry? 

Jules (2): Nine. 

Giancarlo: Nine percent. 

Jules (2): That could be minor or major. In [00:57:00] our survey we, we, 608 people replied to our survey reporting difficulties after psychedelics. For a third of those people, their difficulties lasted longer than a year for a fifth. It was longer than three years. The most common difficulties were like things like anxiety sleep disturbances.

existential confusion, visual distortions and derealization. So these, but there were lots of different types from like increased fear of death. Oh, you know, there’s a whole, you, you’re familiar with them Giancarlo is, you know, somatic problems and so on. So there’s, there’s a whole variety of things that sometimes happen.

So people come to my NGO and get in contact and they say I couldn’t find any information on post psychedelic difficulties. All I saw were these positive stories in CNN or New York Times, people who go to a veterans retreat or they take part in a [00:58:00] clinical trial and their life is radically better.

Those stories are true. But they’re not always the story 

Giancarlo: is not the old story. 

Jules (2): And for that, let’s say maybe 5 percent of people who have real problems afterwards, they need good information and support. So that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do is create a safety net. So that there’s, they have access to good information both before the experience so that they know that there is a, there is a chance that this could happen.

Maybe it’s a 5 percent chance, just so you know. And then if, if they do get into, also that we know how do we minimize this? How do we create a good retreat? How do we create a good clinic? How do we create a good underground guided experience? What are the, what are the the red flags and the green flags when you’re trying to select a retreat or a guide or a clinic?

And then afterwards, if you’re unlucky [00:59:00] and you roll the dice and you have difficulties afterwards, can you have access to good information and specialist support? The problem is sometimes, well, people don’t know where to go and they don’t know what’s going on with them. They’re like me when I was 19.

What is happening to me? And maybe they, maybe they’re part of psychedelic culture and they go to a kind of psychedelic coach or a therapist and and the coach or the therapist says Well, you need to listen to the medicine, you know, you’re not, you’re not heeding the lesson of the mushroom or what is mama ayahuasca trying to teach you?

And this person may be dealing with severe insomnia or derealization or re traumatization or HPPD, which is like hallucination persistent perception disorder. And they’re already feeling a lot of Self blame and then they feel like blamed by, you know, the psychedelic community. Oh, you did it wrong and now just shut up [01:00:00] about it because you’re gonna give, give our favorite drugs a bad name.

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): So, so that’s one thing. That’s amazing 

Giancarlo: job that you guys doing. 

Jules (2): I think, you know, it’s very niche Giancarlo. I mean, I love, you know, it’s incredibly niche. It’s like, it’s like, you know what I mean? It’s like, like 1%, you know, let’s 3 percent of the American population takes psychedelics. And how many, 

Giancarlo: how many, how many 3%?

Jules (2): 3 to 6%. And of that 3 to 6%. But that’s 20 

Giancarlo: million people. 

Jules (2): That’s a lot of people. Yeah. But of that, maybe 5 percent have severe difficulties afterwards. So. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, 

Giancarlo: you’re doing, you’re doing that again. You see, it’s incredible. Like you don’t understand, but the reputation you have out there, like my wife was like, you still haven’t had Jules Evans on your podcast.

He’s the most, he’s the best authority. He makes psychedelic and philosophy and you know, your reputation is incredible out there, but then, but then you can’t accept it. You say his niche. But [01:01:00] it’s not, we 

Jules (2): are so niche. We’re in this tiny little subculture called psychedelics. But 

Giancarlo: we are, but we are, it’s growing as mad.

And, and, and, and then you said it’s 6%, it’s only in America, it’s 18 million people. But then what, what about, you know, in the world, what is 6 percent of 9 billion? Yeah. And, and now, and now, and now that sounds a little bit pretentious and people will make fun of me for saying that, but the psychonauts, it’s a good crowd to have and interact with because they are the most open minded, they are the most.

Paradigm challengers and, you know, a lot of good things are coming from the Psychonauts. So, you know, I just wanted to like, you know, boost your ego a little bit because your work is super important and, and and, and yeah, I’m curious to see the answer to all the questions you raise on the engine. 

Jules (2): I agree.

I agree that this is important. I, but you know, and what I’m [01:02:00] very happy about is it’s not just my team working on it. There’s now, particularly in the last year or so. in, in the wake of Lycos getting rejected by the FDA and various other kinds of setbacks. Now there’s a lot of people in the field going, Oh, we’ve got to take safety seriously, more seriously.

Next month I’m going to California. There’s a psychedelic safety summit and they’re gathering like a hundred people from the field. 

Giancarlo: Amazing. 

Jules (2): Three days. The month after there’s a psychedelic safety researchers gathering. So you know, but, but, but there’s, you know, there’s a lot that needs to be done.

There’s, there’s so many topics where there’s not a single academic paper, for example, reactivation. Retraumatization. 

Giancarlo: Retraumatization. 

Jules (2): Well, that, that either, there’s, there’s not a paper on that or just like people waking up and they’re tripping [01:03:00] again, that kind of flashback kind of thing. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jules (2): Or someone contacted me yesterday.

So they’re having terrible nightmares for like over a year after an ayahuasca experience. Have you ever heard about that kind of thing? 

Giancarlo: The most side effect I hear it’s from. Family meal DMT 

for, 

for flashbacks and for physical danger, Ebo gain. 

Jules: Huh. 

Jules (2): Huh. 

Giancarlo: That’s the, that’s, that’s the thing.

That’s the two things I hear the most. 

Jules (2): Yeah. So people contact me and say things like someone contacted me yesterday. He said they’ve had severe insomnia after micro dosing and they’re not sure. Was it the micro dosing or was it something else? 

Jules: Yeah. 

Jules (2): We try to connect them sometimes to people who’ve had similar problems and have come through them.

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): And we, we also try to produce papers, but what, what I wanted to say, Giancarlo was just that there’s now quite a few researchers working on this. And there’s also new organizations, but, but there’s, there’s a lot to figure [01:04:00] out for the whole field. For example, a topic I know we’re both interested in is like this topic of.

Misconduct or, or, or, or poor conduct in the, in the underground. 

Jules: Yeah. 

Jules (2): What do we, what, what does the field do about that? Like, could there be restorative justice processes? Could there be like an ombudsman? Or some kind of complaints procedure where you bring the facilitator and the client together or the retreat owner and the client and you have a conversation or maybe multiple conversations to the point where they feel okay.

I feel like you’ve heard me and I feel like, you know, maybe you’re going to change your retreat to some extent or your practice. I mean they’ve tried to develop this kind of thing in the world of breath work, like mediation processes, also clearer ethics guide codes. I’ve [01:05:00] got a meeting later today of various researchers and we’re looking at retreat centers.

And we’ve looked at, I can’t remember maybe like 200 retreat centers. And, and do you know how many have any mention of ethics on their website? 

Giancarlo: 5%. 

Jules (2): No. Five outta how many? Out of about 200. Yeah. So 

Giancarlo: two and a half. Two and a half percent. 

Jules (2): Yeah. So thinking about those kinds of things, but, and it’s interesting ’cause as you know, the underground’s been around for decades.

But it hasn’t managed and we’re not the first people to talk about these kinds of topics, right? Like, oh, what about ethics? What about what happens when something goes wrong? And i’m very you know, you you you know this field better than me. It hasn’t, it hasn’t developed these mechanisms or has it?

I mean, have you, have you had these conversations before? 

Giancarlo: Yes, yes. [01:06:00] Geronimo and, and, and Ben, they devote a large part of their time in selecting safety and, and selection protocol. You know, like how do participants select facilitator and vice versa? I know, I know Geronimo recorded an online course. To, to help people to select the right facilitator.

And now there’s much more talk of ethics and, and, you know, like now with the internet, you know, like, I remember I was, I started doing psychedelic at the beginning of the 2000 and there was not all this, there was, you know, you really didn’t know you went, you went to the Amazon and you heard maybe a friend, but now people post and text and, and, you know, a shaman would, would, doesn’t behave properly is immediately.

Jules (2): Well, I don’t know if that’s, I mean, I agree with you that think places like Reddit and Facebook have a really important function. [01:07:00] But first of all, not everyone knows about the kind of Psychonaut page on Reddit or the Ayahuasca page on Facebook. 

Giancarlo: But if someone goes on Google and says, how can I choose my ayahuasca retreat?

You don’t think there is already some sort of organization that helps selecting them? I hear through the grapevines, you know, like retreat where. After the third ceremony, they take participant to look at land to buy under the, under the, 

Jules (2): yeah. And you are very well connected. Giancarlo, you are a veteran.

But, but, but what’s happened in the last few years is the number of people taking psychedelics has doubled from 3% to 6%. And so you get a lot of new arrivals come and they don’t have your connections. They don’t know the word on the street, but even if you do, stuff still happens. Anyway, I agree with you.

They’re, they’re a place, they’re the social media. 

Giancarlo: So you, so you just, I just Googled, how can I choose the right ayahuasca retreat? And the [01:08:00] first is Reddit discussion and forums. So you have, you know, how to find a reputable shaman Quora. I mean, it’s pretty out there and I’m not saying that the problem is solved because it’s You know, we need more.

Okay. So the, what is the problem is that this company is illegal, right? Because in, in psychology, in law, in any other form of professionals, you have a an association, you know, like an architect, association of architect. And if you behave unethically, they report you and you lose your license and you lose your job.

So that doesn’t happen. We don’t have that, but you know, I feel that as. these compounds will slowly, slowly get legalized. And they will. I mean, Lycos was a setback, but then again, someone told me, listen, look at the Lycos debacle, not so much as a setback, but as an encouraging episode. Because if you think about it, you know, the FDA, [01:09:00] Reason in terms of, you know product licensing, right?

So the MDMA want the MDMA, sorry, the, the maps wanted to be fair. So he wanted to apply for, you know, legalization and of, of not just a compound, but a compound and the therapy. So that’s where I think the FDA get confused and then open the door for these irregularities. And then this other organization was.

Trying to, to jeopardize the process, but the fact that MAPS, the fact that there was this slowdown was because of DNA, because the, the FDA was not able to completely evaluate the role of, of therapy because they can’t measure it, right? Huh. Huh. But this is good news. We are getting closer. We’re getting closer to the, so I feel 

Jules (2): I mean, I believe that’s good news, but I agree that it’s gonna, I think it’s gonna happen.

Yeah, I think psychotic medicines will be legalized. 

Giancarlo: And once that happen, [01:10:00] then psychedelic practitioners will be legalized and will be certified. 

Jules (2): So we have to 

Giancarlo: be patient and people like you are making it faster and better. 

Jules (2): Yeah, I agree. I agree. This is, I mean, there’s, there’s various unpredictable things that will happen.

I mean, You know, I agree that psychedelic medicines will probably be approved in some forms in various countries in the next few years. That process will continue. 

Giancarlo: Exactly. 

Jules (2): But, but they will be very tightly controlled and they’ll be expensive. And maybe they’ll only be facilitatable by psychiatrists.

And there will still be an underground. 

Giancarlo: But in, in, in, in Oregon, for example, there is the weekend clinic because there is the two, the two track is the like, you know. insurable, 5, 000, 10, 000, the super expensive through the insurance, that one model. But then there is also psychedelic, not for a disease, but psychedelic for healthy people, which is, which is for people [01:11:00] that maybe are like me.

Jules (2): And there’s a ton of psychedelic churches. Yeah. All of which have got, you know, approval from the DEA. A lot of them have applied for it. So I agree. I 

Giancarlo: mean. So it doesn’t have to be expensive and elitistic. It can be like a little clinic in the, in the, you know, in the countryside. And I, I don’t know if I’m wrong, but in Oregon, there is already some licensing.

Not for, through the medical system, but more through the wellness system. 

Jules (2): Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not a medical program. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): It’s a recreational program. Yeah, which 

Giancarlo: is recreational, such a bad word, but I would say more like, you know 

Jules (2): Spiritual or whatever. In fact, people get that for medical reasons, but, So yeah, I agree with you.

That makes sense to me, that the field is going to become more familiar, because at the moment everyone’s like, wow, It’s exciting new thing. And so there’s a lot of new 

Giancarlo: entrants 

Jules (2): who, who don’t, don’t know what we know, which is like, not everyone’s a good person in this space or just, [01:12:00] it’s, it’s a little wild.

Giancarlo: Yeah. But, but just, just, just to reassure you a little bit more, you know, We, we are building this long term retreat in the, in the old town of Ibiza called Difuso. And, you know, we don’t do psychedelic in Spain. We are monitoring very closely what can we do and when, but, you know, we, but we use expanded state, you know, our model for, for regeneration and transformation and growth is three pillars is the therapy, the community and the expanded states, right?

So with expanded states, we do mostly. Allotropic breathwork and some eros and, but let’s, let’s pick up breathwork, for example. So, you know, we had this client now she’s with us for a month and, and, and she started with the, with the somatic therapy and the therapist. So there, she has three therapies, one for the expanded states, one for the somatic therapy and one for the compassion and inquiry.

And the therapists work together and they can [01:13:00] communicate. The client has waived the confidentiality towards vis a vis the group of therapists, like in a rehab, if you want. And so this lady, from the first session with the somatic practitioner, it was clear that her nervous system was really stressed.

And so she had on the program an allotropic breathwork session and the therapist that communicates said, listen, she’s not ready for a cathartic experience. Her nervous system is too agitated now. So we should push that three weeks down the road. So there are these discussion, you know, I know we are in Ibiza, we are in the capital of expanded state, but it’s happening.

And this lady is writing about it and he’s blogging. So, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m encouraging you to see the glass half full and I’m encouraging you to see yourself as a very important element of this, of this movement of, you know, of conscious psychedelic, if you want, or, or, or, or, you know, more awareness.

You’re doing [01:14:00] such a great work. 

Jules (2): Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. I, I, I’m also. You know, pretty much positive and optimistic. Like, I can see the direction of evolution for the field. So, it’s part of a kind of reawakening to ecstatic experiences, which, in general, for our society, which is incredibly turbulent.

And it goes along with other stuff, like breaking down of old structures, the rise of cults. and profits and false profits. So we’re in a bit like the Reformation, you know, we’re in this wild stage. Yeah. And it’s really interesting. And psychedelics is just one part of that. 

Jules: Yeah. But, 

Jules (2): But you’re right. But there’s just, there’s, there’s a lot to be done.

And we’re in this funny stage where it’s like building processes. And, you know, and it’s, it’s this it’s like, for example, here’s an example retreat [01:15:00] centers or this whole, the whole retreat ecosystem, like, can we encourage them? To have ethics codes to make them more kind of clear to their facilitators and to their clients.

What about tracking outcomes? Occasionally there are accidents that happen at retreat centers. 

Giancarlo: Suggestibility. 

Jules (2): Suggestibility, but also accidents like you know, there’s been a couple of drownings recently. Someone, someone goes to the river in Costa Rica near the retreat center. And for some reason they, they, they drown or someone is at a retreat center in Jamaica and, you know, maybe they’re still too, too high and they get in trouble and they drown or someone has a heart attack.

These are all things that have happened in the last few months or just people go into a manic state. So we don’t know about these kinds of outcomes, so we can’t learn from them. And if you can’t learn from them, nothing changes. So I would love [01:16:00] there to be some kind of voluntary. Network of retreat centers and probably ICS is the organization that could, that could develop this because they have the trust and they have the connections where retreat centers who on the whole, 90 percent of them want to do a good job.

And they can say this happened and we think it might’ve been because of this, this and this so that the field can learn from it. 

Giancarlo: Absolutely. 

Like a booking. com for retreat. 

Jules (2): Well, yeah, but also like like an outcomes report. And it can be anonymous, you know, you know, it could be like, okay, look, this client, you know, a case study, this client went into a manic state afterwards.

Here’s how we try to deal with it, 

Giancarlo: you 

Jules (2): know, so that the field can, can learn from each other. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. But you know that you know, I don’t know, I don’t know if you have time or, but, you know, I’m sure that a good business plan around this kind of of, of, you [01:17:00] know, like a, a nonprofit that would. you know, aggregate all this knowledge.

And, and, you know, what I’m trying to say is that maybe there can be some funding available from all these high net worth psychedelic people, you know? 

Jules (2): Yeah. Well, they I remember pitching to the psychedelic science funders collaborative. When I was just starting this NGO two years ago and they were like, and, and actually it was a gathering of people that was people from fireside, people from cheetah house me and others.

And the, and the, and the high net worth people were like, well, I remember one of them saying, aren’t you being a bit negative? Like why are you focusing on the negative? 

Giancarlo: Yeah. How long, how long ago was that? 

Jules (2): Two and a half 

Giancarlo: years. But you see now already. There are some news. 

Jules (2): Yeah, we, we, we’ve, we’ve had funding, you know, a little bit of funding from some of them and they’ve also, like the Cohen Foundation is funding this new Psychedelic Safety Institute.

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Jules (2): [01:18:00] So there’s, there’s been a big shift. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, exactly. 

Jules (2): Yeah. So, you know, and, and what the hope as well is that there’s going to be more federal funding. That was the hope. But now, of course, we’re in a, in a, in an Elon Musk Doge, you know, federal funding freeze. Yeah, but also 

Giancarlo: into a Maha Kennedy psychedelic friendly.

Jules (2): Yeah. So, you know but that, that’s the big funding is, is like NIH funding ARPA. 

Giancarlo: I see. 

Jules (2): And, and, and they, you know, they, they are beginning to get more interested in psychedelics and, and they want to do it right and they want to do it safe. So I have, you know, Colleagues that I work with, researchers, academic researchers.

They’re now pitching for like big grants, like multi million dollar grants on, on psychedelic safety. And, and that’s, that’s, you know, that’s good. We’re not talking like a hundred thousand, they’re pitching for like a million, 5 [01:19:00] million, these big, big federal grants. Yeah. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. But so just to wrap it up, I saw you start writing a little bit about politics.

What do you see your, your writing? What’s your project for the future? What do you want to see yourself in 5, 10 years? 

Jules (2): I probably will work on the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences project, probably for another two years, 

Giancarlo: or 

Jules (2): three years, and then I would like to put it into a position where it can carry on doing some kind of essential work, but it’s really a catalyst.

So, you know, already some of its work is being kind of done by big academic centers, you know, they, they, they can do it better. So it’s a catalyst to try and help the field develop. So after that, you know, I always become interested in something else, you know, so I’ve worked on stoic philosophy. I’ve worked on.

You know, ecstatic experiences. 

Giancarlo: So what’s the next thing you’re going to be interested in? [01:20:00] You don’t know. Well, 

Jules (2): I wrote a book about, spiritual eugenics, which is the overlap between eugenics and new age spirituality, and why were so many figures in new age culture interested in eugenics in some form or other?

Giancarlo: So eugenics is like population limitation. What’s eugenics? 

Jules (2): Eugenics, it’s basically the idea that we can steer evolution towards better outcomes just as we can breed dogs or horses or different types of fruit. We can breed better types of human. 

Giancarlo: I see. 

Jules (2): And a lot of figures in new age culture were into evolutionary spirituality.

They think of evolution as like a, as like God. They believe people like Aldous Huxley, people like Julian Huxley, people like Theosophists and so on, people like, all the way to like Abraham Maslow or Osho, [01:21:00] Timothy Leary, Abraham, Alistair Crowley, all these figures thought that we could steer evolution towards higher goals, we can make humans into superhumans.

This, by the way, you can even see a bit of this in like Stanislav Grof, like Evolutionary Spirituality. And so I wrote a book talking about this and tracing the history of it. And seeing how it could sometimes end up in some dark places, like or singularity. Well yeah, like that. But I mean, obviously it kind of, it can lead to like nasty eugenicist politics.

So there is now this new kind of liberal eugenics, like with genetic modification. So for example, someone like Christian Angermeier, he is the biggest investor in psychedelics. And he’s, he’s, he’s, he’s not a eugenicist, but he’s a big believer in genetic modification. He thinks that humans will split into those who reject genetic modification and those who embrace [01:22:00] it.

And those who embrace it will become immortal cosmic beings which is pretty much what Timothy Leary thought, by the way, so 

Giancarlo: with, with, with, with cryonics. 

Jules (2): with cryonics, but actually we’ll edit our genes so we won’t die, you know. So there are, you know the new deputy secretary of, of of the health and human services Jim O’Neill.

Giancarlo: In America, in, in the 

Jules (2): States. Yeah, it’s called Jim O’Neill. He used to work with Peter Thiel. I was at Burning Man with him in 2018 before he was, you know, deputy secretary of the, of HHS. And he thinks he’s a transhumanist. So he thinks he will never die. And like Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel thinks he will never die.

And they they think that they’re, you know, they will discover science will advance so much that we’ll become these immortal kind of super beings. And then there’s a whole interesting politics around that, like, what, will everyone or just the elite? [01:23:00] So I am interested in that. I want to, I want to talk, interview your friend, Daniel about that.

Because I think he’s seen some of this kind of transhumanism with, with, you know, in Silicon Valley and in, in, in, in the U. S. Anyway, but who knows? I’m not sure what I’ll be working on in five years. I love staying curious and I love learning. I love, you know, just learning about something new. So I’ve been writing about all the weird bits of the MAGA movement.

Like the transhumanist libertarians and the ecstatic Christians and the conspiracy theorists. And I’m curious about what will happen on the left. What kind of new political movements will arise on the left? What new forms of religion might emerge? What will happen with psychedelic churches. So, you know what, it’s very unusual for me to stay on one topic as long as I have, but at the [01:24:00] moment, because I feel we’re at a critical point with psychedelic culture, I’m really just scared.

staying focused on, on psychedelic safety, because I feel like these next few years are critical. 

Giancarlo: But don’t, don’t you think that that rupture between the, I don’t want to say fake identity, but you know, like a perceived identity, like in your case, you say, you know, you had that rupture between, You know, the gregarious extrovert, joke tellers, and then after a few difficult psychedelic experience, you had the sense, you start having the doubt.

Who’s the real me? Maybe I’m not that good at being that, the social anxiety. So how do you think we can minimize the risk of this rapture? You know, what we call a psychotic experience, I think it’s, it’s just like a brutal, Widening of, you know, like, it’s like an identity split, [01:25:00] right? That’s what it’s like.

It’s like, I don’t know who I am. And, but so what can, you know, personally, I’m interested from a psychotherapeutical point of view to prepare the psychedelic participant in being open, maybe. that this is, you know, this is one part of you to, to minimize the shock because so, so that’s, that’s how we can maybe minimize the risk of the psychotic experience.

Also ontologically, you know, like Ben and Geronimo, they explain it so well. They say, listen, you know, in the indigenous people, when they say that the river, it’s your brother and the mountain is the sister and the moon is the season, they don’t mean it metaphorically. They mean it literally. they feel that we are molecularly, subatomic molecularly connected with the water and the river and we are part, like in the animist religion, right?

So even if in school we can at least not preach it, but just teach this [01:26:00] animist religion or, then we can, you know, then maybe that rapture, you know, like, because what people, what, what people call integration, I think is misleading because in the psychedelic world, we, by integration, what we mean is one or two zoom call checking in how you’re doing, but then, you know, the ontological, the psychedelic experience can be ontological, so violent that is like you take.

The F Flintstone, you take the F Flintstone from the caveman, they put, you put them in Manhattan for one day and then you say, okay, let’s integrate that with a couple of Zoom calls. I mean, it takes time to explain what happened in million of years. Right? I agree. So I feel that in order to minimize the psychotic risk, we need to start informing people that.

There is the other paradigm, which is 

Jules: the 

Giancarlo: consciousness, not an epiphenomenon of the brain, but consciousness as primordial. And this compound can [01:27:00] connect you with this primordial consciousness. And so all your story disappears. But then you don’t feel like who you are. I’m dying. You feel I’m immortal. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, and it’s a preparation.

Jules (2): I mean, yeah, you’re, it’s very interesting. And I, I think the big, the big question. One of the big questions I grapple with is how to improve ecstatic literacy, our culture’s familiarity and discrimination and maturity when it comes to ecstatic experiences, and I watched Geronimo’s course. On on this really, and it, you know, it talks about like, just because Ayahuasca tells you something doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true, or just because you got a message, I am a shaman, or I should leave my wife.

Well, you shouldn’t necessarily act on it immediately. So. All this kind of basic stuff about discrimination [01:28:00] we, we are having to learn as a culture as these kinds of experiences become more common. And that’s, and that’s hard. And I think one of the key questions, Giancarlo, is, is how do we do that in a way that It’s compatible with, with liberalism and with democracy because what sometimes happens with ecstatic revelations.

Is people say, I know what this means for everyone and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, here’s my vision for society. So everyone should learn about the Bible and it’s, you know, we got to return to becoming a Christian society or, you know, everyone’s got to learn about cosmic consciousness. And wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone learned the the holy teachings of Stanislav Grof.

You know, in, in, in society, it’s like that. So pluralism, can we, how can we be open to the ecstatic? Without [01:29:00] saying, you know, I definitely know, you know what’s good for you and, and, and, and, and, you know, if you disagree with me, you are not, not just wrong. Maybe you’re demonic. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, but that’s a, that’s not, I don’t want to say correct or incorrect, but I think like an ecstatic states outcome that leads to the fundamentalism or it’s a little bit of a, of a consequence.

it’s almost a pathology. It’s almost like an underlying feeling of narcissism that then get expanded by, by the ecstatic states, right? 

Jules: Yeah. 

Giancarlo: But so, okay, so that’s why I think it’s critical that the psychedelic experience should be accompanied by therapy. Huh. You know, that, you know, like, in the term psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, everybody gets very excited about the word psychedelic, but it’s a misunderstanding.

The important part of the sentence is psychotherapy. The [01:30:00] psychedelic, it’s only a tool from the psychotherapist to have a better access to the subconscious material. It’s like this new generation of psychotherapists, thanks to expanded state or extended states, they have a better map. We are mapping the subconscious.

Every day, every year, we have a better sense of the map of the subconscious. So, like my friend says, don’t give. The allotropic breathwork to this lady was too much of a you know, deteriorated nervous system because that was pathologizing it. You know, like if she had done it, allotropic breathwork or a mushroom session or a psychedelic session in that state of vulnerability, maybe she would have been suicidal.

Maybe she would have like drowned in the river. You know, so it’s, that’s, that’s, I feel that the psychedelic is, it’s, it’s, it’s a tool for psychotherapies to help the self, the transformation and the growth. It’s not something people can do alone. You know, it’s like a beast to me. 

Jules (2): Could be. I mean, I, I also, you know, I, [01:31:00] I’ve done reporting on, you know, the world of underground psychedelic therapy and that’s a that’s a pretty messy world sometimes and and yeah so i think i think it’s true i think it’s possible but that’s also like that’s not really scalable you know what do you mean that knowledge well that knowledge is not scalable and also just going to a psychedelic therapist is expensive you know that’s not going to affordable for most people but I don’t know, I mean, I think that’s, that’s a kind of, it’s, we, we touched on a much bigger question, which is just ecstasy and revelation and prophecy and all this kinds of non rational stuff and how you fit it into a kind of rational, secular, liberal society.

You, but you don’t. You don’t, yeah. 

Giancarlo: Well, then you have You know, rational and [01:32:00] mystical. Rational and mystical, it’s not You can’t reconcile rational and mystical, right? They did it 

Jules (2): in, they did it, they, they did it in ancient Greece. Because the alternative is you have a spiritual commune which is like a kind of neo, like an ashram or a neo monastery.

And I, I mean, you know, I remember like, I, I, I’m, my wife and I are moving to an eco community in, in, in Costa Rica. And I remember we’re trying to work out governance for this eco. 

Giancarlo: Pachamama. 

Jules (2): No eco villa, it’s called, you know, like where Charles Eisenstein is going to live. And we were trying to work out a governance structure.

And there was a small group meeting to discuss it. And and, and I said, look, we need to be transparent and we need to give everyone a vote. Like we should use. It should be democratic. And one of the kind of new age people said, well, you know, democracy, that’s what, that’s, what’s got us in this mess, you know, so she, you know, they were, they were anti liberal instead that we would all just feel, we would feel the vibes and, and feel the natural, [01:33:00] you know what emerges.

So I, you know, I, all I’m saying is, I think this is a, these are very interesting questions. Yeah. I’m mystical and ecstatic and the secular. A liberal democratic. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: but for example, you heard about Damanhur, right? So, so because I’m interested like you, you know, like I try to develop a TV show in my movie production days called post post capitalistic societies, right?

So the idea was like, we had the speaker and every, every episode would be once would be. Tamera, Damanhur, Oroville, Finghorn, Pachamama, the different, the different communes. So I went to visit some of them and I’ve been in, you know, and, and, and, and for example, you know, one of the ambassador of Damanhur, Esperide, she was here in Ibiza, I had her on the podcast.

And, you know, they’re doing a great job in merging the metaphysical. And, and liberalism because they are now from, you know, it’s based in Turin and there is their set of belief [01:34:00] of, you know, of communion with plants and spirit. And, and, you know, they believe that they, they, they build this incredible temple.

You’re familiar with the temple of Damanhur. Huh. They think that it was a message from, from a different civilization because they didn’t have the, they didn’t have the drawing, the engineering drawing, you know. I mean, people say, how did you do that without the engineering drawing, like digging hundreds of meters.

But then also they now open to capitalism and to the, to terrain and to whoever wants to come and build gym. Or nightclubs. Oh yeah, yeah. They’re open. So that’s so, so that’s super interesting. Right. And, and, and, and for example, automobile, they have, you know, they, they have their own currency and they don’t believe in comp.

They, they, I don’t, I dunno how to, I don’t, I don’t want to make a mistake, but I don’t dunno about the position on competition, but what I remember is that they were, you know, they had the. They believe in creativity and production and invention. And they, they developed the solar panel that then they sold to the Indian [01:35:00] government and they were paid in local money, but that was transferred in their own money.

And so I feel that there is a way of ecstatic states, but also creativity and creation. And yes, commerce, commerce is not a bad world. Right. 

Jules (2): I agree. And look at the Rajneesh community. It was very entrepreneurial. Also, and very innovative. Yeah. The ocean. Yeah, I agree. 

Giancarlo: But then what, what went wrong there that, you know, 

Jules (2): it was 

Giancarlo: things, but it was, it was a cult of personality.

There was, you know, I feel that, you know, the few, the community, the future of the third millennium will get the best of the liberalism that we created integrated with ecstatic states. And I feel ultimately, and I might be just a naive romantic, but if we learn, That, that gap, right, between the, our identity, perceived identity, or mask, and our [01:36:00] true self, if we manage to navigate that transition without shock, that ultimately will bring peace in this planet, right?

Jules (2): I mean, I don’t think that peace in our planet will happen in our lifetime. I agree. I agree. But it’s an aspiration. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the right one. Yeah. It can take a hundred thousand years. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I guess I should think it’s possible. I should not be a cynic and think it’s possible.

Are you still a cynical? But but but I do think, yeah, I think it must be possible some kind of ecstatic liberalism and totally like people like the Quakers. I’m from a Quaker family and they’re kind of ecstatic. You know, like 

Giancarlo: Eisenstein that you mentioned says that our heart knows. A better world is possible.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I wonder if cynicism one day will be considered a pathology. 

Jules (2): I’ll probably be, I’ll be sent [01:37:00] to the funny farm. Come to Ibiza. Let me, let me host you for a few months. I will do some therapy. I’m fascinated by Ibiza. We haven’t talked about it at all, but you know I had never been to Ibiza and, and I love.

I’m fascinated by the subculture of the new age. And then you get sub subcultures. So you get IBI there and you get Austin and you get the Amazon and you know, Costa Rica where I live. Yeah, yeah. So 

Giancarlo: and then And technology and Burning Man and, and crypto. Yeah. And ai. It’s a great intersection of people, 

Jules (2): is it?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I would love to go to Iha. Come, 

Giancarlo: come, come, we’ll, we’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll keep a little apartment for you. 

Jules (2): Yeah. Well, so it sounds very interesting, you’re at the retreat center you’re setting up and yeah, well, let’s keep talking about these, these kinds of topics. They’re going to be critical in the next kind of two to three years and it’s going to be a very interesting time.

And, you [01:38:00] know, places like ICEERS have a, have a critical role to play. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, 

Jules (2): yeah. And, and lots and others as well. And maybe, maybe we can help, you know, think about some of these networks of retreats and stuff and, and how. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, yeah. When, when, when you, when you’re here, you’ll meet Geronimo and then, you know, Ben comes and goes from Barcelona and I can facilitate a meeting with you, ICEERS, maybe some funders.

Jules (2): Yeah. That’d be amazing. 

Giancarlo: In exchange, don’t look too much at politics and look more at psychotherapy.

Have a look at this new theory of the autonomic nervous system. It’s fascinating. This idea that trauma is in your body and you build an armor. Remember Michael Pollan called the default mode network. Are you familiar with the DMS, the default mode network? Michael Pollan called it the egoic armor. Mm. It says that the, you know, [01:39:00] this, this network between the prefrontal COTAs, the mania and talus that the neuropsychopharmacology proves with the FMRI, that with psychedelic, with all the tryptamines.

Mm-hmm . Magic als, D-M-D-M-A, period d mt. Mes. It reduced this, this, this circuit is like, you’ll see on the FMI from red orange, it becomes green and so it’s like the egoic armor gets dissolved. And now the brain is, you know, all the different parts of the brain is finally happy. To express themself without this lock of the world.

Who do I think I am? 

Jules (2): Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . 

Giancarlo: And, and, and, and this is fascinating. I think, you know. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jules (2): I, I, I think it’s a good part and people come to my NGO a lot of them say that learning about nervous system dysregulation and and how to re-regulate is really helpful to them in their recovery.

Giancarlo: Exactly. Exactly. 

Jules (2): There’s all kinds of different levels and, and, you know, Aldous Huxley said a great original [01:40:00] sin is oversimplification, wanting to just interpret from one level, like just the genetic or just the spiritual or just the cognitive or whatever. And so these are, these, you, different people find different levels helpful at particular times, but you can also kind of, you can help them talk to each other, these different modalities.

Exactly. 

Giancarlo: Jules, thank you so much for your time. You give me more time than anticipated. I’m very grateful. 

Jules (2): Sure. I enjoyed it. It’s nice to talk to you Giancarlo. 

Giancarlo: Yes. Yes. Looking forward to have you in Ibiza. Do you, what, what, if people wants to read you or donate to your NGO, give us some links. 

Jules (2): Yeah, sure.

My sub stack every week is called ecstaticintegration. org. If you wouldn’t want to find out more about post psychedelic difficulties, Go to challengingpsychedelicexperiences. com. That’s the little NGO that I help to run. 

Giancarlo: [01:41:00] Fantastico. Thank you so much. 

Jules (2): Okay. 

Giancarlo: Speak soon. 

Jules (2): Bye. Take care. 

Giancarlo: Take care. Thank you, Jules.

Take care.

Speaker: Oh God. So not so not. Brilliant. Brilliant.