57: Richard Grossman on Acupuncture and Ayahuasca

Heart Feather – Website

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Autobiography of a Yogi
Krishnamurti
Be Here Now
Gabor Maté – Quote
Ginebserg
Terrance Mckenna
Akashic records
Rupert Sheldrake – Morphic Fields
Nobel Prize – Quantum Entanglement
Acupuncture
Shipibo-Conibo
Icaros
Howard Amaringo – The Ayahuasca Visions
Default Mode Network
Michael Pollan – How to Change your Mind
Paul Stamets
Rumi – Soul Love
Buddha – Bodhi Tree
Gabor Mate – Somatic
1491 – Book
1493 – Book
Sapo
Bufo
5-MeO-DMT
Heart Feather – Ma’at

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello, hi, welcome to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast today I’m very excited to have Richard Grossman in part caused by an early childhood trauma. Dr Richard Grossman has been dedicated to healing since an early age His spiritual search also started started early by age 15 He had concluded that his only reason to be alive was to help others out of their suffering.

Nice. To aid this goal, he became a doctor [00:01:00] of Oriental medicine in 1983. During this time, he was introduced to the world of plant medicine, especially ayahuasca. Now, his work is a unique combination of traditional Amazonian shamanism, deep energetic healing, and sound healing. His soon to be published book, The Medicine of Your Life, explores this journey in depth.

He’s also exploring the healing power of visual image with the use of AI. Welcome, Richard. So, you know, we, we like to explore very far out topic in our podcast, but we keep a very, you know traditional and conservative structure. We still like to do present past future. So let’s start, you know, I’m very interested in what happened when you were 15, but where did you grow up?

Let’s go through the biographical. Okay. 

Richard: So I was, I was born in upstate New York to parents that were second generation [00:02:00] immigrants from Eastern Europe. My grandparents came over at the turn of the last century and set up shop and then around the middle of the last century, the whole family immigrated out to Los Angeles.

and set up their lives here. So I grew up in a beautiful family environment, very traditional, lots of holidays and lots of food and all of that stuff happened. And my father was a pharmacist and because they, you know, they were, they were struggling, they couldn’t afford babysitter for me and I was. Not the kind of kid that could be cooped up in the house, even with a babysitter.

So I went to the, every summer vacation, I’d go to the pharmacy every day and help. I’d stamp envelopes, I’d seal the envelopes, I’d sometimes even get to push the buttons on the cash register, which was really the highlight of my whole week. And but I got, I got interested. There was one shelf that he had in his pharmacy, one section that was all [00:03:00] plants.

And I don’t remember what he had there. He had, I remember Coca Cola syrup, when Coca Cola was still a medicine. And you know, it had cocaine in it, probably at that time. I don’t know if it did, but, I don’t know. But it was still a medicine for stomach problems. And he had different, different plants in jars, and that really fascinated me.

So, that went from being the son of a pharmacist, you know, to kind of, when I was pretty, pretty young, I went through a crisis with one of my relatives dying, and I, beloved uncle, this is all in my book in detail, but a beloved uncle died, and I locked myself up in my bedroom and wouldn’t come out for three days.

I was so, like, What is this death thing? What is this? How could somebody who was so much love and so much loved suddenly be no longer on this planet? And I went [00:04:00] through the whole existential crisis at about 8 or 9 years old. What’s my life about? What am I living for? Who am I? I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

Everything that I do, no matter what I do, it’s going to be gone. If I make tons of money, it’ll be gone. If I have a big, huge house in Beverly Hills, it’ll be gone. And everything’s going to be gone. And then I thought to myself, like, what? would be meaningful. And the only, the only thing I could find that would be meaningful would be to help other people, to help other people out of their suffering.

And this could have been because I grew up in a medical environment, but it was also part of my soul. I just really was interested in how can I, how can I participate in helping others? So that journey kind of started young and really developed when I started hitting my early teens, when I I picked up a book in a [00:05:00] used bookstore called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, and I was suddenly introduced to Zen, and what that meant, and meditation, and, you know, went from there to Autobiography of a Yogi, to Krishnamurti, to, I don’t even remember all the books, I’ll be here now, of course, to all of the books I read back then.

Like more and more just recognizing that the path that was my family’s path wasn’t my path, you know, to go to college, be a doctor, get a degree, you know, nuclear family, all of that stuff. And I did start getting into some plant medicines in my late teens. Mid teens. And the first time I did it, I was like, this makes so much sense to me.

This makes so much sense that I can eat a plant and it can teach me. I can eat That was ayahuasca? 

Giancarlo: No, that was 

Richard: [00:06:00] mushrooms back then. 

Giancarlo: Mushrooms, yeah. Mushrooms and 

Richard: peyote. That was the only things that were available with marijuana, but I didn’t really ever like marijuana very much. So that was a biggie. I ended up, you know, taking an interesting, I wouldn’t call it a side trip because it was really important, but an interesting detour away from healing into a deep, deep practice of meditation, contemplation, understanding, knowledge.

And that lasted for mid twenties. The healing thing came up again. And I think right about then, I got a degree in massage therapy and started working on people’s bodies, and I didn’t really like that very much. But then somebody, something happened, I don’t remember what it was, and acupuncture popped into the world.

And there was a school that had recently opened up that a friend of mine [00:07:00] was a teacher at, and it just signed up one night. One day I was like, I’m going to do this and became an acupuncturist, went into private practice. 

Giancarlo: And do you mind, do you mind if I ask you just to elaborate a little bit on your first mushroom trip?

It was with friends. Do you remember how much was a big dose, medium dose? 

Richard: It was a medium dose. I would say probably nobody measured things. You just. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Richard: Four, five grams. Probably like three. Three. 

Giancarlo: Three, four. My body is very 

Richard: sensitive to medicine, so. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. And you said that you realized that those plants teach you things.

Do you remember what was the teaching? It was funny 

Richard: because I was actually, you know, I was in high school, I was at a party. When it happened and it was a party that was in a beautiful Santa Monica mountain house and in the backyard there was this oak tree and I walked up to the oak tree and looked at the oak tree and you know the [00:08:00] bark was doing the moving thing and morphing into figures and faces and I’m just looking at this in awe.

of how beautiful something that I had, because I grew up in these mountains, I’d seen a hundred thousand times, you know, or a million times, I don’t know, but I’d never really seen it before. And I realized, you know, in that moment that I was seeing something that was always there, that that oak tree was a being that I never saw as a being before, that oak tree was a consciousness that I never saw before.

And that oak tree could take me places that I never went before. With the mushrooms, but, you know, even after the mushrooms, I can still look at an oak tree and have the same connection to it. 

Giancarlo (2): Mm hmm. Yeah. 

Richard: So that’s what happened with that. And peyote, I did once, same, same thing happened. Some friends of mine went out to go camping up in the mountains above Santa Barbara where there was a beautiful lake for swimming in.

And they all went, [00:09:00] you know, we ate the peyote, which was very difficult for me because it just was. Really intense flavor, but I ate a few buttons and then just sat down and I just sat watching, it was a beautiful location, watching the trees breathing in the wind and watching the river sparkling. And just the utter absolute beauty of nature was mind boggling to me.

Just mind boggling. And that changed my life. You know, I, I. He recognized also that what I was seeing that was so mind boggling was also inside of me. That the outside and the inside, Kabir said it in one of his poems, the inner and the outer have become as one sky. And that was what I was experiencing, was the beauty that I was seeing outside was actually the beauty of my own soul that was being reflected on the outside, and the beauty of the [00:10:00] outside was being reflected on my inside.

And did I need plants to do that? I think I did at that point, you know, I think they really accelerated my growth in a big way. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’d love, I’d love to go back a little bit later on, on, on, on, on the, you know, ontology of this, of this you know, dissolving of this barrier between, you know, us and, and, and the ecosystem and this perception of, of, of, you know, one organism, but just to finish on your, a little bit on your, on your childhood.

So, now you are in doing acupuncture. Right. And, and so. So, 

Richard: to go back, I was pretty messed up also, even though I was doing Tai Chi and getting acupuncture and meditating, I was very, like, a lot of. pain inside of me from the unresolved trauma of childhood, a lot of pain. [00:11:00] And so a friend of mine that I’d known since I was like 18 was a chiropractor and he also then became a plant medicine healer.

And not just plants, but other substances, MDMA, things like that. And before it was illegal. And I started working with him doing a number of different things. And each time it was amazing. Just like, I never, I never went into a fear state. I never went into a. You know, it’s too much. Make it stop state. It was just beautiful.

And, you know, feeling those locked places inside of me just going open. 

Giancarlo: Do you mind if I’m asking where, where were the lock coming from? 

Richard: When I, when I was four to five years old, I don’t remember exactly when my right index finger got amputated in a bicycle accident. 

Giancarlo: Wow. 

Richard: And that was intense. That was intense.

And that, that locked up a lot of [00:12:00] pain and fear and suffering and you know, the trauma didn’t end with the accident continued for years. Of being the freak in school and, you know, that kind of stuff. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Gabor Mate says that the trauma is not the event. The trauma is your reaction to the event. Yes, of course.

And so I can see how you felt you know, not being part of the community and feel, you know, this, this, at that age. felt different and you internalize the sense of not being accepted and and, and, and yeah. And so, and then with MDMA, you were able to maybe access this memory without the pain. 

Richard: Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And so in a certain way you were able to metabolize and integrate.

Richard: I couldn’t even touch the memory. For years after that, it was so powerful and so deep and so, you know, like triggering, re triggering. But then one [00:13:00] day after I was recently graduated from being an acupuncturist, he called me up and said, I brought some ayahuasca up from South America. You’ve got to try this.

And I had no idea what it was. Nobody knew what it was back then. Maybe there was a little bit in, in, you know, Ginsburg’s book and, you know, Terence McKenna was already starting to get his popularity going, but I never had heard of it before. And of course I said, of course, right away, you know, let’s do it next week.

And 

Giancarlo: which, which year was that? Mas o menos? Mas o menos, 

Richard: mas o menos 1984, I 

Giancarlo: think, 

Richard: 1984. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, yeah, yeah. 40 years, 40 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. 

Richard: And because it was just after I graduated, I graduated in 83. Yeah, so I suddenly feel very old again.

No, but the spirit is young. I can feel very young. [00:14:00] Spirit is, hasn’t grown up yet. Anyway so I went to his house. He had a beautiful house. He was living out in the Malibu mountains and drank this medicine. And he was definitely in the beginning stages of his work with, with ayahuasca. I don’t think he really trained.

He didn’t know any Icaros, didn’t, didn’t know much, but he, you know, had these great sound system, these six foot tall speakers and laid me down on a mat in the middle of the room and started playing this music and I was lying there. And suddenly, you know, the music is changing, and I’m changing, and everything is changing, and I went into this experience that still rocks my world, where, like, one second I was lying down on the mat, and I’ve had a lot of ayahuasca experiences since then, nothing’s been like this.

And when I tell it, people [00:15:00] get scared, but it’s not that scary. So I was lying on the mat and from one second to the other, I was in Malibu mountains on the mat. And then the next second I was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. 

Giancarlo: Wow. 

Richard: And 3D, fully real like everything except the sense of smell was there.

I could hear it. I could see it. I could feel it. I could feel the temperature. It was like, not winter, but it was cold and raining and it was horrifying because I could see people being taken, you know, going into the gas chambers. I could see the suffering. I could feel the suffering. And I could not switch channels, you know, it was like, and, and it was like, make it go away.

No, keep it here. No, make it go away. Make it stop. No, I like this. I want to see this. What’s here back and forth for a few minutes. And then finally I was there and I kind of put [00:16:00] out like what. to the universe, to God, what am I supposed to be doing with this? What is my, why am I seeing this? And, you know, if you, if you ever get to work with me, you’ll realize, I say, don’t listen to the voices in the head, but this one I listened to, it said, trust and forgive.

And then. 

Giancarlo: Do you have an ancestor that was in the, your grandfather was in Germany at the time? No, they 

Richard: all, they all, my whole. Well, my immediate family all left around 1900, which was way before Nazi Germany. But I’m sure some relatives that I never met, never knew of were there, but it’s ancestral, you know, it’s in the field anyway.

But so anyway, let me, let me finish the story here cause it’s a good one. And of course. So trust and forgive. And then I went into a whole [00:17:00] dialogue of like, what am I supposed to trust? Trust and forgive. Am I supposed to forgive? Trust and forgive. What do I do with this? Trust and forgive. Am I supposed to forgive Hitler?

Trust and forgive. Am I supposed to forgive the Nazis? Trust and forgive. Nothing came to me but trust and forgive, trust and forgive, trust and forgive. And then I finally asked, what does trust and forgive mean? And the answer that came in was, it means letting go of your inner connection to all of this trauma.

It means releasing it and allowing the winds of time to blow it to where it exists, which is non existence. It no longer exists. It’s only here. It no longer, or here, or wherever in my body, it no longer exists. It’s gone. Time has taken it away. Why do you Why are you continuing to bring it into the present and when I like, okay, I’m [00:18:00] gonna let this go.

I’m gonna let it go. I’m gonna let go of all the anger, all of the trauma, all of the pain, and it was gone. Then I was someplace else. And they got increasingly unpleasant, you know. Someplace else, someplace else, someplace else, someplace else, someplace else, someplace else. Going all the way back in time to the beginning.

And when it was over, I was a little butterfly outside the window, flying around through the flowers. And it was so beautiful and it was so hard. and so beautiful. And as soon as I was that little butterfly, I thought to myself, this is my work. This is it. This is the most powerful healing modality that I could possibly imagine.

And I didn’t start doing it for many years after that. I still had to work on all those remnants of the trauma and [00:19:00] of the fear and of whatever else it was inside of myself. Until that was healed up. And there’s probably still some there. It still comes up from time to time, but 99. 9 is better. And that was kind of my path into working with ayahuasca.

Giancarlo: Wow. It’s such a mysterious substance, right? Because so many people don’t feel anything the first time. Yeah. Or very, or very little. Yeah. And, and you went to this incredible regression and 

Richard: I’m not gonna even call it a regression. Okay. So fast forward to about four years or five years ago, I was in Poland doing some work there.

And I was with a friend of mine, and we were driving,

I forget the names, Warshaw to Horshaw, I don’t know. You were 

Giancarlo: doing medicine, 

Richard: medicine work. Yeah, I was working there. And we were going to pass [00:20:00] Auschwitz. And we see the sign, Auschwitz, 10 kilometers, or whatever it was. Should we go? Too intense. We’re in two nights out play. Should we go? Oh, you know, maybe.

And, but it’s cold and it’s raining and it looks like a horrible day. And we got to the off ramp and I watched your hands just go and take the off ramp. And we got stuck in traffic cause they were, they were they were redoing the road in the city. So it took us like two hours on traffic congestion to get to actual Auschwitz.

So it was already late afternoon. So we spent a couple hours walking around. And it was intense. But the next day we went to the other concentration camp and, you know, that’s when the train tracks leading to the building and we walked in the front door and I’m looking around and like, this was where I was in that ayahuasca trip.

Giancarlo: You recognize 

Richard: it? I recognized it [00:21:00] completely. No doubt at all that that was where I was. So it’s not, my family wasn’t there. My ancestors weren’t there, but. Maybe my soul was, or maybe I was healing somebody else’s. So I, I, I don’t want to too much get into thinking about what it was. It just was what it was.

Giancarlo: Yeah. I mean you know, the, the Theosophy Bablasky with the Akashic record just says that, you know, there’s all these, like, you know, the cosmos is like a, a memory bank. And so you can then travel and, you know, even Rupert Sheldrake talks about the morphogenetic field. Yes. So, you know, I think that, you know, with, with some, with some tools, we can travel in this cosmic matrix, right?

It’s still very mysterious, but for sure, we are not, for sure we are not this independent [00:22:00] separate being, you know, like. I, I always say that I think my listener will get bored to hear that, but two years ago in 2022, the Nobel prize in in physics was given to these, um, Swedish scientists. They proved entanglement.

They prove that the subatomic particle that were connected with then separated thousands of miles and they were still, they were still entangled. So that proved delocalization. So. On a subatomic level, this idea of space is that we have is, is, is, is not correct. 

Richard: So I want to add one thing to this story is part of the realization I had, which is why I continued working with Ayahuasca was that.

In, I’m not saying this from an egocentric, like I’m something [00:23:00] special, but I think every person has this capability and capacity but in, in the releasing of the anger and judgment and fear that was inside of me during that experience so many years ago, it also in some way created an opening for others also to heal that had maybe been there.

And I’ve met several people in my life who were actually there. And in, in, in Auschwitz, it was my patients. Oh wow. 

Giancarlo: Oh wow. 

Richard: It was, it was very dramatic, you know, very emotional to meet them. 

Giancarlo: Wow. They were like 85 or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Richard: They were children when they were there, but they still remembered, still had the tattoo.

Giancarlo: Wow. Wow. And so where are we now? How old were you? Right now? More or less. No. When, when, when, when we were there, when you were in Poland and you went to [00:24:00] Auschwitz, 

Richard: Yeah, that was four years ago, five years ago. 

Giancarlo: Okay. It was recently. I see. I see. I see. Okay. So, so you decided to you did the acupuncture after your first trip, then, then immediately after having these incredible experience with ayahuasca, you decided to.

you know, dedicate your life to offering this medicine to the people and what kind of training did you go? It was, yeah, 

Richard: I still, I still I didn’t do it. I did several more experiences with the ayahuasca and some with other plant medicines. But I was an acupuncturist and so I practiced acupuncture for many years and I think in the practicing of acupuncture I learned about the human body in school and in working on people.

I learned about spirit in school and working on people. I learned about the energetic body [00:25:00] and how to manipulate the energy for the person’s benefit. And I learned how to listen and ask questions and be present and see things, my favorite see thing. A patient walked into my office one day, sat down at my desk.

I looked at her and was like, you’re pregnant. 

Giancarlo: You felt it. 

Richard: I could see it. I don’t know how. And she broke down crying because it wasn’t something that she could keep. And but you know, it was, it was dramatic to me like, I’m, I’m tuning into things that I can’t necessarily. And don’t necessarily want to explain, you know, I’m not the kind of person who’s wants to explain everything.

I want to feel it. I want to be, and I want to do it. I don’t want to necessarily pick it apart because I think in picking it apart, some of the magic is lost. 

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But so just for, just for the audience that are not familiar, what are the basic principle of [00:26:00] acupuncture? 

Richard: Oh yeah. Acupuncture basically goes back to the Neolithic, to the New Stone Age, when people could accurately carved stones, like all of the beautiful arrowheads you might see, or hammers, or whatever, those are all neolithic.

Neo means new, lithic means stone, as composed of paleo, as opposed to paleolithic, which means old stone age, which also I might pick up a rock and I’d use the rock. New stone age, I would manipulate the rock into the shape that I wanted it to be very accurately and very beautifully. It’s really quite a skill.

So they found in tombs, ancient tombs in China, these needles made out of stone, and they were the first acupuncture needles. They didn’t necessarily puncture the skin because you wouldn’t want to put a stone in your skin, but they were used for intense pinpoint pressure [00:27:00] on certain specific points. An easy way to understand the very, very, very, very basics of acupuncture is what do you do if you have a headache?

Rub your head. You’re actually pushing on acupuncture points. So, and you can find exactly the specific point where the headache is coming from. Or the same thing, you know, maybe in the back of the neck or shoulder or your stomach hurts. So you put your hands on your stomach. All of these things are the beginning, utter very, very beginning of the science and art of acupuncture.

And then you take the Chinese, the ancient Chinese, especially penchant for recording things. And, you know, if I, you know, take one of those stone needles and push it on that point, it’ll do whatever it does and, you know, my stomach feels better, I’m [00:28:00] doing it there, the patient’s stomach feels better. And then my feeling is probably at one point somebody made one of these stone needles a little bit too sharp and it penetrated the skin.

And voila, acupuncture is born, because the effect was probably better. That’s totally my fantasy. That’s not anything that there’s a reality about. It’s my fantasy. And so acupuncture is the art of, how do you say it in a couple sentences? Bringing a person’s body, mind, and spirit into harmony with their environment.

And removing from them pathogenic or disease causing energies or matter. So the whole body is interconnected. Like, Western medicine, go to a doctor. The doctor will, you know, be a generalist, usually the first time. A family practitioner or general practitioner or whatever. And they’ll [00:29:00] say, oh yes, you need to go see a kidney doctor or a lung doctor or a bone doctor.

You know, a nephrologist orthopedic doctor, whatever it is. And then those are people that have just studied this one organ or one system extensively. And they may not know very much or may have forgotten about the rest of the body. But they know more about this one thing than anybody else does, other than people in that field.

So the art of specialization is what western medicine, western science is about. It’s, you know, the reductive thing of taking things down to the basic components. Like if I have a liver problem, what are the enzymes that are out of balance? What are the causing of the enzymes that are out of balance?

What’s doing that? You know, it goes down to the basic components. It’s really amazing. Science. Acupuncture looks at the person and says, well, you’re not a liver. You’re not a bone, you’re not a kidney, you’re everything. And everything in you is working in [00:30:00] relationship with everything else. So nothing gets sick by itself.

Nothing goes out of balance by itself. And so it’s using the needles on specific points to try to redirect how the energy flows in the body. And also, of course, using herbs and massage and other techniques. But with acupuncture, it’s using the needles, almost like, you know, the good analogy of this is old school trains.

You had a train going down a track, and then there was a junction, and somebody had to actually pull the lever to decide which way the train went. So the body has hundreds and hundreds of these junction points, and putting the needle in it, you can change how the energy moves in the body. 

Giancarlo: I see. It’s 

Richard: fascinating stuff.

Giancarlo: So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a very holistic approach rather than reductionism. It was the 

Richard: original holistic medicine, you 

Giancarlo: know. Yeah. I think. But so when you said mind, body [00:31:00] and spirit, I can see the energetic interpretation, but how does the spirit fits into, into these meridians? It’s 

Richard: all, all one, you know, energy is spirit, energy is breath, breath is spirit.

Yes. That means spirit, you know, respiration means I guess working the spirit. I don’t know exactly, but respirar, breathe. 

Giancarlo: Yes. Yes. And did, did, did you, did you in some way brought your experience with the, with the needle into the plant medicine practice? 

Richard: Indirectly. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely brought the acupuncture ideologies into my plant medicine work.

Specifically if, if somebody needs some, needed something in, in a ceremony, I could go and do acupuncture on them or [00:32:00] hold a point on them. You know, the points would release the energy that was stuck. 

Giancarlo: But so, which if you don’t mind me asking, which lineage did you adopt? You know, there is ayahuasca, there is like, you know, someone told me, you know, it’s like pasta.

You can cook it in so many different ways. There is so many countries that have Amazons, there are so many tribes. There is a practice that’s more celebratory, a practice which is more. For healing, one is more energetic, you know, the Peruvian, it’s more on the dark. The Brazilian is more celebratory, which, how did you choose your path?

Richard: When I cook, I may use tortillas, miso, pasta you know, plants from, you know, Italian plants and Japanese plants. I put them all in the same dish. And if you’re a good cook, you can make it taste [00:33:00] good. So 

Giancarlo: you made your own recipe 

Richard: and I don’t recommend this. Okay. I don’t recommend the way that I did it, but I started when I went to the Amazon, the first time I was, you know, my eyes were twice as big as my face.

Like, Oh, where am I? What is this? And I started going to different shamans, Corinderos, we call them, they’re not shaman, they weren’t called shamans then, but Corinderos or healers. And I went to initially a. person who was, they call them mestizos, they’re part Spanish, part Mexican, part indigenous, and they have their own kind of more catholicized way of doing things, and very beautiful.

And I went to that and was like, oh, I can learn from this. And then I went to Shipibo, and Shipibo, like for most people, it knocked my socks off. And I really wanted to learn that and was ready to take on a teacher as [00:34:00] my, you know, my plant medicine guru, and that didn’t work out. And I kept on, for the first year, I kept on going to different people and just paying attention.

And I never really wanted to say you are my My astro, I’m your apprentice, never happened. I think I was too old for that in a way. That’s why I knew a lot more about a lot of things than they did, you know, after having years of acupuncture practice behind me. So, but I, I learned, I learned, I listened, I watched, I asked questions and I like, I’ve always liked asking questions of people because.

My favorite thing in school is to ask questions of one of my professors or teachers until they couldn’t answer anymore and go, we don’t know. And then I, that I realized, you know, when I got to that, we don’t know, I was at a really beautiful jumping off place into the unknown there. And, you know, the [00:35:00] same thing with, with the shamans I work with in Peru.

I started, and again, I do not recommend this, please don’t do this when I started acupuncture school about two weeks into it, some friends of mine and myself went down to Chinatown and bought some acupuncture needles, started, you know, doing acupuncture on each other. Just following the recipes in the book.

Don’t do that, please. You know, I’m lucky nobody died. And the same thing happened with acupuncture, is I went down the first year, I went down, I came back up here, and some friends of mine said, oh, you, you gotta give us a ceremony. And I was like, you know, I can’t. Don’t, don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know anything.

And they said, no, we trust you. Go ahead. And back and forth a little bit and finally poured them a couple of cups of some medicine I brought up from South America with me and they didn’t die. They didn’t go crazy and they actually loved every moment of it. So I just started doing more and more of that kind of organically.

I [00:36:00] didn’t really look for it. But I started doing more and more of that and I went down to Peru every, usually once or twice a year, just to be with different, different people I was working with down there and develop my own way of doing things based on the Peruvian style. I, I, I really liked the Peruvian style and the upper Amazonian style.

My first experience was in Ecuador. That was really something. And I, I really love that, you know, in the dark introspective. You’re not singing along too much, and you’re doing the work on yourself, and the shaman’s doing the work with the song, with the music. And I very much responded to the music, very much responded to the Ikaros, and very much also learned kind of organically to play different instruments while I was both in ceremony and out of ceremony.

Giancarlo: What do you think [00:37:00] is the effect and purpose of the Icarus of the music? 

Richard: What do I think? This is a good question. On one hand, there’s, you know, like, if you ask me a question, I’ll give you three separate contradictory answers quite often. So I might do that now. I think the first part, one, one level is, and nobody quote any one of these, because they all go together the first level is it’s entertainment.

It’s cosmic entertainment. The shaman’s up there singing patterns and light and colors and, you know, energetic magic, so that the medicine can work on your body without you trying to make it stop. You get entranced by it, and that entrancement is, it’s beautiful, you know, it’s, it’s lovely. A good, a good singer, a good musician is really a magician.

It’s the real magic. And so that’s part of it, is it takes [00:38:00] your mind and lets the medicine work in your body while, you know, the medicine is in your body. And another level. It is manipulating the energy, first off in the room, and second off if you’re getting a song sung to you, in you. For example, here’s a, here’s an interesting thing that happened to me.

It was, long story, I ended up in the jungle, in a ceremony, with bronchitis. Bad bronchitis. About at least two or three hours from the nearest hospital. And, I was in the medicine. I was with a group, I took a group down there. And I’m like, Oh my God, this is intense. What if I need to get to the hospital? I will die.

Good hour and a [00:39:00] half walk to get to the road and then another hour and a half to get to the hospital. You know, if something goes serious here, I, I’m, I knew enough about my body and about physiology that I knew that I was going into a bad place. And you know, I’m coughing and hacking and the shaman calls me up and sings two songs.

I go back, I sit down at my place, take a couple deep breaths and relax and about 10 minutes later, wait a second, I’m taking deep breaths and relaxing. What just happened? So the next time I asked him what he did and he’s saying, Oh, you know, I just sing a couple songs to your lungs. Yeah. And it healed them.

That particular disease was gone. So that’s the effect of the Ikaros. They take you on a journey, for one, and the second thing is at the [00:40:00] higher level is the shaman is using the Ikaros to, like acupuncture almost, manipulate the energy in your body in a totally different way. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. They call it like energetic surgery.

Richard: Energetic surgery. And, you know, sometimes the, They will call in, they call in the spirit doctors, or the doctors of the higher dimensions, and those doctors will do surgery. You know, there’s that amazing story, it’s in Howard Charing’s book Ayahuasca Visions, about Pablo Amaringo. who’s a great beginner.

He was the first ayahuasca artist, really, and he started the schools that have, the school that has taught so many other of the great ayahuasca painters that are now coming out of the Amazon. So he had a heart valve problem since he was a baby. He was born with it, and it affected his life. And I hope I’m getting this story right.

So it affected his life a lot. In a very bad way, but he was [00:41:00] interested in ayahuasca. And so he was doing ayahuasca one night, lying in a hammock by the river, by the Amazon, by the Ucayali, cause he was from Pucallpa. So he was lying in a, in a hammock by the river and this huge white steamboat, like the old Mississippi steamboat comes tooling down the river, stops right where he’s in his hammock, plank comes down and a doctor, an American doctor, an American nurse.

Nurse was dressed up in a nurse’s uniform, the doctor was wearing a suit, and they walk up to him, and he’s, like, completely in the medicine, unable to move. They cut him open, take his heart out, take his heart down to the river, wash it out, sew it up, come back, put it in his chest, sew him up, and then leave.

Okay, so it’s a really wild vision, right? The next day his heart valve [00:42:00] problem was gone and never came back. 

Giancarlo: Wow. Wow. You know, 

Richard: I, you know, I, I don’t know how that could be explained. You can’t say spirit doctor and have it make any sense. You can’t say body mind medicine and have it make any sense. You can, all I can really say is ayahuasca.

You know, that there is this other universe or universes that ayahuasca opens a person up to. Where things that we in our, you know, very rational, very material world are not able to comprehend, are not able to imagine even, or maybe imagine it as a weird movie. But that somebody could be, you know, drink a medicine, lie down in the steamboat, comes and doctor and nurse can often fix his heart.

Yeah, that was a dream, but his heart was better, you know. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Are you [00:43:00] familiar with this term, the default mode network? Yes. You know the neuros? The neuropsychopharmacology with this fun functioning MRI? Yeah. They found, they found out that the DMT Salisa and LSD Mecal, all the tryptamines, they reduced the blood supply.

In this three, three key area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, the medium cortex and the thalamus or something like that. And so by reducing the blood supply, this default mode network get weakened and subdued. And Michael Pollan in his book called the default mode network, the closest thing to the egoic armor.

So, we now know from somatic medicine, you know, the body keeps the score and we now know that, you know what’s happening in the brain, especially in term of trauma can then be a result of body complication, right? They are connected. [00:44:00] So, you know, the closest scientific explanation I could give to this.

You know, miracle of the heart valve is that, you know, this medicine by changing the neurochemistry of your brain allow, you know, like sort of like melt the egoic armor around the neurocircuitry that were then causing this body ailment, you know, like Paul Stamet, the mycologist is. Yeah. Yeah. He was stuttering and, you know, he took a big dose of mushroom during a storm.

He went up on a tree. The storm was getting worse. So it was trippy. Couldn’t come down. And only in the morning came down from the tree and the stuttering was gone. But there is so many examples like that. Yeah. 

Richard: And on the other hand, that’s our, you know, rational mind trying to Interpret. Interpret the irrational.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: And [00:45:00] I so often, you know, how does ayahuasca do this, and I’ll just say it’s magic. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Richard: I’m completely comfortable with that as an answer. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely comfortable. Yeah. Some people, some people are more cognitive driven or oriented, you know. Some people need to get it more in the brain, but I understand, I hear you.

There’s no need. 

Richard: I think the problem, the problem is, I mean, to me it’s like, we need to walk hand in hand. Science and spirit, you know, science and the art of ayahuasca, these things need to walk hand in hand, but so many scientists want to rationalize the irrational, you know, want to explain the inexplicable.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: And they want to put in a box. Those things that offend their reason, 

Giancarlo (2): because 

Richard: it’s offensive to the reason that a big white steamship comes down the river and does heart surgery. And you know, [00:46:00] that’s offensive to the reason, of course it’s the default mode network and blah, blah, blah, you know? And on the other side, that’s definitely part of what was going on as above.

So below her mistress, Magista said, you know, what’s happening here is how it’s happening here in the body. And on the other hand, there’s magic, you know, Hermes Trismegistus was, you know. 

Giancarlo: But so, but so do, do your clients get satisfied when you say it’s magic? Because you know, sometimes I feel that, you know, especially now this medicine is attracting a lot of, you know, people that might not be necessarily like believer that have a very secular materialistic ontology, right?

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And so when they go and they try plan medicine and you know, they travel to different dimension and they have this, maybe they see these entities and then, you know, everybody now is talking [00:47:00] about integration. They’re doing integration classes, integration school integrations, retreat. And, but then, you know, for someone who has such a different ontology, how you, how do you integrate like the Mississippi boat or you know, an angel or a gremlins or a, an entity that comes, you know, it’s.

It’s like you take the cavemen, you bring them to Manhattan for one day, and then how do you integrate that? So how do you, I mean, even recently the brother of a friend of mine had a terrified, you know, younger, maybe 19 years old, had a terrifying trip, you know, he felt falling in the void and dying. He saw the dog with three heads and, and you know, he was, he had a psychotic.

prizes. He had a psychotic meltdown. You know, he, he was not ready to that. And then in the weeks after You know, I tried my best to find some, some therapies that would in a way create some sort of ontology because for some [00:48:00] of these, you know, especially white men, they’re not going to buy. It’s just magic.

How do you deal with that? How do you prepare them that they’re going to travel to a different dimension maybe? 

Richard: Yeah. That’s the effect of the medicine. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Richard: And. I do fully believe that of what there is to know in creation, we know the tiniest part of the tiniest part, you know, and no matter how I was thinking about this the other day, I was like, well, you know, it’s so modern now we have AI.

We have totally, the entire world is covered by information and communication. This has never happened before that we know of anyway, I don’t think it’s ever happened before. I, I I love, I love Romania and I was up in the mountains of Romania at a friend’s house. And this old shepherd comes by with a herd of [00:49:00] sheep, and he’s walking, you know, stops under a tree with his herd of sheep, and he has his head bowed down, and I’m thinking, wow, this is really beautiful.

He’s there praying and, you know, really connecting to nature and his sheep, and he had an iPhone in front of him. That’s never happened before. So, and he was, he was not a rich shepherd. He was just a poor shepherd living in a little hut in the mountains. I was thinking. We’re so modern right now. But then I thought, you know, in the 1940s people thought they were so modern too.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: That’s like the thing. So what’s it going to be like in a hundred or a thousand years if we survive that? They’ll be, they’ll be in places using technology, using whatever that we can’t even imagine. Yeah. We don’t have the capacity to imagine. Nobody of, maybe Jules Verne, but nobody of 150 or 200 years ago could imagine anything like what we’re experiencing now.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: [00:50:00] You know, technology taken to its limit is magic, indistinguishable from magic. I just mangled that quote, but you know, the idea that what we experience today would be looked at as being magic to somebody from the past, not too distant past. I mean, even AI is like 2001, I think was the first really experienced people had of AI going nuts.

And 

Giancarlo (2): yeah. 

Richard: So what we’re experiencing today in this medicine world, you know what I call magic, I like, I like the word magic, I really am comfortable with not being able to understand what’s going on. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t mind at all. I don’t care how my camera works, I care what the picture it takes is.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Giancarlo: And so, and so your, your, your, your client are, are happy with this interpretation of just, you know, surrender and trust to the magic of the universe. 

Richard: I don’t even talk about that really. [00:51:00] I, I, we’re getting into it cause we’re talking about this, but usually the, the aim that I have with people when I’m working with them is, you know, that we have our intellectual mind.

And we have our soul, our heart, our being, you know, who the I is when I say I, or me. Yeah. Who is it? You know, we point here. Japanese people point here. Chinese people point there. Yeah. Yeah. But who is that I? And if we look back through history, there’s books called scriptures, there’s mystical poets there’s incredible amounts of amount of people who are pointing to this thing inside of us, to this experience within.

That is beyond time and space. That is outside of time and space. That exists in the exact moment of [00:52:00] now. That is not intellectual. It’s not understandable by the mind. Rumi said the mind cannot see it. Only the heart. I think Rumi said 

Giancarlo: that. It’s pure consciousness. 

Richard: So in ceremony I want people to experience that.

I want people to go there if they can. As much as they’re able. And it’s an infinite journey. So there is no I’ve done as much as I can. No matter how much you experience, you’re just still scratching the surface of infinity. You’re still scratching the surface. So if that then is the goal that doesn’t have to be explained rationally It just is.

And when you experience it, you recognize that it’s bigger than the rational mind. It’s bigger than the intellect. So the result of that, of allowing yourself to merge into that, is almost like resetting a [00:53:00] confused computer. Turn it off, it goes back on, it works better. And that’s how I explain things, that’s how I integrate things.

I’m not really concerned. In my work, I’m not concerned very much about gremlins and machine elves and, you know, gods and goddesses, because I look at it as being, there’s a path, metaphorical, but there’s a path. We can see about this much of it. We still take the next step. We can’t see the future. We can’t even really see the past.

We just see our memories of the past. But there’s this golden, you know, Camino del Oro. You know, the road of gold, the Camino de los Santos, the road of the saints. You know, that is inside, is the breath, is taking us on this journey. And we [00:54:00] can pay attention to that. And

there’s so much other stuff that are side trips off of that road. Like Buddha, Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, for example, he had exhausted his ability and the ability of the technologies of his time. To understand who he was, to understand what, you know, the purpose of his life was. And he sat down under the Bodhi tree.

The milkmaid came and gave him some rice and milk, because he hadn’t eaten in so long. Use your imagination a little bit there. But she gave him some rice and milk and he sat and he didn’t move. And in his not moving, he was attacked by [00:55:00] armies of demons. He was tempted by all the wealth of the world.

He could have been a great King. He was, he was, you know, tempted by dancing gods and goddess, you know, all the things that can happen in a psychedelic journey, you know, these things like, okay, so here’s a demon. Do I fight it or do I sit and not interact? If I sit and not interact, there’s no energy going to this thought form of the demon and it dissolves into the nothingness that it really is.

The same thing for gods and goddesses. I can get all caught up in, I saw Krishna, you know, I saw Buddha, I saw this, I saw that, but. If I just sit, they dissolve into the non reality that they are, because they are just thought forms. And the more I do that, the deeper I go into the core of my being, the clearer I [00:56:00] get, the more connected to reality I am, and the default mode network gets activated and all the things in my body heal.

You know? So, it’s, it’s a different way of looking at it. That does not need a lot of explanation. I don’t want to have to analyze people’s visions. In other words, yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yes. I understand. I understand. But so the desired outcome, it’s healing. 

Richard: Yeah. It’s peace. Connection. 

Giancarlo: But so how do, how do you do the follow up of your session?

Are you, are you in touch with your clients? Do you speak with them? How often? When do you recommend them to come back? How is the aftercare, if you don’t mind me asking? 

Richard: I tend to be fairly hands off with giving people directions on what to do. 

We do have after every, every night ceremony, we have a long circle council, I call it in the morning.

I’ve been doing that since I started doing the work. Nobody [00:57:00] else was doing it back then, but I, you know, it was based on kind of the Shona Ndebele council idea, talking stick, you know, was added into it. So I do that until people are clear. People that are talked out. 

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: You know, somebody has stuff from their past come up, we talk about it.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: And talk about how to move through it. And then usually a week, week and a half later, we meet online for another council, and then they’re always available to contact me if they need to. 

Giancarlo (2): But 

Richard: I find, you know, once people are clear, they tend to stay clear. And if people leave confused, they’ll tend to stay confused.

So, and it’s, it’s usually for me, it’s not very difficult to unconfuse somebody. 

Giancarlo: Wow. 

Richard: My favorite story was Somebody called me up and, you know, it’s like six months [00:58:00] had gone by and she said, I got to talk to you. I’m really frightened about what I experienced. And I said, Oh, it’s okay to be frightened. She said, really?

Wow. Thank you. I’ll talk to you later. She had to have permission to feel what she was feeling. That was what it took. And you know, granted there’ll be more complicated things going on and the advantage of living in Los Angeles is every other person is an integration therapist these days. I’m exaggerating.

Giancarlo: Yeah. But so, so, so you recommend, you recommend some eventually. Yeah. In 

Richard: our circle we have somebody who does Peter Levine’s work, somatic experiencing and massage person. We have a lot of different not a lot, but several different pathways for people to find healing. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because my experience with, especially with trauma is that, you know, [00:59:00] You know, it is possible to, to integrate the, you know, this, the neurocircuitry of trauma is possible to rewire it, you know, neuroplasticity do exist, but it takes time and works.

And so, you know, like Gabor Mate, for example, has this somatic approach where you visualize this, this, you know, energetic, this, this traumatic energy in your body and you stay with it and you feel it and you become curious about it and then you integrate it. But it’s, it’s almost everyday practice. And I remember my personal experience with ayahuasca is that, you know, you have a one week, maybe two weeks of clarity, but then the confusion come back.

So. You know, I think personally, I don’t know what’s your view, but you know, now that Salosa, you know, MDMA has become legal, if not this year, next year, Salosabine has been already decriminalized in Oregon. I mean, soon DMT will, you know, in the future, I mean, this can always be [01:00:00] backlash, but I think that, you know, once this medicine will be legal, I think that there will be.

integrated with with somatic therapies, with transpersonal therapies so that it can be, you know, one of the tool, you know, I personally, I think, you know, when people talk about psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, I personally think that the important part is the therapy, not the psychedelic and but so are you, are you you recommend some integration therapies, but you don’t have therapies that call you, psychotherapies that says, listen, my client is, I think is ready for a session.

And that happens to you also? 

Richard: Yes, 

Giancarlo: exactly. I think that’s the right model. 

Richard: Yeah. And. You know, like, like I said, I mean, I, I learned this path in the very traditional upper Amazonian way. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. 

Richard: And, you know, if you tell the shaman, we’re going to have an integration council circle, you go, what? 

Giancarlo: But [01:01:00] those shaman Richard, those shaman, they were never really, I mean, this is a little bit of an invention of the West to drink ayahuasca.

I mean, those shaman were not even giving the ayahuasca to their participant, right? 

Richard: This is one theory. I don’t believe this. 

Giancarlo: No, but the reason why these shamans thousand years ago were drinking were not to cure the trauma of the Western man. It was like, you know, maybe to fight with the local tribes or to attract the weather, the rain, to visualize the food.

to protect from the Jaguar. So, you know, I, when you say, yeah, the, the, the, the upper Amazonian shaman doesn’t talk about integration, but because he’s not really used to deal with the Western psyche. Yeah. Don’t you think? Yeah, 

Richard: exactly. Yeah. And also I wanted to just add that we have absolutely no idea the practices were in the jungle and what the jungle was prior to, 

Giancarlo: our discovery. Irish 

Richard: invasion, [01:02:00] 

Giancarlo: really. Yeah. You have no idea. Yeah, yeah. There are 

Richard: discoveries happening in the Amazon showing that basically, this is in 1491, the book, amazing book, everybody should read it, 1491 and 1493, I think amazing books that there was a civilization there, the entire Amazon was cultivated.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. It was 

Richard: all on purpose and we look at it and it’s like this massive wild jungle, but had millions of people who live there, who built cities, you know, who lived in harmony and even the tribal people lived in harmony with it. Yeah. And nurtured it. It was their home. Yeah. It was their pharmacy. So we don’t, we don’t know.

We have no idea what. 

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: A lot of, a lot of the ideas about, well, the shamans didn’t drink the medicine and I mean, the shamans drank and the people didn’t, that came out of Western minds sitting around the table talking and making stuff up because of their own insecurities, their own fears. I [01:03:00] don’t think, I never heard that until recently.

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. I never heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Richard: Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that it saw. Too much of a tradition, too much of a understanding and beauty there to think that this is a recent invention. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. It’s deep. It’s so deep. So deep. It’s beautiful. And It’s becoming so popular now, eh? I mean, my, my wife she was, you know, she started to drink.

like in the, at the end of the nineties. And recently she was commenting that back then there were only people that didn’t have any other option. You know, it was either, either suicide or ayahuasca. I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it was like really people then were at the end of the line that really needed help.

Now it’s like talk to a cocktail party. You know, have you tried? Have you not tried? I want to try it. What do you think [01:04:00] about that? What do you think about this over excitement for also people that don’t have any specific issue to address? Are they welcome to this practice or they should maybe wait, want to know more?

Do you, do you, do you have a screening process when some of your clients, what is the criteria if you don’t mind? I 

Richard: had to back up a half a step there in that it has gotten extremely popular right now. People doing it who should not be doing it, are people leading ceremonies who have not done their own work and are in it for whatever ego or money, I don’t know.

It’s dangerous what’s happening now. It’s a testimony to the safety of the medicine that a lot more people aren’t really getting in trouble with it. To me, it’s like, this is so safe. Plus you’re getting, you’re getting these weird, Ideas of like [01:05:00] heroic retreats where you have Ayahuasca, you have San Pedro, you have Bufo, you have Sapo, you have Barrape, you have DMT, you know, and you have 5 MeO DMT, and you do a sweat lodge, and people die in these things.

And because, you know, it’s a marketing ploy. If a person Really knows ayahuasca. They don’t so much need to go to a bunch of other things. They don’t so much need it. Same thing with San Pedro. If a person really knows San Pedro, they don’t need to go to a bunch of other things. And that said, I think like ayahuasca and San Pedro and some of the other Amazonian plants are synergistic and do work together.

But the idea of, you know, taking a three day or four day retreat and doing ten different substances is insane. And I think that’s only going to get worse for a while because it’s not part of our culture. We don’t really have any depth of [01:06:00] understanding of how these plants work. And, you know, the idea that somebody 18 years old can go into a store and pick up 10 grams of mushrooms and eat them, it’ll probably be okay, but it’s a big probably, you know, and I just don’t want to see any backlash happen with people who don’t know what they’re doing getting it over their heads.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. I think the model now is that therapies will be licensed and those license will be able to give it to the patient. So only licensed people can buy. 

Richard: And you can go in their stores in Canada, you can walk in and buy mushrooms now. 

Giancarlo: Already now? Already now, 

Richard: yeah. Hmm. So, 

Giancarlo: yeah. And, and so, and so how do you see your practice, your future?

Do you ever think, how do you, do you see yourself doing this facilitation for the next foreseeable future? Where do you see yourself in 10, 15, 20 years? [01:07:00] No, you look such, I 

Richard: think, I think you look, you seem such in good shape. Yeah, no, in 10 or 15 years, well, I joke about it, but I, there’s a certain song that I wrote that I sing in every ceremony that’s like, it’s so good.

It’s so good. It’s really like, and I’m the only person that can really sing it right now. My assistants are learning it, but you know, I sing it and I said, I want to be in the middle of this song and die when I’m singing this song. It’ll 

Giancarlo (2): freak you 

Richard: all out, but that’s okay. We get over it. So I wanna, I wanna continue doing this as long as I am able to, capable of physically, and I’m also, you know, I’m, I’m also just finishing up writing a book now and maybe two books.

Nice. It’s one book that’s turning into two books and I don’t know. I mean, I, I, I. I love to travel as well. And I have in the past had communities in [01:08:00] different parts of the world, and I’m hoping that all kind of fell apart during the COVID years, 

Giancarlo (2): but 

Richard: I’m hoping to reestablish that and, you know, take this joy and love to the rest of the world.

How I, how I, how I, you know, my dreams, I have a dream. I have a dream. And I was invited to, well, I’ll back up because it’s very relevant right now. It’s super relevant. And I had a ceremony number of years ago that had a handful of Israelis in it. And we also had one Arab in the ceremony. So the Israelis were singing, you know, they wanted to sing their songs and they sang a beautiful prayer.

And then, you know, I’m like, sometimes I grow horns, sometimes I grow horns. And I told the Arab man to sing the call to prayer [01:09:00] that they sing five times a day in, in the Arabic, the Muslim countries, and he sang it. And I was watching carefully what’s going on there. The Israelis were like, you know, where’s our weapons?

We have an enemy in here. This is the song of the enemy. And then it didn’t take very long, but then they just went. It’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. So, my dream would be to do ceremonies where there’s Arabs and there’s Israelis, where there’s Muslims and there’s Jews and there’s Christians and there’s people who come from these diverse, battling, ridiculously battling cultures, the stupidity that is unbounded right now, and have them sing to each other with the medicine.

And, you know, when they went into the room, into the ceremony, they were enemies. When they left, they were [01:10:00] brothers and sisters. Amazing. And I have been privileged to do some ceremonies in the Mideast, and the effect of it is so beautiful. You know, the possibilities are so beautiful for This is actually helping to discover that, you know, God, Hashem, Allah, different names for the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, yeah, 

Richard: for sure. You know, different names for the same thing, and there’s no need to fight. We can sing to each other, we can celebrate the beauty with each other, and I spent a lot of time in, in Turkey, and, you know, I’m Jewish, my background is Jewish, I don’t have much of a Jewish background.

Background, but you’re not there. And to be, you know, leading ceremonies with a room full of Muslims, basically. Handful of Jews, handful of Christians, [01:11:00] but mostly Muslims. And to come to a point where there’s so much love. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself. It doesn’t matter what color your skin is.

It doesn’t matter what your history is. It doesn’t matter what the background is. There’s just love. 

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: And what If we’re in a situation now, you know, I look at the situation in the world and there’s no hope. There’s like literally no hope. There’s no great leaders. There’s nothing happening. What if the only solution to all of this is we learn to love each other, unconditionally, uncategorically.

Not because we’re going to get all gushy and, you know squishy, wishy about it, but because we’re going to discover that the core of my existence, the core of your existence, the core of every person that’s listed in this existence, is love, is pure love, is [01:12:00] love is God. Jesus wasn’t joking when he said God is love.

He didn’t say God is like love, God is similar to love, or God is sort of like maybe, if you think about it, it’s like love. He said God is love, period. And the love, of course, the idea of the love in this situation is that there’s more to love than love. Squishy stuff that we humans know as being love.

It’s the love of the creation of the universe. It’s love that exists at the farthest, farthest, farthest, farthest, farthest dimensional reality, or the farthest alternative universe, or, you know, down into the basic subatomic nature of every atom in your body. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s why I don’t care about goblins and, you know, fairies and stuff that happen in the ceremony.

This is what I’m interested in. 

Giancarlo (2): Yeah. 

Richard: This [01:13:00] is what I want, is like, what if, what if there’s an experience a human being can have that can transform them so deeply that, You know, they, they, they have that experience of, you know, there’s so much more than the shell that we live in. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Connection, connection with other, connection with nature, with the cosmos, this idea of belonging.

There is a lot of story of community, problematic community, conflictual community, where ayahuasca sessions were introduced and it was completely transforced. You know, even, even, even us here in Ibiza, even recently people where, you know, there’s been disagreement, there’s been business disagreement, but then when you are, you know, in those circumstances, in those environments.

You know, the, the similarities prevails over the difference for sure. [01:14:00] Richard, thank you so much. That was beautiful. Do you have a place to send the audience to maybe, because one, one of your book is out? Not 

Richard: yet. Not 

Giancarlo: yet. 

Richard: Heartfeather. com. 

Giancarlo: Heartfeather. com. We’ll put it in the show. I took on the name 

Richard: Heartfeather, of course, because it’s the idea of when a person dies, their heart is taken out and put on a scale.

And on the other side of the scale is a feather. And if the heart weighs more than the feather, they can’t go on to paradise. 

Giancarlo (2): So if 

Richard: the heart weighs less than the feather. And their paradise is open to them, the next lifetime. It’s Egyptian. 

Giancarlo (2): Beautiful. 

Richard: And it’s the scale of Ma’at. Oh, nice, nice. And so my idea is when I, when I had that three o’clock in the morning, like Heart Feather heartfeather.

com, it’s there, you know. It was that I, I wanted that to be the goal is to have people find ways, find a way or [01:15:00] find how to, or take the creative steps into making their heart lighter than a feather instead of heavier than lead. 

Giancarlo: Nice. 

Richard: Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Very good. Thank you, Richard. Thank you very much for your time and thank you for your work and thank you for your spirit and your generosity.

And it’s really come through. Your integrity and true desire to help. Thank you very much. 

Richard: Thank you. Lovely. 

Giancarlo: Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Speaker: Coca zonada, it’s zonada and tea. Coca zonada, it’s zonada 

and [01:16:00] tea.