With challenges to the so-called psychedelic renaissance, do we now need a ‘psychedelic enlightenment’ that changes not just ourselves, but our culture?
Alexander Beiner is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the margins of culture into the mainstream.
Last year, Ali published a bestselling book,
The Bigger Picture: How Psychedelics Can Help Us Make Sense of the World (2023), and now writes a popular
Substack with the same name.
He is an executive director of
Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture, and he was also one of the founders of
Rebel Wisdom, a popular alternative media platform that explored the cutting-edge of systems change and cultural sensemaking.
This episode focused on how we might use psychedelics in the effort to fix our systems and change our cultures, exploring:
- Ali's background and early fascination with altered states
- Crisis, meta-crisis, and the need for systems change
- ‘E-Cognition’ and cultural frameworks that shape our thinking
- The problem of false insights under psychedelics
- The need for discernment and collective interpretation
- 'Saving the world’ vs changing culture
- Artificial intelligence and the prospects of an animist revival
- AI interactions as entity encounters
- Shipibo perspectives on progress and technology
Ali Beiner is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month
Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit
Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.
What is In & Through: The Onaya Podcast?
In times of political, ecological and psychospiritual crisis — the only way out is In & Through.
Join Onaya as we welcome some of the most interesting people we know, to discuss eclectic topics from psychedelic medicine and Indigenous ways of knowing, to spirit entities, the meaning of dreams, and singing to the plants.
Your main host is our founder Dr Simon Ruffell, a psychiatrist and research psychologist with a PhD in Amazonian ayahuasca and a student of Shipibo curanderismo.
Onaya is dedicated to bridging the gap between traditional indigenous knowledge and modern science, including a not-for-profit research arm that studies ayahuasca and other Amazonian plant medicine practices.
We offer one-to-one support, consultancy and accredited courses that combine shamanism and biomedical science to facilitate holistic individual and collective healing.
For more information, please visit https://www.onaya.io/ or join our mailing list.
*** For a special 10% discount to our 6-Month Psychedelic Mentorship Training, head to our website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' ***
Co-producers: Robbie Redway and Caspar Montgomery
Music: United Freedom Collective