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In & Through by Onaya transcends paradigms at the intersection of science, spirituality and psychedelic medicine.
In eclectic conversations navigating psychological growth, psychedelic spirits and everything in between, Onaya welcomes wide-ranging guests including neuroscientists, musical healers and Shipibo curanderos. Traverse the transformative power of traditional plant medicines like ayahuasca, the mysteries of consciousness, and holistic approaches to understanding mind, body and soul.
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Your main host is Onaya's 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
Hello, and welcome to In and Through, the podcast by Onaya with me, Dr Simon Ruffell, where we talk about psychology, spirituality, and everything in between with a wide range of eclectic guests.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Just a note to say that this is a section of a longer conversation, so please do head to onaya.io to see all our courses, materials, and to join our community.
Dr Simon Ruffell:In this episode, I spoke to doctor Dave Luke, associate professor of psychology at the University of Greenwich. Dave's main interests include transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness. Dave has published over a 100 academic papers in this area as well as 13 books. In this session, we spoke about whether Western science can adequately research spiritual experiences as described by traditional healers.
Dr Simon Ruffell:We spoke about psychedelics and their connection to nature as well as touching on psychedelic perspectivism. And Dave also flipped the questions back at me to see how I have coped with training in both western science and traditional medicine. Enjoy. Okay. So, what are you finding most interesting in your work at the moment?
Dr David Luke:Yeah. Well, there's a lot going on in the psychedelic space and I think it's expanding all the time. Obviously my own particular interest in the kind of more exotic and transpersonal dimensions. You know, the more out there kind of experiences that people have. And that kind of taken a few different directions currently.
Dr David Luke:Some of which to do with people having challenging experiences, particularly around what we call ontological shock, which you know obviously those challenges to kind of prior and existing world views and how they may get turned upside down and how people cope with those or not often as the case may be. But also how it kind of, these for want of a better word, kind of shamanic experiences and perspectives people tend towards after psychedelic experiences. We see these big metaphysical shifts and, there's lots of stuff, you know, like perspectivism and, psychic experiences and so on. So, yeah, I mean, we could we could pursue any of those And many of these these are. Dimensions.
Dr David Luke:Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:So one thing I'm particularly interested in is the the change in perspectives that people have and the ways that they understand the world after psychedelics. Mhmm. Is that kinda what you were getting at when you were talking about these shifts in perspectives?
Dr David Luke:Well, I guess it can have two meanings. Yeah. It could be a change in perspective and a change in worldview or change in your ontology or beliefs about the nature of reality. But there's a term which is borrowed, from well, the use of it in anthropology as a Brazilian anthropologist by the name of Eduardo Viveiro de Castro. And, he said that the underlying world view or how indigenous people of the Americas come to obtain knowledge, their epistemology is what he calls perspectivism.
Dr David Luke:And that is they change their perspective to understand something. Okay. And so if you wanna know something, you turn into that thing. And they do that through the use of Ayahuasca or peyote or dieta, you know. So you come to engage with the thing directly.
Dr David Luke:And so this is a really interesting, way of of obtaining knowledge. And it's but it's something that we're starting to see emerging spontaneously in people's experiences. Westerners, you know, who who don't have that particular worldview when they take psychedelics often they have these experiences of perspectivism. And which is just one of the kind of ontological challenges or shifts that people can have in a psychedelic experience. And they can come in different forms as well.
Dr David Luke:So some of that lends itself well to things things like creative problem solving. But it also probably lends itself well to engendering deeper connections with the natural world as well. So for instance, what we were finding in our research, we're looking at people's deeper connections with nature through psychedelic experiences and it's one of the a fairly robust effect. We've been discovering that people as a trend reliably become more connected to nature following psychedelic experiences particularly with organic, psychedelics like magic mushrooms but also Ayahuasca as well. Mhmm.
Dr David Luke:You've also done some research on this.
Dr Simon Ruffell:I've heard of it.
Dr David Luke:I think no, I think I actually reviewed
Dr Simon Ruffell:one of your papers.
Dr David Luke:It was about, connections with nature and Ayahuasca. I'm glad you got that published.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Thanks very
Dr David Luke:much, yeah. And also supports my yeah, that that that kind of finding that we're finding people have a deeper connection with with nature.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Why do you think that is? Why and why especially with the the plants when people are taking or working with mushrooms or Ayahuasca? And does that seem to be the case with other psychedelics?
Dr David Luke:Right. Okay. So it is interesting. And so I did a kind of quick kind of and crude survey of, you know, which substances are most likely to make people feel connected or which ones do people tend to report deeper connection. Magic Mushrooms came out top, actually followed by LSD but then also Ayahuasca, DMT.
Dr David Luke:So there did seem to be and then right at the bottom you have like MDMA and then ketamine. And you'll notice the trend is that the ones that make people feel more connected to nature are more organic and the ones that least connected are more synthetic. And in fact, you know, the bottom of the scale, ketamine is this dissociative anesthetic as well. So it's probably it's hard to disentangle. Is it the idea that these things are organic and therefore people feel like they're they're kind of engaging with the natural world more?
Dr David Luke:Is it that people are having more kind of encounter experiences like indigenous people do when they take organic psychedelics, power plants, mushrooms. Is it the effects of them? Is there something about psilocybin that makes people somehow feel more connected to everything or to nature versus ketamine which kind of makes you feel pretty disconnected to like everything really. When you're just gonna have an out of body experience you can't remember who you are. But that's a little bit unfair as well in a way because actually it's just been recently discovered that ketamine of course does have an organic source.
Dr David Luke:It was always considered to be like the most synthetic of of of drugs in a way. It's only ever been produced in the lab. There's nothing like it. Naturally caring in nature or so we thought. And then recently they found, do you ever read that brilliant journey?
Dr David Luke:Journal parasites and vectors? Parasites and babies. You must be an avid reader.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Do subscribe. To that name.
Dr David Luke:There's a great article in there where they found this type of fungus which hunts nematode worms. And it kinda makes these like little mycelial like man traps or worm traps, you know. So and it wiggles past. It kind of springs the mycelium shut on the worm and captures it. And then it injects it with ketamine.
Dr David Luke:That is produced itself.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Actual ketamine?
Dr David Luke:Actual ketamine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it hasn't just scored it off the dark web or off Instagram or TikTok. It's made it itself.
Dr David Luke:Wow. Yeah, it's astonishing. And they even tested it by giving people, they tested it in an organic model as well of whether or not administering ketamine could reduce, nematode worms because they're a kind of common kind of mammal parasite as well. And it had like protective effects against the worms. So so it's good for hunting worms and it, you know, there you go.
Dr David Luke:So ketamine's actually organic. The big big shark horror.
Dr Simon Ruffell:And people having to synthesize it separately in the lab? The same molecule, the exact molecule?
Dr David Luke:I don't know how well, so like historically, yeah, ketamine is is always been lab produced.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr David Luke:But, there are some kind of enthusiastic my mycophiles now, myconauts or mycologists maybe who are actually trying to grow this type of fungus and see if they can get the ketamine organic ketamine. Wow. Yeah. Which, you know, that's a kind of novel idea. But the idea of ketamine is something extremely synthetic.
Dr David Luke:And maybe maybe it's the kind of associations which are playing into people's connections to nature. Maybe it's the experiences or, you know, perhaps we could give more open mind and there's there is a kind of a sense in which people have an experience which actually connects them to something, you know, belonging to that organic substance or, you know, such as and it's very something commonly people report. You know, Paul Stamets himself, this kind of dawn of mycology or amateur mycology, he always said that the fungus speaks to him, you know. And when it speaks to him it tells him what are you doing? Wake up you monkeys, you're trashing the planet.
Dr David Luke:You know, we're an ecology of consciousness and that humans need to stop destroying the planet. And that's a fairly common message that people often get especially from mushrooms.
Dr Simon Ruffell:So For sure. And I mean those those messages from the plants, that can sound quite far out of them. But that's something that indigenous peoples who work with cystitic plants talk about all the time. Mhmm. You know, messages from plants, messages from spirits.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Mhmm. And we're seeing that more in clinical research as well that people even in labs will have those kind of those kind of messages. Yeah. Yeah. We found in general that trying to anchor those experiences for people who are getting a bit lost in that world Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Within Western frameworks can be really helpful. Yeah. And there are a few that you can do that with. And so for example, Internal Family Systems, IFS
Dr David Luke:Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Richard Swartz talks about unattached burdens Yeah. Which seem to be energy parts which aren't directly linked to you. They're not part of you. Some people interpret that as as entities, as some kind of entity. Jungian psychoanalytic theory as well by thinking about things as archetypes can also be another way to to try and ground those things too.
Dr David Luke:Definitely. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Which can be really really helpful. I just wanted to to circle back to what we were talking about before in terms of placing one knowledge system above the other. Mhmm. And, I found this with the research that that we've been doing. It's so difficult Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Not to come in there even when we're trying to collaborate with indigenous healers, you know, trying to be on an equal playing field. Even just as a scientific researcher, it immediately puts you in a position of power or perceived power Mhmm. To validate practices. To say, well, actually we found that Ayahuasca does work as an antidepressant. Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:And they which just it really isn't the way to be approaching it. So Sure. I completely agree with you. They're just trying to come in rather with rather than trying to validate, prove, or disprove. Just having that descriptive science
Dr David Luke:Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Thing.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Just trying to
Dr David Luke:yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Understand as best we can the kind of the shamanic context is really, really beneficial. What kind of difficulties do you see that extend into the long term with ontological shock or just in general? What are some of the things that are most common?
Dr David Luke:So, I mean, some of the ontological shock is part of it, but there are various stripes and various ways in which like long term psychological challenges can exist and manifest depersonalization, derealization, dissociation. So people just feeling very detached from their body. They're the people, the world, themselves, their identity. Which probably goes hand in hand. I haven't drilled down this too much but with this kind of sense of like ontological shock.
Dr David Luke:You know it can maybe jolt you out of it or it just could be that people are still having, they haven't really come down from their experience. Maybe it just tips them over the edge neurobiologically speaking and they remain in a state of dissociation. That's a lot of it. A lot of people are having anxiety. Some people are having like feeling more disconnected interestingly.
Dr David Luke:As a general rule, psychedelics make you feel more connected to everyone and everything. Some people come out of it feeling more disconnected. So, you know, perhaps stemming from the dissociation or having an encounter with the void or, you know, those experiences where actually it's quite nihilistic, you know. So, so we see these big metaphysical shifts often with people and their beliefs, usually away from naturalism, material reductionism, science, kind of the basis of kind of most accepted science or sorry, how to put that? The the kind of belief system accepted by most scientists, let's say.
Dr David Luke:And they move towards like panpsychism or, idealism even sometimes, you know, the the idea that only consciousness exists or that everything is inherently conscious or that mind and and body are separate entities. So we see that general move in that direction. And I think, yeah, that the the there just are these profound metaphysical shifts often that people have. There's a general tendency, and in worst cases can leave people feeling dissociated. Hard to know whether the the the metaphysical shifts are part of the the cause of the psychological dissociation but they they can go ahead in that.
Dr Simon Ruffell:So what, what is exciting you most in the world of psychedelics at the moment? Oh, yeah. David Lee.
Dr David Luke:Well, all of that stuff really. That's kinda fun. I mean, yeah. I've been going into perspectivism a lot. That's kinda been like, oh, how far down does this go?
Dr Simon Ruffell:How land do you think it goes?
Dr David Luke:Oh, me and I think it's got a lot of money. And also as it relates to, creative problem solving as well which is a little bit outside of the of the kind of mentoring context. But I think, because it takes us in some interesting dimensions of like, well, whatever we believe about these experiences, they may be useful, right, as well beyond just like I turned into a serpent and now feel great. Like, they may be these experiences may give us useful information as well. And that's of course very much part of the indigenous worldview.
Dr David Luke:So, for instance in creative problem solving, we see these kinds of perspectivist experiences occurring, in our in our own research and, like, anecdotally as well as well as people having these experiences just randomly, you know, when they're tripping. So for instance, like, you could think of cases like, Carrie Mullis for instance, you know. He'd been working in genetic research. Came up, discovered polymerase chain reaction. You know, which is really obviously brilliantly super useful for all genetic research.
Dr David Luke:Takes things from DNA replicator. Basis of all genome testing, sequencing, you name it. Forensic anything to do with genetics uses PCR, even the damn COVID tests, you know, PCR. Right? So, which is great.
Dr David Luke:And he rightly won the Nobel Prize biochemistry or whatever for that discovery. And then afterwards, he said, well, I'll take a note of LSD right. And I could fly alongside the strands of the DNA molecule and see what was going on at molecular level. And that's exactly, you know, what Eduardo de Castro is talking about when he talks about perspectivism of indigenous peoples. It's like you want to understand that thing, you get down there at the level of the molecules.
Dr David Luke:You turn into that thing. And it and it gives you an insight, right? Now are you was he really kind of like like a strand of DNA? Was he actually had he actually turned into a stranded DNA? But it doesn't really matter but he was down there and had that experience and that led to a fruitful discovery.
Dr David Luke:You know he said had he not taken LSD he don't think he would he doesn't think he would've discovered PCR. So you know that's one example. And I was lucky enough to run this clinical drug trial. Well, I'm not running it myself but I was involved in this clinical drug trial, at hospital in North London, Norfolk Park. And we took top level scientists from, you know, Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge, all with PhDs, maths, physics, engineering, biology, whatever, to work on their most difficult technical scientific problem, fill them to the lab and we give them some LSD to facilitate that.
Dr David Luke:And of course we saw some of these instances of perspectivism coming up as well in that study. People having breakthroughs. So like one guy, geologist working on, tectonic plates evolution over 1000000 of years. Had this data from 3 years of collecting data and didn't quite make sense. It was just that he didn't know what to make of this data.
Dr David Luke:And he had the experience of, like, diving down into the ocean down to the bottom of the ocean and watching the tectonic plates evolving over 1000000 of years at high speed, according to his data. And he realised that a part of his data was wrong. Like they had some bad samples or something. And it was like okay. But it all made sense.
Dr David Luke:So it all made sense. And one of my favourite ones is that one of them was a biologist, 3 years at Cambridge studying, the nature of relationship between this plant and a fungus. And the plant is a as a ghost plant. It's kind of unlike 99% of all of the plants, it doesn't photosynthesize, it has no chlorophyll, and it seemingly gets all of its energy directly from the fungus, the mycorrhizal fungus it grows out of. So it was considered to be parasitic, but he wasn't sure.
Dr David Luke:He had no idea. Been studying for 3 years in the lab, in the jungle. Still didn't know. Came to the study, took LSD and, you know, so we interviewed everyone immediately afterwards. And so like, you know, so Merlin what's his name?
Dr David Luke:Yeah. So so I was how was your experience? And he says, well, I turned into the fungus. And we're like, pretty sure he didn't. We were watching it.
Dr David Luke:And we're like well and, you know, was that insightful? Did you have a breakthrough? And I was like what was it like? And he said slimy.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Sounds like he was there. Yeah. Yeah. He was there. He was there.
Dr David Luke:So he did didn't seem like much of a breakthrough, but, you know, later when you wrote that in his book, Entangled Life, he found that he changed his perspective. You know, it's like it it changed his how he thought about the nature of this relationship between the plant and fungus, but also changed how he thought about how we do biology and how we do science, you know. And I think that's what's really valuable about this. So for him, you know, he's like growing inside the root stock of this plant and seeing it for the first time first person, first fungi.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Fungi IV. Fungi IV.
Dr David Luke:You know, for the first time it was been looking at this problem for 3 years, still didn't know. And then in the first time he he wasn't looking at it as Merlin Sheldrake anymore. It was as Merlin Sheldrake, the human. He was seeing it from the the a perspective. Yep.
Dr David Luke:He's he interprets it as the perspective of the fungi. And so, like, this is perspective. This is Amerindian cosmo epistemology. Right? And so it could be useful.
Dr David Luke:If it hit him, he get into some new insights about the nature of this relationship. But it's like it could be also applied to science. Right? Why not? You know, the idea in in science of empiricism, you know, like everything comes through us through our senses and deduction, induction, hypothesis testing is kind of great.
Dr David Luke:Like our normal kind of mode of objective science is good for testing ideas and establishing, you know, some kind of apparent veracity of our findings and all the rest of it. But it's not necessarily good for making discoveries or having new ideas, right? Thinking differently about old problems which you can't solve. And psychedelics and these perspectivist experiences really can because, you know, they give you what we call like divergent thinking instead of doing our normal everyday convergent thinking a plus b equals c kind of thing, you know. You see things like differently and you bring in different memories and ideas and you can mash them together in different ways.
Dr David Luke:That's divergent thinking. But in some cases it's even like you become that thing, you know. And that is amaran cosmology. But it's it's like the opposite of science. In Western science we we're objective.
Dr David Luke:We try to distance ourselves from the thing we're meant to measure. We're meant to be, you know, detached observers. Right? We're meant to be kind of putting the thing over here. We're studying.
Dr David Luke:Let's let's sample it, atomize it, move it out. It's kind of in, you know, a normal system. We desiccate it, we chop it up, we stick it under a microscope and we stay as far from it as possible. We call that objective science, right? Whereas in the in the jungle you like you do the opposite.
Dr David Luke:It's like you get as close to that thing as possible. You try and you become that thing, you know. Like you it's hyper subjectivity. It's the opposite of objectivity. But I don't think one is necessarily better than the other because and I think they could actually work together in synchrony, you know.
Dr David Luke:Like some people like Carrie Mullis and other people have probably had great intuitive insights which have led to massive breakthroughs, particularly around ecological issues. Right? This is perfect for you. If you wanna understand some kind of ecological or biological problem, it might help to not think about that as a human. To have it from a non human perspective.
Dr David Luke:And as, what's his man, Einstein said.
Dr Simon Ruffell:He was that guy. He was that guy. He was that guy. He was that guy. He was that guy.
Dr Simon Ruffell:He was
Dr David Luke:that guy. He was that guy. That you can't, the same kind of thinking that got you into the trouble, the problem is not the kind of thinking that's gonna get you out. You know, solve that problem, right? Around ecological issues, right?
Dr David Luke:Being materialist, reductive, scientific perspective technologized human beings has, you know, brought us to the brink of ecological catastrophe. Right? We're in the world's biggest wave of mass extinction in 60000000 years and it's man made. We might be out of species to extinct within a few 100 years at this rate. So, like, let's not be so stuffy and, like, trying to armored and trying to keep our objective detached kind of science.
Dr David Luke:Let's also augment that with some indigenous perspectives and psychedelic experiences. It might give us some better insights. I'd love to ask you a question actually.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah. I got you.
Dr David Luke:No. Just so like in your work, both you know, working and and respecting and honoring and exploring indigenous perspective on these things, but having a a a background in in science and psychiatry, yeah, which way are you leaning currently? How does that for you being trying to stay in the middle or are you just going one way or the other?
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah, that's a super good question. So for quite a few years I tried to remain in the middle And I found that it was almost impossible to do that without feeling like I was beginning to lose my mind. Yeah. And so, to put it bluntly. And so I found that I would go to the jungle.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Now when I was there I would Yeah. Understand everything from the Shipibo cosmology. Brilliant. I would have my Shipibo hat on and that's what I would do.
Dr David Luke:Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:And then when I came back to London to work as a psychiatrist, I would have to take that off and to put on my Western psychiatrist hat Great. And explain everything through that lens. So it was just becoming harder and harder to fit both of those things into Yeah. Into each, into their categories. And there are some times when they do fit slightly, so for example Slightly.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Slightly. Like negative energies, you have some negative energy stuck to you, that could translate to depression or anxiety. Mhmm. That can be cleaned in a shamanic ceremony and people might feel less depressed. Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Another thing is ancestral trauma and cleaning familial lines. Mhmm. And this is quite interesting one. So we started doing our research looking at epigenetics. So the way in which the environment changes the expression of your genes.
Dr Simon Ruffell:And when we started doing that and we were describing and explaining that to Don Rohno and explaining that that's the theory is that it could get passed down through generations. And that study showed at least after 13 generations, Rono wasn't at all surprised and just said, oh, yeah. No. That's that's cleaning ancestral lives. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:You know, that's something that we've been doing for 100, if not 1000 of years. Brilliant. So there are these times where it does map onto each other. But then when I've experienced things in in the rainforest and with my training to do with entity encounters, demonic attachments, possession, things like this. They it gets harder and harder to fit that into the Western scientific box.
Dr Simon Ruffell:You get into shamanic training, which I've been doing now for the last 5, 6 years, when you start doing master plant theaters where you're communicating or trying to form a relationship with an entity Mhmm. Which is the basic basis of a lot of shamanism. You go into a ceremony and the shaman, the curandero, is a they're a negotiator. They're the middleman Mhmm. Between the participant and between the entity.
Dr David Luke:Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:And you're asking the entity to heal people. I mean, I haven't been able to find a way to explain that within a western scientific paradigm or framework.
Dr David Luke:Well, and it's not gonna benefit you either, is it? Because if you're like, well, these things, they're unreal. It's like hard to make a relationship with something you don't think is real. Like, you you have to, act as if it's real at the very least for it to to even be genuine. Right?
Dr David Luke:So, yeah, it doesn't benefit you to have that kind of western psychiatric worldview. But it's interesting what you said about the danger or the difficulty of being in the middle. It's like you're either in one or the other. And it's nice you can go between them and that's great. But it's like the middle ground trying to kind of hold both of those world views together simultaneously.
Dr David Luke:And I think that probably probably has some insight into like where people are at with kind of ontological shock, you know, when they're they're kind of like they have this cognitive dissonance and they're between these world views. And they're not able to just go into 1, stay there, then move back to the other. Right? It's like they're they're kind of being buffeted around in the middle of it.
Dr Simon Ruffell:For sure. Yeah. It can be it can be challenging and I definitely, you know, have experienced that to to a certain degree. But, I think at the same time it can also be dangerous just being in one camp. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Because I find with psychiatry and the DSM, you mentioned which is the the kind of the diagnostic Bible in psychiatry. You begin to mention any of these things to do with NC, it's NC encounters, you know, shamanic ceremonies. You'll be at real risk of it getting labeled with something that might end up in you getting sectioned. Yeah. Depending on the way that you're, living your life and that that's influencing you.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah. In general with psychiatry, if something's not having a negative influence on you
Dr David Luke:Mhmm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:That wouldn't Sure. You know, you wouldn't really kind of get Not enough beds for what to do. You wouldn't qualify for the bed. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:You would really gonna be seen to need treatment as a result of that. It might just be a kind of an unusual, spiritual belief.
Dr David Luke:But if you had that coupled with some maladaptive behavior.
Dr Simon Ruffell:For sure. For sure. Which is super common if you're going through some kind of spiritual emergency Yeah. Or you're having this experience for the first time. And so I think that, you know, there are some some categories, some diagnostic categories in the DSM.
Dr Simon Ruffell:They just lump together all of these experiences. So I think that that is quite dangerous. And this is where really having people that have some experience in both worlds or at least that openness or that appreciation can really help to prevent what could be quite racist and kind of diagnoses and quite challenging. And for many years, I I had these experiences of having these experiences in in the jungle. Coming back to coming back to the UK and talking to to other people, other psychiatrists about them and just saying, I'm not, you know, not necessarily saying I believe these things, but this was my experience in the jungle and
Dr David Luke:Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Having some kind of raised eyebrows and some laughing a lot. You know, you must have been really really high. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah. I'm thinking, oh, maybe. Maybe. How much truth was that in that experience? But then switching to trying to explain it through a Western framework.
Dr Simon Ruffell:I think, oh, the brain is a is a really powerful, predictor of things. Maybe that's why I was seeing these faces within my ceremonies that I seem to be able to speak to. And then going back to the Amazon rainforest, so our curanderos and saying that to them and saying, you know, well, I think you'll find the brain is actually a rather powerful predictive machine and maybe I've been actually, seeing these faces because of that and having these conversations. And then was met with almost exactly the same response of just raised eyebrows and laughing and jazz. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah. He just
Dr David Luke:I know. You've been hanging out with those
Dr Simon Ruffell:psychologists too long. Oh, Simone. Okay. Wow. It's all about life.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Perfect time. Perfect time. I know.
Dr David Luke:That's pretty well, I'm just delighted that you are, you know, walking between these worlds and I think it really is super valuable. You know, and it and it does need to infuse our psychedelic education and and, you know, it's a great call for cross cultural, transcultural psychiatry as well that we really need to have this kind of cultural awareness.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah, just like the final note in the ears. I, you know, I firmly believe that if there is truth in what these, you know, indigenous all around the world seem to be saying, it's really the height of stupidity like especially from science to completely ignore half the population of the world throughout most of time. Mhmm. And so And I think one of the pitfalls that we can fall into is that, ah, yes, well it can't be explained by science. Science has there's no evidence for this from our paradigm.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Okay. When I think of it from our from our methods Yeah. If we look at these these other frameworks of understanding the world, there's ample evidence. Yeah. Loads of it for most likely 1000 of years globally.
Dr Simon Ruffell:And so just having that openness whilst avoiding the danger of just accepting everything that everyone says, and getting lost in their world. Because I've also seen this with a lot of Westerners as
Dr David Luke:well. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:It's so easy to get lost in their worlds and you get a spiritual bypassing. It's because of the spirits. It's because of the entities or this ego inflation, you know. I always knew I was special. Finally, these spirits have noticed.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Yeah. These shamans have told me Did
Dr David Luke:I tell you of a reincarnation of Jesus? Yeah. Are we all?
Dr Simon Ruffell:I mean, that day. Who is it? Who is it? So, yeah, I think that there is that danger but then having that respectful ground is openness. Which I think can only be achieved by having open conversations, having that community, being willing to be to be called out and gently and gently shot down.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Maybe not so gently if it's like you need to be. But also not having the necessarily just believing that Western science has all of the answers Sure. Right now.
Dr David Luke:Great. Absolutely. Hang on. Yeah.
Dr Simon Ruffell:Thank you for listening to In and Through by Onaya. Please do head to our website to view our courses, materials, and join our community. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.