Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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So now let's jump in.
Welcome back.
I have my friend Ralph Daab from Krn Cologne in Germany on today.
He's a publisher and has made his living his own way in many countries in the world
and has come to a point where the material has sort of given way to the spiritual.
And he's a man who's very much explored how as a westerner you can find your way
to the shamanic, to the altered states of consciousness that open the window
to the more indigenous way of looking at things while still being in the West.
And I think that that's a very useful thing for many of us because
as those of you listeners who know my background, spending a
lot of time, for example, in the.
Kalahari in Africa with hunting and gathering peoples down there, it can be
almost misleading to think, oh, well, that kind of life, that deeply spiritual life,
that very connected life, that's something different that happens down there in those
other places with people who haven't sort of gone through the Judeo-Christian thing
that we've all gone through, et cetera.
I can't really do that because I'm up here in the western economy and, you
know, stuck in that rap race and so on.
Of course, we all know that's not really true, but I think it's
really good to draw our attention sometimes to how people doing it right
here, right now in our culture and particularly, you know, how is that.
Is that is, you know, can that be related to business?
Can that be related to how do you make a living when you, when you decide, okay,
you know, I, I want to begin to explore these other ways of looking at the world,
but I still have to kind of keep one foot pretty firmly in the, in the here
and now and the economy and all of that.
Now do I dance that dance?
And I think somebody like Ralph has quite a lot of insights for us that way.
So I thought I'd have him on the show for live free, ride free.
'cause he's a man who definitely does live free and ride free
and we can learn from him.
So Ralph, thank you for coming on the show.
Yeah.
Hi Ruper.
Thank you for having me.
It's a great pleasure to be on the shower.
So do you want to tell listeners a little bit about how we met?
Because I think those circumstances.
Are quite helpful to drawing people's attention to sort of
always keep your eyes open.
You never quite know who's around the next corner type thing.
You wanna have a right.
Ralf Daab: Yeah, it was, it is a great story.
I always tell people I was living in, back then, it was like two years
ago in Germany where we live now.
Yeah.
We born in Germany.
So I was walking the dock, you know, up from the hill and then you know,
passed by a, a horse place basically.
And I was talking to Leon, your wife first, and then the dogs started playing.
And then, so we started talking and so, oh, where are you from?
What are you doing?
And then I said like, you know, and then Leanna said, well, that
you guys lived in, in the US in Texas, and then you moved back here.
And I said, I, I lived in New York for some years and I also.
Was in Texas many times.
And then, you know, I'm a publisher.
And I'm publisher.
And then he said, oh, my husband Rupert, he's also like, he, he's an author.
He published books, New York Times bestseller books.
So, and then you walked up and then we met and we just connected right away, you
know, and then we started talking and, you know, things like it was incredible
because yeah, it was, it's, it's no
Rupert Isaacson: coincidence.
It was like well, what was interesting to me about that.
First meeting and you gotta just picture listeners, you know, I'm picking poo.
That's what we always do every morning.
Yeah.
Right.
With the horses and, but people walk by, there's a public footpath that
goes, you know, past the, the, the sort of main area where the horses are.
'cause they all live outside and you know, people walk their dogs.
You sometimes say hi, whatever.
But relatively few people actually stop and say hi.
You know, it's, it's Germany after.
So it's like, first thing is, well that's kind of unusual.
Look, here's a bloke who's actually kind of cheerful and, you know, friendly.
And then but very quickly the conversation went to, well, you know, what do you do?
Okay, I'm publisher, I'm a writer.
Interesting, interesting.
Similar worlds.
And then of course I told you a little bit about what I publish books on.
And then you say, oh, that's interesting because, you know,
I do these journeys, right?
And I said, oh, what kind of journeys?
And you said, well, like MDMA.
Right.
And what was interesting to me about that was a lot of my friends and
contemporaries, particularly in the USA in the last, I'd say five years, have
begun to experiment with looking at altered states of consciousness through
journeys with MDMA, which some people call ecstasy, but it's not the ecstasy,
of course, that you buy in a nightclub.
It's the pure form that used to be prescribed way back in the day by
psychologists and psychiatrists who warring married couples because it
made them listen to each other nicely.
Brings out the sort of compassion in people and si psilocybin,
which is of course mushrooms.
And this has been a growing field among.
I think many people in the kind of middle class of the west over the last
decade or so, because I think there has been this growing awareness that
the material life needs to be balanced with the spiritual, but the church no
longer offers that never really did.
I mean, mystic Christianity can, but not the church, not witch
burning and Spanish inquisition.
And so where to look, where to look.
And so of course people began to look naturally to the Eastern philosophies
because with the British Empire, that kind of really opened up that
route from India through England and then out to the rest of the West.
And that sort of, those meditations and Buddhism and Hinduism and stuff like that
began to have a big influence on Western society, but it was still perceived
as very much a thing from outside.
I think from over there.
People like me, of course, going down and spending time with a lot of
indigenous folk bringing that back.
But again, that's still being, well, that's something other,
that's something over there.
That's not us.
That's not where we are.
How do we, and so I think it's very logical that people like you, Ralph
and other friends of mine, began to look to the use of psychotropics.
In the same way that of course people are undergoing healing ceremonies in,
you know, the Amazon or areas where, or Siberia, areas where native America,
where psychotropic plants grow and have always been used for healing.
It's a very logical thing and I think there's a reach back even through
the European past there, because certainly in the pre-Christian
era, people used fly aic mushroom.
They used psilocybin, what we would call magic mushrooms and ver you
know, datura nightshade certain things with hemlock or to achieve altered
state of consciousness in order to you know, connect with the divine.
And that of course was rooted out of our culture by the church.
So there you are, and we're having that conversation and I'm thinking, well, this
is sort of interesting on the Shamanic.
And then when I began to do this podcast, I thought, well, actually
Ralph would be a very good guy to get on this show because he is really
an entrepreneur and you run your own publishing stuff, but you've also, you
know, helped larger publishing companies.
And that's something, but you, you also now thread this very spiritual path.
That's Ry ride free.
Sort of in a nutshell, would you take us through your journey a little bit,
where you began as a boy in corn growing up, sort of, you know, in the seventies
and eighties in that, you know, post-war booming economy, having fun, it takes
you off to other parts of the world, just and then how you get into publishing.
Just get, take us through that early stage in your life, how, how
you get going on your live free, ride free sort of initial, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah,
Ralf Daab: I
Rupert Isaacson: did
Ralf Daab: that.
So I grew up in Cologne and
Rupert Isaacson: you know, I was which is a bit of a party town, right?
It's a
Ralf Daab: fun town.
Well, it's a carnival, you know, the people are very open-minded and friendly.
You know, my, my parents, my mother had a, a restaurant, you know, but a lot
of people always came like every day.
So it was always, yeah, I grew up in like a, in yeah, a good, environment, I would
say, you know, so, and I played soccer, football, you know, when I was young.
And I was pretty good.
So I played for the s fone in the junior.
What is, just tell us, oh, that's, SCON is one of the best
club football club in the world.
We just came up, you went up to, did you play Football Con?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, right.
But in the junior team, you know, so for some years
Ralf Daab: and that was a
Rupert Isaacson: great time.
That's something that's like playing for Arsenal or, or Tottenham.
Yeah, yeah,
Ralf Daab: yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So that was a great time when it was 14 years old, 15 years, 16,
you know, so playing, like we, we played tournaments in, in, in Paris,
in, in Brussels, in, in Zurich or, you know, so it was always good.
Like I had go to the director of the school and said like, I have to go for,
you know, a week for tournament, whatever.
So it was a good time.
I was and then I was, you know, I was obviously going to school and then I
started university and but I knew right away from be, it's not really what I.
Whatever you want to do.
Like, so I would start, like my mom, I also did back then, so I would start like
a friend, he was importing like t-shirts from California, like big Wednesdays.
So I was like, oh, they cool t-shirts, exert shirts, you know, I would start
selling them out of the car, you know, in the school and so and so on.
And then other things like a hot tuna from Australia, like a
brand, like really cool brand.
So, and I said, let's open up a store.
Let's, so like when I was 22, I opened my first fashion store in Cologne.
And then you know, coincidence, somebody walked in and said like, yeah,
I need like, you know, 20 jackets.
And it turned out, turns out that he was from EMI, Electrola from the record
company, and it was for Tina Turner's concert like tour, you know, so it was got
into the merchandise business for that.
So I was always like doing things, you know, like, and then a friend of mine,
I was in New York, first time in 1991.
What sent you to New York?
Just pleasure.
It was just Okay.
It was before business.
Yeah.
Before business was like with a friend that went to New York for
the first time and another friend, he was also in New York and he was
working for hin for the publisher.
Tian
Rupert Isaacson: is a very famous German publishing house.
Right.
Basic Cologne.
But now the world, you know, biggest art book publisher in the world.
Yeah.
You've, you, you've seen them listeners, even if you don't know them, they're
these amazing German art and fashion.
Right.
Photographic.
They have
Ralf Daab: stores all over.
Yeah, the world basically.
So back then in the nineties, and then, then, then he said like, ah, you know,
we are looking for somebody who could do like sales and marketing in the us.
Are you interested?
And I said, well, yes, of course.
You know.
So I started working for Tchen as a sales manager for the US and like first year,
two years traveling from Cologne to the US like, you know, visiting, like, I
don't know, first trip was 20 cities in like four weeks, you know, every day.
Another city.
So it was a great time.
And then I moved to New York in 1995, you know, and moved there.
It was just for, for a year.
And then I stayed there total of like almost six years.
So setting up the office there and then all sales and
marketing, that was a great time.
It was like my early thirties.
So, yeah.
So it was, that's how I got into publishing, international publishing also.
And then I moved back and my son Lucas was born in New York.
And then, we decided to go back to Cologne, and then I started my, of working
for another publisher for three years.
You know, I was responsible for setting up a program, so I developed
the whole, the book program and international distribution.
So, and then I decided to start my own publishing house in 2003.
And yeah, so then we traveled a lot, you know, all over the place, like Asia
lots then us a lot, of course Europe.
And yeah, so that was I was always in, in things like, you know, what can you do?
Like, develop new things.
I have so many ideas and, and, and, so, and then I, you know,
got to a point where publishing in general was, became difficult.
Had problems with the banks, the investors and the whole thing.
And then, so at the end I had to close the company, basically file for
chapter 11, which is like insolvency.
And yeah, it was a really tough time.
And then the marriage ended I was kinda lost, you know, that
was like 2000, where were we now?
Like, 64, 15, 16 round then, so about eight, nine years ago.
And so I was kind of lost and I said like, what can you do?
Like my life, you know, so, and I, yeah, I did like a photo exhibition, for example.
I had took some photos.
I did like an exhibition, and then I, I, I decided like, oh,
let's go back into publishing.
And so I started to to create books again.
But at the same time, I was always like looking for new things.
But so I, I got into the meditation thing, so I was reading books, listening
to podcasts about meditation or why, why did you get into meditation?
Studying?
Yeah, because, yeah, because I was like kind of felt like I, I needed to do
something else, you know, like going out of like, like, you know, this business
world that the business thing or the life of like, you know, just traveling around
and being like stressed and everything.
So, and then I started also doing sports again, and also mindfulness things.
You know, had you always
Rupert Isaacson: kind of in the back of your mind thought,
or that meditation thing?
I kind of want to get into that, but I'll, I'll do that later, you know, or
was it more sudden thing a more new thing?
No, no, it was always there, kind of, you know,
Ralf Daab: like, you know, but it, it wasn't like, like every day, but I felt
like, you know, I was at a point where I was, you know, like really lost and it's
the only thing I could, could help me.
Like, I could only help myself, you know?
So, and I and it was good.
So I, you know, did a love of sports again running and so I felt a little better.
And and then it got to a point, like I was, you know, I talked to a friend
and then he told me about a seminar he went to, and he said like it was
the best thing he did in his life.
And then he told me everything about it.
And then.
I said, yeah, I wanna do this.
And that's how I got into my first journey of the MD May.
Yeah, that was, I
Rupert Isaacson: presume because you'd been living in New York, you know, you'd
been in fashion, you'd been in sport, you'd been in publishing, recreational
drug use must have been something with which you were quite familiar.
I mean, I know I said No, not really.
No, no,
Ralf Daab: no, no.
Not really.
Rupert Isaacson: No.
No.
So when, okay, because I remember for example, when I was in my
earliest twenties this is back like 8,000 years ago I think before the
invention of the wheel I tried MDMA, at that point, it was still very pure.
It was before techno, before the raves, before all of that took off.
And so before it became a mass industry, that people then began to adulterate
it with speed and, you know, awful.
And so I, I tried it a few times in those early years and then very quickly gave
it up because it, it very quickly became adulterated with all sorts of stuff.
And you couldn't, at least at that stage in my life, access that pure form anymore.
But I do remember breaking up with my first girlfriend.
Basically she was dumping me.
While we both were on MDMA, which of course, as many listeners
may know, MDMA used to be prescribed by marriage counselors.
Before it was made illegal because it helped people to listen to
each other really compassionately and to tell the truth.
Right.
And so we broke up, you know, so kindly with each other, even
though my heart was broken.
And we remained friends, we're friends to this day.
It's very interesting.
So, you know, when you told me about you doing these MDM majors,
I immediately made that assumption.
Oh, well he must have had, you know, some sort of previous history with
this, but you said No, not at all.
So this being something quite new for you, right.
What made you think Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that, that might be something then,
Ralf Daab: because a friend told me that what, what, you know, what he
experienced and told me that it's saved, that it's, you know, you know.
So I said like, okay, because I was really not really into drugs, you know, I had
joined, so, you know, of course then an alcohol, you know, wine and, and so on,
but not, not no drugs, you know, I was not never, I always said like, you know,
I can be fun without drugs, you know?
Mm-hmm.
So, but in this case I was like looking into this more the, as this therapy
than just like having fun with drugs or so, you know, and trusting my
friend and said like, oh, let's try it.
And then and it was tell everybody it was the best thing
I did in my life, you know, so
Rupert Isaacson: well.
Right.
You know, often you know, when people say, for example, go down to the
Amazon looking for healing, they'll often find themselves with a ero, you
know, a, a healer doing ayahuasca.
Yeah.
Which of course is a very, very strong hallucinogen.
But many people will report I, yes.
What I needed was a kind of radical way to break through an out of the worldview
that has been to some I've been stuck in.
And I needed kind of a radical change of environment, both physically
and mentally, emotionally, in order to get this other perspective.
Otherwise, I, I sort of couldn't break out of the, the rut that I was in.
Do you feel that that's what happened to you?
Yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah, exactly.
But it's also like after like the first time, it's like, it's like four years ago.
So, and it's a whole process, you know, I realized, you know, after four years I did
like many times different ways, you know, different locations, you know, like I
ended up like, you know, some places and.
And also tried other things, you know, with mushrooms and, and so on.
And now after four years, I realize it's, it's not just the one, one journey,
you know, or, you know, even the, the weekend or so, it's a whole process.
It's like it changed.
That transformation is going on like forever, you know?
So it's like, but you, the thing is, like, you, you, I learned to
let things go, you know, like to now during these journeys, to, to look
at things, to, to have sometimes the same feeling again about things.
Even when I was a child, I, I could look at this, say,
oh yeah, that was not so bad.
Or that was so, and, and, and, and let go.
And, and now I realize that, that it's just part, it's just one part of it.
You know?
It's not like you do one journey MDMA or whatever it is, you know,
like, and, oh, you're healed now.
Oh, you changed my life now.
No, no, it's like.
To change your life or, you know, to go to, through a real transformation.
It's, it's, it's takes weeks and years and, and, and goes on, you know, like, no
Rupert Isaacson: doubt.
But you need that initial experience.
Initial experience to sort of
Ralf Daab: help leapfrog into that.
Yes, exactly.
And the initial experience is like to, to to, to become like
in different consciousness, you know, different perspectives.
And this is what I never had experienced before without that
drug, you know, without MDMA or without mushrooms, whatever.
But MDA is more like for me at least, it was like to, to see
things from a different perspective.
Yeah.
Every ev every time like really clear.
It's not like you're a, you're like sleeping or, so I was always
clear and I was, I've experienced stories, really stories.
I was in those stories in like 500 years ago in Persia.
I was in, in the universe.
I was an astronaut.
I was, and my soul was up there in, in the Big bang or whatever it is,
you know, like, and I said like, what?
It was such great stories and experiences and that changed my view of myself and
my surrounding my people around me.
So it's like all it is, it's like a kind of heart opener.
And then when you go that path like I did you'll see that, that your life change.
But it's like not, I.
You know, if you, you stay in your environment, if you stay
in your structure, you, you don't change really a lot.
So you have to let go.
And you have to realize, and you have to say, okay, if I, if a relationship
ends now, yeah, maybe it has to end now because without ending the
end of the relationship, you can cannot experience something new or
you move to a new place, you know, and it's all part of the journey.
And that's, that's it all started four years ago with the MDMA and I,
I did many, many trips, many and I still do it's kind of like sometimes
I feel I don't need it anymore.
'cause it's like what your neuroscience would say, tell you, it is like the
neuro, they can adjust you know, things.
And then you, you can get the same feeling or you can, I can change my perspective
now without taking anything because my neuron, they, they experience, they can,
they can, they can be in that same state.
So, and yeah, so for me it was like, it's a, it's a game changer.
Rupert Isaacson: It's, it's a life changer.
And in those early days when you were first taking these journeys, and I'm
gonna ask you to describe, you know, some of the journeys that stand out the most
and the insights you got from them, but in those early days when you were first
beginning with it, did you find it very difficult then to reintegrate yourself
back into, if you like, ordinary life, making a living business, picking up the
phone to people, striking deals, whatever?
Or did you actually find that?
No, it was actually much more of an effortless flow.
The first journeys
Ralf Daab: I, I remember was like, I, I was telling everybody now how great
it is, you know, it was like friends and family, and people are like, some
people on the street maybe say like, I, you know, this is so fantastic.
Everybody should do it, and everybody has to like, go on
trips and it's change everything.
So then I realized you, you cannot talk to everybody about it.
You know, some people said, Hey, he's crazy, what is he doing?
And and I said like, yeah, okay you shouldn't talk to everybody about it.
Just to people who are really interested.
And I said, like, you know, you figure out, you know, who's
really interested and who's not.
But yeah.
And then I got to the point and said like, okay, what I'm doing
now if I continue this journey is I realize myself that I'm changing Now.
I, you know, I, I, I talk differently.
I feel differently.
So if I, if I want to stay in my old world, I have to stop
now because it doesn't work.
Or I, I say, okay.
That's my new path.
I go that path no matter what.
And I do, and I did, and I still do.
And then you realize that you don't have to talk about anymore.
It just comes.
People just come or they don't, you know?
And, and the things change.
And also in terms of business, it opened up new paths as well.
So I'm doing, I'm, my conversations now with, with architects or interior
designers is different now and, and the business is growing actually.
But those are the books you're doing now, right?
The, your higher series,
Rupert Isaacson: it's about architecture.
You'll do the
Ralf Daab: architecture and interior books and the business
actually growing like this year.
And it's like, it's amazing.
You know, it's like the more I open up, the more people I attract to, to publish
with me, to publish their work with me.
Plus I've written my own book.
About the stories.
A little book I published myself under my new labor high on living came out like in
February and then it sounded quite good.
And tell us about the book.
What is it?
What's it called?
Yeah, I wrote the stories like the stories I experienced on this
journeys, you know, I wrote them down.
This is like 32 episodes in the book.
They're short episodes, you know, so, and it's, yeah, you could read
it and get really good responses from people say, okay, this is really cool.
I could see myself in this same story, you know, like up in the universe or.
I journey to myself in my own self, in my own nothing.
You know, when you on your own atom, there's nothing there.
But then I experienced the most energy ever I experienced.
So, and it opened up everything and started to love myself.
Self-love is basically, I experienced on one of the journeys, I was myself
saying, wow, this is, this is love.
This is, I didn't know what love is before love.
I thought of this could live, love my wife or my, my parents, my son, but this
kind of love I, I didn't know before.
So, I wrote this little book and actually it was like when I moved here to Opco
two days, two days later, I was like posting a video on Instagram saying
I'm living up here now in the nature.
And I got like, from my.
Former employee Laura.
She used to work for me in, in Cologne like 12, 13 years ago.
She's like, she wrote on Instagram like, what are you doing there?
She said like, well, I live here now.
Well, she said, like, I live in like right here in the village,
like for 10 years, so let's meet.
And her husband was also involved in the, in uncle in in the reading day,
like where authors came to do readings.
And so he took me into the program.
So I was there officially in Hong Kong and did two readings that day.
It was fun, you know, people came and listened to my, my Stories
and tell us the name of the book.
The book is named Dbia.
There you are again.
Dbi You again.
32 episodes.
Yeah, soul Journey of Zaza and Ze episode.
That's the Journey.
Subtitle.
And Zaza Ze Being Journey.
Right.
And it's, it's a nice little book and yeah, people like it.
And so that's the basic, and, and through that book I got I, I'm
getting now three more authors.
Like I one author in, in Hedburg now, like Christine, she wrote
a book about her journey.
Like one year she traveled with her family around the world.
She, she wrote really nice books.
So that's, I'm gonna publish that book under high on Living and, and others.
So then through that, the new publishing part we call it High on Journey, high
on Living, not On Journey, high on Living is a new division kind of buddy.
Where I'm gonna publish the, the stories of people with their want to, you
know, write their book about their own story and bring it out to the world.
And it's, it's really cool so that, you know, so my, my past, my journeys,
I got into a new business basically.
And it's really interesting to see like how people are attracted to that.
You know, it's also part of like, I think the future where people think
about more how you run a business and what kind of business is good.
So, I remember like a year ago I posted something on LinkedIn saying, you know,
I'm, I'm going, like, the spiritual entrepreneurship is the new thing,
kind of, you know, you have social entrepreneurship where you've got the
sustainability and all that kind of stuff, but the spiritual entrepreneurship
is something, it's in the future, like, especially the young generations looking
to, to start is basically what, what.
Kind of product or service you can do for, for everybody that it's not like,
of course you run a business and you should make money with it, you know?
So it's not like, but in a different way.
It's not like you make money no matter what, and you you know, keep it all for
yourself, you know, like we have nowadays with all the, the Jeff Basos and things,
you know, I have like super yachts and so no, that's not spiritual entrepreneurship.
It is like for, for everybody.
And, and that's, that's the kind of thing I, I, I'm, I'm looking into,
and that's that's how I want to start or build up my new publishing
division also as a community.
And it's all part, it's all together now.
And like, started with my first MD major like four years ago.
It's incredible.
But what happened since, ever since, you know, so, and it's, it goes on, you know?
So.
So
Rupert Isaacson: let's talk about some of those journeys.
Tell us about the first journey you did, and then I want you to give us.
Some windows on some of those other journeys.
Let's start with your first journey four years ago.
Well, the first journey was like I
Ralf Daab: was, you know, you, you put the music on you basically, you take
it and then it takes like half an hour.
So, and then you put the music on.
You're lying down.
You lying down on the mattress in a quiet room.
Quiet room.
Yeah.
Someone is there with you to look after you a bit.
Yeah.
Right, right.
It, it's better like setting settings.
Very important.
Someone with not alone experience.
Alone with experience.
And you can have also like conversations, you know, during your, mm-hmm.
Your, your.
Journey.
So I was like looking out the window and I saw like birds flying
and said like, oh, that's fun.
You know, let's fly with birds, you know?
So, and I really, my soul left my body and I went up to the, and fly, you
know, played with the, with the birds.
And then I suddenly went further up through the clouds, through the sky.
And I was up in, in the universe in the, so, and then I saw the earth from above.
And how beautiful this be.
Blue planet was standing, like, looked like standing still.
I was really like, it, it, it wasn't like looking a picture, it was like I
was there, my soul was up there, and I looked at this beautiful planet.
I said like, oh yeah, my God, this is so beautiful.
And what are, what are we doing here?
And then, and then suddenly I had like a drag kind of like, it was so, so, so fast.
I said, what the, the, the earth doesn't stand still.
It, it, it turns like in one day.
We, we have speed of 1,600 kilometers per hour.
We, we moving, but we don't feel it, you know?
So, and the, the, the earth is moving around the sun with the speed
of 100,000 kilometers per hour.
And it's incredible.
Like, and you know what?
And you don't feel it, but when you, and then I realized, hey,
this is so, this is amazing.
But it's also like, so it, it changed my perspective of like, being on that planet.
You know what I mean?
It's like seeing from outside and, and feeling the, the speed and almost
felt like, you know, I'm nothing.
I'm, I'm, I'm, and, and how f how big the universe is and how
f everything is so creative.
So I said like, who am I?
You know, what am I doing here?
Why we have wars on earth?
Why we have so crazy people, like, you know, so that, that
first journey changed my.
Perspective of everything myself, the earth, the universe.
And then, then I got back into my body and I was laying there.
I said like, wow, this was incredible.
This was, I've never had this experience before.
And I was really, it felt like, you know, not looking TV or on the picture.
It was like my soul was up there.
And maybe it was, I think it was because maybe my soul was up there
in form alive or whatever, you know?
So, and that's a difference of, you know, maybe just meditation or being
like in a different consciousness.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think consciousness is the, is the word there.
You know, listening to the current
conversations that are going on around quantum explorations from
physicists, it seems that the people who were dubbed crazy, like,
penrose back in, in, in the uk.
He was in his nineties.
Now he, even though he was a, a Nobel laureate, even though he made many, many
contributions to mainstream science that he was celebrated for when he came up
with the idea that perhaps the universe is conscious, perhaps physics, the answers in
in classical physics are just not enough.
And that they need to interact with fields of consciousness that seem
to be expressed through quantum.
He was just, you know, laughed out of town.
And then you had people like Rupert Shel, Drake, another renowned physicist
in the uk basically saying the same thing, saying, no, I think, you know,
from a scientific point of view, the only explanation is that we're dealing
with a conscious universe and that everything is conscious and that cells
a conscious, and consciousness is not, not a, not a product of the human brain.
That the human brain comes from consciousness.
You know, and that old sort of Judeo-Christian idea of from
Descartes in the 17th century, I think therefore I am right.
And so therefore only humans, you know, have spirituality,
emotion, soul, blah, blah, blah.
And of course this was taken up by the church with great alacrity 'cause
it meant one could get away with doing all sorts of horrible things.
'cause then you could also have a hierarchy of, within humans, you know,
who, who's more worthy than others.
And of course that turned out to be white people.
Especially, you know, ones who are gonna go and do some colonizing.
All of that seems to be breaking down now, and the people who are exploring fields
of consciousness in the western world all seem to be coming to this conclusion.
Talk us through your next journeys, because that was sort of your
icebreaker, if you like, right?
Where you you got the new perspective.
And I remember having that same response when I was sort of in my
late teens, early twenties, I think when I first ever did psychotropics.
I think I was living in Canada actually at the time, and when I first did
LSD and I realized this is before any of my exposure to sort of shamma
shamanism or anything like that.
And I remember thinking, this is really useful because this is like
being taken up to a window on.
Spirituality or window on altered consciousness or what now people
might call other fields, but you can't really go through that window.
The, the drug is also, it gives you the, the perspective,
but also is the limitation.
And then later when I encountered, you know, sun Bushman healers and others who
could go through that window I, of course, you know, my life changed, but I remember
thinking very early, yes, this is great.
I'm so glad I got a chance to see through this window, but I
can't go through that window.
You know?
So you, but so you kind of a bit did go through the window on that first
trip, but not perhaps fully right?
You're still.
Aware, well, this is a medicine I've taken, or this is a drug that
I've taken, it's brought me here.
How does it then develop, talk, talk us through the next couple, when's the next
sort of most significant moment in, in these journeys that stands out for you?
Right.
Ralf Daab: And, and this is very the most significant story I was
like before, went on the journey.
I said like, you know, I wanna really know what am I doing in my, my life here?
What is my purpose?
What is my calling?
Like, you know, am I really doing the things I'm supposed to do?
Like, so sometimes you, you can ask questions before or, you know, but it's,
it's not necessarily that it comes up.
The subconscious will tell you what, you know, what's important.
But in this case, it came up and so I was listening to music.
It was same thing.
It was on a mattress listening to music, and it was a kind of,
kind of Arabian melody music.
So suddenly I saw myself on a bazaar in Persia, but some hundred years ago.
So I was walking through, was bizarre, looking at, you know,
beautiful things like bases, like carpets, like beautiful things.
And the people like who were selling that, they know me, they, they
offered me to take, oh, take a look at here and there and there.
So, and then suddenly two guards came, like soldiers, and they Japanese said
like, oh, I, you are Ralph, right?
And yeah, I said like, yeah come on, the, the Salton wants to see you.
I said, Saltan, why Saltan?
Yeah.
Come on.
So, and, and I'm telling this story.
I'm really in that story.
I'm not, you know, looking from the outside and then
see the, I'm in the story.
It's the same thing.
As I said before.
My soul was in the, I like up in space now.
My soul was in Persia some hundred years ago.
And I, you know, I could hear the voices, I could see everything like, as I would
be there, like, so I was in the, in the.
I was, yeah, walking with the palace and, and towards the, the sultan.
So the Sultan said, hello, Ralph, very nice to see you.
Glad you came.
And and then he said that this is it.
They say, you can see the beauty.
Show me the beauty in this world, because I cannot see the beauty show the
beauty to me, and I will make you rich.
So I said, okay, all right.
So that's, and then I, this stopped, story stopped, and it was like in the
conversation with the guy was with me.
He said like, you know what, I could just experience I salt like
some hundred years ago in Persia.
He said, yeah, what does it mean?
Like your subconscious wants to tell you something of that.
So, yeah, yeah.
I'm doing books like for the last 20 years I published books on architecture,
art, fashion, you know, to show beautiful things, you know, to other people.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, all right, that's that.
So now, now I know that I'm doing the right thing, you know, because.
That's what my subconscious told me.
The funny, now the thing is like one of the next, not the next one, but the, the
journey after like, I don't know, four months later, did the Suan feel that you
did show him the beauty, or did Yeah.
That the story continues.
Mm-hmm.
Like four months later, say music comes up, you know, mattress.
And I was like, oh, I'm in Persia again.
And I said, oh, oh, let's see what's gonna happen.
So I'm in front of the S again and he says like, oh yeah, glad you're back.
I, you know, I watch you and then you do a good job.
Continue.
It is all right.
You know, that's, you're doing the right thing.
But I have to tell you something.
I said, okay, what do you have to tell him?
And he says, I don't exist.
I said, what do you mean you don't exist?
Who are you?
And then he says, in this word, I'm God, I'm the universe, and I'm you.
And then he vanished.
He, he exposed, he's gone.
The palace is gone.
Everything is gone.
I'm on the mattress, I'm back.
And the said what?
Yeah.
And then talking to the guy, I said that, yeah, it was just happens.
Had the high spiritual experience saying like, it's all in my set.
And me the sultan is just, I'm you.
He said, like, it's in me.
So it's all there.
And that's, that's an incredible story.
Now now I know that I'm on the right path.
So what happened then is we were in California two years ago and we
were down in San Diego, LA Jolla.
It's like, a place I know, 'cause I've been there many times when I
lived in the us So I was going to the bookstore and check out the bookstore.
So there was a, I sort of sign psychic reading.
I said like, ah, I'm curious.
Let's say, let's go there.
So I called and said like, come like in half an hour.
So, so walk in and there's an old lady, beautiful setting, you
know, it was more like a gallery.
And I asked her, what, what can you do?
So, and she said like, I, I can do a reading.
I said, okay, let's do it.
So one hour she said, like you said, just sit down.
You don't say anything, you know, just listen.
And after that you can ask questions.
Like afterwards, in one hour she told me everything about my childhood, my, my
life, my relationships, my, the things I'm doing, business wise, everything.
And now it comes.
Then she told me, in a former life you were in Persia on Aza you were responsible
to show people beautiful things.
Can you imagine like a psychic reader in California?
That's real.
It's not, that's not a journey.
That's not, that's real life.
She tells me the story I experienced on an Emily MJ journey six months before.
Incredible.
And then, and then af especially then I knew that's, that's something real,
you know, now I know it's, it's there.
It doesn't matter if it's a journey and the image or it's real life.
It, it's, it's the same basically.
And how can she possibly know that, you know?
And did you ask her how she did?
Yeah.
And, and she said like, what?
She said, like, when I walked in, she said, like, I was,
she could see everything.
I was open.
She said like, you know, you are very open.
And then I told her about the journeys.
She said, okay, now I know because you did the journeys, you're, you're very open.
You can, you know, so you're I, I have a feeling also that I can, things are
channeled to me, you know, sometimes, you know, says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's all, that's you.
And it's incredible.
Then after that you said like, okay, now I'm, I'm really like the next level.
Of my myself, basically, you know?
So, and that showed me that what, what's in me, in my subconscious
comes out through the MDA major.
It is in real life.
It's like what calla synchronicity happens, you know, like you
experience things in real life.
Maybe you have a dream or you have a journey.
I'm the major, whatever.
Or maybe mushrooms and things are happening.
And that's, I think, great.
It opens up
Rupert Isaacson: many doors.
Did she elucidate or do you feel that what's going on with a thing
like that is that you were dealing actually with a linear timeline?
Like I used to be that person I, I'm, I'm now reincarnated as this person?
Or do you or she feel that No, these are existing and overlapping parallels, fields
of consciousness, which are perhaps.
Happening simultaneously.
Yeah.
It's more like I experienced it happening all at the same time.
So you are still the Yeah.
It's person in Persia.
Yeah.
And you are still whoever you were or will be, right?
Ralf Daab: Right.
Even like in, in formal lives.
But also now I'm still the young Ralph, the, the baby Ralph, the, the
5-year-old Ralph, the 15-year-old Ralph.
I'm, I'm also, but I'm also the 90-year-old Ralph.
Old, old Ralph already I'm, everything's at the same time.
It's just a different perspective.
You know, when you look at this and you can say it's just, if I'm like
I'm now 60 years old, so if I go like 55 light years away, I look to the
earth and I see the 5-year-old Ralph.
So it's all at the same time.
And the great thing is what I experienced myself, is to find the
old, the 5-year-old Ralph again in me.
To let the, let the, the young Ralph play again, like the, you know, be
silly, be, you know, open and yeah.
And that's a great thing.
So to know that everything is there at the same time, time is nothing.
Time
Rupert Isaacson: is, was it, was it Einstein who said that time may
just be a particularly stubborn illusion brought about by gravity?
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand that, but that's certainly something he said.
But I, I suppose I could actually, because if you add weight and mass
to things, you know, you've probably seen those diagrams of the idea of
space and time being like a net.
And you put planet like ball that sits on it, goes whoop, like that.
Yeah.
Right.
And that warp kind of effect of like the ball on the blanket with a
blanket then gets a big bulge in it.
If we are sort of in the middle of that, we then might experience that
heaviness, that weight as time could be.
Could that be, I mean, that sounds as, as feasible as anything else to me.
I don't see why that wouldn't be, particularly when you've got
people like Einstein saying it.
Okay.
Take us through the next thing.
But before you get there, there's actually just something I'd like to also add.
When I've been with indigenous peoples frequently, their
perception of time is not linear.
It's often more vertical.
The idea is again, that it's all these things are happening simultaneously.
You own lifespan is happening simultaneously.
You are, as you say, your young self, your old self, your dead self, your previous
self, your next self, all of that.
That's all at the same time.
It's just that where your awareness is, is now.
Yeah.
And that, of course there is only the present because no
one's ever been able to see.
Anything else.
But there are all those presence are constantly going on together.
And I've had that, I've had that presented to me many, many
times in indigenous settings.
And then watch people do really interesting things with that.
Then I just say it.
But then they will go into an altered set of consciousness and in front of my eyes,
pull something physically outta somebody's body who's sick and they get well.
Again, I, I've seen that many people who've gone and spent time
in those sorts of parts of the world would have similar stories.
So clearly it's been put to some sort of practical use.
It's just within our context in our culture, we find it confusing.
Tell us then again, you, okay, so there's, there's you in Persia twice.
There you are in San Diego.
And the lady says, oh yeah, you were in Persia.
What's the next one that takes you deeper?
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I can tell you a story.
Ralf Daab: I mean, we are under us now.
Now it's very confidential.
Oh, no.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: I've hit the course.
Ralf Daab: You
Rupert Isaacson: don't want it.
Ralf Daab: No, no, no.
It's really, I can tell the story because it's once, this story is really, when
I do the reading, you know, especially woman asked me, how, how did you do that?
So I had sex with myself.
Ah, I
Ralf Daab: explain it now.
Were you good?
Yes, absolutely.
And then, and it was incredible what a relief
Rupert Isaacson: would be.
Ralf Daab: Can you imagine if you like, well, that was a bit shit.
No, no, I was yeah, same thing.
So I was, music was good.
I was feeling really good.
And so I, I started touching myself, but it felt like, you know, I'm
touching somebody else, like with my hands, with somebody else.
And I realized, oh, you know, came up.
Oh, sex is good, you know, and then I saw myself as a man, as I am as Ralph.
But then I realized there's something different.
So I was also the woman.
I was both, I was me and the woman, and I felt both, you know,
both sides, basically both feet.
I, I could feel myself and when I, when I, as Ralph as a man touched
the woman, the Ralph, whatever name touched, I could feel both sides.
So, and then we had sex, and then we really had sex.
So we had Did you enter yourself?
Yes.
Did you feel
Rupert Isaacson: yourself being entered by you?
Yes.
Ralf Daab: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you, you as a man know what it feels like to penetrate, how did it feel
to be penetrated from that feeling?
Very, very, very, very good.
It felt very, what can you, can you, can you be more specific?
Like,
Ralf Daab: I felt like, I felt it was very tender.
It was like smooth.
It was lovely.
It was, you know,
Rupert Isaacson: very what was the emotional component of
having this lover inside you?
It was love.
Ralf Daab: It was, it was, it felt like love, you know, like
everything, you know, so it felt.
Felt like I, I was, I would be one once, you know, everything in both.
But I, I had my, the, the feminine side and I had the masculine
side, and it was incredible.
So I, for me as a man afterwards, I was saying like, okay, it's good.
I'm, I'm very soft.
I'm tender, I'm, I'm, I'm a good man.
I'm very, you know, like, you know, so I, I think that woman feels
feel good in my, you know, with me.
So, and the other side was like, oh yeah, he's a good, he's great.
He's so it was both
Rupert Isaacson: sides.
And he's credible, like when I, do you think it was an exercise in
self-acceptance in some metaphorical way?
Yeah.
Kind of.
Kind of,
Ralf Daab: yes.
Yeah.
It was funny, like, when I do the readings, most women ask
me, oh, how, how does it feel?
And then how, how does it work to get into that feeling?
Because they wanna experience the same thing, but also as a man.
Sure.
You know,
Rupert Isaacson: everyone has that curiosity.
And then for
Ralf Daab: me it was like, this journey was like to, to show me
that everything is also in me, the feminine side and the masculine side.
And my feminine part, I would say is also, I would say, bit
larger than maybe other men.
So I have real good feminine side also.
And that was this journey, you know, to experience the sexual part on both sides.
Rupert Isaacson: So,
Ralf Daab: yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: it's interesting that you say that because I have a, it's not
exactly a recurring dream, but it's a dream where the, there's a recognition
that is recurring where sometimes I meet a young woman, and this has happened to me.
Oh.
Many times in the, over the decades, and there's this absolute falling
in love and but also a sense of, I know you, and sometimes we
make love and sometimes we don't.
But there's always this great joy and a feeling of homecoming and acceptance.
And then when I wake up, sometimes I wake up with tears, not from loss, not
because I've had to wake up and that person has gone, but sort of tears of joy.
And then at a heart level, what comes through is, oh, that was your soul.
You met your soul.
And it's interesting to me that my soul is always feminine
and occasionally it's a horse.
Mm-hmm.
Occasionally I meet a horse that talks, we don't make love.
But we do hang out and we, and we the interactions we have are very sweet.
Very loving.
There is this feeling of
a family, family or so less romantic than when I meet the young woman.
But nonetheless, the same exact feeling and the same heart
thought, that's your soul.
And then I'm always so grateful afterwards.
I always do a meditation or, or pray around gratitude and say, thank you, thank
you, thank you God universe for allowing me to make contact with my soul like
that because it means that I can carry that feeling around with me almost like
a little happiness garden inside myself.
And it sounds like you are describing.
A very, very intense version of something like that, perhaps.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Has that happened to you again since, or No.
Was that a one time?
That was a one time, yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
But it's there now.
Now I know.
Like, it's in me
Rupert Isaacson: like, like
Ralf Daab: Right.
Do
Rupert Isaacson: you
Ralf Daab: feel
Rupert Isaacson: you can access that state?
Yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's with everything, you know, the thing is like, every story is comforting.
I think that that's the word I'm trying to Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Every story I experience like is, it's in me.
It's, it's, it's right there, you know, different situations.
I can pull it up and say, oh, yeah.
There's another great story I tell you.
Mm-hmm.
Please.
I always had a dream for years because you were talking about a dream.
In real life, like, I had dream like years and years and years.
I, I, you know, I was flying a lot, you know, when I lived in New York, I was
like always on the, you know, plane.
Like, I don't know.
I.
Every week almost.
I never had fear of flying or, you know, something, but in that dream the plane
crashed and in the, in the dark woods.
So, you know, I survive and everybody in the plane survive.
So, but I'm standing in the front of the wreck, the, the
wreckage that, of the plane.
And then the dream always stops there in the, in the, in darkness.
And this is a dream
Rupert Isaacson: outside of these MDMA journey, right?
Right.
Like the dream
Ralf Daab: I had like, for, for years, 10 years or so.
Okay.
Even, even more 15 years or so.
So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm standing in front of the wreckage and, and and it's
dark and then the dream stops there.
I wake up and the dream stops there.
So on one of the journeys, the dream comes up.
Same thing.
I'm standing in front of the wreckage and, and now I start walking.
Into the darkness.
You know, it, I could see nothing.
It was just black, you know, woods black, nothing could see anything.
How about I keep walking and then suddenly a, a girl stands there in
this white skirt, like a little, like five year, four year girl, girl.
And she puts me like an amlin around my neck.
And then she, she tells me that, go your path into the light.
Walk into the light.
So I keep walking, walking.
Suddenly I see a light, you know, in the woods.
So, and I get there and then and there's a huge deer like in, in the middle, standing
there in the light, and he steps aside.
And I go in there and I start dancing in that space where the light is.
And then suddenly I, I'm, I'm on a stage.
I'm in a huge stage, and then the curtains open, and then there are
thousands of people applauding.
And then I'm, I'm back there on stage dancing again.
So what tells me that metaphor was like, yes, I was, I was broke, you
know, I was like, you know, lost kind of like, and I was lost in real
life, so I was lost standing there.
I was not dead, but, and then I start walking and this little
girl gives me like an omelet.
Like say, okay, go into the light.
And then I'm, I'm on stage dancing and I'm back into my life.
I'm back on stage.
I'm, so, it's a fantastic story for me.
And ever since it's like, I don't know, two years ago, never had that dream again.
'cause it's the, the, the situation is solved now, you know?
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm back on stage and there was an old life that
Rupert Isaacson: had to end sort of.
Yeah, very businessy, very flying, roundy involved type life.
Right.
It needed to end, but when that ends, of course, yeah.
One feels lost for a while.
Yeah.
Until one is put on the next stage.
I could see, I could see the logic of that.
So that was really like,
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Never had that dream again.
I don't need that dream again.
'cause now I'm back in state basically kind of like, okay, I'm back
Rupert Isaacson: now before we come to where you are back to, which
is different to where you were and perhaps an old self did have to die.
Talk to me about death.
So with these journeys, you experienced perspective, you
experienced love and self-acceptance.
You experienced.
Different fields of consciousness and vertical parallel timelines.
Ralf Daab: I know what you,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Have you experienced death and if so, yes.
Yes.
Tell me about that.
Yes, I experienced
Ralf Daab: my own death and it was wonderful.
Some people would say, oh, scaring, or, you know, I don't
want to, you know, experience that I did and it was wonderful.
So the thing is, I, I was, you know, same thing, you know, mattress music
is on and I see myself on the beach in os Gore, that's in France, like
on the Atlantic Coast where we go almost every year for a long time now.
It's like a soul place for me.
Like it's, you know, so I see myself like on the beach sitting
there in the arms of a woman, but I don't see the woman behind me.
But I'm sitting there and then I.
The number 96 comes up.
So my age, 96.
I say, wow, that's fantastic.
I'm 96 years old.
I had a good life.
I it's a lot of time.
So, and then I felt that my soul is leaving my body, you know, it's like going
out of my body, like over the sand and the water up in the, through the cloud.
There were no clouds, but up in the sky and then into space and, and it said
like, I'm dying and actually a diet.
And the woman behind me said, like, you know, I'm, I'm coming with you later.
And I love you.
That's the last thing I heard.
I love you, but I couldn't see the woman, so I don't know who it is.
Yeah, no.
So that's but it was a wonderful experience.
It was very, very smooth, very not hurting, nothing.
You know, it was like going in back into space.
It, it just felt really, really wonderful.
And then being 96, I said like, you know, if that's, this
is really, I'm gonna be 96.
Wow, that's great.
You know, so I still have, you know, about, it was 56 at that
time, so I have 40 years to go.
It is fantastic.
You know, so, and if I die 90, say whatever can happen to me now, that being
Rupert Isaacson: 16
Ralf Daab: again.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
That's the other story.
Now that, that's the part I experience on the MDMA journey.
But, so three months later we are actually in our school.
I go for a walk on the beach.
I have music on.
That's what I do.
Like once a day I going for a walk and then I stop.
And at that, I'm at that point where I said, oh, here has, here is this, here's
a place where I die so I could see it.
And I, I got showered.
It felt like boo goosebumps wall.
I.
I start crying, you know, say, wow, this is, here's a place.
So I then did calculations, said like I was 56.
Then I said, I, when I 96, it's 40 years to go.
When I subtract that from 56, I'm 16 years old now, and I can start all over
again with everything, with relationship, with business, with everything.
And I still have 40 years to go, wow, how fantastic is that?
So, and then I started crying and laughing and I was dancing on the beach
and I was like, wow, this is fantastic.
So that was real, you know, so that's what I said earlier with with when you
have like the experience with, with the Saltan or you know, with things
that happen in, in on the MDMA journey.
And then you have experience like in real life you say, well, that's
the same thing, you know here.
The, his story continues in real life, so I.
It was just fantastic.
And I said like, I don't have fear of death, nothing.
So what, what else can happen to me?
And one thing is like, a friend of mine, tma, he died in November of cancer
last November, very sad age of 58.
So, and last year I took him twice on the journey, MDMA journey.
And he experienced also his death on his first journey which helped him
a lot to, at the end, I was in the hospice with him the last three days.
And he told me the story, like how he died and he was great.
He was, you know, going into the light and he had no fear, you know, and he left
and with no fear and he gave me so much power and energy and it was incredible.
So, for him, this MDMA journey was wonderful, you know?
Going through this whole process, and then eventually he died then.
But it was great.
So for him and for me also, yeah.
So these are things that that's why I also like, going, I dunno
when next week, two weeks, we're gonna do like, MDA journey again.
Like this is like, just experience.
Like what, what's coming, you know, you can look into the future or I can look
into the future, or I can ask questions.
So like, what is, what, what's coming next?
Or ideas is something I should I should look at.
Or what also happens is that's what the, the psychic reading told me also,
like, I should be open to to channeling.
And that's happening also.
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it's now, I, I sleep very
well because one thing is also like, it helped me a lot in the last six months
without the separation, the ending of the relationship and everything.
I.
I don't drink alcohol in it no more for six months now.
And it's great, you know, I feel good.
I sleep better.
I, I'm clear.
So it's, it's fantastic.
So I wake up most of the time, early in the morning, like 5 30, 6.
And then in that stage I'm, I'm just saying, okay, I'm
open, just channel whatever.
Like, I'm talking to the universe, they're like, oh, let, let me know
what I, you know, should look at.
And and I, I get messages.
It's, it's amazing.
Can you give us some
Rupert Isaacson: examples?
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
It's like, some people come up, they say, oh, you should talk to him.
Or some people like like yesterday for example, was some like really like
a name came up or I saw the picture actually of a person who I've seen for
like years said I should talk, contact him, you know, so that kind of thing.
And I sent an email yesterday.
Got a response, so maybe a new project.
So that's kind of things, you know, oh, let's say I should do this or that,
or just some, sometimes small things.
But yeah, it's kind of like, or I see get also sometimes messages for other people
when I, when I see oh, there's something going on, and yeah, be careful, you know?
So I think it's more like, and then you tell
Rupert Isaacson: that person, I saw this.
Ralf Daab: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: keep your eyes
Ralf Daab: open.
It's like what Psyched told me, like you are very open, you know, you
know, a higher frequency basically.
And I feel that sometimes, you know, that I can get messages or feel something and,
that's what Yeah, it's, it's, it's great.
So it's nothing I'm, I'm afraid of, you know, so it's just really good.
And that's why, you know, I'm continue also doing, doing like, I'm
starting doing Kundalini now because Kundalini yoga is also spiritual,
you know, it's a connection between spirit and body and everything.
It's, it is part of the spiritual journey.
Or the go meditation I did last weekend in, in Hamburg was fantastic.
Have you done go meditation?
Wow.
I have not,
Rupert Isaacson: but I have, I have done things with singing bowls and frequencies.
I was recently in Grand Rapids, Michigan and went through a meditation with singing
balls, very similar to gongs actually.
And one of the things which the practitioner did as we were lying
there, was with a tuning fork coming around and then putting the tuning fork.
To the skin at the frequency of the bowl.
And I, what I found extraordinary about that was that I didn't experience it
as like a vibration or a buzzing or a tickling or something that you'd,
you'd expect I experienced it as color.
Mm-hmm.
And
deep sense of peace.
And I was actually there with my son.
I was there with Rowan sc you know who's Yeah.
Okay.
My whole story really?
Yeah.
We were there
Rupert Isaacson: together and he'd been actually helping me
with a, an autism training.
You know, he often comes on the trainings now and helps explain
autism from the inside to people.
And to be going through that experience with him was lovely.
And actually that, that.
What you just said brings me sort of to the next thing, which is I think
some people will be listening saying, oh, well, does that mean I have to
do a psychotropic substance in order to begin to access these states?
And of course the answer is no.
No.
All of my early experiences with those ulcer state of consciousness
as healing have been with cultures where those plants just don't grow.
So for example, in the Kalahari, in southern Africa,
there are no psychotropics.
So the healers dance themselves into trance but then are incredibly effective
whether they are healing or whether they're contacting ancestor spirits for
answers to a dilemma or whether they are, whether it's hunting magic, and they just
need to know where the lions are so they can go the other way the next day, or,
or, or, of course, those who know my story know that it, it even got tied up with the
human rights and political struggle that the son were in, that I was helping with.
Where I realized that what was happening was the lawyers that we
were hiring for them because they've been kicked off their land illegally
to make way for diamond mines.
Were going talking to the.
Community who would then go and talk to their healers, who would then go into
trance and go into the spirit world, come back with a series of instructions, tell
that to the community, who would then tell that to the lawyers, and then that
would be the strategy for the courtroom.
But the lawyers had no idea that they were being directed from the spirit world.
And when I realized that that was going on, I, oh my gosh, I
can never tell these guys this.
'cause what?
It'll put them off their game.
But what happened was that, you know, us with the measly, you know,
a hundred thousand that we managed to raise up against DeBeers Diamonds.
The Bushman won
the largest land claim in African history, and then several more after
that and did indeed get to go home and did indeed see the whole process
through no psychotropics involved.
Then a few years ago, I was going through a rather difficult.
Period.
And I was experiencing a lot of fear and it was beginning to take over.
And I was with a healer I know in the Americas who
heals in the Lakota tradition.
And there they do use a psychotropic, they use peyote which is partly,
you know, dimethyltryptamine, DMT, strongest hallucinogen known to man.
And he said, Rupert, I can just see we were in a sweat lodge.
And I'd done that before, sweating through.
He said, I can see you need medicine, you know?
And I was like, no, I do.
The last thing I need right now is I'm just clinging onto
my sanity by my fingernails.
The last thing I need is some kind of psychotropic drug is ripper.
How long have you known me?
You know, do you feel I'm a professional or not?
Good?
Fine.
You know, so he says, I'll give you, you know, the dosage
I think that you should have.
And what was so interesting was I.
After a while, I became aware of like a little red laser that
you might see in a PowerPoint.
Mm-hmm.
Going through my body and stopping at areas where I had stiffness and pain.
Oh.
And it would go b
beep, and then it would move on and the pain would, at that place would be gone.
And then a certain point it crossed into my brain and it
started going around my brain.
And everywhere it was finding fear and anxiety.
It would stop and go B,
you know, and it would be gone.
And like it was finding, you know, cortisol scarring effectively from
stress and taking that away, which we know oxytocin can do naturally, but this
was happening very, very, very quickly.
And I remember thinking, well, this is great, but you know, the drug's gonna
wear off and then it will all come back.
But it never did.
The healing was real and lasting.
But the reason I'm telling that story and then the stories from.
Previously when no medicine was involved is, I think, speaking to your
point where you've now been four years letting, let's say the plant medicine
because MDMA is effectively a plant derivative or, or you know, synthesize
drugs are effectively plant derivatives.
And now you're finding, oh, actually I no longer need that to access.
Right.
The, and you know, and even though it doesn't mean I'm gonna reject it, I
will still continue to do those things, but I know it, it's done its job
for having provided me the, the, the way through the window, if you like.
Would you say that that's
Ralf Daab: true?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
It goes faster.
I mean, there are different ways to, and everybody can find, they should
find their own own way to, to get there.
It's just a little faster, I would say, you know, it's.
You can do it like one day, basically a journey.
And when you do other things, you have to train it, you have to
like, yeah, really get into it.
It can take hours or like weeks, decades or decades, you know, you could get
there, but it takes a long, longer time.
So with, with MA or maybe other things like mushrooms.
And so it, it gets faster because, you know, there's nothing you can do.
You just, it's gonna act on the way it's gonna happen that way.
Yeah, right.
So, it's basically, you know, just to bring the body to, to
produce more dopamine, you know, or certainly, you know, so, but yeah.
But a lot of people are afraid or they're like don't want to take
drugs, you know, of course, you know, maybe self-control, whatever.
And they always say like, you know, drugs, what is drugs?
You know, like medicine is, it's all drugs and it's as a therapy, it, it helps.
I mean, like, it's, it's proven, you know?
So, post-traumatic traumas.
You know, in other countries like Australia, it's legal now they, they
do it and they're working on it.
I think also in the u in US and even in Europe.
So it takes some years, but then it will be, for therapy, it will be legalized.
MDMA, right?
MDMA.
Yeah.
MDA.
And of course it used to be.
Used to be, used to be.
So, yeah.
But there are different ways and everybody can find their, their own way.
And it should be, it is no dogma.
It's no dogma to say you have to do this to get there, you know, so.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: It, it's also interesting that you talk about Kundalini, because
the Bushman have a, a similar idea, you know, Kundalini's supposed to reside
at the base of your spine, right?
Mm-hmm.
And it's a life force, a sexual energy that you can begin to manipulate the
Bushman colic mum and forward slash.
The forward slash is that click that, and mum is one of those untranslatable words,
which it can mean power, this type of life force wisdom can mean many things.
But they, what they do is they over years of training, learn how to
boil the, in their stomach, bring it into their stomach and boil it.
And the dance does this, and you'll see them get incredibly hot.
Wow.
And if you touch them, they're incredibly hot, but they'll even, they'll try
to cool themselves in the fire.
So they'll actually take swallow coals.
I've seen that many times.
Or lay in the fire, come up, unburned.
Very good.
And then when the womb is boiling, which is very painful in the
early stages, when they're younger healers, they'll often faint or.
Sometimes they would say die and have to be brought back.
But as they get older, they learn how to ride it.
And then this is when they can not just be in the spirit world and do
what they need to do, but they can pull things out of people or put
things into people that are needed.
So it's clear that these things are as old as humanity because
the San are, the bushman are the oldest known culture on the planet.
And so the quest for the altered state of consciousness seems to be
built into our DNA that to play with consciousness, which is why I think in
the past we've made, had the arrogance as humans to think we are the only ones
with consciousness, which now I think we're realizing clearly isn't true.
But because we're conscious of our consciousness in a certain way,
if you like, we're self-conscious, we have a great desire to.
Communicate with it, I think, and through it, and use it as medicine
and answer dilemmas through it.
And I as you say, whichever way you do it there is no one
way but to be on that path.
Seems to be important for human happiness.
Yeah.
Would you not
Ralf Daab: agree?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yes.
You on certain, like one path to your own path, and then be curious, you
know, like go there and there, try things out, you know, like what I did
like, following like some people like a podcast and then say, okay, that's good.
I, I, you know, now I follow somebody else or read other books
or do a seminar on meditation or the gong meditation, for example.
Just try things out, you know, and then you feel like when your body, or when
your consciousness, or when your spirit like reacts and what, what's best for you.
So, and like being on a path that's the most beautiful thing.
It is like, and to, to, to experience new things.
To meet new people.
And it is, it is kind of like you, you meet other people, you meet
people who are also on their path.
You know, you, you connect very fast.
And and that's, that's the great thing about you know, being on the.
On the journey.
On the path.
And but as I said in the beginning is you have to let things go, you know?
That's the other part I I seeing or meeting a lot of people.
They do a lot of things.
They, they, they go every, every day or three, four days a week, they go
to yoga and they do a lot things, but they still in the same environment.
There's still same jobs.
They're stressed, you know, they, they, they, you know, of course it's difficult
to leave everything, but kind of like you have to like, kind of, you know, let
things go in order to receive new things.
You have to make room for new things.
Rupert Isaacson: It seems though that that process is almost built in.
And I think a lot of people find this rather alarmingly, you know, when they
first get involved in this type of way of life, things can fall apart very
fast and that can be very traumatic at first, even though they may, they
are things that actually you look.
Back over a couple of years and you go, oh yeah, actually
I needed to let all that go.
And I probably would've just clung onto it forever if it hadn't, if I
hadn't been literally picked up by a pair of forceps and placed over there.
However painful that was, and I'd say it seems that you've gone
through something like this rather recently, because when I first met
you you were, you know, living in vs.
Barden, which is
a nice town, it's a wealthy town nice apartment still very much in the
publishing life, et cetera, et cetera.
Then you went through something of disruption about six months ago.
And I remember and, and now you're living in this, in an apartment in this castle.
Rather, rather romantic in a very, very beautiful part of the countryside in
Germany that I know where you are and I know how beautiful the nature is there.
And it's interesting you've been sending me these pictures on WhatsApp of, of the
nature, and I'm like, ah, he's found it.
'cause one of the things which I was noticing through your story and they, you
know, when, whether it was you working for Chen or you as the Persian person
showing people beauty, the, this is all about human beauty and things that
were made by humans and you know, Chen also fashion and models and that kind
of physical human beauty and as well.
But what I feel is often missing from all of that is nature.
And of course the greatest beauty, of course, is always nature.
And that's why we, we react and respond to beauty in the way that we do because
nature is beautiful and nature is what we're supposed to be surrounded by.
And people actually, people are very beautiful.
Inside from doubt.
We're a very loving species.
Right.
You know, it's, it, so it's interesting to me that finally,
you know, in the last six months, there you are in nature by another.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you, those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you, it looks
like, well obviously we're, we're, we're talking across by Zoom in Ralph's
apartment within that castle, but I know what's outside that window and I know
that you're out in that nature now and you've really simplified, you've sort of
gone from, you know, home ownership and real estate and all of that stuff now
to saying, no, no, I'm gonna minimalize and I'm just gonna have this small
apartment to spend most of my time in nature while still working as a publisher.
Ralf Daab: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, it's interesting to me,
Ralf Daab: and one thing is also like, talking about, you know, when
I said the, the, the, the salt in the Persia, you know, show the beauty.
What I realize now, it's not only it was back then or still is sometimes of
course with the books to show the beauty outside, but it's also like, my purpose
is also to show the beauty in people.
Mm-hmm.
To help people to go on their path to, to develop or show their own beauty.
And that's also, you know, one thing I'm gonna do in the future to help
people to show their own beauty because every person is beautiful.
So, and then how.
Well, but yeah, with seminars, with you know, I did like, coaching
as a neuroscience coaching.
I have like a certificate, whatever you call it, you know, and then
I did meditation, spiritual, and I'm doing a kundalini practicing.
So things like put it together, but also my.
Strength is what I can do really good is like bring people together.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, the funny thing is, like a year ago I was still in Spartan,
I was in rgo, which is beautiful, you know, the wine area with wines.
And so, and I was standing there and said like, ah, well this is beautiful.
This is beautiful and, and good energy for me.
And it's like I would live in a place like here, like where you can live,
but also where you can do seminars, you know, like a house or so.
And now I'm no longer at Beach Spot, but I'm here now and I have, I found a place.
It's incredible.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you, can you do seminars now
Ralf Daab: in Yes.
This, here they're, they event place, they're weddings are here,
seminars here, there's a big space terrace outside Nature.
It is a perfect place for seminars.
So we can, we start doing like in, in four weeks, we have a seminar here I'm
organizing, so I bring people here.
That's, you know, organized things, festivals.
I wanted to do a festival here, music festival overlooking
here, the Rhine Valley.
It's, it's just incredible.
So can you imagine like a year before, like last year or,
or it was more than a year.
I mean, last year was, and I had this vision and now I'm here and I
can do it, and it's, it's happening.
So it's not, you know, I had to, had to leave things in v spot and,
you know, also the relationship.
But now everything can come and can, you know, organize.
I'm not looking for a relationship now, but never know.
But everything is can happen now.
So.
And you're still
Rupert Isaacson: publishing?
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So listen, if people want to read your book there you are again.
Yeah.
How do they find it?
Ralf Daab: Well, there's a, there's a website.
It's called books.buy.
It's a print on demand website.
Mm-hmm.
Website.
It's actually based, the company's based in Australia, but it's all over the world.
And they can place order print on demand.
So it's free shipping worldwide.
You can place the order, you can order the book and they find a
printer near you, like someplace.
Let's say when you order here, maybe in Germany or France, and they ship it to
you free, free shipping, free of charge.
It's, I think it's 20.
And that's in
Rupert Isaacson: English, obviously.
That's the English.
Yeah, of course in English.
There you are again.
English book, that book.
Stop by.
So people go to book, book start by slash
Ralf Daab: HHOL.
You can put it maybe slash HOL living.
HOL.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Great.
And then they would look for, there you are again.
Ralf Daab: Right.
It's on there.
You can.
They can buy it, they free shipping and then they can read.
So yeah.
And
Rupert Isaacson: if people want to reach, reach out to you and want to be,
you know, well, they, they could send email questions about their own healing
or wanna be part of your seminars or come visit Yeah, they could contact
Ralf Daab: me.
Yeah.
How do they contact you?
Well, there's by email's best like ralph@highonliving.com.
Rupert Isaacson: So R-A-L-P-H Ralph, no FF with an F right in the German way.
RALF at
Ralf Daab: Hi.
Hi.
On living.com.
High on
Rupert Isaacson: living.com.
Ralph, with an F.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: High on living.com,
right?
Yeah.
Reach, reach out to Ralph listeners.
He's, he's, yeah, please do.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
And come up here like, if you visit Germany or near
Cologne, you cannot up be here.
Yeah.
Hiking.
It's, it's a beautiful place.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run up the a three.
Yeah.
Come, come here.
Right.
Take exit bat.
Ralf Daab: Bat exit.
Lin.
You're right here.
So bad Ho.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I know exactly where that is.
We help someone buy a horse from Bad Ho.
Yeah, it's right here.
Great horse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ralf Daab: They're up here.
They're 50 horses up here, so see them in the morning when they come out the stalls
and like run and run and, and I, yeah.
Well, maybe we'll do something with
Rupert Isaacson: horses together then.
Yeah.
It should come.
That's, it's really wonderful.
Okay.
All right, Rael, thank you so much.
Well, thank you, Rupert.
It's been a, been a, yeah.
Wonderful journey.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Great, great.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So any last words of wisdom before I click off the record?
Ralf Daab: Last word of wisdom.
Well, I would say it's all energy.
It's Albert Einstein.
It is all energy.
And that's what I feel now.
I.
Going through all these journeys for the last four years is
basically even with my plan.
My plan, when you see it here, it was like this tall, basically in, in this button.
It didn't grow, but it didn't die.
But here it's growing like fast.
I went a beautiful, so I know I'm at the right place because
plant is feeling good, you know?
Rupert Isaacson: So it's all energy.
Ralf Daab: Yeah, it's
Rupert Isaacson: all energy.
That's right.
As Nicola Tesla said, also, I think if you want to know the secrets of the
universe, you have to think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
Yeah, exactly.
And it seems that, well, I guess every electronic device we use goes back to him.
So Yeah.
Clearly these guys had, you know, yeah.
Had something.
All right, well, all right.
Parallel universes vertical timelines.
Medicines to help us radically shift our viewpoints.
By the way, that, that's something I, I, I wanted just to throw in there.
I was looking at the neuroscience of of psychotropics and it does seem that
what happens with people is massively, massively augmented neuron new neural
pathway development when these happen.
'cause of course it's also new, similar to what you get with novel movement,
novel ways of moving, BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which
normally you only get through movement.
It seems that this can be massively boosted with the use of psychotropics.
And I guess our ancestors must have known this.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Maybe that's that thing of allowing us to see mm-hmm.
What we can't normally see.
So there you are again.
There you go.
Buy it from books.
Stop by slash HOL.
Give Ralph an email at rlf@highonliving.com.
Yeah, I guess we'll see you on the next looking forward.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
See you soon.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for having me.
Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
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Ride free.
Welcome back.
I have my friend Ralph Daab from Krn Cologne in Germany, uh, on today.
He's a publisher and has made his living his own way, um, in many
countries in the world, um, and has come to a point where the material has
sort of given way to the spiritual.
Um, and he's a man who's very much explored how as a westerner you can
find your way to the shamanic, to the altered states of consciousness
that, um, open the window to the more indigenous way of looking at
things while still being in the West.
And I think that that's a very useful thing for many of us because
as those of you listeners who know my background, spending a
lot of time, for example, in the.
Kalahari in Africa with hunting and gathering peoples down there, it can
be almost misleading, um, to think, oh, well, that kind of life, that deeply
spiritual life, that very connected life, that's something different that
happens down there in those other places with people who haven't sort of gone
through the Judeo-Christian thing that we've all gone through, et cetera.
I can't really do that because I'm up here in the western economy and, you
know, stuck in that rap race and so on.
Of course, we all know that's not really true, but I think it's really
good to draw our attention sometimes to how people doing it right here,
right now in our culture and, um, particularly, you know, how is that.
Is that is, you know, can that be related to business?
Can that be related to how do you make a living when you, when you decide, okay,
you know, I, I want to begin to explore these other ways of looking at the world,
but I still have to kind of keep one foot pretty firmly in the, in the here
and now and the economy and all of that.
Now do I dance that dance?
And I think somebody like Ralph, um, has quite a lot of,
uh, insights for us that way.
So I thought I'd have him on the show for live free, ride free.
'cause he's a man who definitely does live free and ride free
and, uh, we can learn from him.
So Ralph, thank you for coming on the show.
Yeah.
Hi Ruper.
Thank you for having me.
It's a great pleasure to be on the shower.
So do you want to tell listeners a little bit about how we met?
Because I think those circumstances.
Are quite helpful to drawing people's attention to sort of
always keep your eyes open.
You never quite know who's around the next corner type thing.
You wanna have a right.
Um,
Ralf Daab: yeah, it was, it is a great story.
I always tell people, um, I was living in, back then, it was like two years
ago in Germany where we live now.
Yeah.
We born in Germany.
So I was walking the dock, you know, up from the hill and then, um, you know,
passed by a, a horse place basically.
And I was talking to Leon, your wife first, and then the dogs started playing.
And then, so we started talking and so, oh, where are you from?
What are you doing?
And then, uh, I said like, you know, and then Leanna said, well, that
you guys lived in, in the US in Texas, and then you moved back here.
And I said, I, I lived in New York for some years and I also.
Was in Texas many times.
And then, you know, I'm a publisher.
And I'm publisher.
And then he said, oh, my husband Rupert, he's also like, he, he's an author.
He published books, New York Times bestseller books.
So, and then you walked up and then we met and we just connected right
away, you know, and then we started talking and, you know, things like,
uh, it was, um, incredible because, uh, yeah, it was, it's, it's no
Rupert Isaacson: coincidence.
It was like, uh, well, what was interesting to me about that.
First meeting, um, and you gotta just picture listeners,
you know, I'm picking poo.
That's what we always do every morning.
Yeah.
Right.
With the horses and, but people walk by, there's a public footpath that
goes, you know, past the, the, the sort of main area where the horses are.
'cause they all live outside and you know, people walk their dogs.
You sometimes say hi, whatever.
Um, but relatively few people actually stop and say hi.
Um, you know, it's, it's Germany after.
So it's like, first thing is, well that's kind of unusual.
Look, here's a bloke who's actually kind of cheerful and, you know, um, friendly.
Um, and then, um, but very quickly the conversation went to,
well, you know, what do you do?
Okay, I'm publisher, I'm a writer.
Interesting, interesting.
Similar worlds.
And then of course I told you a little bit about what I publish books on.
And then you say, oh, that's interesting because, you know,
I do these journeys, right?
And I said, oh, what kind of journeys?
And you said, well, like MDMA.
Right.
And what was interesting to me about that was, um, a lot of my friends and
contemporaries, particularly in the USA in the last, I'd say five years, have
begun to, uh, experiment with looking at altered states of consciousness through
journeys with MDMA, which some people call ecstasy, but it's not the ecstasy,
of course, that you buy in a nightclub.
It's the pure form that used to be prescribed, uh, way back in the day
by psychologists and psychiatrists who warring married couples because it
made them listen to each other nicely.
Um, brings out the sort of compassion in people and, um, si uh, psilocybin,
which is of course, um, mushrooms.
And, um, this has been a growing field, um, among.
I think many people in the kind of middle class of the west over the last
decade or so, because I think there has been this growing awareness that
the material life needs to be balanced with the spiritual, but the church no
longer offers that never really did.
I mean, mystic Christianity can, but not the church, not witch
burning and Spanish inquisition.
Um, and so where to look, where to look.
And so of course people began to look naturally to the Eastern philosophies
because with the British Empire, that kind of really opened up that
route from India through England and then out to the rest of the West.
Um, and that sort of, those meditations and Buddhism and
Hinduism and stuff like that began to have a big influence on Western
society, but it was still perceived as very much a thing from outside.
I think from over there.
People like me, of course, going down and spending time with a lot of
indigenous folk, um, bringing that back.
But again, that's still being, well, that's something other,
that's something over there.
That's not us.
That's not where we are.
How do we, and so I think it's very logical that people like you, Ralph
and other friends of mine, began to look to the use of psychotropics.
Um, in the same way that of course people are undergoing healing ceremonies in,
you know, the Amazon or areas where, or Siberia, areas where, um, native
America, where psychotropic plants grow and have always been used for healing.
Um, it's a very logical thing and I think there's a reach back even through
the European past there, because certainly, um, in the pre-Christian
era, people used fly aic mushroom.
They used psilocybin, what we would call magic mushrooms and ver you know,
datura, um, nightshade, um, certain things with hemlock or to achieve altered
state of consciousness in order to, um, you know, connect with the divine.
And that of course was rooted out of our culture by the church.
So there you are, and we're having that conversation and I'm thinking, well, this
is sort of interesting on the Shamanic.
Um, and then when I began to do this uh, uh, podcast, I thought, well, actually
Ralph would be a very good guy to get on this show because he is really
an entrepreneur and you run your own publishing stuff, but you've also, you
know, helped larger publishing companies.
And that's something, but you, you also now thread this very spiritual path.
That's Ry ride free.
Sort of in a nutshell, would you take us through your journey a little bit,
where you began as a boy in corn growing up, sort of, you know, in the seventies
and eighties in that, you know, post-war booming economy, having fun, it takes
you off to other parts of the world, just and then how you get into publishing.
Just get, take us through that early stage in your life, how, how you
get going on your live free, ride free, um, sort of initial, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah,
Ralf Daab: I
Rupert Isaacson: did
Ralf Daab: that.
Um, so I grew up in Cologne and, um,
Rupert Isaacson: you know, I was, um, which is a bit of a party town, right?
It's a
Ralf Daab: fun town.
Well, it's a carnival, you know, the people are very open-minded and friendly.
You know, my, my parents, my mother had a, a restaurant, you know, but a lot
of people always came like every day.
So it was always, yeah, I grew up in like a, in, uh, yeah, a good, uh.
Environment, I would say, you know, so, and I played soccer,
football, you know, when I was young.
And uh, I was pretty good.
So I played for the s fone, uh, in the junior.
What is, just tell us, oh, that's, SCON is one of the best
club football club in the world.
We just came up, you went up to, did you play Football Con?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, right.
But in the junior team, you know, so for some years
Ralf Daab: and that was a
Rupert Isaacson: great time.
That's something that's like playing for Arsenal or, or Tottenham.
Yeah, yeah,
Ralf Daab: yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So that was a great time when it was 14 years old, 15 years, 16,
you know, so playing, like we, we played tournaments in, in, in Paris,
in, in Brussels, in, in Zurich or, you know, so it was always good.
Like I had go to the director of the school and said like, I have to go for,
you know, a week for tournament, whatever.
So it was a good time.
I was, um, and then, um, I was, you know, I was obviously going to
school and then I started university and, uh, but I knew right away
from be, it's not really what I.
Whatever you want to do.
Like, uh, so I would start, like my mom, I also did, um, back then,
so I would start like a friend, he was importing like t-shirts from
California, like big Wednesdays.
So I was like, oh, they cool t-shirts, exert shirts, you know, I would start
selling them out of the car, you know, in the school and so and so on.
And then other things like a hot tuna from Australia, like a
brand, like really cool brand.
Uh, so, and I said, let's open up a store.
Let's, so like when I was 22, I opened my first, uh, fashion store in Cologne.
And then, um, you know, coincidence, somebody walked in and said like, yeah,
I need like, you know, 20 jackets.
And it turned out, turns out that he was from EMI, Electrola from
the record company, and it was for Tina Turner's concert, uh, like
tour, you know, so it was got into the merchandise business for that.
So I was always like doing things, you know, like, um, um, and then,
uh, a friend of mine, I was in New York, first time in 1991.
What sent you to New York?
Just pleasure.
It was just Okay.
It was before business.
Yeah.
Before business was like with a friend that went to New York for
the first time and another friend, he was also in New York and he was
working for hin for the publisher.
Tian
Rupert Isaacson: is a very famous, uh, German publishing house.
Right.
Basic Cologne.
But now the world, you know, biggest art book publisher in the world.
Yeah.
You've, you, you've seen them listeners, even if you don't know them, they're
these amazing German art and fashion.
Right.
Photographic.
They have
Ralf Daab: stores all over.
Yeah, the world basically.
So back then in the nineties, and then, then, then he said like, ah, you know,
we are looking for somebody who could do like sales and marketing in the us.
Uh, are you interested?
And I said, well, yes, of course.
You know.
So I started working for Tchen as a sales manager for the US and um, like first
year, two years traveling from Cologne to the US like, you know, visiting, like,
I don't know, first trip was 20 cities in like four weeks, you know, every day.
Another city.
So it was a great time.
And then I moved to New York in 1995, you know, and, um, moved there.
It was just for, for a year.
And then I stayed there total of like almost six years.
So setting up the office there and then, uh, all sales and
marketing, that was a great time.
It was like my early thirties.
So, um, yeah.
So it was, that's how I got into publishing, international publishing also.
And then I moved back and my son Lucas was born in New York.
And then, um.
We decided to go back to Cologne, and then I started my, of working for
another publisher for three years.
You know, um, I was responsible for setting up a program, so I
developed the whole, the book program and international distribution.
So, and then I decided to, uh, start my own publishing house in 2003.
And, um, yeah, so then we traveled a lot, you know, all over the place, like Asia
lots, uh, then us a lot, of course Europe.
And, um, yeah, so that was, uh, I was always in, in things
like, you know, what can you do?
Like, uh, develop new things.
I have so many ideas and, and, and, uh.
So, and then I, you know, got to a point where, uh, publishing in
general was, became difficult.
Uh, had problems with the banks, the investors and the whole thing.
And then, so at the end, uh, I had to close the company, basically file for
chapter 11, which is like insolvency.
And, um, yeah, it was a really tough time.
And then the marriage ended, uh, I was kinda lost, you know, that was
like, uh, 2000, where were we now?
Like, uh, uh, 64, 15, 16 round then, so about eight, nine years ago.
And so I was kind of lost and I said like, what can you do?
Like my life, you know, so, and I, yeah, I did like a photo exhibition, for example.
I had took some photos.
I did like an exhibition, and then I, I, I decided like, oh,
let's go back into publishing.
And, uh, so I started to, uh, to create books again.
But at the same time, I was always like, uh, looking for new things.
But, uh, so I, I got into the, um, meditation thing, so I was reading books,
listening to podcasts about meditation or why, why did you get into meditation?
Studying?
Yeah, because, yeah, because I was like, uh, kind of felt like I, I needed
to do something else, you know, like going out of like, like, you know, this
business world that the business thing or the life of like, you know, um.
Just traveling around and being like stressed and everything.
So, and then I started also doing sports again, and, uh, also mindfulness things.
You know, had you always
Rupert Isaacson: kind of in the back of your mind thought,
or that meditation thing?
I kind of want to get into that, but I'll, I'll do that later, you know, or
was it more sudden thing a more new thing?
No, no, it was always there, kind of, you know,
Ralf Daab: like, uh, you know, but, uh, it, it wasn't like, like every
day, but, um, I felt like, you know, I was at a point where I was, you
know, like really lost and it's the only thing I could, could help me.
Like, I could only help myself, you know?
So, and I, uh, and it was good.
So I, you know, did a love of sports again running and, um,
so I felt a little better.
And uh, and then it got to a point, like I was, you know, I talked to a
friend and then he told me about a seminar he went to, and he said like it
was the best thing he did in his life.
And then he told me everything about it.
And then.
I said, yeah, I wanna do this.
And that's how I got into my first journey of the MD May.
Um, yeah, that was, I
Rupert Isaacson: presume because you'd been living in New York, you know, you'd,
um, been in fashion, you'd been in sport, you'd been in publishing, recreational
drug use must have been something with which you were quite familiar.
I mean, I know I said No, not really.
No, no,
Ralf Daab: no, no.
Not really.
Rupert Isaacson: No.
No.
Um, so when, okay, because I remember for example, when I was in my
earliest twenties, um, this is back like 8,000 years ago, um, I
think before the invention of the wheel, um, I, um, tried MDMA, um.
At that point, it was still very pure.
It was before techno, before the raves, before all of that took off.
And so before it became a mass industry, that people then began to adulterate
it with speed and, you know, awful.
And so I, I tried it a few times in those early years and then very quickly gave
it up because it, it very quickly became adulterated with all sorts of stuff.
And you couldn't, at least at that stage in my life, access that pure form anymore.
But I do remember, um, breaking up with my first girlfriend.
Basically she was dumping me.
Um, while we both were on MDMA, which of course, as many listeners
may know, MDMA used to be prescribed by marriage counselors.
Before it was made illegal because it helped people to listen to
each other really compassionately and to tell the truth.
Right.
And so we broke up, you know, so kindly with each other, even
though my heart was broken.
And, uh, we remained friends, we're friends to this day.
It's very interesting.
Um, so, you know, when you told me about you doing these MDM majors,
I immediately made that assumption.
Oh, well he must have had, you know, some sort of, uh, previous history
with this, but you said No, not at all.
So this being something quite new for you, right.
What made you think Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that, that might be something then,
Ralf Daab: because a friend told me that what, what, you know, what he
experienced and, uh, told me that it's saved, that it's, you know, you know.
Uh, so I said like, okay, because I was really not really into drugs, you know, I
had joined, so, you know, of course then an alcohol, you know, wine and, and so
on, but not, not no drugs, you know, I was not never, I always said like, you know,
I can be, uh, fun without drugs, you know?
Mm-hmm.
So, um, but in this case I was like looking into this more the, as this
therapy than just like having fun with drugs or so, you know, and, uh, trusting
my friend and said like, oh, let's try it.
And then, um, and it was, uh, tell everybody it was the best thing
I did in my life, you know, so
Rupert Isaacson: well.
Right.
You know, often, um, you know, when people say, for example, go down to
the Amazon looking for healing, they'll often find themselves, uh, with a ero,
you know, a, a healer doing ayahuasca.
Um, yeah.
Which of course is a very, very strong hallucinogen.
Um.
But many people will report I, yes.
What I needed was a kind of radical way to break through an out of the worldview
that has been to some I've been stuck in.
And I needed kind of a radical change of environment, both physically
and mentally, emotionally, in order to get this other perspective.
Otherwise, I, I sort of couldn't break out of the, the rut that I was in.
Do you feel that that's what happened to you?
Yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah, exactly.
But it's also like after like the first time, it's like, it's like four years ago.
So, um, and it's a whole process, you know, I realized, you know, after
four years I did like many times different ways, you know, different
locations, you know, like I ended up like, you know, some places and.
Um, and also tried other things, you know, with mushrooms and, and so on.
And now after four years, I realize it's, it's not just the one, one journey,
you know, or, you know, even the, the weekend or so, it's a whole process.
It's like it changed.
That transformation is going on like forever, you know?
So it's like, but you, the thing is, like, you, you, I learned to
let things go, you know, like to now during these journeys, to, to look
at things, to, to, uh, have sometimes the same feeling again about things.
Even when I was a child, I, I could look at this, say,
oh yeah, that was not so bad.
Or that was so, and, and, and, and let go.
And, and now I realize that, that it's just part, it's just one part of it.
You know?
It's not like you do one journey MDMA or whatever it is, you know,
like, and, oh, you're healed now.
Oh, you changed my life now.
No, no, it's like.
To change your life or, you know, to go to, through a real transformation.
It's, it's, it's takes weeks and years and, and, and goes on, you know, like, no
Rupert Isaacson: doubt.
But you need that initial experience.
Initial experience to sort of
Ralf Daab: help leapfrog into that.
Yes, exactly.
And the initial experience is like to, to to, to become like
in different consciousness, you know, different perspectives.
And this is what I never had experienced before without that
drug, you know, without MDMA, uh, or without mushrooms, whatever.
But MDA is more like, uh, for me at least, it was like to, uh.
To see things from a different perspective.
Yeah.
Uh, every ev every time like really clear.
It's not like you're a, you're like sleeping or, so I was always
clear and I was, I've experienced stories, really stories.
I was in those stories in like 500 years ago in Persia.
I was in, in the universe.
I was an astronaut.
I was, and my soul was up there in, in the Big bang or whatever it is,
you know, like, and I said like, what?
It was such great stories and experiences and um, that changed my view of myself
and my surrounding my people around me.
So it's like all it is, it's like a kind of heart opener.
And then when you go that path like I did, um, you'll see
that, that your life change.
But it's like not, I.
You know, if you, you stay in your environment, if you stay
in your structure, you, you don't change really a lot.
So you have to let go.
And you have to realize, and you have to say, okay, if I, if a relationship
ends now, yeah, maybe it has to end now because without ending the
end of the relationship, you can cannot experience something new or
you move to a new place, you know, and it's all part of the journey.
Um, and that's, that's it all started four years ago with the MDMA and I,
I did many, many trips, many, uh, and I still do, uh, it's kind of like
sometimes I feel I don't need it anymore.
'cause, uh, it's like what your neuroscience would say, tell you,
it is like the neuro, they can adjust, uh, you know, things.
Um, and then you, you can get the same feeling or you can, I can change
my perspective now without taking anything because my neuron, they, they
experience, they can, they can, uh.
They can be in that same state.
So, and um, yeah, so for me it was like, it's a, it's a game changer.
Rupert Isaacson: It's, it's a life changer.
And, uh, in those early days when you were first taking these journeys, and I'm
gonna ask you to describe, you know, some of the journeys that stand out the most
and the insights you got from them, but in those early days when you were first
beginning with it, did you find it very difficult then to reintegrate yourself
back into, if you like, ordinary life, making a living business, picking up the
phone to people, striking deals, whatever?
Or did you actually find that?
No, it was actually much more of an effortless flow.
The first journeys
Ralf Daab: I, I remember was like, I, I was telling everybody now how great
it is, you know, it was like friends and family, and people are like, some
people on the street maybe say like, I, you know, this is so fantastic.
Everybody should do it, and everybody has to like, go on
trips and it's change everything.
So then I realized you, you cannot talk to everybody about it.
You know, some people said, Hey, he's crazy, what is he doing?
And uh, um, and I said like, yeah, okay, um, you shouldn't
talk to everybody about it.
Uh, just to people who are really interested.
And I said, like, you know, you figure out, you know, who's
really interested and who's not.
But yeah.
And then I, um, got to the point and said like, okay, what I'm doing
now if I continue this journey is I realize myself that I'm changing Now.
I, you know, I, I, I talk differently.
I feel differently.
So if I, if I want to stay in my old world, I have to stop
now because it doesn't work.
Or I, I say, okay.
That's my new path.
I go that path no matter what.
And I do, and I did, and I still do.
And then, um, you realize that you don't have to talk about anymore.
It just comes.
People just come or they don't, you know?
And, and the things change.
And also in terms of business, it opened up new paths as well.
So I'm doing, I'm, my conversations now with, with architects or interior
designers is different now and, and the business is growing actually.
But those are the books you're doing now, right?
The, your higher series,
Rupert Isaacson: it's about architecture.
You'll do the
Ralf Daab: architecture and interior books and the business
actually growing like this year.
And it's like, it's amazing.
You know, it's like the more I open up, the more people I attract to, to publish
with me, to publish their work with me.
Plus I've written my own book.
About the stories.
Uh, a little book I published myself, uh, under my new labor high on
living, um, came out like in February and then it sounded quite good.
And, uh, tell us about the book.
What is it?
What's it called?
Yeah, I wrote the stories like, um, the stories I experienced on this
journeys, you know, I wrote them down.
This is like 32 episodes in the book.
They're short episodes, you know, so, um, and it's, yeah, you could read
it and get really good responses from people say, okay, this is really cool.
I could see myself in this same story, you know, like up in the universe or.
Uh, I journey to myself in my own self, in my own nothing.
You know, when you on your own atom, there's nothing there.
But then I experienced the most energy ever I experienced.
So, and it opened up everything and started to love myself.
Self-love is basically, I experienced on one of the journeys, I was myself
saying, wow, this is, this is love.
This is, I didn't know what love is before love.
I thought of this could live, love my wife or my, my parents, my son, but this
kind of love I, I didn't know before.
So, um, I wrote this little book and um, actually it was like when I moved here to
Opco, uh, two days, two days later, I was like posting a video on Instagram saying,
uh, I'm living up here now in the nature.
And I got like, from my.
Former, um, employee Laura.
She used to work for me in, in Cologne like 12, 13 years ago.
She's like, she wrote on Instagram like, what are you doing there?
She said like, well, I live here now.
Well, she said, like, I live in like right here in the village,
like for 10 years, so let's meet.
And her husband was also involved in the, in uncle in, uh, in the reading day,
like where authors came to do readings.
And so he took me into the program.
So I was there officially in Hong Kong and did two readings that day.
It was fun, you know, people came and, uh, listened to my, my Stories
and tell us the name of the book.
The book is named Dbia.
There you are again.
Dbi You again.
Uh, 32 episodes.
Um, yeah, soul Journey, uh, of Zaza and Ze episode.
That's the Journey.
Subtitle.
Um, and Zaza Ze Being Journey.
Right.
And it's, it's a nice little book and yeah, people like it.
And, uh, so that's the basic, and, and through that book I got, um, I, I'm
getting now, uh, three more authors.
Like I one author in, in Hedburg now, like Christine, she wrote
a book about her journey.
Like one year she traveled with her family around the world.
She, she wrote really nice books.
So that's, I'm gonna publish that book under high on Living and, and others.
So then through that, the new publishing part, um, we call it High on Journey, high
on Living, not On Journey, high on Living, uh, is a new, um, division kind of buddy.
Where I'm gonna publish the, the stories of people with their want to, you
know, write their book about their own story and bring it out to the world.
And it's, it's really cool so that, you know, so my, my past, my journeys,
I got into a new business basically.
And, uh, it's really interesting to see like how people are attracted to that.
You know, it's also part of like, I think the future where people think
about more, uh, how you run a business and what kind of business, uh, is good.
So, um, I remember like a year ago I posted something on LinkedIn saying,
you know, I'm, I'm going, like, the spiritual entrepreneurship is the new
thing, kind of, you know, you have social entrepreneurship where you've got the
sustainability and all that kind of stuff, but the spiritual entrepreneurship
is something, it's in the future, like, especially the young generations looking
to, to start is basically what, what.
Kind of product or service you can do for, for everybody that it's not like,
of course you run a business and you should make money with it, you know?
So it's not like, uh, but in a different way.
It's not like you make money no matter what, and you, uh, you know,
keep it all for yourself, you know, like we have nowadays with all the,
the Jeff Basos and things, you know, I have like super yachts and so no,
that's not spiritual entrepreneurship.
It is like for, for everybody.
And, and that's, that's the kind of thing I, I, I'm, I'm looking into,
and that's, uh, that's how I want to start or build up my new publishing
division also as a community.
And it's all part, it's all together now.
And like, started with my first MD major like four years ago.
It's incredible.
But what happened since, ever since, you know, so, uh, and
it's, it goes on, you know?
So.
So
Rupert Isaacson: let's talk about some of those journeys.
Um, tell us about the first journey you did, and then I want you to give us.
Some windows on some of those other journeys.
Let's start with your first journey four years ago.
Well, the first journey was like, um, I
Ralf Daab: was, you know, you, you put the music on you basically, you take
it and then it takes like half an hour.
So, and then you put the music on.
You're lying down.
You lying down on the mattress in a quiet room.
Quiet room.
Yeah.
Someone is there with you to look after you a bit.
Yeah.
Right, right.
It, it's better like setting settings.
Very important.
Someone with not alone experience.
Alone with experience.
And you can have also like conversations, you know, during your, mm-hmm.
Your, your.
Journey.
So I was like looking out the window and I saw like birds flying
and said like, oh, that's fun.
You know, let's fly with birds, you know?
So, and I really, my soul left my body and I went up to the, and fly, you
know, played with the, with the birds.
And then I suddenly went further up through the clouds, through the, uh, sky.
And I was up in, in the universe in the, so, and then I saw the earth from above.
And, uh, how beautiful this be.
Blue planet was standing, like, looked like standing still.
I was really like, it, it, it wasn't like looking a picture, it was like I
was there, my soul was up there, and I looked at this beautiful planet.
I said like, oh yeah, my God, this is so beautiful.
And what are, what are we doing here?
And then, and then suddenly I had like a drag kind of like,
uh, it was so, so, so fast.
I said, what the, the, the earth doesn't stand still.
It, it, it turns like in one day.
We, we have speed of 1,600 kilometers per hour.
We, we moving, but we don't feel it, you know?
So, and the, the, the earth is moving around the sun with the speed
of 100,000 kilometers per hour.
And it's incredible.
Like, and you know what?
And you don't feel it, but when you, and then I realized, hey,
this is so, this is amazing.
But it's also like, uh, so it, it changed my perspective of
like, being on that planet.
You know what I mean?
It's like seeing from outside and, and feeling the, the speed and almost
felt like, you know, I'm nothing.
I'm, I'm, I'm, and, and how f how big the universe is and how
f everything is so creative.
So I said like, who am I?
You know, what am I doing here?
Why we have wars on earth?
Why we have so crazy people, like, you know, so that, that
first journey changed my.
Perspective of everything myself, the earth, the universe.
And then, then I got back into my body and I was laying there.
I said like, wow, this was incredible.
This was, I've never had this experience before.
And I was really, it felt like, you know, not looking TV or on the picture.
It was like my soul was up there.
And maybe it was, I think it was because maybe my soul was up there
in form alive or whatever, you know?
So, and that's a difference of, you know, maybe just meditation or being
like in a different consciousness.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think consciousness is the, is the word there.
Um, you know, listening to the current
conversations that are going on around quantum, um, explorations from
physicists, it seems that the people who were dubbed crazy, like, um, uh.
Penrose back in, in, in the uk.
He was in his nineties.
Now he, even though he was a, a Nobel laureate, even though he, uh, made many,
many, um, contributions to mainstream science that he was celebrated for
when he came up with the idea that perhaps the universe is conscious,
perhaps physics, the answers in in classical physics are just not enough.
Um, and that they need to interact with fields of consciousness that
seem to be expressed through quantum.
He was just, you know, laughed out of town.
And then you had people like, uh, Rupert Shel, Drake, another renowned physicist
in the uk basically saying the same thing, saying, no, I think, you know,
from a scientific point of view, the only explanation is that we're dealing
with a conscious universe and that everything is conscious and that cells
a conscious, and consciousness is not, not a, not a product of the human brain.
That the human brain comes from consciousness.
Um, you know, and that old sort of Judeo-Christian idea of from
Descartes in the 17th century, I think therefore I am right.
Um, and so therefore only humans, you know, have spirituality,
emotion, soul, blah, blah, blah.
And of course this was taken up by the church with great alacrity 'cause
it meant one could get away with doing all sorts of horrible things.
'cause then you could also have a hierarchy of, within humans, you know,
who, who's more worthy than others.
And of course that turned out to be white people.
Um.
Especially, you know, ones who are gonna go and do some colonizing.
Um, all of that seems to be breaking down now, and the people who are
exploring fields of consciousness, um, in the western world all seem
to be coming to this conclusion.
Talk us through, um, your next journeys, because that was sort of
your icebreaker, if you like, right?
Where you you got the new perspective.
And I remember having that same response when I was sort of in my
late teens, early twenties, I think when I first ever did psychotropics.
I think I was living in Canada actually at the time, and, uh, when I first
did LSD and I realized this is before any of my exposure to sort of shamma
shamanism or anything like that.
And I remember thinking, this is really useful because this is like
being taken up to a window on.
Spirituality or window on altered consciousness or what now people
might call other fields, but you can't really go through that window.
The, the drug is also, it gives you the, the perspective,
but also is the limitation.
Um, and then later when I encountered, you know, sun Bushman healers and
others who could go through that window, um, I, of course, you know, my
life changed, but I remember thinking very early, yes, this is great.
I'm so glad I got a chance to see through this window, but I
can't go through that window.
You know?
So you, but so you kind of a bit did go through the window on that first
trip, but not perhaps fully right?
You're still.
Aware, well, this is a medicine I've taken, or this is a drug that
I've taken, it's brought me here.
How does it then develop, talk, talk us through the next couple, when's the next
sort of most significant moment in, in these journeys that stands out for you?
Right.
Ralf Daab: And, and this is very the most significant, uh, story I was
like before, went on the journey.
I said like, you know, I wanna really know what am I doing in my, my life here?
What is my purpose?
What is my calling?
Like, you know, am I really doing the things I'm supposed to do?
Like, uh, so sometimes you, you can ask questions before or, you know, but it's,
it's not necessarily that it comes up.
The subconscious will tell you what, you know, what's important.
But in this case, it came up and so I was listening to music.
It was, um, same thing.
It was on a mattress listening to music, and it was a kind of,
kind of Arabian melody music.
So suddenly I saw myself on a bazaar in Persia, but some hundred years ago.
So I was walking through, was bizarre, looking at, you know,
beautiful things like bases, like carpets, like beautiful things.
And the people like who were selling that, they know me, they, they
offered me to take, oh, take a look at here and there and there.
So, and then suddenly two guards came, like soldiers, and they Japanese said
like, oh, I, you are Ralph, right?
And, um, yeah, I said like, yeah, um, come on, the, the Salton wants to see you.
I said, Saltan, why Saltan?
Yeah.
Come on.
So, and, and I'm telling this story.
I'm really in that story.
I'm not, you know, looking from the outside and then
see the, I'm in the story.
It's the same thing.
As I said before.
My soul was in the, I like up in space now.
My soul was in Persia some hundred years ago.
And I, you know, I could hear the voices, I could see everything like, as I would
be there, like, so I was in the, in the.
Uh, I was, yeah, walking with the palace and, and towards the, the sultan.
So the Sultan said, hello, Ralph, very nice to see you.
Glad you came.
And, uh, and then he said that this is it.
They say, you can see the beauty.
Show me the beauty in this world, because I cannot see the beauty show the
beauty to me, and I will make you rich.
So I said, okay, all right.
So that's, and then I, this stopped, story stopped, and it was like in the
conversation with the guy was with me.
He said like, you know what, I could just experience I salt like
some hundred years ago in Persia.
He said, yeah, what does it mean?
Like your subconscious wants to tell you something of that.
So, yeah, yeah.
I'm doing books like for the last 20 years I published books on architecture,
art, fashion, you know, to show beautiful things, you know, to other people.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, all right, that's that.
So now, now I know that I'm doing the right thing, you know, because.
That's what my subconscious told me.
The funny, now the thing is like one of the next, not the next one, but the, the
journey after like, I don't know, four months later, did the Suan feel that you
did show him the beauty, or did Yeah.
That the story continues.
Mm-hmm.
Like four months later, say music comes up, you know, mattress.
And I was like, oh, I'm in Persia again.
And I said, oh, oh, let's see what's gonna happen.
So I'm in front of the S again and he says like, oh yeah, glad you're back.
I, you know, I watch you and then you do a good job.
Continue.
It is all right.
You know, that's, you're doing the right thing.
Uh, but I have to tell you something.
I said, okay, what do you have to tell him?
And he says, I don't exist.
I said, what do you mean you don't exist?
Who are you?
And then he says, in this word, I'm God, I'm the universe, and I'm you.
And then he vanished.
He, he exposed, he's gone.
The palace is gone.
Everything is gone.
I'm on the mattress, I'm back.
And the said what?
Yeah.
And then talking to the guy, I said that, yeah, it was just happens.
Had the high spiritual, uh, experience saying like, it's all in my set.
And me the sultan is just, I'm you.
He said, like, it's in me.
So it's all there.
And that's, that's an incredible story.
Now, um, now I know that I'm on the right path.
So what happened then is we were in California two years ago and we
were down in San Diego, LA Jolla.
It's like, uh, a place I know, 'cause I've been there many times when I
lived in the us So I was going to the bookstore and check out the bookstore.
So there was a, I sort of sign psychic reading.
I said like, ah, I'm curious.
Let's say, let's go there.
So I called and said like, come like in half an hour.
So, um, so walk in and there's an old lady, beautiful setting, you
know, it was more like a gallery.
And I asked her, what, what can you do?
So, and she said like, I, I can do a reading.
I said, okay, let's do it.
So one hour she said, like you said, just sit down.
You don't say anything, you know, just listen.
And after that you can ask questions.
Like afterwards, in one hour she told me everything about my childhood, my, my
life, my relationships, my, the things I'm doing, business wise, everything.
And now it comes.
Then she told me, in a former life you were in Persia on Aza you were responsible
to show people beautiful things.
Can you imagine like a psychic reader in California?
That's real.
It's not, that's not a journey.
That's not, that's real life.
She tells me the story I experienced on an Emily MJ journey six months before.
Incredible.
And then, and then af especially then I knew that's, that's something real,
you know, now I know it's, it's there.
It doesn't matter if it's a journey and the image or it's real life.
It, it's, it's the same basically.
And how can she possibly know that, you know?
And, uh, did you ask her how she did?
Yeah.
And, and she said like, what?
Uh, she said, like, when I walked in, she said, like, I
was, she could see everything.
I was open.
She said like, uh, you know, you are very open.
And then I told her about the journeys.
She said, okay, now I know because you did the journeys, you're, you're very open.
You can, you know, so you're, um, I, I have a feeling also that I can, things
are channeled to me, you know, sometimes, you know, says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's all, that's you.
And it's incredible.
Then after that you said like, okay, now I'm, I'm really like, uh, the next level.
Of my myself, basically, you know?
So, and that showed me that what, what's in me, in my subconscious
comes out through the MDA major.
It is in real life.
It's like what calla, uh, synchronicity happens, you know, like you
experience things in real life.
Maybe you have a dream or you have a journey.
I'm the major, whatever.
Or maybe mushrooms and things are happening.
Um, and that's, I think, great.
It opens up
Rupert Isaacson: many doors.
Did she elucidate or do you feel that what's going on with a thing
like that is that you were dealing actually with a linear timeline?
Like I used to be that person I, I'm, I'm now reincarnated as this person?
Or do you or she feel that No, these are existing and overlapping parallels, fields
of consciousness, which are perhaps.
Happening simultaneously.
Yeah.
It's more like I experienced it happening all at the same time.
So you are still the Yeah.
It's, uh, person in Persia.
Yeah.
And you are still whoever you were or will be, right?
Ralf Daab: Right.
Even like in, in formal lives.
But also now I'm still the young Ralph, the, the baby Ralph, the, the
5-year-old Ralph, the 15-year-old Ralph.
I'm, I'm also, but I'm also the 90-year-old Ralph.
Old, old Ralph already I'm, everything's at the same time.
It's just a different perspective.
You know, when you look at this and you can say it's just, if I'm like,
um, I'm now 60 years old, so if I go like 55 light years away, I look to the
earth and I see the 5-year-old Ralph.
So it's all at the same time.
And the great thing is what I experienced myself, is to find the
old, the 5-year-old Ralph again in me.
To let the, let the, the young Ralph play again, like the, you know, be
silly, be, you know, open and, uh, yeah.
And that's a great thing.
So to know that everything is there at the same time, time is nothing.
Time
Rupert Isaacson: is, was it, was it Einstein who said that time may
just be a particularly stubborn illusion brought about by gravity?
Um, yeah, I'm not sure I understand that, but that's certainly something he said.
Um, but I, I suppose I could actually, because if you add weight and mass
to things, you know, you've probably seen those diagrams of the idea of
space and time being like a net.
And you put planet like ball that sits on it, goes whoop, like that.
Yeah.
Right.
And that warp kind of effect of like the ball on the blanket with a
blanket then gets a big bulge in it.
If we are sort of in the middle of that, we then might experience that
heaviness, that weight as time could be.
Could that be, I mean, that sounds as, as feasible as anything else to me.
I don't see why that wouldn't be, particularly when you've got
people like Einstein saying it.
Um, okay.
Take us through the next, uh, thing.
But before you get there, there's actually just something I'd like to also add.
When I've been with indigenous peoples frequently, their perception
of time is not, uh, linear.
It's often more vertical.
The idea is again, that it's all these things are happening simultaneously.
You own lifespan is happening simultaneously.
You are, as you say, your young self, your old self, your dead self, your previous
self, your next self, all of that.
That's all at the same time.
It's just that where your awareness is, is now.
Yeah.
Um, and that, of course there is only the present because no
one's ever been able to see.
Anything else.
Um, but there are all those presence are constantly going on together.
And I've had that, I've had that presented to me many, many
times in indigenous settings.
Um, and then watch people do really interesting things with that.
Then I just say it.
But then they will go into an altered set of consciousness and in front of my eyes,
pull something physically outta somebody's body who's sick and they get well.
Again, I, I've seen that many people who've gone and spent time
in those sorts of parts of the world would have similar stories.
Um, so clearly it's been put to some sort of practical use.
Um, it's just within our context in our culture, we find it confusing.
Tell us then again, you, okay, so there's, there's you in Persia twice.
There you are in San Diego.
And the lady says, oh yeah, you were in Persia.
Um, what's the next one that takes you deeper?
I can tell you a story.
Ralf Daab: I mean, we are under us now.
Now it's very confidential.
Oh, no.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: I've hit the course.
Ralf Daab: You
Rupert Isaacson: don't want it.
Ralf Daab: No, no, no.
It's really, I can tell the story because it's once, this story is really, when
I do the reading, you know, especially woman asked me, how, how did you do that?
So I had sex with myself.
Ah, I
Ralf Daab: explain it now.
Were you good?
Yes, absolutely.
And then, and it was incredible what a relief
Rupert Isaacson: would be.
Ralf Daab: Can you imagine if you like, well, that was a bit shit.
No, no, I was, um, yeah, same thing.
So I was, music was good.
I was feeling really good.
And, uh, so I, I started touching myself, but it felt like, you know,
I'm touching somebody else, like with my hands, with somebody else.
And I realized, oh, you know, came up.
Oh, sex is good, you know, and then I saw myself as a man, as I am as Ralph.
But then I realized there's something different.
So I was also the woman.
I was both, I was me and the woman, and I felt both, you know,
both sides, basically both feet.
I, I could feel myself and when I, when I, as Ralph as a man touched
the woman, the Ralph, whatever name touched, I could feel both sides.
So, and then we had sex, and then we really had sex.
So we had Did you enter yourself?
Yes.
Did you feel
Rupert Isaacson: yourself being entered by you?
Yes.
Ralf Daab: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you, you as a man know what it feels like to penetrate, how did it feel
to be penetrated from that feeling?
Very, very, very, very good.
It felt very, what can you, can you, can you be more specific?
Like,
Ralf Daab: I felt like, I felt it was very tender.
It was like smooth.
It was lovely.
It was, you know,
Rupert Isaacson: very, uh, what was the emotional component of
having this lover inside you?
It was love.
Ralf Daab: It was, it was, it felt like love, you know, like
everything, you know, so it felt.
Felt like I, I was, I would be one once, you know, everything in both.
But I, I had my, the, the feminine side and I had the masculine
side, and it was incredible.
So I, for me as a man afterwards, I was saying like, okay, it's good.
I'm, I'm very soft.
I'm tender, I'm, I'm, I'm a good man.
I'm very, you know, like, um, you know, so I, I think that woman feels
feel good in my, you know, with me.
So, and the other side was like, oh yeah, he's a good, he's great.
He's, uh, um, so it was both
Rupert Isaacson: sides.
And he's credible, like when I, do you think it was an exercise in
self-acceptance in some metaphorical way?
Yeah.
Kind of.
Kind of,
Ralf Daab: yes.
Yeah.
It was funny, like, uh, when I do the readings, most women ask
me, oh, how, how does it feel?
And then how, how does it work to get into that feeling?
Because they wanna experience the same thing, but also as a man.
Sure.
You know,
Rupert Isaacson: everyone has that curiosity.
And then for
Ralf Daab: me it was like, this journey was like to, to show me
that everything is also in me, the feminine side and the masculine side.
And my feminine part, I would say is also, I would say, bit
larger than maybe other men.
So I have real good feminine side also.
And that was this journey, you know, to experience, uh,
the sexual part on both sides.
Rupert Isaacson: So,
Ralf Daab: yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: it's interesting that you say that because I have a,
it's not exactly a recurring dream, but it's a dream where the, there's
a recognition that is recurring, um, where sometimes I meet a young
woman, and this has happened to me.
Oh.
Many times in the, over the decades, and there's this absolute falling
in love and but also a sense of, I know you, and sometimes we
make love and sometimes we don't.
But there's always this great joy and a feeling of homecoming and acceptance.
And then when I wake up, sometimes I wake up with tears, not from loss, not
because I've had to wake up and that person has gone, but sort of tears of joy.
And then at a heart level, what comes through is, oh, that was your soul.
You met your soul.
And it's interesting to me that my soul is always feminine
and occasionally it's a horse.
Mm-hmm.
Occasionally I meet a horse that talks, we don't make love.
Um, but we do hang out and we, and we, um, the interactions we have are very sweet.
Very loving.
There is this feeling of
a family, family or so less romantic than when I meet the young woman.
But nonetheless, the same exact feeling and the same heart
thought, that's your soul.
And then I'm always so grateful afterwards.
I always do a meditation or, or pray around gratitude and say, thank you,
thank you, thank you God universe for allowing me to make contact
with my soul like that because it means that I can carry that feeling
around with me almost like a little happiness garden, um, inside myself.
Um, and it sounds like you are describing.
A very, very intense version of something like that, perhaps.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Um, has that happened to you again since, or No.
Was that a one time?
That was a one time, yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
But it's there now.
Now I know.
Like, it's in me
Rupert Isaacson: like, like
Ralf Daab: Right.
Do
Rupert Isaacson: you
Ralf Daab: feel
Rupert Isaacson: you can access that state?
Yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's with everything, you know, the thing is like, every story is comforting.
I think that that's the word I'm trying to Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Every story I experience like is, it's in me.
It's, it's, it's right there, you know, different situations.
I can pull it up and say, oh, yeah.
Um, there's another great story I tell you.
Mm-hmm.
Please.
Um, I always had a dream for years because you were talking about a dream.
Um, in real life, like, I had dream like years and years and years.
I, I, you know, I was flying a lot, you know, when I lived in New York, I was
like always on the, you know, plane.
Like, I don't know.
I.
Every week almost.
Um, I never had fear of flying or, you know, something, but in that
dream, um, the plane crashed and, uh, in the, in the dark woods.
So, you know, I survive and everybody in the plane survive.
So, but I'm standing in the front of the wreck, the, the
wreckage that, of the plane.
And then the dream always stops there in the, in the, in darkness.
And this is a dream
Rupert Isaacson: outside of these MDMA journey, right?
Right.
Like the dream
Ralf Daab: I had like, for, for years, 10 years or so.
Okay.
Even, even more 15 years or so.
Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm standing in front of the wreckage and, and, uh, and
it's dark and then the dream stops there.
I wake up and the dream stops there.
So on one of the journeys, the dream comes up.
Same thing.
I'm standing in front of the wreckage and, and now I start walking.
Into the darkness.
You know, it, I could see nothing.
It was just black, you know, woods black, nothing could see anything.
How about I keep walking and then suddenly a, a girl stands there in
this white skirt, like a little, like five year, four year girl, girl.
And she puts me like an amlin around my neck.
And then she, she tells me that, go your path into the light.
Walk into the light.
So I keep walking, walking.
Suddenly I see a light, you know, in the woods.
So, and I get there and then, uh, and there's a huge deer like in,
in the middle, standing there in the light, and he steps aside.
And I go in there and I start dancing in that space where the light is.
And then suddenly I, I'm, I'm on a stage.
I'm in a huge stage, and then the curtains open, and then there are
thousands of people applauding.
And then, uh, I'm, I'm back there on stage dancing again.
So what tells me that metaphor was like, yes, I was, I was broke, you
know, I was like, you know, lost kind of like, and I was lost in real
life, so I was lost standing there.
I was not dead, but, and then I start walking and this little
girl gives me like an omelet.
Like say, okay, go into the light.
And then I'm, I'm on stage dancing and I'm back into my life.
I'm back on stage.
I'm, so, it's a fantastic story for me.
And ever since it's like, I don't know, two years ago, never had that dream again.
'cause it's the, the, the situation is solved now, you know?
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm back on stage and there was an old life that
Rupert Isaacson: had to end, uh, sort of.
Uh, yeah, very businessy, very flying, roundy involved type life.
Right.
It needed to end, but when that ends, of course, yeah.
One feels lost for a while.
Yeah.
Until one is put on the next stage.
I could see, I could see the logic of that.
Um, so that was really like,
Ralf Daab: uh, yeah.
Never had that dream again.
I don't need that dream again.
'cause now I'm back in state basically kind of like, okay, I'm back
Rupert Isaacson: now before we come to where you are back to, which
is different to where you were and perhaps an old self did have to die.
Um, talk to me about death.
So with these journeys, you experienced perspective, you
experienced love and self-acceptance.
You experienced.
Uh, different fields of consciousness and vertical parallel timelines.
Ralf Daab: I know what you,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Have you experienced death and if so, yes.
Yes.
Tell me about that.
Yes, I experienced
Ralf Daab: my own death and it was wonderful.
Um, some people would say, oh, scaring, or, you know, I don't
want to, you know, experience that I did and it was wonderful.
So the thing is, I, I was, you know, um, same thing, you know, mattress music
is on and I see myself on the beach in os Gore, that's in France, like on
the Atlantic Coast where we go almost every year, uh, for a long time now.
Um, it's like a soul place for me.
Like it's, you know, so I see myself like on the beach sitting
there in the arms of a woman, but I don't see the woman behind me.
But I'm sitting there and then I.
The number 96 comes up.
So my age, 96.
I say, wow, that's fantastic.
I'm 96 years old.
I had a good life.
I, uh, it's a lot of time.
Um, so, and then I felt that my soul is leaving my body, you know, it's like going
out of my body, like over the sand and the water up in the, through the cloud.
There were no clouds, but, uh, up in the sky and then into space and, and it said
like, I'm dying and actually a diet.
And the woman behind me said, like, you know, I'm, I'm coming with you later.
And, uh, I love you.
That's the last thing I heard.
I love you, but I couldn't see the woman, so I don't know who it is.
Yeah, no.
So that's, um, but it was a wonderful experience.
It was, uh, very, very smooth, very uh.
Not hurting, nothing.
You know, it was like going in back into space.
It, it just felt really, really wonderful.
And then being 96, I said like, you know, if that's, this
is really, I'm gonna be 96.
Wow, that's great.
You know, so I still have, you know, about, it was 56 at that
time, so I have 40 years to go.
It is fantastic.
You know, so, and if I die 90, say whatever can happen to me now, that being
Rupert Isaacson: 16
Ralf Daab: again.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
That's the other story.
Now that, that's the part I experience on the MDMA journey.
But, so three months later we are actually in our school.
I go for a walk on the beach.
I have music on.
That's what I do.
Like once a day I going for a walk and then I stop.
And at that, I'm at that point where I said, oh, here has, here is this, here's
a place where I die so I could see it.
And I, I got showered.
It felt like boo goosebumps wall.
I.
I start crying, you know, say, wow, this is, here's a place.
So I then did calculations, said like I was 56.
Then I said, I, when I 96, it's 40 years to go.
When I subtract that from 56, I'm 16 years old now, and I can start all over
again with everything, with relationship, with business, with everything.
And I still have 40 years to go, wow, how fantastic is that?
So, and then I started crying and laughing and I was dancing on the beach
and I was like, wow, this is fantastic.
So that was real, you know, so that's what I said earlier with with when you
have like the experience with, with the Saltan or you know, with things
that happen in, in on the MDMA journey.
And then you have experience like in real life you say, well, that's
the same thing, you know here.
The, his story continues in real life, so I.
It was just fantastic.
And I said like, I don't have fear of death, nothing.
So what, what else, uh, can happen to me?
And one thing is like, uh, a friend of mine, tma, he died in November of cancer
last November, very sad age of 58.
So, um, and last year I took him twice on the journey, MDMA journey.
And he experienced also his death on his first journey, um, which helped
him a lot to, at the end, I was in the hospice with him the last three days.
And he told me the story, like how he died and he was great.
He was, you know, going into the light and he had no fear, you know, and he left
and with no fear and he gave me so much power and energy and it was incredible.
So, for him, this MDMA journey was wonderful, you know?
Going through this whole process, and then eventually he died then.
But, uh, it was great.
So for him and for me also, yeah.
So these are things that, uh, that's why I also like, uh, going, I dunno
when next week, two weeks, we're gonna do like, uh, MDA journey again.
Like this is like, just experience.
Like what, what's coming, you know, you can look into the
future, um, or I can look into the future, or I can ask questions.
So like, what is, what, what's coming next?
Or ideas is something I should, uh, I should look at.
Or what also happens is, um, that's what the, the psychic reading
told me also, like, I should be open to, uh, to channeling.
And that's happening also.
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it's now, I, I sleep very
well because one thing is also like, it helped me a lot in the last six months
without the separation, the ending of the relationship and everything.
I.
I don't drink alcohol in it no more for six months now.
And it's great, you know, I feel good.
I sleep better.
I, I'm clear.
So it's, it's fantastic.
So I wake up most of the time, early in the morning, like 5 30, 6.
And then in that stage I'm, I'm just saying, okay, I'm
open, just channel whatever.
Like, I'm talking to the universe, they're like, oh, let, let me know
what I, you know, should look at.
And, uh, and I, I get messages.
It's, it's amazing.
Can you give us some
Rupert Isaacson: examples?
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
It's like, um, some people come up, they say, oh, you should talk to him.
Or some people like, um, like yesterday for example, was some like really like
a name came up or I saw the picture actually of a person who I've seen for
like years said I should talk, contact him, you know, so that kind of thing.
And I sent an email yesterday.
Got a response, so maybe a new project.
So that's kind of things, you know, oh, let's say I should do this or that,
or just some, sometimes small things.
But yeah, it's kind of like, or I see get also sometimes messages
for other people when I, when I, um, see oh, there's something going
on, and yeah, be careful, you know?
So I think it's more like, and then you tell
Rupert Isaacson: that person, I saw this.
Ralf Daab: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: keep your eyes
Ralf Daab: open.
It's like what Psyched told me, like you are very open, you know, um, you
know, a higher frequency basically.
And I feel that sometimes, you know, that, um, I can get messages
or feel something and, um.
That's what Yeah, it's, it's, it's great.
So it's nothing I'm, I'm afraid of, you know, so it's just really good.
And that's why, you know, I'm continue also doing, doing like, uh, I'm
starting doing Kundalini now because Kundalini yoga is also spiritual,
you know, it's a connection between spirit and body and everything.
It's, it is part of the spiritual journey.
Um, or, uh, the go meditation I did last weekend in, in Hamburg was fantastic.
Have you done go meditation?
Wow.
I have not,
Rupert Isaacson: but I have, I have done things with singing bowls and frequencies.
Um, I was recently in Grand Rapids, Michigan and um, went through a
meditation with singing balls, very similar to gongs actually.
And one of the things which the practitioner did as we were lying
there, was with a tuning fork coming around and then putting the tuning fork.
To the skin, um, at the frequency of the bowl.
And I, what I found, um, extraordinary about that was that I didn't experience
it as like a vibration or a buzzing or a tickling or something that you'd,
you'd expect I experienced it as color.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and
deep sense of peace.
And I was actually there with my son.
I was there with Rowan, uh, sc you know who's Yeah.
Okay.
My whole story really?
Yeah.
We were there
Rupert Isaacson: together and he'd been actually helping me
with a, an autism training.
Um, you know, he often comes on the trainings now and helps explain
autism from the inside to people.
Um, and to be going through that experience with him was lovely.
And actually that, that.
What you just said brings me sort of to the next thing, which is I think
some people will be listening saying, oh, well, does that mean I have to
do a psychotropic substance in order to begin to access these states?
And of course the answer is no.
No.
Um, all of my early experiences with those ulcer state of consciousness as
healing have been with, um, cultures where those plants just don't grow.
So for example, in the Kalahari, in southern Africa,
there are no psychotropics.
So the healers dance themselves into trance, um, but then are incredibly
effective whether they are healing or whether they're contacting ancestor
spirits for, um, answers to a dilemma or whether they are, whether it's hunting
magic, and they just need to know where the lions are so they can go the
other way the next day, or, or, or, um.
Of course, those who know my story know that it, it even got tied up
with the human rights and political, um, uh, struggle that the son
were in, that I was helping with.
Where I realized that what was happening was the lawyers that we
were, uh, hiring for them because they've been kicked off their land
illegally to make way for diamond mines.
Were going talking to the.
Community who would then go and talk to their healers, who would then go into
trance and go into the spirit world, come back with a series of instructions, tell
that to the community, who would then tell that to the lawyers, and then that
would be the strategy for the courtroom.
But the lawyers had no idea that they were being directed from the spirit world.
And when I realized that that was going on, I, oh my gosh, I
can never tell these guys this.
'cause what?
It'll put them off their game.
But what happened was that, you know, us with the measly, you know, a
hundred thousand that we managed to, uh, raise up against DeBeers Diamonds.
The Bushman won
the largest land claim in African history, and then several more after
that and did indeed get to go home and did indeed see the whole process
through, um, no psychotropics involved.
Then a few years ago, I was going through a rather difficult.
Period.
And I was experiencing a lot of fear and it was beginning to take over.
And I was with a healer I know in the Americas who
heals in the Lakota tradition.
And there they do use a psychotropic, they use peyote, um, which is partly,
you know, dimethyltryptamine, DMT, strongest hallucinogen known to man.
And he said, Rupert, I can just see we were in a sweat lodge.
And I'd done that before, sweating through.
He said, I can see you need medicine, you know?
And I was like, no, I do.
The last thing I need right now is I'm just clinging onto
my sanity by my fingernails.
The last thing I need is some kind of psychotropic drug is ripper.
How long have you known me?
You know, do you feel I'm a professional or not?
Good?
Fine.
You know, so he says, I'll give you, you know, the dosage
I think that you should have.
And what was so interesting was I.
After a while, I became aware of like a little red laser that
you might see in a PowerPoint.
Mm-hmm.
Going through my body and stopping at areas where I had stiffness and pain.
Oh.
And it would go b
beep, and then it would move on and the pain would, at that place would be gone.
And then a certain point it crossed into my brain and it
started going around my brain.
And everywhere it was finding fear and anxiety.
It would stop and go B,
you know, and it would be gone.
And like it was finding, you know, cortisol scarring effectively from
stress and taking that away, which we know oxytocin can do naturally, but this
was happening very, very, very quickly.
And I remember thinking, well, this is great, but you know, the drug's gonna
wear off and then it will all come back.
But it never did.
The healing was real and lasting.
But the reason I'm telling that story and then the stories from.
Previously when no medicine was involved is, I think, speaking to your point
where you've now been four years letting, let's say the plant medicine because
MDMA is effectively a plant derivative or, or, uh, you know, synthesize drugs
are effectively plant derivatives.
And now you're finding, oh, actually I no longer need that to access.
Right.
The, and you know, and even though it doesn't mean I'm gonna reject it, I
will still continue to do those things, but I know it, it's done its job
for having provided me the, the, the way through the window, if you like.
Would you say that that's
Ralf Daab: true?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
It goes faster.
I mean, there are different ways to, and everybody can find, they should
find their own own way to, to get there.
Um, it's just a little faster, I would say, you know, it's.
You can do it like one day, basically a journey.
And when you do other things, you have to train it, you have to
like, yeah, really get into it.
It can take hours or like weeks, decades or decades, you know, you could get
there, but it takes a long, longer time.
So with, with MA or maybe other things like, uh, mushrooms.
And so it, it gets faster because, you know, there's nothing you can do.
You just, it's gonna act on the way it's gonna happen that way.
Yeah, right.
So, um, it's basically, you know, just to bring the body to, to
produce more dopamine, you know, or certainly, you know, so, but yeah.
But a lot of people are afraid or they're like, um, don't want to take
drugs, you know, of course, you know, maybe, uh, self-control, whatever.
And they always say like, you know, drugs, what is drugs?
You know, like medicine is, it's all drugs and it's as a therapy, it, it helps.
I mean, like, it's, it's proven, you know?
So, um.
Post-traumatic traumas.
You know, in other countries like Australia, it's legal now they, they
do it and, uh, they're working on it.
I think also in the u in US and even in Europe.
So it takes some years, but then it will be, for therapy, it will be legalized.
MDMA, right?
MDMA.
Yeah.
MDA.
And of course it used to be.
Used to be, used to be.
So, um, yeah.
But there are different ways and everybody can find their, their own way.
And it should be, it is no dogma.
It's no dogma to say you have to do this to get there, you know, so.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Um, it, it's also interesting that you talk about Kundalini,
because the Bushman have a, a similar idea, you know, Kundalini's supposed to
reside at the base of your spine, right?
Mm-hmm.
And it's a life force, a sexual energy that you can, um, begin to manipulate
the Bushman colic mum and forward slash.
Um, the forward slash is that click that, and mum is one of those,
uh, untranslatable words, which it can mean power, this type of life
force wisdom can mean many things.
Um, but they, what they do is they over years of training, learn how
to boil the, in their stomach, bring it into their stomach and boil it.
And the dance does this, and you'll see them get incredibly hot.
Wow.
And if you touch them, they're incredibly hot, but they'll even, they'll try
to cool themselves in the fire.
So they'll actually take swallow coals.
I've seen that many times.
Or lay in the fire, come up, unburned.
Very good.
Um, and then when the womb is boiling, which is very painful in the
early stages, when they're younger healers, they'll often faint or.
Sometimes they would say die and have to be brought back.
But as they get older, they learn how to ride it.
And then this is when they can not just be in the spirit world and do
what they need to do, but they can pull things out of people or put
things into people that are needed.
So it's clear that these things are as old as humanity because
the San are, the bushman are the oldest known culture on the planet.
And so the quest for the altered state of consciousness seems to be built
into our DNA, um, that to play with consciousness, which is why I think in
the past we've made, had the arrogance as humans to think we are the only ones
with consciousness, which now I think we're realizing clearly isn't true.
But because we're conscious of our consciousness in a certain way,
if you like, we're self-conscious, we have a great desire to.
Communicate with it, I think, and through it, and use it as medicine
and answer dilemmas through it.
And I, uh, as you say, whichever way you do it, um, there is no
one way but to be on that path.
Seems to be important for human happiness.
Yeah.
Would you not
Ralf Daab: agree?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yes.
You on certain, like one path to your own path, and then be curious, you know,
like go there and there, try things out, you know, like what I did like,
uh, following like some people like a podcast and then say, okay, that's good.
I, I, you know, now I follow somebody else or read other books or do
a seminar on, uh, meditation or the gong meditation, for example.
Just try things out, you know, and then you feel like when your body, or when
your consciousness, or when your spirit like reacts and what, what's best for you.
So, and like being on a path that's the most beautiful thing.
It is like, and uh, to, to, to experience new things.
To meet new people.
And it is, it is kind of like you, you meet other people, you meet
people who are also on their path.
You know, you, you connect very fast.
And, uh, um, and that's, that's the great thing about, uh, you know, being on the.
On the journey.
On the path.
And, uh, but as I said in the beginning is you have to let things go, you know?
Um, that's the other part I I seeing or meeting a lot of people.
They do a lot of things.
They, they, they go every, every day or three, four days a week, they go
to yoga and they do a lot things, but they still in the same environment.
There's still same jobs.
They're stressed, you know, they, they, they, you know, of course it's difficult
to leave everything, but, um, kind of like you have to like, kind of, you know, let
things go in order to receive new things.
You have to make room for new things.
Rupert Isaacson: It seems though that that process is almost built in.
Um, and I think a lot of people find this rather alarmingly, you know, when
they first get involved in this type of way of life, things can fall apart
very fast and that can be very traumatic at first, even though they may, they
are things that actually you look.
Back over a couple of years and you go, oh yeah, actually
I needed to let all that go.
Um, and I probably would've just clung onto it forever if it hadn't, if I
hadn't been literally picked up by a pair of forceps and placed over there.
Um, however painful that was, and I'd say it seems that you've gone through
something like this rather recently, because when I first met you, um,
you were, you know, living in vs.
Barden, which is
a nice town, it's a wealthy town, um, nice apartment, um, still very much in
the publishing life, et cetera, et cetera.
Then you went through something of disruption, um, about six months ago.
Um, and I remember and, and now you're living in this, in
an apartment in this castle.
Rather, rather romantic, um, in a very, very beautiful part of the countryside in
Germany that I know where you are and I know how beautiful the nature is there.
And it's interesting you've been sending me these, uh, pictures
on WhatsApp of, of the nature, and I'm like, ah, he's found it.
'cause one of the things which I was noticing through your story, um, and
they, you know, when, whether it was you, uh, working for Chen or you as the, uh,
Persian person showing people beauty, the, this is all about human beauty and things
that were made by humans and you know, Chen also fashion and models and that
kind of physical human beauty and as well.
But what I feel is often missing from all of that is nature.
Um, and of course the greatest beauty, of course, is always nature.
And that's why we, we react and respond to beauty in the way that we do because
nature is beautiful and nature is what we're supposed to be surrounded by.
And people actually, people are very beautiful.
Um, inside from doubt.
We're a very loving species.
Right.
You know, it's, it, so it's interesting to me that finally,
you know, in the last six months, there you are in nature by another.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you, those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you, it looks
like, well obviously we're, we're, we're talking across by Zoom in Ralph's
apartment within that castle, but I know what's outside that window and I know
that you're out in that nature now and you've really simplified, you've sort of
gone from, you know, home ownership and real estate and all of that stuff now
to saying, no, no, I'm gonna minimalize and I'm just gonna have this small
apartment to spend most of my time in nature while still working as a publisher.
Ralf Daab: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, it's interesting to me,
Ralf Daab: and one thing is also like, uh, talking about, you know, when I
said the, the, the, the salt in the Persia, you know, show the beauty.
Uh, what I realize now, it's not only it was back then or still is sometimes of
course with the books to show the beauty outside, but it's also like, my purpose
is also to show the beauty in people.
Mm-hmm.
To help people to go on their path to, to develop or show their own beauty.
And that's also, you know, one thing I'm gonna do in the future to help
people, uh, to show their own beauty because every person is beautiful.
So, and then how.
Well, but, um, yeah, with seminars, with, uh, you know, I did like, uh, coaching,
um, um, as a neuroscience coaching.
I have like a certificate, whatever you call it, you know, and then I did,
uh, meditation, spiritual, and I'm doing a kundalini, uh, practicing.
So things like put it together, but also my.
Strength is what I can do really good is like bring people together.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, the funny thing is, like a year ago I was still in Spartan,
I was in rgo, which is beautiful, you know, the wine area with wines.
And so, and I was standing there and said like, ah, well this is beautiful.
This is beautiful and, and good energy for me.
And it's like I would live in a place like here, like where you can live,
but also where you can do seminars, you know, like a house or so.
And now I'm no longer at Beach Spot, but I'm here now and I have, I found a place.
It's incredible.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you, can you do seminars now
Ralf Daab: in Yes.
This, here they're, they event place, they're weddings are here,
seminars here, there's a big space terrace outside Nature.
It is a perfect place for seminars.
So we can, we start doing like in, in four weeks, we have a seminar here I'm
organizing, so I bring people here.
That's, you know, uh, organized things, festivals.
I wanted to do a festival here, music festival overlooking
here, the Rhine Valley.
It's, it's just incredible.
So can you imagine like a year before, like last year or,
or it was more than a year.
I mean, last year was, and I had this vision and now I'm here and I
can do it, and it's, it's happening.
So it's not, you know, I had to, had to leave things in v spot and,
you know, also the relationship.
But now everything can come and can, you know, organize.
I'm not looking for a relationship now, but never know.
But everything is can happen now.
So.
And you're still
Rupert Isaacson: publishing?
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So listen, if people want to read your
book, um, there you are again.
Um, yeah.
How do they find it?
Ralf Daab: Well, there's a, there's a website.
It's called um, books.buy.
It's a print on demand website.
Mm-hmm.
Website.
It's actually based, the company's based in Australia, but it's all over the world.
And they can place order, uh, print on demand.
So it's free shipping worldwide.
Um, you can place the order, you can order the book and they find a
printer near you, like someplace.
Let's say when you order here, maybe in Germany or France, and they ship it to
you free, free shipping, free of charge.
It's, I think it's 20.
And that's in
Rupert Isaacson: English, obviously.
That's the English.
Yeah, of course in English.
There you are again.
English book, that book.
Stop by.
So people go to book, book start by slash
Ralf Daab: HHOL.
You can put it maybe slash HOL living.
HOL.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Great.
And then they would look for, there you are again.
Ralf Daab: Right.
It's on there.
You can.
They can buy it, they free shipping and then they can read.
So yeah.
And
Rupert Isaacson: if people want to reach, reach out to you and want to be,
you know, well, they, they could send email questions about their own healing
or wanna be part of your seminars or come visit Yeah, they could contact
Ralf Daab: me.
Yeah.
How do they contact you?
Well, there's, uh, by email's best like ralph@highonliving.com.
Rupert Isaacson: So R-A-L-P-H Ralph, no FF with an F right in the German way.
RALF at
Ralf Daab: Hi.
Hi.
On living.com.
High on
Rupert Isaacson: living.com.
Ralph, with an F.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: High on living.com,
right?
Yeah.
Reach, reach out to Ralph listeners.
He's, he's, yeah, please do.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
And come up here like, if you visit, uh, Germany or near
Cologne, you cannot up be here.
Yeah.
Hiking.
It's, it's a beautiful place.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run up the, uh, a three.
Yeah.
Come, come here.
Right.
Take exit bat.
Ralf Daab: Bat exit.
Lin.
You're right here.
So bad Ho.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I know exactly where that is.
We help someone buy a horse from Bad Ho.
Uh, yeah, it's right here.
Great horse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ralf Daab: They're up here.
They're 50 horses up here, so see them in the morning when they come out the stalls
and like run and run and, and I, yeah.
Well, maybe we'll do something with
Rupert Isaacson: horses together then.
Yeah.
It should come.
That's, it's really wonderful.
Okay.
All right, Rael, thank you so much.
Well, thank you, Rupert.
It's been a, been a, yeah.
Wonderful journey.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Great, great.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So any last words of wisdom before I click off the record?
Ralf Daab: Last word of wisdom.
Well, I would say it's all energy.
It's Albert Einstein.
It is all energy.
And that's what I feel now.
I.
Going through all these journeys for the last four years is
basically even with my plan.
My plan, when you see it here, it was like this tall, basically in, in this button.
It didn't grow, but it didn't die.
But here it's growing like fast.
I went a beautiful, so I know I'm at the right place because
plant is feeling good, you know?
Rupert Isaacson: So it's all energy.
Ralf Daab: Yeah, it's
Rupert Isaacson: all energy.
That's right.
As Nicola Tesla said, also, I think, um, if you want to know the secrets of
the universe, you have to think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
Yeah, exactly.
And it seems that, well, I guess every electronic device we use goes back to him.
So Yeah.
Clearly these guys had, you know, yeah.
Had something.
All right, well, all right.
Parallel universes, um, vertical timelines.
Medicines to help us radically shift our viewpoints.
By the way, that, that's something I, I, I wanted just to throw in there.
I was looking at the neuroscience of, um, of, uh, psychotropics and
it does seem that what happens with people is massively, massively, um,
augmented, uh, neuron new neural pathway development when these happen.
'cause of course it's also new, similar to what you get with novel movement,
novel ways of moving, BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which
normally you only get through movement.
Um, it seems that this can be massively boosted with the use of psychotropics.
And I guess our ancestors must have known this.
Yeah, of course.
Um, yeah.
Maybe that's that thing of allowing us to see mm-hmm.
What we can't normally see.
So there you are again.
There you go.
Buy it from books.
Stop by slash HOL.
Give Ralph an email at rlf@highonliving.com.
Yeah, I guess we'll see you on the next looking forward.
Ralf Daab: Yeah.
Yeah.
See you soon.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for having me.