Name: Researcher Amanda Feilding on The Effects of Psychedelic Use on the Ego
Uploaded: 2023-06-27T17:28:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Researcher Amanda Feilding on The Effects of Psychedelic Use on the Ego' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-06-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Researcher Amanda Feilding on The Effects of Psychedelic Use on the Ego' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-06-27. Transcript available.

I've heard you say that you believe that what psychedelics do is make the
mind more fertile for these experiences. Is that a good way?
Yes, that's exactly what I think. I think you're at that level where the ego's
control has dissolved to some degree and so it's like fertile ground and so if
you've whatever pre trained or if you're ready for mystical experience you're
more likely to have it in that experience in that state of mind.
So the mind is actually restricting us in many ways through the ego
from having these experiences. Yes, I think so.
And what psychedelics do is release those boundaries.
Yes, I think that due to the evolution of man, homo sapiens, and are taking the
upright position.
This is a theory I was introduced to in 1966 and actually I think a lot of the
details are
probably wrong but in concept I think is true, which is the apes standing
upright.
One thing people haven't taken into account is obviously there are hundreds of
acids that
are standing upright. You free your hands, you run faster, you see further, all
of that.
But in the upright position, gravity is against the blood in the brain.
Because in the brain there are two fluid volumes, blood and cerebral spinal
fluid, which is water,
basically, which is made in the brain itself. So it has kind of squatters
rights in the brain.
So when you're in the upright position, gravity is pulling the blood down.
So I think probably with the upright position we lost a small proportion of our
blood supply.
I mean, some animals, if you tie them upright, a dog, for instance, if it's
tied up so it can't get down,
it will start howling and go mad because
it hasn't got the valves to keep the blood up.
And we've obviously got a certain amount, but maybe we lost some blood at that
upright position.
And as a compensation for that loss, I think we developed an internal mechanism
more than any other
animal has done it, which is to direct the blood where it most needs to go.
Obviously, all animals do that.
They have the power to send the blood where it's most important to survival or
whatever.
And I think that through the use of the conditioned sound, the word,
we learn to control that process more than any other animal.
And over the millennia, we kind of build up our power to do that. So I think
that's the secret of why humans,
you know, which is a talking ape, got control of the whole game because of our
creation of language,
which enables us to do all these incredible things we do.
But it also has a disadvantage that our basic state is slightly low in blood in
the dominant organ.
So we have to keep this this mechanism of tight control where the blood is
distributed.
And that is evolved with the ego, which is essential. I mean, we wouldn't
survive without the ego to kind of
be able to direct the blood where it's most needed. People who lose their ego.
And in the 60s, when people took large doses of LSD, as it was then, every day,
sometimes they lost their ego.
They flipped out. And there was one occasion of someone we knew who was in Ibiza.
And he'd flipped out and he put the key in the lock to open the door.
Someone would say goodnight to him. He put the key in the lock and left him.
And then in the morning, he was still there with the key in the door because
the head hadn't told him,
"Turn the key to open the door."
We need the words to keep us, you know, under control.
So the words have made us what we are, this incredible animal who can, you know,
have a nuclear war if we want,
or know all the atoms in the body, all those brilliant things we do, which is
amazing.
But we're also obviously a very deeply faulted animal at some point. We're, you
know, neurotic, psychotic, psychotic, you know,
all of those things because of this shortage of blood and then the dependent on
the meaning of the word.
So if we have a terrible conditioning, which a lot of people do,
the separation from reality is, in a sense, in the meaning of the word.
So the danger of our society now, in a sense, is we're getting further and
further away from
nature, in a sense.
And that, in a way, is why psychedelics can be a very useful medicine because
they increase
the connectivity with the senses, with the internal bodily senses and also the
outside perceptual senses.
So I actually think that we're entering a kind of new possible age, and that's
why for fun I call it the
psychedelic age, because for the first time we've got or getting the knowledge
by which we can actually
understand the brain better and understand how we can alter
the volume of blood in the brain, which is giving the brain energy. The whole
thing is about energy.
The more energy we have, the more parts of the brain can function
simultaneously.
And that obviously can be very creative, stimulating, empathic, by just having
more of the brain
functioning. And so I think that the knowledge of psychedelics, and when I say
psychedelics, I don't
actually mean necessarily psychedelics, because as we all know, one can get
these experiences endogenously
through exercise, or
Holotropic breathing, exactly, or breathing exercises. I mean, all the
spiritual training
all knew that. That's what they were doing in the spiritual disciplines, is
teaching people how to control
their internal
ego, and also their sense of consciousness.
And I think at the center of the spiritual experience is the getting higher and
loosening
the grip of the ego, so you're more in touch with nature.
Do you think that in the absence of these psychedelic experiences, one of the
problems with words is that we develop narratives,
and then we use our ego to reinforce these narratives, and we sort of deny
objective reality?
Yes. I think more and more, the word can become
the reality. I mean, in the creation of
words, which we all have, and have to have, and are thankful to have, but
nevertheless, it does create
a slightly different world. It's rather like
the shadows on Plato's wall, one gets one's internal addition of the world,
rather than the real experience of the world.
And so
I think it's good to be in contact with nature, and I think
it's a dangerous path that we're taking now, where it becomes more and more
life is the screen.
But still, that's where we're going, and it has great advantages as well as
dangers, kind of thing.
But I do think that the knowledge of getting high has always been central to
the human evolution.
And at the earliest demonstrations of what we've got, of the earliest
demonstrations of human culture,
say, the caves in Chauvet, do you know that?
Yes.
Yeah, which I think they've never been bettered. I mean, that artwork, the
brushstrokes of those animals,
they're alive, you can see the movement. No one ever did it better.
And it's like 30-something thousand years old?
Exactly, 35, 40, something around there.
Wow.
So, I can tell, because I, some respects an artist, I know those strokes.
Let's see, pull up some of those images, Jamie, because some of those images
are amazing stuff.
They're just incredible, aren't they?
Yeah.
The movement of the animals, the feeling.
Yeah, they did create a feeling of movement, like the animals were running.
Yeah, and the lines, I mean, anyone who paints, I mean, Picasso, I think, said,
without them, he would have never done what he did.
Or, I can't remember quite, but modern art isn't better, it gets as good, but
not really.
It's crazy, because they're depicting rhinos, too, which is really wild, that
there was rhinos in France.
Yeah, beautiful ones of horses, and buffaloes, and that's in the bowels of the
earth, they do it.
So, it was obviously a very spiritual, because why go into the bowels of the
earth, if it's just a kind of magical, spiritual experience they're having.
Yeah.
And so, I think, without doubt, they were high.
How they got there, was it through singing, drumming, or singing, or was it
through taking compounds?
Funny enough, I've recently been introduced, met a charming man, who's the
archaeologist in charge of Chauvet.
And I said, I'd love to be able to analyze and see if we can find out if there's
any remnants of some
psychopathic substance or something.
And he said, I was very welcome to go there.
So, I'm very excited about the possibility.