Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2002 - Amanda Feilding
Uploaded: 2023-06-27T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2002 - Amanda Feilding' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-06-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2002 - Amanda Feilding' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-06-27. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2002 - Amanda Feilding

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Thank you very much for doing this.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
It's lovely to meet you.
And I really, really appreciate your life's work.
I mean, I think what you've done has been really remarkable,
particularly because of the time period in which you embarked in it.
I mean, you sort of got involved in psychedelics and psychedelic research
at the very beginning of it and when it was extremely controversial
and very difficult to do research.
Well, I actually got involved in it when it was incredible fun.
And I was incredibly lucky with my timing, I think,
because I was very attracted to the other side, if you like, the mystical.
Because I lived in this very, very isolated spot.
And one had nothing to do but kind of reach around
in a beautiful place, have mystical experiences, dream of the future.
Is that your phone?
Yes.
There we go.
When did you first get involved or even interested in what you would call
mystical experiences?
Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
No worries.
No worries.
No worries.
I don't know how to turn these things off.
Do you want me to turn it on mute for you?
Yes, please.
Okay.
These wacky kids today and their devices.
Ah, sorry about that.
No worries.
No worries at all.
So, how old were you when you first got interested in...
Um, very young, I should say.
Um, I came, uh, I had a kind of, in the, I grew up in this very isolated place.
Um, I was very, very close to my father, who came back from the war, a diabetic,
and he
was a very eccentric person, and so, from three, I was his carer, so I was like...
Three years old.
Yeah, which was a lovely role, I mean, I was his little pet dog, I went
everywhere with him.
I adored him, and he adored me, and so, and he was a very, um, out of the, he
wasn't
in normal society at all.
How so?
He just wasn't.
He was an eccentric and a charming, um, did his own thing, artist, um, a farmer,
but
not really a farmer.
He couldn't bear really farming, but, um, yeah, anyway.
So, um, and I suppose spiritually, I had three, my mother was a Catholic, so I
grew up
a Catholic, and then he was, whatever, agnostic, atheist, nothing.
I accepted a thinker.
I accepted a thinker, and, um, then his best friend, who was his kind of, he
picked up as,
um, he, the person that did all his work when he was at university, called Bertie,
um, was,
became a Buddhist monk, a rather famous Buddhist monk.
But so he was a big influence in the absence, because he was my godfather, and
so I had these
three influences, and so I kind of dreamt of doing magic, mystical things in
the world,
and, um, had mystical experiences, as lots of children do, and so then, um, I,
I'm sorry,
I can't quite think how to condense it, but anyway, I grew up in an unusual
setting, and,
um, with a passion for altered states, mystics.
I started studying them when I was probably about ten.
Really?
Yeah.
And, um, and it became rather a passion, and in, in the, the place we lived, it
just, it
got three moats, and it was very overgrown, and in between the moats there was
a, a mound,
very beautiful mound, where I had a kind of pet god who lived in the mound,
called Zeo, and
my kind of, um, my mission was making this god figure laugh, so that was the
aim of the
game.
So when, when you say you studied, uh, the mystical states at ten, like, how so?
How are you doing that?
Um, well, when I started reading, I started reading about it, but I didn't
really, I, I
don't know what I meant by that, but when I went to church, Catholic church
with my mother,
and there was incense and all that sort of thing, and I had kind of mystical
experiences
with Jesus, I was very close to Jesus in those days, and, um, then, uh,
whatever, uh, but
it was a kind of rather wild, quite a dangerous upbringing.
Um, we had to do the farming, it was quite, it was a mixture between, you know,
the kind
setting, but quite a mixture with peasant life, of looking after the animals,
and, um, farm,
farm animals, pigs, cows, all of that sort of thing, and, um, then at one point
I decided
I wanted to leave home, and I went to a boarding school, which was a terrible
mistake, and, um,
I was a convent, and, actually, I won the sound, when I was 16, won the sounds
prize, I was
quite clever, but I hated it, and lived outside the boundaries of the school
all the time.
And then I wanted books on Buddhism, because I, for my prize, and the nuns said,
"No, no,
we can't give you books on Buddhism," and so I said, "All right, I'll, I'll, I'll
leave,
thanks very much, and educate myself," which is what I did, I left school at 16.
Really?
And, um...
And it was because they wouldn't allow you to study Buddhism?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what I chose to study, and they wouldn't, so I said, "Thanks."
In the original days of the church, the incense, what they would walk down the
aisle with,
that was cannabis.
Yeah, that, that was beautiful.
Yeah.
I mean, the one thing I loved about that convent, there was a, in the chapel,
they had
even song, and this Italian nun with the voice of an angel, and it really, with
incense, took
one into a mystical space.
Yeah.
And that was very special, that was the high point of it.
They used to use cannabis, and then the host, what did the host used to be?
The host, I mean, obviously, originally, it was a psychedelic.
Yes.
Yeah.
Do we know what psychedelic?
I think different places are different ones, but kind of based on mushroom or
ergot or those
sort of things, funny enough, I'm rather keen on making sacred hosts.
I recently was involved in that, anyway, that's a different story.
But I would love to hear that story.
You make sacred hosts?
No, I don't, but I'm going to.
You're going to?
I'm intending to.
Well, once, actually, the story was very much shock, probably Catholic comrades,
once I was
in Paris, and we were walking by Notre Dame on a Sunday, and very high, and
went into the
church, and lovely Eucharist.
I hadn't heard all those wonderful songs.
I love those Latin, 16th century, 15th century chanting.
And so I experienced having the host again.
And it was so delicious.
Spiritually, it was wonderful.
And so I can absolutely see originally the host was a psychedelic experience.
it was so delicious.
And it was so delicious.
And it was so delicious.
Spiritually, it was wonderful.
And so I can absolutely see originally the host was a psychedelic experience.
And it was so delicious.
And it was so delicious.
And it was so delicious.
Spiritually, it was wonderful.
And so I can absolutely see originally the host was a psychedelic experience.
And it's with that music and the incense.
It's a beautiful spiritual experience.
Yeah.
I'm sure there was a psychedelic experience.
And it's with that music and the incense, it's a beautiful spiritual experience.
Yeah.
I'm sure that was probably the root of a lot of those religious ceremonies.
I think so.
Have you read John Marco Allegro's book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross?
No, I haven't.
No.
Is that a good one?
It's an amazing book.
Right.
John Marco Allegro was an--
Oh, yes.
I remember his name.
I remember his name.
I don't think I've ever read him.
He was an ordained minister who was a religious scholar and an expert on
language.
And he was one of the decipherers of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Right.
So he worked with that for 14 years.
They deciphered the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Right.
Yeah.
And then he wrote The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, which was his
interpretation of what
the Dead Sea Scrolls was really all about.
Right.
Right.
And he believed that the origins of Christianity were in the consumption of
psychedelic mushrooms
and fertility rituals.
Yes.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I'm sure psychedelics were the root of all of those spiritual practices and
part of them.
Most likely.
Yeah.
So when you were first experiencing these things, like what year are we talking
about when you
first got excited about these things?
Let me just think.
When was it?
Well, I first smoked cannabis when I was 16.
And funnily enough, the first time I smoked it, Ray Charles was playing.
Oh, wow.
And I felt this is paradise.
Yeah.
And I bet millions of people had Ray Charles and their first sounding of
cannabis.
But it was wonderful.
It's amazing what it does to music.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When I was 16, which was, I was born in '43, so I know who that was.
Anyway, that's when I started smoking cannabis.
And I was there at Oxford at that point with a very interesting group of, they
were older
than the other students because they'd been in Korea.
So they were much better educated.
And they were smokers.
And introduced me to wonderful books, like "Against Nature" and "L'Autrement"
and, well,
rather wonderful material.
And it was a very creative period.
And at that point, as I'd left school by then, I had somehow got the world's
leading expert,
like, what was the American one?
I can't remember.
Anyway, on Comparative Religions and Mysticism, someone called Professor Zainer,
who's at all
cells in Oxford and wrote a book called "Mysticists of the Sacred and Profane."
And he became my tutor.
So I went and saw him twice a week, which was a very kind of awkward meeting.
So, because I was very shy and he was very shy and it was in all cells.
And we both sat there cuddling the cats kind of thing.
And then finally I decided the best way forward was to bring my very, very
handsome cousin,
who was a student at Oxford, because he was gay.
And that kind of warmed.
Loosen everybody up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, very smart.
And then it became very friendly and fun.
Yeah.
But anyway, he'd written this book, which I actually didn't agree with, which
was saying
"Mysticism is sacred and profane."
Yeah.
And he was a Catholic combat actually.
And he thought that he'd had one experience with mescaline, I think it was, and
not liked
it.
And thought that they were a very different bracket to the experience you get
through an endogenous
mystical experience.
Interesting.
Which I don't actually think is necessary.
I think they're the same experience, but obviously with different qualities.
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're ready for a 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 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 it's true, which is the ape 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, wh