Ep. 85 - The Psychedelic Gospels with Jerry Brown

In re-harmonization is desperately needed on this planet in terms of compassion, kindness, caring for others, doing for others. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. Welcome to episode 85 of Synchronicity. My guest this week is the astoundingly excellent Jerry Brown, who along with his wife Julie wrote a book called The Psychedelic Gospels, which essentially explore the very psychedelic roots of Christianity, which is, I have intuited this from other ways, but what is amazing about this particular book is how well researched it is how much rigorous studying and confirming with leaders in the fields, proving essentially that images of a particular, well, several, but in particular Amorita Muscaria mushrooms and also psilocybin appear in imagery across Europe, the Mediterranean hidden in plain sight, as Jerry will explain, and really what separates this from a lot of other theories related to psychedelics and religion is they went after empirical proof, they wanted to verify their intuition, they wanted to confirm not only through metaphysical means but also through history, anthropology, sociology, ethnobotany, mycologists, they really wanted to confirm that this is actually what they were seeing and what they had discovered.

It's an amazing story, I highly recommend you pick up the book The Psychedelic Gospels. I think if you like this show, this is going to be right up your alley, there are going to be links on that on the episode page at sinkpodcast.com and also at minepodnetwork.com and in case you can't hear, I'm still dealing with allergies, seasonal allergies is just totally brutal this year. So if you have allergies, I feel for you, this podcast brought to you by seasonal allergies. Outside of that, guys, everything is going pretty great with the new schedule. Like I said, it's going to be doing five, six episodes a month now instead of just four.

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Don't hold it to yourself, share the wealth, share the love. That's, I'm going to cut it super duper duper short this week. Going to have some announcements next week about creative evolution, which is launching. I think last week I said late May, it is now going to be June 8th, 2017, I will have details on how you can sign up for that. I'm going to have two different versions, maybe three of the course available at different price tiers, so you don't have to fork over a ton of money and you can still get a pretty positive experience. The beta course wrapped up last week, really positive experience, got some, to meet some really wonderful people too.

And in other news, I said I was going to keep this short MindPod Network. Check out what's going there, go to the podcast page. We have added four, five podcasters will be added to MindPod Network by the end of May 2017. We just added Adam Summer, who was a previous guest on this show, and I was on his show exploring astrology. He's on MindPod Network now. We added Ellie Erin, who runs a wonderful podcast called the Ellie Erin Hour, about a lot of the same things we discussed here. She's in the Shambhala lineage, really cool chick out of New York. Check that out. Who else are we adding? Dan Yelly Bolelli, we're adding his Drunken Daoist podcast, so we're going to be syndicating that.

We have a couple of other really cool stuff on the horizon too that I will share with you potentially a event, not potentially, an event in August of this year. MindPod Network event, fairly sizable in New York City is shaping up. So with that, with that, now, without further ado, let's get to this super fucking awesome episode with Jerry Brown talking about psychedelic phosphorus. You know, we all have had, and even a population of non-psychadelic people have had prophetic dreams, intimations, unlikely strings of coincidences, all of these sort of things. These are experiences which cultures deny.

Cultures put in place, I'm sure you've heard this word, a paradigm, and then what fits within the cultural paradigm is accentuated, stressed, and what doesn't fit inside the cultural paradigm is denied, marginalized, argued against, and we live at the end of a thousand-year binge on the philosophical position known as materialism. But I was particularly fascinated about, by you and your wife because, like I said, before we were recording, we'll just consider ourselves rolling now. You know, I've had several very intense macro-dose experiences on mushrooms, silo-cybin, we're talking about the upper realms of probably what someone should do, so like, you know, between 9 and 14 grams, you know, which is not a small amount, and what I've been struck by each time I've taken that much is clearly the religious and transcendent and spiritual overtones that seem to be present on all of these types of entheogens if we want to call them that, but particularly with mushrooms, I believe that I tapped into something that many people refer to as Christ Consciousness, which is this energy or kind of awareness that is Christ-like, the recurring themes that I would say are present in that are this idea of selfless service, compassion, unconditional love, and not in a conceptual kind of let's think about these things way, but it actually felt experience.

So when she tuned me into the psychedelic gospels, which is this hidden connection between psychedelics and Christianity, which you've written with your wife, I was just blown away because this here, yeah, I mean, and truthfully, you know, we'll have links to the entire book and we'll talk about it extensively so people can pick this up, but you know, it's one thing to talk about the connection between psychedelics and Christianity and maybe some subjective or direct experiences we might have it's totally another to kind of weave this narrative and anthropological story that is backed up by imagery to this day that is from this stuff.

So I would love to, I know there's a lot to cover here and I know this is like a super long intro and there's a question in here I promise, but I would love to hear kind of before we get into the book and the overall general themes, I'd love to hear about what led you intuitively or synchronistically as you pointed out to this connection that seems now given what you've done to be pretty apparent. Okay, that is a long introduction and it is a good question at the end. First of all, after my first LSD experience in 1963, high in the mountains of Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, it was a tumultuous time in my life and I had a difficult and challenging and somewhat frightening experience.

You could kind of call it the shamanism 101 where there are powers and counter forces and how do you balance everything and find a balance among that and it kind of integrated led over into my everyday reality. So being an anthropologist and a founding professor of anthropology at Florida International University in Miami, where we created the catalog and the program, I designed and taught this course always called hallucinogens and culture, which I started teaching from 1975 up until 2014 when I retired and it's still being offered there. I won't go into the details of the course, but it is all about humanity's interaction with psychedelics, our entheogens, chemicals and plants that generate the divine within.

In the process of pulling together the case studies for this course, I really, and this is very comfortable for anthropologists, anthropology is intrinsically and interdisciplinary activity. I had to draw from art history, from classical studies of Greek and Rome, from anthropology, from mythology, from church history to name a few. And of course, I had to over time understand and be able to identify many of the psychoactive plants from cannabis to claviceps, papaya, and hallucinogen mysteries to banisteriopsis, which is one of the components in ayahuasca, to the peyote of the ritual. So having that background when in 2006, my wife and co-author, Julie and I, on an anniversary trip, were drawn to visit Roslyn Chappell, which is right south of Edinburgh, we were going to Scotland.

We were drawn there by the Da Vinci Code's references to it, both in the book and in the movie. And while there, the Roslyn Chappell is the most incredible Catholic church you'll ever see. It's a synthesis of pagan and Catholic symbolism. It is more gaudy than gothic in that the stone almost seems to be living liquid that flows into each other. And there are many enigmatic drawings there. There's a famous apprentices pillar with the serpent heads gnawing at the base, the dragons at the base of the tree of life in Yardcarsil in Norse mythology, and I could go on and on. The main point is that there are at least a hundred green man heads, pretty much united by a sinuous vine that runs through Roslyn Chappell.

And while we were standing in the front of the chapel in the most sacred place where Masses said, and I looked up, and there is a green man head. These are faces that are wrapped in laurels or branches. You can have vines coming out of the eyelids, out of the nose, out of the lips. So it's very much a fertility symbol that you can find throughout Europe and India. And this one particular green man, just his expression, which was enigmatic as he being sardonic, as he being contemplative. And I found a replica, a plaster replica of that green man head in the gift store at Roslyn Chappell. Two weeks later, we're sitting in Julian and I in an Italian restaurant in St. Andrew Scotland, home of Gulf, the birthplace of Gulf, and I go to the ladies' room, I reach into my knapsack, I look for the map, I pull out the green man head, I put it on the table, and I just kind of absentmindedly turn it 180 degrees.

And there, as you and your readers can see, on page 13 of the book, it sculpted upside down right over the penile land in the far head of this green man, and Amaneeta Mascaria mushroom, which was very clear by the bulb, by the veil, and by the raised dots on mushroom. Years later, when we were actually writing the book, we met with the eminent mycologist, Paul Stamets. When I asked Paul, you know, would you consider this to you, could you confirm our identification, which set off our entire research, which I'll get to in a minute, and he said, that happens to be a taxonomically correct Amaneeta Mascaria mushroom, which is the mushroom found in the soma of the Hindu Rivera, which is the mushroom used from time immemorial, and still today by the Siberian reindeer herders, the fathers of shamanism.

In that mushroom, you see if you're young and super Mario, brother. That's right. Yeah. And if you're a little older, you'll find it in a lot of Christmas stories and in the Scandinavia folk tales. That's right. And I said, Paul, are you sure he looked at me like, why are you asking me that? And he pulls, he says, let me get my computer, he pulls out his computer, and he pulls up photographs that he took at Roslin. Well, he was there, he says, not only is there this Amaneeta Mascaria, but let me show you the other mushroom images that are well with Roslin. Now, at this point, Noah, Julie, and I, and we found some other references to passages in the Bible and in the Apocrypha that were referenced or hinted at by Sir William St.

Clair in inscriptions he left in Roslin Chapel that referred to someone, a biblical figure of Ezra's, you know, being offered a drink by the divine and drinking of it, and it shifted his consciousness and he wrote and wrote for 40 days, and it is very clear because it says, you know, from this, you know, I was given this drink, and it says so. And the next day, behold, a voice call to me saying, Ezra, open your mouth and drink that I give thee to drink, then I open my mouth and behold, he reached me a full cup, which was full as it were with water. But the color of it was like fire, and I took it and drank, and when I drank of it, my heart under understanding and wisdom grew in my breast for my spirit, straightened my memory, and my mouth was open and shut no more.

So Julie and I, I mean, after making this discovery and then, you know, seeing these other hints to Ezra, then our minds were really racing, we're saying, is Sir William St. Clair in this Catholic church telling us something about the role of psychedelics in Christianity? Are there other images out there? If there's this image, are there other images? And you know, I had heard or read a little bit about some of that, but I had discounted the idea of psychedelics and theogens in Christianity due to the eminent work of the great ethnomicologist Gordon Watson, who said it had a thousand years before Christ.

And now, you know, our minds were racing, could this be telling us something? Is this the Eucharist of Jesus and the disciples, you know, the big, big question? And our minds were, you know, started racing, not only wisely, but almost to a rambunctious overthrow of reason. Yes. So at this point, we thought back, I remember the words of Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yes. And I said, well, this is an extraordinary claim and we better go out, do the anthropological field work and gather extraordinary evidence in the form of other images in Christian churches and cathedrals and by images, I mean, distinct images of psychedelic aminita muskaria and psilocybin mushrooms in Christian art.

By that, I mean in stained glass windows, in frescoes, in ceiling paintings, in sculpture, in mosaics, and in illuminated Bibles, which are Bibles that have either very fancy lettering and or, you know, paintings drawn into illustrate part of the text. And that's what we found. And we set off and did that research. And there is how the that is how we came to this research. So this is a thank you so much for that detailed and amazing kind of recapitulation of how this happened. And I love that, you know, I can trace back many of the places where I am now and how I got here back to my first LSD experience when I was 15.

It was quite the 18 hour excursion, inner and outer. So I love that that kind of launched you and this whole kind of connection between hallucinogens and religion. I also just want to touch on a few other things that you mentioned. One kind of auspicious, you know, aspect of what you just told is obviously the synchronicity of meeting with your friend and seeing that these things actually do line up and it's anatomically correct. But I also love that there's this, there's this reharmonization when we're talking about Christianity in particular, really any of the Judea, really any of the Abrahamic religion.

So let's just say Christianity, Judaism and Islam, you know, there's, there's, this is another facet I'd love to get into, but there has been this subjugation of the female and the feminine divine for the past 2,500, 3,000 years or so, which has created a fair amount of disharmony in the world. But what I love about kind of the genesis of your book here with your wife and just the connections that you're revealing between psychedelics and Christianity in this case is that there is this harmonization, this balance of you and your wife doing this together. Do you know what I mean? Like that, that is a very auspicious and not overlooked theme of how this came about because that to me is the key of how we start to piece together our past, present and future.

It is this harmony between these, not just genders, but the principles that are embodied between masculine and feminine. So as you kind of discovered this breadcrumb trail, which must have just been such a thrill to see because it's, like you said, the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, this book, and you can tell just from hearing you speak about this too, you're not just speculating. You're not having some trip somewhere and looking at a picture and reading into it and saying, "Oh, here it is." You wanted to make sure that this was vetted, that this was accurate, that as you continue to uncover more and excavate what was going on through the annals of history, that this was actually borne out and in fact, that is what happened.

So maybe we could pick up kind of with the Gordon Watson stuff and how he didn't really connect psychedelics to Christianity. And I know you have a theory as to why that potentially happened, but when he originally went down to Mexico, I believe it was, and met Maria Sabina, who was this shaman who kind of introduced him to the mushroom world, what do you think happened in those decades following where he kind of introduced mushrooms to the western world, but also was careful not to contextualize them too much within his own religion as to kind of, he was pointing out all these other religious connections, but when it came to Christianity, that wasn't there.

Could you elaborate or illuminate a little bit about what was going on there? Sure. Whatever. And first of all, I mean, the first part of our book about the first religion is in many ways, although we touch on the use of entheogens in many different groups of people from peyote of the plains and the ends and psilocybin of the Mazatak and ergots in the Palestinian mysteries and ayahuasca among the Konypo and Hiveto. Although we go ahead and do that, we mainly focus on resummarizing Gordon Watson's eminent and pioneering discoveries in the world of ethnomacology, the way in which cultures interact with the mushroom world.

Starting from his brilliant discovery of soma as the enigmatic plant, God and juice of the plant as Aminena Muskaria in the Hindu Rigveda, one of the world's oldest religious texts, his discovery of a mushroom reindeer herder, reindeer cult that exists in Siberia from time immemorial and for this reason, and as the Aminena using reindeer herders spread out across Russia in about 30 different linguistic groups are called the fathers of shamanism. It's probably from that area that the original areas came into India and it's probably from that area that from the 12 to 40,000 BC that asiatic people migrated across the varying strait brought this mushroom worshipping religion with them and when they lost access to Aminena Muskaria which grows at 6,000 to 8,000 feet in the new world, they actually investigated and found other subsequent plants from the very bitter peyote and why?

Because this was the portal to the supernatural world, which is the realm of true reality are at very minimum the realm of the afterlife and the before life in shamanism. So there was a high motivation there. In terms of was in himself, he then goes on along with the brilliant classical scholar Karl Rook who's expert in Greek literature and none other than Albert Hoffman who first synthesized LSD in his Swiss laboratory in 1938 didn't actually experience it until 1943 but they them as co-authors he identifies an ergot of fungus not LSD but an LSD like related klebicep's purpeia as a psychoactive ingredient in the kiki on the potion of the hallucinian mysteries that were practiced from 1500 BC to the 400s AD when Christianity in the official religion of of the Roman Empire and then he goes on to also look at Maria Sabina.

So we talk about all of that but then when we get to chapter 7, the battle of the trees and this very image at plain carol of it which is a small chapel in the center of France it's only about 60 feet deep and 20 feet long but on the back wall there is this picture of and it's plate 5 in our book of Adam and Eve standing side by side in the middle between them is a giant Amaneeta Muscaria mushroom with the white dots meticulously painted in neat little rows across the top Adam and Eve are not covering themselves with big leaves but with mushroom caps and Watson saw this in 1952 and in as we say in the book he kind of fled from it he he said and he deferred to an eminent art historian Panofsky that this is not a mushroom well if it walks like a mushroom talks like a mushroom looks like a mushroom it's a mushroom and many others have countered that and we and we and and we point out in the book just you know a few minutes down the road is the Abbey of San Sylvain where the Benedictine monks who created this whole story show in the creation of mushroom and a tree so they're saying hey we definitely know the difference between a mushroom and a tree and then we so and then we go on to Saint Martin de Vic only two hours away from Plankaroppa let me come to Plankaroppa because yes that's where this whole battle of the tree starts and if this is indeed an Amaneeta Muscaria as others have confirmed as we believe it is without doubt as the guide to that chapel told us as bishops have written about over the years then that says there is evidence of psychedelics in Christianity beyond Rosalind if you deny that at washes was and did then you know and being the preeminent authority and ecology that kind of put a damper on the field yeah for a decade just a little yeah and also I accepted it as well I mean of course you know kind of makes sense psychedelics in Christianity are you kidding me you know I wouldn't have believed it myself had a not seen this along with Julie with my own eyes so this is very important it's important because it is to be you know it starts off this whole conversation of additional evidence and then if we look at what is being depicted itself there is a famous scene of Adam and Eve the temptation scene in the Garden of Eden and if you look at plate five Adam Eve is partially skeletonized as is Adam as you can see and the serpent is offering Eve a round object which could easily be a mushroom cap now to come back to what this story is about was and finally came to the conclusion that this there was Amanita Muscaria known to the people who created this portion of the Bible in the Old Testament and with the coming of monotheism it was suppressed right but what is this story really show mythologically because if you read Genesis it's amazing and I'm gonna just paraphrase you Genesis hey Adam hey you have this wonderful place you have dominion over all of the creatures the land the sea all your needs will be met you don't have to go to school you're never gonna pay taxes enjoy your life oh but one thing in the center of this Garden of Eden is the tree of the knowledge is a good and evil and if you eat this thereof then surely you shall die now Adam is okay God's word we got all the rest and the serpent who can represent evil or who can represent knowledge right healing as it does comes to Eve comes to Eve not to Adam and he says you know if you if you eat of this then you will be like unto God it will open your eyes and Eve does and she achieves this higher awareness and she says to Adam you know Adam you got to try this yeah right and Adam's no no no no okay and everyone knows the rest of the story although there's some fine points there that are fascinating so now it really gets interesting though because hey God does not kill that that's right so what does it mean for surely you shall die yes it means your ego will die and let's keep a higher consciousness and there's a later passage and Genesis gets even more interesting where God says they have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil what if they eat of the top tree of immortality and become as unto us now I don't know who this unto us yes we're not at the father-son in the Holy Ghost yet but the important point here is that in Christianity this becomes the original sin yes committed by Eve the beginning of the battle of the sexes the beginning of the stigmatization of women in all kinds of ways yes that we're still living with today you know over two thousand years well we were talking about Genesis I mean thousands of years later yeah so is Eve really the creator of original sin or is Julie and I believe was it the woman who had the wisdom and the courage to bring man to higher consciousness thank you that's what we think this is about and that comes back to your point of the reintegration of the feminine yes yes you're tying it together and let's look at culturally and where we are in historical time and we don't have to get into the whole idea of time as an illusion or my or some sorrow right now but look at how these plants are emerging all around the world I mean ayahuasca this has been just one of the most insane things to witness I remember my mom and my stepdad now they they met in Peru in the early 2000s and you know there were people going down there but it was nothing like it is now or there's ayahuasca retreats all over the country of the world it's this it's having a moment if we think of this is kind of the feminine principle emerging from mother earth we do see this reintegration and harmonization I love this story of Genesis you're talking about too because yes we can look at it like you said as the beginning of original sin or we can look at it as a wonderful allegory for what you mentioned is for ego death for showing the difference between the interconnectedness of everything yet being aware of duality consciousness raising through potential psychedelics I mean this all does seem to weave together in a way that makes more sense than I think would meet the eye and I love that you're touching on the reemergence I call it the reharmonization of the the feminine principles I think this word balance is used quite a bit both personally and collectively and I think some some of us sometimes get the idea of kind of the Libra scales of things being equally weighed and I think sometimes with the principle of harmony like if you're playing a chord of three notes a triad sometimes the tone of one of the chords needs to be a little bit louder and played a little bit with a little more velocity and I think where we are right now the notes we should be playing with a little more for velocity are those qualities typically associated with the feminine divine and the feminine qualities we need more compassion we need more cooperation we need more authority feminine authority throughout culture so I love you know we didn't plan this talk out at all but I love that this all does kind of lead to this point which is when we're talking about mushrooms or my favorite plant ally cannabis I think these things are imbued with this femininity and this consciousness that is really you know I don't want to say it's a panacea but something that's needed medicine for us individually collectively and globally so I love that this kind of fits in with what you've been discovering as well you and your wife hello synchronicity listener I'm here in the middle of this show to let you know about the Facebook community on for synchronicity we have a page of course for synchronicity which you can find but there's also a private Facebook community which you can access through syncpodcast.com that's why NC podcast calm you'll see a menu item request access I will look at you if I like the cut of your jib you make the cut to get in that's it so I hope to see you there and back to the episode two things there the you know obviously a reharmonization is desperately needed on this planet in terms of compassion kindness caring for others doing for others and obviously the feminine principle brings that in very strongly I also think that what's happening both on every front with the worldwide migration of ayahuasca ayahuasca retreats of interest in LSD microdosing creativity and the problem-solving and healing and for the realization that some people have in their experience of ayahuasca also known as visionary vine that that God the God that they come to through the wisdom of the plant is a woman in some cases but I also think from my knowledge experience and the pretty considerable reading I've done is you can't really categorize these experiences because these some of these psychedelic experiences can be incredibly intellectual jobs love LSD he said it helped him think different in creating Apple Crick the co-discoverer of the DNA helix said he visualized it during an LSD experience its LSD is as masculine has been used very effectively in in scientific mathematic architectural problem-solving in a very famous experiment that we talk about in chapter 14 of our book yes so you know there's a variety of experiences but coming back to the research itself and I just want to say and I know you'll put this out there that many of our photos are available on our website yes at psychedelicgospels.com and of course you can you know find them and own the book or on Kindle or paperback on Amazon or any bookseller of your choice which you can get to directly or through our website that out of this so this is a very interesting old testament Genesis image here in the Garden of Eden yes and however we go over two hours away Julie and I to Saint Martin de Vic Church a small Paris church and here we the colors of this the frescoes that were made in the eleven hundreds are so stunning and are so emotionally warm that as we say in the book walking across the threshold of what on the outside is a pretty drab church with a plain brown door it's like having cataracts removed from your eyes we walk into the into the choir and on as shown in in plate six the purification of Isaiah's lips and Christ entry into Jerusalem on the wall of the choir is Christ sitting on the ass entering Jerusalem is disciples behind him and Julie talks on my arm which says do you see what I say and I look up there and I say oh yes I see what you see and here on plate six of our book the joyful youth which is a photograph and Julie took all the original photographs of this fresco one of the joyful youth of the three that are greeting G Christ and unferaling their robes to welcome him is holding on to the stem of a very large and distinct so aside it's tan it's smooth it's different than the palm leaves that have been collected in other parts of the scene and it is also huge and in romanesque art size matters okay that that mushroom in the church in plain carot was as huge as Adam and Eve and these psilocybin mushrooms are as large as the boys heads for a reason because the artist is telling us this is important right which our eyes travel down to the next wall perpendicular to this Christ entry and there are the towers of Jerusalem another colored picture in our book are the youth cutting down with the same long kind of knives psilocybin plants from the towers of Jerusalem and if that were not enough this sits right over the painting the fresco of the last supper which has the same long knives on the table the same sliced mushroom caps and if you look very closely in plate nine drawn into the hems of the disciples to the left of Jesus our four distinct mushroom caps and it was in this particular sequence of events of seeing psychedelics in scenes from the New Testament that really gave rise to this aha moment right where Julie and I realize this is a psychedelic gospel that this is a gospel that's different from the canonical gospel in the New Testament different even from the many ways from the Gnostic Gospels and this is telling us there's a different master story there's an alternative history of Christianity and that's not too far-fetched because it was Pope Gregory in the sixth century who said let art be the Bible of the illiterate because most people were and remained through feudalism illiterate until the coming of the Gutenberg press and the beginning of printing and one of the first books that was printed was obviously the Bible so this was where the religious instruction was going to take place and then we became pretty convinced that we had a solid hypothesis we said okay you know this is Saint Martin de Vic this is plain corrupt this is Abbey of sense of man they're pretty close to each other you can get to each other easily in the day in the center of France is this some marginal Catholic cult is this some renegade hippie faction of the Benedictines are other order frolicking about on you know magic mushrooms far from the thing and the church so we decided to go to the high holy places of Christendom to go to Chart Cathedral to go to Canterbury Cathedral in England to go to Hildesheim in Germany which was created by Saint by Bishop Bernwater who became sainted by the Catholic Church and there we found additional evidence to good enough theory so as you're discovering more and more evidence that is at some point kind of a discovery but then at a certain point I'm sure just confirmation continued confirmation what is this doing for you and Julie you know personally I imagine there have been psychedelic experiences that you've both had that also directly there's two ways we're coming at this right and this is another great thing about what you've done here what you've both done is you're connecting empiricism in science with mysticism and mystery and that is to me the nexus point of where we need to be right now I don't think it does anyone any good to be just a scientific materialist reductive to and I don't think it does anyone good to be totally out in outer space into new age wu wu world without no grounding I think providing providing this spectrum and this connection point is incredibly important so what was going on as you kind of uncover and then confirm that whoa we potentially are looking at a psychedelic gospel whoa there are mushrooms and illusions to all of this stuff not just as you said kind of some weird ken kese and kind of cult that may be emerged from Christianity but this is actually the root of what's going on what are some of the thoughts you're having as you're kind of going on this anthropological kind of mission Easter egg hunt kind of yeah as you can imagine many incredible excitement at these continual discoveries at this moment of discovery of being able to you know photograph and capture it and write up our notes and organize the photos and plan where we're going next and many many synchronic events have a long way here that also confirmed that we're in the flow we're definitely on the right track and we see these synchronicities when they are repetitive and almost right in your face unmistakable yeah as as really sign posts that confirmed that we were you know fulfilling our our destiny doing the right work and that our theories were to be confirmed number one number two you know we had moments of you know what is the response going to be to this you know will this be accepted in the academic community in the media by the Catholic Church what will their difficulties be how much blowback would there be and but also you know and you said this as eloquently just a moment ago with anyone I ever heard talking about you know bringing you know science and this together this was a if you if you stretch it out a confirmation because Julie and I had our first authentic experiences with the divine with God with the sacred whatever you want to call it through psychedelics and this is what you know moved us into believing that as you however you want to phrase it as my mother said that that God is a river of love that flows from the universe or a Stanislaw growth you know said it so beautifully that you know the universe is permeated with an intelligence that in and altered states of consciousness we can act this so it kind of brought all of this together because yes of course if this is a documented pathway through the divine one we know it in our own lives we know it from vast amounts of anthropological research that psychedelics not the only pathway but one very confirmed pathway for shamanic people from time immemorial going back at least ten thousand years in the archaeological record and maybe thirty to forty thousand years if the cave art interpretations France are born out right that this long connection is there that Christianity itself emerged from a circum mediterranean area that was rife with mystery cults the therapeutic rife with cults that we know and actually religions such as the olecinian mysteries practiced in Greece definitely at the time of the birth of Christianity using a psychoactive potion as in the kekion of the olecinian mysteries as confirmed by none other than Albert Hoffman the famous Swiss chemist it's not a huge stretch to ask the next question and say if this was the original Eucharist if part of Jesus and his disciples awakening to the divinity and their immortality was through sacred plants that were put here by God why not so you know it does it is plausible and then you know for those of for you and others who may know not know about the miracle of marsh chapel which is actually a scientific experiment also known as the good Friday experiment that was undertaken in 1962 by Walter Panky who was a graduate student in divinity under Timothy Leary before Timothy Leary and his friends were expelled from Harvard and it was a brilliant experiment what it does it ask the question was could synthetic psychedelics actually cause or induce in this case so aside but a mystical experience right so Panky took some volunteer divinity students he took them to a small room in marsh chapel which is a chapel at Boston on the grounds of Boston University in Cambridge on good Friday he gave one of them and it was a double blind so the researchers did not know whom they were giving the psilocybin and to hook the 30 milligrams of psilocybin and to whom they were giving a large dose of niacin B3 as a placebo because they'll make you feel flushed wait wait just to be clear you're saying they were given 30 milligrams so what was it intravenous was it how was that it was capsules okay okay okay so now the result of that research was that nine out of the ten divinity students who received the psilocybin had an authentic mystical experience Houston Smith who passed recently became a very eminent scholar of religion he said it was the most powerful cosmic homecoming he had ever experienced and that confirmed what he had thought and written about it and knew about religion it is confirmed it existentially for him right another gentleman who is the the psychologist American psychologist said this is the best design there are no experiments and I quote known to me in the history of scientific study religion better designed or clearer in their conclusion than this one and none other than Rick Doblin the founder of maps the multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies Rick 20 did a 25 year later follow-up study where he found seven of the original participants in this study who received the psilocybin and they said it continued to be the you know the persistent positive reality in their lives right it was by and many of them a genuine experience that had value then and all through their lives this was found six months after the experiment and 25 years right right right so so here's now we have and this study is a beautiful illumination of a fusion between mysticism right and science right and and this is what this entire psychedelic renaissance is is bringing about given you know the known and continually revealed ability of and the agents to reveal mystical experience that's right in a in a most profound way so this is where it certainly all comes together and if this is the truth then there and this was known to Jesus in the disciples and to the early church it is no wonder that this would be perpetuated in secrecy right and I want to stress secrecy is not suppression as some people have complained right are both complained and claimed who think that church suppressed this obviously not this isn't Bishop Bermorg's church he became a saint he was the tuner to auto third the Holy Roman Emperor this is no renegade group right but it was as in all of shamanism that this is sacred so this is done in secrecy this is done in host host tones this is done in ritual settings with extensive preparation and so it would be not a huge stress to believe or to understand that early Christians understood the healing and the godly properties of psychedelics and would want to perpetuate them and as we show in the book it is only with a chilling coming of the inquisition that these images drop off and begin to disappear from Renaissance Christianity on into modern times right so you can see the proliferation being there even if secretive like you're saying mystery schools these things aren't there to suppress or hide there to make sure people are prepared it's kind of like if you're going into a trip you know a psychedelic session set and setting you know make sure you're bringing in the right intention and aspirations to it it's it's not something to kind of keep people away but as you pointed out during the inquisition then it really starts to actively be suppressed and I wonder if it was actively suppressed in the beginning and then just completely forgotten or just you know the same way that many elements of science now just completely berate the concept of organized religion just as being faulty on its own and we clearly can look at the missteps and ways that religious powers you know can be co-opted and abused but just kind of this lapping off and it's kind of like the counterbalance I look all the suffering that religion is caused so let's not do it so it's interesting that as this inquisition as war and murder and beliefs and horrible things are perpetuated throughout the world they kind of lose touch with this psychic kind of aspect of what maybe was getting people in touch with the real divine so that I find fascinating and I love that you point out that it wasn't suppressed to the point where this isn't available like you're you've proven you guys went around and took pictures of this stuff it's still there so I love that you have that kind of qualifying difference between it being suppressed and and really hidden in plain sight as you put it sure I mean look just a couple of points here you know the we linked the inquisition to the horrible black death the black leg of Europe which killed by some estimates up to 60% of the population of Europe in a very short period of time from 1347 to 1352 now the church which is supposed to have the hotline to God couldn't protect people from this right and so they blamed it and they blamed it on the witches and to a lesser extent on the Jews right so now because you ask how do the wise women of Europe who are the feminine keepers of the herbal knowledge of the psychedelic knowledge of the herbal medicinals out the aphrodisiacs how do these wise women who have served their European villages in childbirth and others arts of healing for hundreds of years how do they become the witches of the inquisition how does Santa become Satan how does the horn god of shamanism that you see in the cave paintings with the shaman wearing the horned robes of the reindeer of another animal become the devil right Christianity this is where we link it to and it's also here that we find out in while we're at the Vatican why Gordon Watson refused to pursue his theory of the role of the theologians in religion you know past the hallowed halls of christian and that that's one of the reveals you'll just have to read our book to find out why why Watson and it's quite dramatic why Watson did not do that yes we really believe that this interesting this resurgence of psychedelics the psychedelic renaissance and theogen reformation new science of psychedelics as different people have called it is really going to lead not only to a cleansing of the doors of perception as how to describe it but to a resecralization of the doors of perception and bring an experiential component back into religion that I think for the large group of people growing group of people especially the youth who say look I'm spiritual but not religious right can be a very amazing experience and that's why we call for the creation of sacred centers we're you know to become legal under the First Amendment of the US Constitution where people can go and explore psychedelics for personal growth and religious purposes we understand that ayahuasca is legal in the context of the Santo di me church in the United States right we understand that people are going down to Costa Rica right and and South America to experience these retreats directly that there are psilocybin retreats springing up in the Caribbean islands that's right so all of this is going on and hopefully it will take place in a responsible setting the other point I want to make is at the end of the day Noah we don't believe that this work has to be seen as a fundamental challenge to much to anyone's faith in Christianity right so much that is beautiful in Christianity and especially to the amazing you know powerful teachings of Christ consciousness that are expressed in the Sermon on on the Mount to be sure I mean this is such an amazing you know radical departure from the Old Testament that you should love your neighbor hate your enemy as it was taught but I say love your enemies blurs them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them which to secretly use you and persecute you this is really looking at the world from the most expanded form of consciousness that it is all you know it is all there yes it is all part of creation it is all part of some gigantic cosmic dance of balance and creation and destruction and even though evil does a lot of harm in the world that you know the only way we're gonna we're gonna evolve is if we bless and forgive those who have harmed us not only for them but also at the profoundest level for our own healing because if you harbor resentment and anger it's gonna affect you at every level and so when we say look this doesn't have to be seen as a challenge to Christianity but is reintroducing Christianity to a mystery that's part of its origins as we believe and found in many many of the world's religions including Buddhism including the Hindu religion from the Rig Veda on including Judaism where there is also evidence about you know what was the mana of the of the Exodus right so and here we cite brother David Stendall Ross one of my favorites and he says the following you know if if I can experience God through a sunset on a mountaintop why not through a mushroom prayerfully ingested I mean and he is one of my absolute favorites he's got so many amazing quotes and just such a spirit that is helping the world I mean what you're saying truthfully there was another Jewish person a long time ago who you've been referencing who said a lot of similar things and when you're talking about not radically altering or being at odds with the tenants of Christianity that couldn't be more spot on I mean this is an inclusive religion at its heart regardless of what certain people in this country may have co-opted it for you know it really is like that's the heart of what you're talking about this is something that if we can embody those things you're talking about treating everyone as you want to be treated forgiving people when they do things that you don't like and I love that you bring up you know there's evil in the world will rhombus has a quote that I use a lot on this podcast which is suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation and what that means is this is kind of the force that we rub up against to get us to be a little more smooth and depending on what we believe happens before we were born or after we die we may want to be a little smoothed out and if we look at kind of the global individual and collective problems that we face they're all similar types of problems we don't have a ton of unique problems that no one else has in the world despite the fact we may think that sometimes so we can use these opportunities that are provided to us in a dualistic universe to kind of get into those core principles of interconnectedness selfless service unconditional love but really embody them in a way that isn't just conceptual and isn't just intellectual but really live it and I like you you know have experience when you're in that flow when you're really doing what you're supposed to be doing we do we get the benefit of the what Jung referred to as an a causal pattern of orderedness which is synchronicities and I love love love love Jerry that you and Julie were able to go on this expedition and kind of connect these internal and external worlds in such a profound way that I really think as time goes on is going to be more and more appreciated it's truly an amazing thing I mean as a really yes I mean all credit deserved because this connected a lot of dots in my life I've been talking about Christ consciousness as a Jew for going on 15 years and sometimes it feels pretty weird but when you have a direct experience you can't really shake it sometimes and to see how you've connected the dots of the Muscaria if I will together it's pretty incredible and I'm just so grateful that you guys embarked on this and really you know it's happening at the right time you mentioned the psychedelic renaissance that's going on it's it's truly it's a miraculous thing to to behold and I'm just glad that there are people like you out there kind of you know holding the space for some very profound things that I think are not in the not too distant future well as a writer and I can speak for Julie on this nothing could be more gratifying you know to hear this kind of response that you just just given us and I just want to emphasize that Julie took all of the photos these are her original photos of these entheogens in Christian art in churches cathedral throughout Europe the Middle East are recaptured from the museums holding the artwork of Egypt showing prominent entheogens Julie who is very perceptive visually made a lot of the original discoveries as you'll find out and reading the book and I wanted to write an academic book first about this theory and Julie said no we have to reach a broader audience this is too important we don't know how long we're going to be around and so as being a you know intuitive researcher and as I found out after 35 years of marriage you know my wife is a brilliant editor the reason large part of the accolades this book is receiving and the reason this book is so readable and is what it is a combination of sort of an anthropological meditation and a travel log and a discovery of discovery is because of of Julie's work and I just want to you know completely acknowledge her for that and yes behind every great man my friend we we know what to be the case so I end with three questions and I think this one is this I think it's behind every great woman in this case yeah that's that's probably I should be let's let's start using that one a little bit more prominent way so I end with three quick questions and then one larger one so we'll get to that and I just you know maybe in the future we could we could do this again and talk about some other things that maybe aren't directly related to the book but kind of had to do with the part of your career we were teaching the hallucinogens as related to religion and culture because there's there's just so much there and I can get the sense that you know you've been steeped in this stuff for decades and you know as much as I can do to mine your wisdom I'd love to but here are the questions they may seem a little silly but they're not what is your favorite color okay oh right now yeah yeah I blue nice what's your favorite number nine cool what's your favorite animal here cool and the last question what's a practical tip that has helped you in your life that you could share with listeners right now practical tip all right as my former father-in-law said to me when he asked do you know what a rich man is I replied I have no idea what a rich man is he says it's very simple it's a man who knows when he has enough and to me that was very practical and helpful being at that point in my life trying to figure out which way to go what's really important and under and out of that I developed a deep and profound sense of gratitude for what I had instead of focusing on what other people had and who had more than me and why didn't I have more and et cetera et cetera and out of that deep and profound sense of gratitude for what I have and where I am I was able to evolve you know this career that emerged before you by being happy with following my own truth and this is what Julie and I have have woven together and that has you know created so many blessings in our life that continue to unfold of you know being grateful for what you have and following your truth no matter where it leads yes yes and I'll leave with the quote of someone you brought up before it's brother David signed a rass and it is it is not happiness that makes us grateful it's gratefulness that makes us happy so you couldn't couldn't have said it any better man thank you so much for doing this please extend my sincere love and gratitude to Julie as well when you speak to her and see her this has been an absolute pleasure I'll thank Jen for tipping me off to you guys and really anything I can do to help with the book or anything you guys are working on please consider the lines of communication open and I'm happy to have you guys we all have had and even a population of non psychedelic people have had prophetic dreams intimations unlikely strings of coincidences all of these sort of things these are experiences which cultures deny cultures put in place I'm sure you've heard this word of paradigm and then what fits within the cultural paradigm is accentuated stressed and what doesn't fit inside the cultural paradigm is denied marginalized argued against and we live at the end of a thousand year binge on the philosophical position known as materialism (upbeat music)

Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want to find out more about the psychedelic gospels, Jerry Brown, Julie Brown, you can go to psychedelicgospels.com. There's also a Facebook page. You can find interviews with them on a variety of other podcasts, check it out. Really cool people. Didn't get a chance to talk to Julie, hopefully next time, but Jerry, as you can tell, very cool dude. If you want to support the show, rating and reviewing the podcast helps, you are more than welcome to donate. You can also become a patron on Patreon. You go to patreon.com/synchronicity and you will see that.

You can also join the email community, which is growing in numbers. We're over a thousand people. I know I said billions, maybe early on the show. That wasn't true. I was lying. We don't actually have a billion people on the email list, but we are past a thousand. Things are going well. Doing some cool stuff there. At the very least, you get cool gifts every week with a quote. That's pretty good, I think. Thank you to everyone who listens past the music. Have pretty good feeling that I'm gonna get out an EP. Not a pretty good feeling. Going to be releasing at least an EP. That's four songs in fall of this year, 2017.

Maybe an album. We'll see if I can get it together. Got a lot going on. And stay tuned for creative evolution if that is something you're interested in. And I know I just realized I forgot to mention exactly what that is in the intro. This is a course that is designed to help you maintain and sustain a creative practice, which has numerous benefits in your life. So if you're creative or an aspiring creative and you want to kind of kick it into high gear and turn that corner, I got a course that I made that can help you do that. So stay tuned for info on that. That's it, that's it. I will see you next week.