Zach Leary - Trans-humanism, psychedelic use, over-use and taking a break
During this episode of Psychedelics Today, your hosts Kyle Buller and Joe Moore talk to Zach Leary host of the MAPS podcast and It\u2019s All Happening. We have an incredible time talking to Zach and his worldview, experiences, opinions and much more. It was a very fun time recording with Zach and we hope it can happen again in the near future.\xa0
Show Notes
- Joe and Kyle discuss Zach\u2019s connections with Ram Dass
- Zach Leary calls himself a futurist and we discuss what a futurist is.
- A natural way to continue the narrative of our physical evolution and our spiritual development.
- Cyberspace is an invention as a result of our human condition.
- The way and the reason we invented it is that we found a need to create another dimension.
- Futurism and transhumanism and embracing the way technology is augmenting the human experience is a great place to be.
- Do you see any major problems in psychedelia?
- Overall, it\u2019s a great time to be into psychedelics.
- There\u2019s so much research and data available to the end-user and the discussion is improving.
- Many people are starting to be more open about their beneficial relationship with psychedelics.
- It\u2019s important to get people in the mainstream aware of their beneficial properties.
- The Ayahuasca fad going on in the U.S. has many people calling themselves shamans, which raised a red flag to Zach.
- It used to be that going to the medicine man was a common occurrence in any culture.
- Mysticism didn\u2019t go away, it just got turned into a more doctrinal practice.
- Overall, it\u2019s a great time to be into psychedelics.
- The part of the church that bothers Zach is the authoritarian aspect, that there is only one god.
- There\u2019s an element of fanaticism when someone says there\u2019s only one drug that\u2019s worth taking.
- April 19 is the 75th anniversary of the first intentional use of LSD (Bicycle Day).
- We have to start re-thinking about what \u201cnatural\u201d means.
- The human imagination and what it creates is a by-product of nature.
- There\u2019s no stopping the technological march, the train has left the station.
- A return to nature can include biodiverse rooftop gardens in New York.
- It\u2019s very hard to get off the grid.
- What do we have that\u2019s readily available and sustainable?
- Mushrooms
- LSD
- Other synthetic compounds that don\u2019t bother the rainforest, etc.
- Drugs that may not be sustainable:
- Ayahuasca, Peyote, 5-MeO (Sonoran Desert Toad - Bufo Alvarius toad venom)
- Some people are playing fast and loose with 5-MeO
- There are people who give do things to \u201cpatients\u201d that are non-consensual while they are under the effect of the drug.
- Psychedelics are often highly individualistic.
- It\u2019s nice to be able to jump in with a shaman, but to what extent?
- There is some cultural appropriation here when you take ancient practices and move them into new environments.
- It\u2019s best not to ignore the roots and traditions of these practices but honor them as best as you can.
- How do we not make mistakes in psychedelics?
- There\u2019s so much data, examples and role models now.
- There are best practices based on data now.
- Zach would like to see less consumption of MDMA.
- People over-consume MDMA.
- More of a concern about bodily harm.
- 2-3 times a year is probably enough.
- There are parallel paths going on and if the parallel path of computers and humanity are going on, what does that look like eventually?
- What are some of your major influences in the psychedelic world?
- Terence McKenna, Jim Fadiman, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Dennis McKenna
- How would you like to see the future of psychedelics evolve?
- We\u2019re seeing the rumblings of what\u2019s to come.
- There\u2019s going to be a firmly legitimate place in the psychiatric world for the psychedelic therapy.
- Hopefully, it carries over into recreational use and cognitive therapy.
About Zach Leary
Zach is the host of both the \u201cIt\u2019s All Happening with Zach Leary\u201d podcast and \u201cThe MAPS Podcast.\u201d They have helped to cement him as one of the most thought provoking podcasters in the cultural philosophy genre of podcasting. He\u2019s also a blogger/writer, a futurist, spiritualist, a technology consultant\xa0and socio-cultural theorist.
In all of Zach\u2019s work he blends his roles as a spiritual aspirant and a futurist into a unique identity all his own. His spiritual background has it\u2019s roots in being a practitioner of bhakti yoga as taught through many of the vedantic systems of Northern India, in particular Neem Karoli Baba as taught by Ram Dass. Through the practice of bhakti yoga he has found keys that unlock doorways that allow the soul to experience it\u2019s true nature of being eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss. In addition to bhakti yoga, Zach is influenced by many different methods and traditions of consciousness exploration ranging from trans-humanism to buddhism and clinical psychology. Zach is also a frequent pundit on the political systems that are fueling todays economic and cultural structures. At the core of all of Zach\u2019s work is the belief that we have been fused together by the collective practice of using technology to expand our species imagination with spirituality and mysticism to define the very nature of who we are.
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