#4 | From Silicon Valley to the Amazon: Ayahuasca, AI & the Future of Human Consciousness | Hamilton Souther

Trained by the original lineages — how Hamilton spent 18 months being denied, then saved a shaman's life to earn his apprenticeship

100 to 150 ceremonies a year — what traditional training actually looks like, and why 99 out of 100 apprentices fail

Purging depression in a single night — what Hamilton has witnessed ayahuasca do that antidepressants never could

The plant that built Silicon Valley — the quiet decades-long relationship between psychedelics and the technology in your pocket

Brain on steroids — why ayahuasca doesn't make you high, it makes you more lucid, and what that means for creativity and discovery

AI is a hammer — Hamilton's take on whether artificial intelligence becomes a tool for flourishing or destruction, and what psychedelics have to do with it

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And if you’re curious to experience a safe, guided psychedelic journey yourself, you can apply via our website at askalice.world. Our next retreats take place 1 to 4 May and 2 to 5 June in the Netherlands. 24-27 September we do to Portugal.

And don’t forget…
when in doubt, ask Alice.

If this conversation resonated with you, feel free to hit the follow or subscribe button. It helps these conversations reach more curious humans.

And if you’re curious to experience a safe, guided psychedelic journey yourself, you can apply via our website at askalice.world. Our next retreats take place 1 to 4 May and 2 to 5 June in the Netherlands

And don’t forget…
when in doubt, ask Alice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

I think the most important thing that ayahuasca supports now is both an opportunity to connect deeply into love. And our Western societies have become both hyper-ideologically focused and also mentally focused. So you have both a very, very strong expression of polarized ideologies and an over-emphasis and over-indexing on mental capacity. And we need to awaken much more heart and unconditional love in our societies.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Welcome to Alice Asks. My name is Kaylin Gavins, and I'm your host and the founder of Ask Alice, where we create curated psychedelic experiences for curious humans. I believe psychedelics are part of a broader shift in consciousness the world is asking for right now. One rooted in awareness, responsibility, and connection. In this podcast, I talk with interesting humans in the psychedelic field, from lived experience to science and facilitation. And I'll sometimes share my own reflections from working in this space. Welcome to Alice Asks. Okay, Hamilton. For those who are listening, let me quickly introduce how I got to Hamilton. It was quite a coincidence. And one of the topics that really interests me is how psychedelics can help us to create better, to to be more visionary, to to um solve big world problems. More than I had this trip and then I made a beautiful painting, but really like okay, how does it really uh work? And um yeah, I was talking to some people I was introduced to in the US, and then uh they were in a newsletter, and in this newsletter uh it was referred to you, Hamilton, and um that's how I got to explore who is Hamilton, Hamilton Sauter. Uh so let me first uh read a bit how uh you introduced yourself uh on your website. I think it's really beautifully written. So it says Maestro Hamilton Sauter is a pioneer of the global plant medicine movement and the psychedelic renaissance. He's the founder and visionary of various businesses and projects. He's applying his expertise to advancing our understanding of artificial intelligence, and I think also in a broader sense, uh, humanity. Um Hamilton, like if there's so many, just in that one simple question, uh, there's so many things that I want to ask. I find it very interesting, the combination of your expertise in psychedelics on one hand, but also your engagement in in projects like um Gaia Labs, where you work in Web3 Technologies, headwaters, artificial intelligence, but at the same time with Blue Morpho, you're organizing very nice high-end um ayahuasca um retreats in Peru. So maybe um to start with Hamilton, like um where did it start it? This this beautiful combination of of interest, of expertise. Um, so maybe take us back to to where it started.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Sure, I appreciate that. Thank you so much, first of all, for allowing me to be on your podcast and have an opportunity to talk about these things.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

Um, my life started in Silicon Valley in the late 1970s. And I grew up in Silicon Valley and you know was educated there, and then graduated and went to the university and studied anthropology. And when I graduated from the university, uh I wasn't really sure the direction I wanted to take in my life and really the purpose of my life at that point. And um, it was a very dark time for me. And my mom said to me, Well, you don't want your life, just give it back to spirit. And so I didn't know what that meant, and I didn't have a background for that and nor an understanding for it, but I did it. I was in my kitchen, and I truly, from the heart, from a place of deep honesty, just gave my life back to spirit. I said, Well, if my life came from spirit, I give it back. What should I do? And I had an awakening, and I now understand that awakenings are common and uh amazing, and I welcome them for everybody because it shifts your frame of mind and it shifts your understandings and your worldview changes. And um, I opened up at that point to learn about shamanism and to learn about spirituality. I had come from a Western medical scientific background, and I truly believed in the scientific method, but I also understood that our ancestors had a reason to come up with the word spirit and a reason to think of source and the word consciousness. And so there was a reason for that, but I didn't understand it. And so I maintained a deep connection to the scientific method as a way to study my own experiences and hopefully to prove more of these kinds of edge cases that weren't being really spoken about at that time. And in my case, that meant to head to the Amazon and go to Peru. And when I was 23 years old, I left the United States and I moved to the Amazon. And through that process, I found my teachers that brought me into their lineage of plant medicine. And I got to live with them and work with them for many years and most importantly study with them. And so I went from a Western education, and my graduate education was the education of a traditional lineage in the Peruvian Amazon, and uh they just had a different worldview, and they used ayahuasca ceremonies as their classroom, and they used the forest as their environment and pharmacy. And I was blessed to get to learn about the medicinal plants, the nature of the understandings that the people there have, and also the great insights and knowledge that were held within my lineage. And so that was how it started. And um, Blue Morpho started in all of that as a way to start to share this with others. It was so powerful and impactful that I thought it was important to share this, not just keep it secret, but start to let others uh experience the miracles I was experiencing. And so Blue Morpho became a way to start to share it with others. And over the last 23 years, Blue Morpho has flourished as a place that people come from all over the world to experience the plant medicines and uh to really improve themselves.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Wow, that is that is uh worth a book on itself. And and when you say I I went to Peru and um I got trained by a lineage of of uh people who had the wisdom about the plant medicine, how does that work? Because um I'm just curious. I I know for instance, I I've been studying a bit the the history of psychedelics, and and I know traditionally uh the people and the shamans, they they've not been very keen on on sharing all these these things with with Westerners. So so I cannot imagine that you just arrived and they say, Oh uh let's train you boys. So how did that go? What did you do to uh to get their the yeah?

SPEAKER_03 9:03

Yeah, that's a that's an incredible story. I tell the whole story in two books that are available on Amazon. Um, so you can get the whole story, but I would like to share a little of it now. Um I had my first ayahuasca ceremony in a very remote part of the forest. I was on a deep trek, and um it was from the city you could fly into, the city of Iquitos, it was already 24 hours travel over land in just into the forest to by rivers to get to this place. And um, that was where I had my first ayahuasca ceremony. And in the visions I had in that ceremony, I was told that I would stay there and I would live there and I would train there, although it was unheard of. It was uh you would from the main river, you would go three hours without seeing any other people, and then you would come to a native indigenous tribe, and then you'd go even further, another 40 minutes to an hour beyond them, and that was the location. And I was said, you're gonna stay here. Um, so I had to ask the locals who lived there if I could get permission to live there, and they all agreed. And it turned out that that location where I had ceremony was 500 meters from the house of the great grandmaster, elder, mystic, and médico vegetalista of that part of the forest named Julio Jerene Pinedo. And it was taboo to teach people outside of blood lines. The lineages are all very unique to their individual family lines. And the oral history goes back to thousands of years before there was any Western uh encroachment or you know uh presence, European presence in South America. And so it was uh considered in our part of the forest punishable by death to train somebody outside of the bloodlines. And um so I stayed there for over a year and a half, uh being denied apprenticeship. I was just told that it was just not allowed and it was impossible, but the visions kept telling me I needed to stay there. So I learned to live off the land, I learned to live in the forest. I thought of it as my second childhood, where you learn to walk and learn to talk and you know, learn your environment. And um, after a year and a half, I was passing by Julio's house one day, and he was gravely ill. And I went up to him, and in that moment, I just felt this tremendous presence of greater intelligence and awareness, and I used it to help him. And at the end of that experience, over four days, he was healed, and he uh attributed to me that I had saved his life. And um, I don't have any way to prove that or not, it's just what he said. And he said, for saving my life, what do you want in exchange? And I said, I want us to be together. I want to learn. And I asked for apprenticeship, and so um funny, he never said yes or no. Just that night we drank ayahuasca together and my apprenticeship started. And um, that's how it happened. He agreed, he was uh, no one knows his real age, but he was right around mid-80s, so around 85 to 87 years old, probably at that time. And um he, you know, had seen what he thought was his own death, and he agreed to accept me at that point, and so um that's how it happened.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Wow, that's that's uh epic story. And so, how long were you in if if I can call it training or or how long were you by his side?

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Yeah, um, well, from that point on, uh I was trained by Julio and one of his number one students. They were the two of them. Uh his student was in his mid-40s at the time. And Julio was alive for about the next five years. And so I was with Julio during that time and I trained, and my training continued beyond his death for about 14 years.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And and what do you do in the training? Like what is what is I I I was saying, because you now also train people in it, so so what is important in a training of uh a maestro medico vegetalista.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

I the training is extensive, it's a very different kind of school than we think of in a Western school where you think of a classroom or a campus, the entire forest is your campus. And um you go through really three core types of training. The first are plant medicine ceremonies. So you participate in many ayahuasca ceremonies. Uh typically, an apprentice will participate in 100 to 150 ayahuasca ceremonies a year. Um, at the same time, they're expected to do dieta, which is a kind of fast, and drinking of other kinds of medicinal teas. Some come from trees and some come from other plants where you use their leaves, barks, or roots. And you learn the nature of those trees. And it is said that there is a transference of the essence or spirit of that medicinal plant to you, and that from within you you transform, which they call learning. And it awakens innate and inherent capacities that you have that you didn't have before as you go through that process. And then the third part is rites of passage, where you are tested. You're tested in your strength and your resolve and your commitment and your integrity. And so you go through that process of ceremonies and dieta and rites of passage. And when you have completed that process, they give you the title Maestro Medico Vegetalista. It can be traditionally anywhere from five years to 10 or 15 years of duration. And there is no set amount of time. You just have to go through the process to the point in our lineage that uh the ayahuasca and the medicinal plants communicate to everybody that you have made it to the level of maestro. Your own maestros in your lineage have agreed that you're a maestro, and you from the heart know that you have graduated to that place before you've been given the title.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Wow. It's uh quite a different process than your degree in anthropology, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Very much so. Very much so.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Um wow, that's that's uh that's an intense uh school. Um so maybe could you give like an overview? Like what are the things that you spend time on on these days? Like what are your main focuses?

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Well, during training, your main focus is the nature of your connection.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah, no, I mean uh I mean now, today so many days later. Sure. Like you had his backgrounds. Oh no, I was interested about something else. Like, in all this time, did you have did you keep contact with your family?

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Like that might have been uh I did, yeah, during the entire time. I would um go to locations where there was telecommunication every two weeks, and I would check in and see how everyone was doing and make sure everyone was okay. And we would maintain a deep spiritual connection, yeah. And so we were able to feel each other and communicate with each other through that and know that we were okay. Yeah, and uh my family was very supportive. Yeah, they all came to participate in the ayahuasca ceremonies and the medicine, and after they had the experience, they understood the importance of the work that we were doing and uh were very proud of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah, yeah, that is, I think that's quite helpful because I can also imagine uh it triggers a lot of fears to see your son disappearing in the Peruvian Amazon and and maybe never coming back anymore. Uh but um yeah, so let's go back to um do you still remember? Now you've done so many ceremonies, your very first uh ayahuasca ceremony.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

Yeah, I do remember uh almost everything about my very first ceremony. It's the easiest one to remember because it's the one where I went from not having any frame of reference for the nature of the experience to the one that opened me up to a very vast and different understanding of ourselves, our mind, our consciousness, and our spiritual connection.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah, wow. And and um for the people who've I think many people more and more they've heard about ayahuasca, but could could you explain what it actually is? Because I feel still there's a lot of confusion when you speak about psychedelics. Um, maybe a small anecdote. Uh I I host retreats with with uh Magic Truffles, and um somebody came into the retreat and uh literally like 10 minutes before the retreat, he he still thought he was gonna do ayahuasca. Where it's clearly communicated, so so people confuse a lot. So maybe uh hearing from you, like uh if people hear about ayahuasca, how would you uh explain it to them what it is?

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yeah, first of all, there are many visionary plants, yeah. Many, many visionary plants, and they have very special compounds and molecules in them that make them visionary. And ayahuasca is a combination of plants that is in the form of traditionally a tea, and it's the vine of Banisteriapsis cappi, that is also known as ayahuasca or yahe, and the leaves of a what a tree called chakruna or psychatra vidras, or chalipangi. And it's the combination of the two that makes the tea ayahuasca. So when you have the vine, which is the cappi vine, and you have the chakruna leaves together into a tea, you get ayahuasca as a result. And every lineage has their own recipe, their own concentrations, their own cooking process, their own rituals associated with that. But the basic tea is the same, and that's ayahuasca.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah. And and so you need a combination because if you have just one of the two, it probably breaks down immediately in your body.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

That's correct. Uh, we have an enzyme in our stomach that breaks down dimethyltryptamine or DMT once you ingest it. Many foods have trace amounts of DMT in it. And so to not be in a consistent and continuous psychedelic experience, we developed and evolved a way to break down DMT. And the CAPI vine, the ayahuasca vine, has within it a chemical that in our stomach inhibits the enzyme that breaks down the DMT and it allows for the absorption of the dimethyltreptamine into your bloodstream and then to your brain. And the the vine, ayahuasca vine itself has a very important MAOI, which uh both supports the natural rebalancing of serotonin within the brain, but it also allows for the dimethyltryptamine to remain in the brain for a longer extended period of time, which allows for the journey that is uh typically associated with an ayahuasca ceremony or ayahuasca experience.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah. And and did you get to learn in your uh training, because this seems to be a fully random combination of plans. So is there any uh knowledge about how this got discovered? Was it like uh or or is it like part of the the mystery or the Mystics around uh ayahuasca.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

I think it's still a great mystery, but uh there's oral tradition in our lineage that says that at the beginning of our lineage and the discovery of the combination of the plants, humans had the ability to communicate with the plants. And in our mythology, the ayahuasca vine told the people to combine it with the chakruna plant to be able to make the combination, that there's a knowledge within the plants themselves that has the ability to um understand these relationships. And I know that's very foreign to somebody who you know uh hasn't trained their mind to think this way, but that's the the story that we were told.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah, cool. Yeah, but I I I strongly believe that that plants uh communicate, and then why wouldn't at some point they be able to communicate with people? I think it's just us that that have unlearned these things that that yeah are a bit skeptic uh against it. Um so so maybe interesting. Like, have you I'm curious, have you ever tried another psychedelic, maybe in your training or or outside your training, then ayahuasca? Or or is it like, no, that's that's the only thing uh I do?

SPEAKER_03 23:31

No, I've worked actually with many psychedelics. Um I trained heavily in ayahuasca practice, but our lineage worked with other plants as well. And so um there's a whole group of plants in the Amazon that go by the name Sanango or Sananga, and they're visionary. There's also Toei that's visionary at larger doses of tobacco or mapacha tobacco, it's also visionary. And we worked with all of those plants, and independently, I also have worked with the Andean cactus that goes by the name San Pedro or Wachuma, and uh had the opportunity as well to work with psilocybin mushrooms, and so I've had uh great opportunity to experience a variety of different uh you know visionary plants. Many don't know that cannabis is also at larger doses, very visionary, and I've done extensive ceremonial work with cannabis in and around the visionary qualities and uh teaching qualities that it has. And just to understand them, I've had a very limited but experience with certain um pharmaceutical-based or Western medicine-based psychedelics as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah, and and do you because they sometimes say that that although people would think yes, visionary plants is or vision uh is all the same, uh, but people who are more deep in it, they would say no, they have really like a different spirit, like the father, the mother, the niños. Do did you get to experience that? And how would you from your own experience um yeah, distinguish the spirit of ayahuasca if if you had to because this is very um uh it's very uh difficult to explain that to someone uh who has never done it, but but let's still maybe try. How would you explain to if if ayahuasca were to be a person versus maybe uh magic mushrooms or or San Pedro, how how would you compare the these different personalities?

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Well, I'd first say that they're very uniquely different, and the experience that you have with them is dramatically different. You know, uh San Pedro ceremony could last all night long or all day. Many people say it is over 24 hours of experiencing the medicine. Um, ayahuasca ceremonies are traditionally about four to six hours and upwards of 12. Um so they have a widely different type of experience. And then when you're in them, the nature of how your body feels is extremely unique to each one. And so they all go through the same pattern. There's an adjustment phase once you consume them, we call that onset. There's a time when you're just now balanced within them and you're having your experience, and we call that in the medicine, and then there's a phase where after it gets the strongest, it ultimately wears off, and we call that landing. And um, I think specifically with ayahuasca, you'll hear in the mythologies a tremendous amount of anthropomorphism where the nature of the plant energies or plant spirits are described in human-like qualities, yeah, like uh mother or grandmother. Um, but I think the greatest consistency that everybody experiences is that they drink the tea and then their body adjusts, and then they start to both feel different, they feel an activation in their nervous system. Um, and then they start to become aware of patterns and colors that they weren't aware of before. And the nature of those patterns and colors doesn't look like a two-dimensional expression of patterns and colors, but actually a multidimensional expression that if you were looking into the forest, you would see the patterns go as far as you could see. And I think that that's the greatest representation of the spirit of ayahuasca. It's the nature of becoming aware of patterns that you weren't aware of before that are geometric and colorful, and that can ultimately take any kind of shape. They say it's a shape shifter. It can be a mother, a grandfather, a grandmother, can turn into all different kinds of animal shapes, and it can be an interface that allows you to interact with what they call spirit, which is the like energy forms of all of the different uh alive beingnesses of Earth. So all the different plants, all the different animals, you know, all of this incredible biodiversity that we see, as well as elements of the natural world, like what they would call the spirit of a mountain or the spirit of a river, etc. You people in the millions of people now have uh anecdotal stories of saying that they experienced exactly what uh people were talking about in that kind of connection and the state of that ayahuasca produces.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Yeah. And how how was it different from uh, for example, uh psilocybin magic mushrooms?

SPEAKER_03 28:48

I think um the first difference with ayahuasca is the intricacy of the sacred geometry that people see in uh in psilocybin, it's often wavier and less precise. And the sacred geometry in ayahuasca is very unique in that it'll take over your entire field of vision, but then if you start to look into it, it becomes more and more and more and more complex and for many people beautiful as well as extremely colorful. It's uh said that people see an infinity of colors, colors that they've never seen before with their eyes, um, and a capacity for that that is somehow suspended or sustained within that sacred geometry. So I think that's the first uh aspect of it. And then um, if you get into the psychological narrative that people experience, it seems like they go on two very different journeys. So the kind of plant intelligence that someone experiences through their psychological interface uh is very unique to uh psilocybin and also unique to ayahuasca. Um, it's why you have a mythological statement that those are lose and these are losuelos or las abuelas, uh, you know, or la madre. It's why there's this difference in mythological context because they have such a uniquely different um form of communication.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yeah. I I must admit, and I think uh I think many people are with me, I I've I've only done uh ayahuasca once. It was actually in the beginning of this year, it was my first uh experience, and um I was always a bit holding it off uh because I I am so uh uh afraid of purging. Uh and I think that's probably a fear that you have to overcome a lot. How would you explain it? Is there a role for this purging? Uh yeah, and is it always like that? Like in the retreat I was in, they say it's half of the people. Um in the end it was much more than half of the people. But but what's your experience with that? What is there a role for the purging? What does it say if people purge a lot or nothing, or it doesn't say anything? Uh just to talk a bit about this taboo on ayahuasca.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

First, the purging is very purposeful, and there's only three kinds of purging, or three reasons people purge. Um the first is that they have something in their body that represents a kind of illness that needs to come out, and they expel it either through vomiting or through defecation, and it leaves their body, and during that time often they'll sweat, uh, which is common when you vomit. You know, if you have the need to, you often have like a kind of sweat or cold sweat beforehand. And so the body is actually releasing something that is very important and um I think uniquely miraculous. That you could go decades with something in your body, drink a little cup of ayahuasca tea, and because you drank that tea, have the opportunity to expel something in us that is illness producing. The second is that um you just drank a saturation dose of ayahuasca. So you drank so much of a dose that your now body doesn't want any more ayahuasca in it. You've absorbed enough. And it's a very important aspect of the way to control overdose. You don't see overdose in ayahuasca because the body will throw it up before somebody actually reaches a uh hypertoxic level. Um, so it's a safety mechanism within it.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

And there are lineages on these limits, like like are there people that can only sustain very low quantities or correct. Yeah, correct.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

So there are there are lineages that pour very large doses of ayahuasca for everybody, knowing that everybody will purge out the amount they don't need. Okay, and so they just have a saturation dose. Um, and then the third reason is that the ceremony itself changes your vibrational state, and it's done with chanting and percussive instruments and a language that's called ikoro. And so that can bring up for people places within their energetic systems where they have blockages. And when they reach that blockage, they'll purge and they'll release the blockage. So they'll reach it and purge and release it, and that opens up their energy body, it opens up their light body, it opens up their spiritual connection, and it opens up their ability to relate to subtler energies that are around them all the time. And so, in all ways, it's miraculous. And as a great example, on many, many occasions, we've had people that come under certain levels of psychological distress, and many of them with diagnosed depression, and they'll purge the depression, and right afterwards they will be relieved of the depression and it will not come back.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

That's magical. In the world where uh people are massively using antidepressants, depressants, uh it's actually sad to know that only so little people have access or are there to go to this more alternative ways of healing themselves. Um okay, cool. And and another thing I wanted to discuss uh in ayahuasca what you see almost always is that um the ceremony leaders they are also drinking uh smaller doses. What's the purpose of that?

SPEAKER_03 35:04

The ceremonial leaders drink ayahuasca from smaller to larger doses depending on the leader and their capacity. Uh, to be able to be in a similar state of consciousness and frame of mind as the participants, they enter into the visions themselves and they guide the entire ceremony through melodic frequencies that come in the form of chants and ikoro, and in some cases song. And so through the nature of the connected consciousness, the uh similar frame of mind, they have an ability and they've learned to navigate the visions, and so they do that with the help of ayahuasca, which is why they drink as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Yeah, cool. Um then people come to your to your retreats. Uh, I assume there's a thorough preparation, but then something I think is very important is is integration, yeah, because of course you can have uh a magical experience and then uh go home and uh just continue your life as it is. Um tell me a bit about the importance of integration and maybe some some some tools you give always with with people who join your retreats. Like what is important after you've had such an impactful experience?

SPEAKER_03 36:25

Integration is very important. Um, we think uh ayahuasca retreat or plant medicine retreat requires anywhere from six months to a year of integration. So it's a you know much longer process than just going to a retreat for a week and it ends when you leave. It actually begins when the retreat's over. And it's an opportunity to not go back into the lifestyle that you had that produced the problems in the first place. And it's an opportunity to root uh new change in behavior, new habits, and um new ways of seeing the world that for you are much healthier and help you sustain uh you know a more impactful life experience. The simplest thing about integration is to give it time and to give yourself a lot of time to rest and relax, and to promote activities that bring rest and relaxation during integration, especially in the two weeks after the retreat itself, up to one month. Um, you need a lot of time to sleep, and you need to nourish yourself with really healthy foods, and you want to stay away from alcohol and other kinds of drugs that can uh you know fundamentally change your energetic state. And we offer a program that helps you build in really simple daily awarenesses that support integration. Like, what do you do as soon as you wake up? In our integration program, we want you to start with the awareness of 10 things you're grateful for. And then uh when you brush your teeth and you look in the mirror, we want you to tell yourself that you love yourself. And most people discovered the love for themselves on the retreat, so it's an honest and truthful statement. But we want to reinforce the nature of that love from the heart. And then if somebody drinks any kind of plant as part of their, you know, morning uh ritual of having a hot beverage, whether it's a tea or a coffee or cacao, you know, we just um we ask them to ask the plants to continue to support them and use that as a moment to connect with the plants that they worked with, to connect with the ayahuasca or connect with the sandpager and to continue asking that the plants support their intention. And then uh when they shower or they bathe, then they're in water. We ask them to ask the spirit of water to continue to help them energetically to cleanse them and to stabilize them. And we promote grounding activities to take one or two minutes a day to walk outside and bare feet, or walk bare feet inside the house, or give yourself a foot massage, or if it's you know really cold outside, just to sit and feel the weight of your body and just you know, offer yourself a time of mental calmness. And uh we kind of do that throughout the day. Take a moment in the day to enjoy pure beauty. And I often find that myself in nature, just looking at a flower or looking at a tree, just something really simple that for you represents pure beauty. It could be, you know, a pet that you have or something that you deeply connect with. Take us a moment in the day to connect with pure love. And um, whenever it gets intense, to you know, do certain ceremonial meditations and breath work that we have just to help continue to move the energy or move any residual um blockages that start to come up. And so we teach people intentional practice and how to bring that into their lives. And then we have professional integration coaches that are available to support people and they really help them work through the big realizations that they had during the sessions, especially when they had deep realizations or revelations, how to bring those into their psychology, how to support a new worldview that has had those experiences. And so uh we have people that are exceptionally trained to support um, you know, the ability to integrate those really peak experiences that people have.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Yeah. Yeah, because that's that's I think that's a nice word also, peak experience. What you see sometimes uh in the psychedelic scene is that there's there's a uh a fraction of the people who who start to chase the peak experience uh and who think that um the plant will cure them like like uh it's called the plant medicine, but that's I often say, okay, the plant can support, but in the end you are the medicine because the plant can uh offer you things, but if you don't do anything with these, that there's still some type of ownership. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna do this retreat, I go home, and then uh everything is solved. Like, how how do you explain that to people?

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Like, like I think that there are aspects of the healing that come directly from the plants in the same way that you would think of Western pharmaceutical medication, like you take an antibiotic and it kills the infection and now you continue with your life. Or you take cold medicine and it masks the symptoms for a period of time and you get over the cold. I think the plants have a certain level of capacity, a very narrow level of capacity in that way. And then there's the part of recognizing that if you've had psychological difficulties or trauma and you've lived with them for a long time, that you've created a habituated life out of that distress, living with that trauma. And that that actually takes a lot of time to transform. And I think of the plant medicines as giving you a very unique, miraculous and uh tremendous opportunity to make that change in your life. And so I say, you know, you get neuroplasticity from the plant medicines themselves. So if you really work that neuroplasticity in that window from 48 hours to a week, you can make a lot of changes in your neuronet over a short period of time, which lead to change in frame of mind. But uh, the best change in frame of mind is a process over six to nine months as you build a much healthier lifestyle and you build a much healthier way of thinking. And um, that's the opportunity that I think the plants give you. And so that's that nature of that commitment to that integration for as long as you're experiencing it and feeling it. And um, then when you feel like that integration has been completed, that's an opportunity if you still need more intervention and more support to come back to the plant medicines and continue the process. And sometimes it can take two or three retreats to fully change the nature of your behavior while you're being supported through that process.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Yeah, but then overall, you would not recommend people to do a few in a row. You would always recommend to do one, take your proper integration, and then do the next one.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

What would be I think of it as uh commitment to a series of ceremonies. A traditional single ayahuasca healing in the Amazon is usually three ceremonies. Many centers offer three to five ceremonies. When we do a full week of ayahuasca, we offer four. And that's just to give people the opportunity to have an introduction ceremony and then the three. So they have a many people are coming for the first time. So they get to be introduced to it, get into the plant medicine, and then the three uh, you know, full ceremonies. We also have ceremonies. That are blended, where we work with ayahuasca and then we work with San Pedro, which is a you know another kind of plant medicine, and offers a variety of unique experiences that are also helpful. Sometimes people come in our trainings for extended periods of time. We call them initiations and immersions. And they'll come for anywhere from uh six to 12 ceremonies. And then we expect that to be an even longer integration.

SPEAKER_05 44:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:27

Yeah. And uh so it really depends on the programming that you're engaging with, but we believe it's best to go through a set series of ceremonies and then to take a break to integrate them, especially when it's for personal transformational purposes. Uh, the only people in the Amazon that drink the plant medicines regularly are the shamans that are trained. And they went through extensive training to be able to do that and be able to maintain a positive relationship with them.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Yeah. And and how how do I uh imagine you or those shamans when when you're in this training and you do 150 ceremonies a year? Um do you get used to it? Or are it's maybe not the wrong the right word, but like it is such an intense experience that that do you somehow get used to it or do you get more yeah, how how is that?

SPEAKER_03 45:28

It's very unique, especially with ayahuasca, that during that process you become more sensitive to it, not less sensitive. Okay, and as you become more sensitive to it, you have to learn uh a set series of skills that they ultimately define of as mastery. And uh many of them are similar skills as you would see in deep Eastern philosophical training, like the ability to sit, stay centered, stay grounded, navigate widely different mental states and states of consciousness. And so there's a deep training associated with it, and many fail. Uh, typically one in a hundred make it through training, 99 fail.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Yeah, yeah, okay, not for everyone. And and um going back to your retreats, um what what type of people would come to a retreat of yours in Peru?

SPEAKER_03 46:28

We have people who come from all over the world from over a hundred countries, people have visited us, and uh they come from every kind of background you can imagine. They all share one thing in common, which is that they feel a desire or a calling to experience this. Many are doing it for personal healing, many come for personal growth, some come for curiosity and exploration. Um, but the majority of people have very deep intention and intentional purpose behind their desire to come and experience this. And they come from all ages. So uh plant medicines are allowed uh for people who need them that are teenagers with parental guidance, all the way to people in their 80s who are you know preparing for the next chapter in their life. And uh, we've been finding now that people are using the plant medicines not only to know themselves better, but also for uh increased success, uh personal capacity, you know, uh spiritual hacking, biohacking, mind hacking, uh, and really looking to excel in their development in their life, not just fix things that have uh you know gone awry or gone wrong. So it's a unique period of time now. And uh it's really it's beautiful to see the variety of reasons that people come with and the unique ability for the plant medicines to support such a unique variety of reasons that people are participating with it.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Yeah, yeah. It's so so I hear it's not many people they are fed up of surviving and they really wanna want to thrive in life. Um and and so you did I hear that well, you also uh accept uh teenagers in your ceremony?

SPEAKER_03 48:18

We do, as long as they have parental guidance.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

Yeah, wow, cool. Would there be people that you wouldn't accept?

SPEAKER_03 48:26

There are many. You have to pass medical screening, you have to be a candidate. There are many preconceived condition or uh pre-existing conditions that wouldn't allow you, like hypertension, high blood pressure, um, you know, to name a few heart conditions. You have to be uh physically healthy enough to be able to experience the power of the plant medicines in the body. Whenever there's a borderline case, we uh have doctor approval. So we have them have their medical doctors write uh notes of permission that uh say that they've had physical checkup and that they are an appropriate candidate for this kind of experience. And then there are people that are on medications that are contraindicated to working with the different plants. And um, for them to have the experience, they have to go through a medically supervised uh weaning program to wean off the medicines. That usually takes anywhere from 30 to 90 days, depending on the kind of medicines they've been on. Sometimes those are antidepressants. Um, often they're ones that affect the nature of brain chemistry. But as the you know, Western pharmaceutical industry and big pharma continues to expand every year. There are more and more and more uh pharmaceutical medications that are contraindicated to working with the plant medicines. So we have specialist pharmacists who stay up on that and can help inform the nature of the drug interactions, and then uh people go through weaning schedules that are medically supervised.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Yeah, okay, cool. So uh a variety of people, both in terms of age, uh purpose of the ceremony. Um do you get a lot of to get to the topic that I'm I'm uh most interested in, do you get a lot of people who come there to to crack a problem or or to to understand something or really for this creative uh power of the spirit?

SPEAKER_03 50:26

I think the majority of people come for the creative power. When you have a problem and you don't know how to solve it, you look for extraordinary help. And um, you know, yesterday I was asked by a guest uh who comes from a background of addiction how to solve the addiction, and that's a creative problem. You know, that's a healing kind of creativity. And then we have people who are uh business people and they have you know significant needs within their businesses, and they're not sure the right direction to take, and they come for the creativity of the decision-making power associated with it. There are uh people who've come who, in the ceremonies themselves, have gotten entire downloads for uh businesses that they ultimately created and technology businesses, which is one of the ways that I ultimately got involved in technology. And um, people also come for scientific discovery. There are scientists that come that uh have unique problems in the scientific space and they're looking to make discoveries, and they use the increased creativity from the plant medicine experience to help those discoveries.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

Wow. And and um what would you say is the link, yeah, because you are like a bit at the intercourse of technology, uh, psychedelics. How would you link both to someone who only knows uh technology?

SPEAKER_03 52:00

Well, I think the most important thing to understand is that your interaction with your environment in your life is how you developed all of the understandings that you have. And by having these plant medicine experiences, you are going into an altered state where you increase the depth and the awareness of your experiences. And it's also been scientifically proven with psilocybin, especially and ayahuasca, both that the plant medicines, while they're in the brain, allow the brain to communicate in new ways that it hadn't communicated before, both bilaterally and in uh vertical access, where you get a lot more access to your neuronet and uh interneuron communication, which has been scientifically studied and proven. And you know, all of our great creative moments come whether it's writing a song or whether it's a new idea or whether it's the decision that we make from something that happens in our brain, you know, in connection with the totality of our body at any given moment. And so when you combine the opportunity to have the brain communicate in new ways and to be in an altered state of consciousness or an altered state of mind, and to still be lucid, it's very important to understand that the plant medicines don't make you drunk, they don't take away your lucidity, they actually increase your sensitivity and increase your lucidity. That it's a very ripe and potential moment, a powerful moment for creative discovery. And um, it's been used for decades now in Silicon Valley for the development of the technology industry because the substances are controlled and in many cases illegal. It's been very quiet about the nature of their uses, but there's been a you know community of scientists and a community of technologists that have been working with different kinds of visionary psychedelics and plant medicines continuously. And so it's a very powerful tool for creativity and creation. And um many people experience, especially in ayahuasca, uh an awareness of a mindset that is very akin to engineering. It's very akin to how uh engineering plans would get drawn, the mathematics behind it, the mindset of systems and systems engineering. And so that's very powerful for technological discovery because it's all based on systems and code that is directly related to our natural environment. Like the ones and zeros of the code that's in the binary digital technology we're using to have this conversation in electrical engineering is a reading of a fluctuation of voltage in positives and negatives. And so when you have this expanded experience that is highly energetic with this very unique form of mindset and sacred geometry, this unique engineering and systems thinking, this increased brain capacity and creativity, you have a very, very special moment for uh creative discovery.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Yeah, wow. Yeah, I I often feel like while I'm in this uh experience, I feel my my brain is on steroids. Like I when I go out of the experience, I I always feel like holy cow, when when I'm in my normal uh conscious state, I feel I'm only using a fraction of of the capacity. And and when you are in another state, like the psychedelic state, all of a sudden you you get to feel like whoa, like like as if you're ramping up uh using more of your potential. And um another anecdote I I wanted to share is that that uh once I was guiding someone uh in the trip to the bathroom and he kept on telling me, like, are we allowed to see this? Are we allowed to see this? Like, like there's often some experience of getting to understand uh bigger parts of of how everything works. Um would that also be with ayahuasca?

SPEAKER_03 56:36

Very much so. Yeah, many people feel like they have a deep awareness and understanding of how things work and our place in the world and the nature of our purpose, and that all of it comes through this expanded mindset and visionary experience.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

Yeah, it's almost like you for a moment you are a bit backstage of life capital L. Um and so the link with technology, um one of the things you are uh you sp you told me when we first uh had we had another introduction call is that that you said for me, uh ayahuasca also helped me to understand AI. Um why is that important?

SPEAKER_03 57:31

I think it's important because we're in a technological evolution that is going to redefine our economic systems and the way of life for many, many people. In the Western developed worlds, AI is going to lead to automization and robotics and a new evolution in how machines affect our lives. And on a larger field, it's going to affect uh the geopolitical systems, warfare, the sharing of information, and uh maybe you know, a form of superintelligence. And so I think on all fronts, we're about to go from uh like the movement before there were books, all the way to people holding iPhones and smartphones, like no books, iPhone, like just skip thousands of years of history is going to be where we are to 20 years from now, artificial intelligence. Not what we see today, but 20 years from now, artificial intelligence. And so I think of it as a uh very early stage. The world will never be free from artificial intelligence again. So it there's a before artificial intelligence and there's an after. We are now in the after, so everybody has to evolve with it. And so I think it's of a uh you know incredible importance. Everybody's already been working and utilizing artificial intelligence. If you've used a smartphone or a computer, you've uh used artificial intelligence. It's built into it, but now it's becoming a consumer product and uh it's informing how every business runs. So it will affect all manufacturing, it will affect medicine, it will affect uh every kind of service industry. And I'm already seeing that uh just with the types of artificial intelligence tools that are available now, but I think it's uh much more important the exponential growth curve that is expected from the technology and the possibility of superintelligence.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

Yeah. Are you generally more an optimist or a pessimist when it comes to AI?

SPEAKER_03 59:52

I'm equally both. I think that uh humans have the capacity to take a tool that is neutral and make it uh nefarious or uh dystopian, as much as they can take a tool and make it purposeful. So a great example is a hammer. A hammer can be a weapon, or you can build amazing things with a hammer. You know, we can't we can't make our beautiful marble sculptures without a hammer, nor can we build our houses without a hammer. And you know, a hammer can also be used for a nature of power and destruction. You can also use a hammer to destroy those beautiful pieces of art that were created with the hammer as well. But the hammer is a neutral tool, it just is there. And so humans are the ones that are coding the artificial intelligence with their own values, morals, and beliefs. And so I represent in the space the importance of benevolence and the understanding of that nature within ourselves and within our own intelligence, so that we can inform upon the tools that will be intelligent, what it means to be benevolent and supportive, not only of humanity, but of the entire earth system. I think of Earth as one single system. And so uh I would like to see that these tools not be extractive of that earth system, but ultimately supportive of it, even if others will uh ultimately build dystopian or negative forms of this technology.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

Yeah, so so am I hearing that you say like AI, it is what it is, but uh it's almost like if we as um people uh we can be good people, benevolent, uh the eye will likely become a force for good, whereas if we um go into this lower vibrations, uh then it can be a very harmful thing. Is that what you're saying, more or less?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:46

That's exactly what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

Yeah. Okay. Um so so it's also our our own responsibility to to decide on the direction uh of where this is going.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:02

Absolutely. I mean, you can take a chat tool right now, like any of the large language models, and you can ask it how to manipulate somebody, or you can ask it how to support somebody.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

That's up to you. That's the user. The tool has the capacity to understand manipulation or support. Uh, you have to make that choice. And so I think you know, there will be people who will make the choice for benevolence and support, and there will be people who make the choice for lower vibrational states, and we'll see artificial intelligence inform upon all of that tooling. Uh, but ultimately we're the decision makers and we have to decide the course and direction of the technology.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

Yeah, it's it's almost like we are the parents, technology is is the child, and depending on what we feed the child with, both in uh food or words, um, it will become uh benevolent or uh yeah, less benefent child. Um so when you spoke about um our brain that can uh make more connections, uh things that are not there. Um when you have this psychedelic uh experience, you've got all the insights, and that's uh what I read. It's more some kind of primary thinking, it's more associative, more intuitive, more broad, out of the box. Um but then when you get out of the ceremony, is it then like a nice package where you can go home with, or does it require maybe more uh secondary thinking, like logical thinking, linear thinking? Like like do you see a place for both? How how's your experience with that? Because sometimes these these experiences can be crystal clear but also a bit confusing sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:12

Yeah, I think the kind of uh-huh moments or deep realizations, or you're you'll hear in the space them call them downloads, are typically very simple and very clear, and they inform upon your worldview and your mindset and how you understand yourself. And afterwards, that's when the more complex complex or linear thinking typically kicks in and it starts to process now with this new awareness that came, you know, in deep simplicity. Often people will even forget the awareness. I uh recommend that everybody write it down, whether digitally or by hand, just write them down so that you don't forget that that's now in you and it's in how you're you're processing information and understanding. And I just think of it as updating your mind that once you've had these realizations, your mindset is going to change. And in doing so, you'll process a lot of linear thinking and more complex forms of thinking. Um, and it I think it has deep purpose and it's transformational, which is why the integrative process takes months instead of, you know, hours to days.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:13

Yeah. Have you ever come close in one of your experiences to have the feeling like I'm about to understand everything? Or is it still just curious?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:26

I think that's a very dangerous thought. And I would like to think that the universe is so expansive and creative that we will always be both uh babies of the universe and explorers of the universe. And I would hope that uh the universe would continue to exponentially create more for us to learn. And uh, we only ever learn up to the moment of assimilating all of our knowledge in a brief moment. So when we get that thought, I know everything. That's I know everything. Everything I know in that moment, I'm holistically understanding my knowledge. And I would like to think that in the amount of time it takes me to think that, that the universe has created so much more that I know nothing at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

Yeah, okay. One of your uh words in your purpose is to contribute to human flourishing. How does uh ayahuasca contribute to it?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

I think the most important thing that ayahuas now is both an opportunity to connect deeply into love. And our Western societies have become both hyper-ideologically focused and uh also mentally focused. So you have both a very, very strong expression of polarized ideologies and an over-emphasis and over-indexing on mental capacity. And uh we need to awaken much more heart and unconditional love in our societies. And ayahuasca is a powerful tool for awakening the heart. And then the second piece is that consciousness is still debated as if it even exists. And I think that consciousness does exist, and that is a very limitedly explored frontier. And ayahuasca gives us direct access to our consciousness and allows us the exploration of consciousness in a direct way. And I think that the greatest riches that are there to be discovered are going to be in the realms of consciousness. And uh it's a place for ripe scientific investigation and discovery, and maybe some of the most important technology that we will ever create. And I think ayahuasca gives us direct access to that, and uh that makes it a miraculous and uh incredibly important, powerful tool at this uh time of our collective evolution.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:59

Yeah. So so would you agree with the sentence uh psychedelics can change a world?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:09

I I do believe in that sentence because I think the world that we live in was created by psychedelics. I think humans have been interacting with different psychedelics uh for a very, very long period of time, uh, including all other kinds of mind-altering substances. And so uh it's very rational to think that uh humans followed herd animals and herd animals defecate the perfect environment for psilocybin mushrooms to grow. Uh it's also interesting that we have receptors over a million years of evolution for every psychoactive chemical that we've discovered. So, how did we evolve the brain capacity to have a receptor for those molecules? And I think that only happens by ingesting the molecules and evolving the brain. And so I think our entire uh mind and uh state of what we call the modern world is or postmodern world has been informed by psychedelics and will continue to be so. Many of our most important technologies that we use on a daily basis were discovered and created through people having psychedelic experiences. And so it's not just the ability for people to take it and change the world, but for people to take the experience and create world-changing discoveries and technologies. And so I think it's rational to say psychedelics have been informing humanity uh since the origins of humanity. And I actually think that that's something very beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:44

Yeah, wow. And and um if if you were um like if you were that that would be maybe a funny thing to say, but if if you could replace uh President Trump for for uh let's say a few months, what what would be your biggest wish on on the global level or American level? Something you would change.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:18

What I would like to see is that our global leaders come together. And I don't care who they are, they're all humans to me. So I would just like to see all of our global leaders come together and make a plan for peace, and a plan that uses all of our resources in stewardship for every generation that will ever live in the future. I think it is our responsibility as people to think in billions of years of time, not in lifetimes or decades. And uh there's only one species called Homo sapien sapien, even though we go by many different religions and nationalities. I would like us to make a plan to celebrate each other, celebrate our differences, not just similarities, and use all of our resources to support the flourishing of humanity and recognizing that we are co-creators with the universe. And I think when we do that, we will usher in an exceptional renaissance of who and what we are, and we will prove our relevance not only to Earth itself, to each other, but also the entire cosmos. And we will finally understand our place and our purpose, both as humans and as spirits. And uh I would like to see the leaders of our civilizations and our species come together to understand that uh the earth is our resource and it is something that we need to steward and cherish.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:54

Yeah, and I think what would be uh maybe a good idea to prepare this meeting is to have these people all together in a series of a few uh ayahuasca ceremonies. Would you would you be happy to guide it?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:10

Uh I would like there to be many leaders of that ceremony, not just me, but I think it would be a tremendous honor to get to be there. If I even just got to see there and witness a ceremony like that, I think it would be a uh global changing, world-changing moment. Um, it's important, though, to also think that it's not just one ceremony that changes people, it's the willingness over a period of time. And I think that plant medicines have a place in global diplomacy, and I think that they could be used effectively with the right guidance to uh supporting the end of ideological war. And I would uh like to see that happen if it were possible.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

Is there anything? Thank you so much for for everything you shared. Is there anything that we didn't cover yet that you think is important to share?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:03

I would like to share that uh right now there's a great psychedelic renaissance happening. And I think it's important for people to get the right education and training, even if they just want to be a participant. And it's part of our mission now to support people to have that training, whether they just want to do home sits with friends or they want to go to different retreats and different circles, like your truffle retreats or our plant medicine retreats, and to know how to sit and hold space themselves, to know how to have their own safety within it. And I think of it very much like any of the other uh forms of basic education, that we need to be able to have powerful, safe experiences. Like when we learn to drive a car, we take classes to learn how to do it, and so we provide that education. And it's not just for people who want to be professionals, although even more education is needed for them. And so I think it's very important that as the psychedelic renaissance happens, that uh people have the education and the skills to really get the most out of these experiences. You're making an investment in yourself, and you want them to be safe and positive, and you want to be able to truly uh get the most out of them. And so I think it's it's important to highlight the that need for education and to invest in it. And um, you know, it's part of our mission to support that education, and we have both online programs and we have what we call initiations where we do the trainings in per person to uh have that basic education all the way to professional facilitation.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:44

Yeah, yeah, I think I I couldn't agree more, as it's such a it's it's such a potent, uh potent plant or plans that uh it would be rather uh irresponsible to to have people use them, experiment them without any proper training or education. Um okay uh Hamilton, I I would really love to thank you um for taking the time. I know you're busy, you're doing a lot of retreats. Um thanks for your insights, thanks for for sharing your story, uh for yeah, your your your wisdom and um I really hope uh I'm actually convinced uh that we will meet in real life soon.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:45

I appreciate that and uh I'll cherish that day. I look forward to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:50

Thank you for listening to Alice Asks. If this conversation resonated with you, hitting the follow or subscribe button takes two seconds and it helps these conversations reach more curious humans like you, and that means the world to us. And if you're feeling the pull to experience a safe, guided psychedelic journey yourself, you can apply directly via our website at askelis.world. That is askellis.world. Our last two retreats before the summer are on May 1st till 4th and June 2nd till 4th, both in the Netherlands. And in September, we will go to the Portuguese mountains. Spots are limited and we work with small groups, so if you feel ready, don't wait too long. And as always, when in doubt, go and ask Alice.