in this excerpt, “natural” is used to describe people who This is a topic that many people are looking for. newyorkcityvoices.org is a channel providing useful information about learning, life, digital marketing and online courses …. it will help you have an overview and solid multi-faceted knowledge . Today, newyorkcityvoices.org would like to introduce to you Michael Pollan— The Opposite of Spirituality is Egotism — London Real excerpt. Following along are instructions in the video below:
We think weve got it all figured out and you need to shake that that confidence you need to inject some noise in the system. I write as a person. I was kind of a newbie to the psychedelic community.
So i think that made it much more accessible to other people. I was a very reluctant psychonaut. I had six guided journeys to ayahuasca circles.
One lsd one psilocybin one five meo dmt. The night before every one of these experiences was sleepless. The cautionary voice was my ego trying to protect itself against an assault.
Its a kind of death and you fight it if youve been properly prepared youre gonna surrender to it as a writer. I really like to bring a variety of different lenses to a topic. If you combine science with personal experience with history.
Then you begin to get a whole picture music. Somethings going on the culture is ready to have this conversation. I do see these medicines as addressing some of the big problems we face as a society the environmental crisis which slows from our disconnection from nature and tribalism which flows from our disconnection from people unlike ourselves.
I do think that psychedelics can teach us important things about that am. I less frightened of death perhaps perhaps i am music this is london real. I am.
Brian rose. My guest today is michael pollan the award winning author activist and journalist named by time magazine. As one of the hundred most influential people in the world for 25 years.
Youve been writing about the intersection of nature and culture selling millions of copies with your bestsellers. The omnivores dilemma in defense of food and cooked. Which is now a successful netflix series your new book how to change your mind dives deep into the world of psychedelics through meetings with shamans magic.
Mushroom hunts and using yourself as a guinea pig to take your readers on a journey to the frontiers of the human mind michael welcome to london real. Thank you very sick think. Its a pleasure.
Having you here you described yourself as a materialist before this book. Started youve also spent a lot of your life. Studying plants and yes.
Many different ways and you had some new relationships with clients you know when you were in your backyard for that non guided experience and then ive had some amazing relationships with plants on my garden. Im not but when im on the psychedelic experiences. I have them and then now even without them.
When im in the hampstead heath here. I just i just find myself very much attracted and seeing wisdom in these moods. And again like i was trained in engineering.
Another company. But what now that when i when i see it i have a tendency to really stare at trees when im having a psilocybin experience in the nature and i can stare at them for hours. And i just really i have a lot of the realizations that youve come to in some of your work like wow look at this tree.
Its been here for a few hundred years its gonna be for here for a few hundred years. It must look down at us humans and say look at all these silly little animals running around flashing your bling youre trying to get in the new york times bestseller list and guess what were gonna be here. Its fun to watch you guys and then by the way could you plant me over there thank you very much and so.
But im curious what you saw did you see spirituality there. And what is that well we have to talk about the definition of spirituality. But i had a very profound experience with plants in my garden on this psilocybin trip.
Now you should understand ive always given plants a lot of credit. Ive written about plant intelligence. I wrote a piece for the new yorker a couple years ago and in botany desire my third book.
I wrote about the reciprocal relation ship. We have with plants that we think were working on them and theyre doing what we want you know when we mow the lawn or whatever. But in fact.
The grasses have manipulated us into mowing that lawn so the trees cant come up and shade them and ruin their habitat. So theyre theyre manipulating us too they have not intentionally this is just evolution. Thats how evolution this is coevolution that they they use us we use them thats how co co evolution works.
Were not aware of how were used in the same way the the bee. The honeybee is not aware when its when its going breaking into the flower on the apple tree and stealing the nectar that in fact. Its been manipulated to do exactly that and without its knowledge.
Its carrying pollen on its legs and taking it to some other flower. Were much more like the bee than we realize and so i understood this intellectually. This was an idea developed in botany desire.
But man. I felt it for the first time that these plants in my garden were regarding me in some sense. They dont have eyes or anything.
But there were just like their presence. The sense that they did have that i wasnt the only subject you know normally. We think were the only subject everything else is an object no they were subjects too there were spirits in that sense everywhere.
And its a very common phenomenon on psychedelics to have the sense that consciousness is more evenly spread over the world and not just locked in here. And that other beings are more alive than you realized. And i definitely had that with these plants and i felt like i was one character among many in this garden rather than the human overseeing the garden and it was it was a deeper connection to nature than id ever felt i dont think theres anything supernatural about that i would say its spiritual in this sense and this will just take a minute to develop.
But i what happened to me i as i said earlier. I hadnt really i didnt think id had a spiritual experience. Which kind of surprised me yeah.
I know but i didnt feel like i had i mean the way i talked about plants sounds kind of spiritual just what i was saying but i assume that spiritual meant supernatural in some sense that you had to leave the laws of nature and science and and it was an experience that refuted them by showing you that there was some divine force you werent aware of or god or whatever. It was and i i didnt buy that and but i came to understand spirituality in a different way over the course of writing. This book and that was that the opposite of spiritual is not material as i had thought the opposite of spiritual is egotistical and that it is ego and the ego defenses that wall us off from the kinds of really.
Powerful connections that constitute the spiritual experience. Im talking about the experience of love for someone else or for nature. Im talking about feeling like youre part of nature.
You have that deep connection with nature the ego keeps us you know puts these walls up it patrols the boundary between self and other it tends to encourage us to objectify the other and not see that there are other subjects looking back at us all over the world like your tree and so when i came to understand that that was the that was the opposite that i was having spiritual experiences. And there were experiences of deep powerful connection and thats what i think spirituality is now for some people that connection is with some idea of the divinity and higher power. And i can totally even see that in a naturalistic sense.
So i dont think ive given up my materialism. But i have acquired a spirituality without it without giving it up and that was a that was a big surprise for me and a big turn and and i realized since that to the extent. I can lower the voice of my ego.
I can make available those kind of connections. .
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