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The Room of Lives

The Room of Lives

by Neel (Abhranil Das)

Science Personal Journals

68 · Sex Therapist · Kink, Shame & Trauma

‘As a child, I had a book with a macabre 15th century painting: writhing naked bodies, blood, people being torn up. I was fascinated, and ashamed that I liked it. I used to go to the basement to watch an old show with nude actors doing very erotic things, and would go into ecstatic states as a child. I drew pictures of people being strung up, their breasts tied up, being boiled in oil. I thought I was possessed by the devil, that men in white coats would come get me. ‘I went to grad school and worked at the public defender's office, interviewing sex offenders in prison to say whether they could be released. I was finding humanity in them, seeing that they’d been horribly traumatized themselves. The school didn’t like this. I was called into the dean's office and threatened to be flunked. ‘In my thirties I was in a mental hospital, in a semi-locked unit. One day I said something about wanting to hurt myself. They dragged me to the locked unit. There, I saw what deep mental illness really looks like. A woman was talking to me, and she put out her cigarette in her arm. After all my years thinking I was so crazy, I realized, that's not me. ‘I work a lot with Indian couples, and I’ve learned how little sex education they get. An Indian sex therapist friend told me that her female clients from Gujarat only want to do therapy in English, because there is not one word about sex in their language that is not vulgar or disgusting.’ Dr. Anna Randall earned a Master of Social Work from Boston University, and a Master of Public Health and Doctor of Human Sexuality from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is currently a sex therapist in Silicon Valley, and co-founder and Executive Director of The Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance. Anna begins by sharing her childhood erotic fascinations, and the pervasive role of shame in her Catholic upbringing. We trace her unique history of navigating 27 different therapists, beginning with a psychoanalyst who fell asleep during sessions, and how those encounters have informed her current approach as a directive sex therapist. Finally, we discuss her clinical work treating desire discrepancies in multicultural couples, and how watching Indian Matchmaking has helped her decode their intricate dynamics.

67 · Silvia Polivoy · Ayahuasca Retreat Facilitator

‘A teacher helping me with homework was studying psychology, and asked me many intelligent questions. That’s when I became curious about psychology. I specialized in drug addiction, then psychoanalysis and dream interpretation, transactional analysis, then transpersonal psychology. ‘I once left my body, and saw myself from the outside. I started researching, and found that you can do such things in trance states. I learned hypnosis and holotropic breathwork. I was using hypnosis to explore my clients’ past lives, but sometimes they instead went into some other dimension or planet, and I realized then that there are such worlds. ‘I went into the Amazon to work with shamans. On ayahuasca, the jungle spoke to me telepathically, and asked me to help it. I was in awe. Each time I drank it, I saw a probable future, and focused on it. ‘Ayahuasca is trance. When you drink it, you communicate with a sentient entity. In my opinion, everything has a cause in the spiritual realm, that materializes in the body. I help people enter into a light trance to see the spiritual causes of their problems.’ Silvia Polivoy, PhD, is co-founder and facilitator at the Spirit Vine Ayahuasca retreat center in Brazil, where I went last year. She is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has worked in psychoanalysis, transactional therapy, transpersonal approaches, spiritual methods, meditation, group therapy, hypnosis, past-life regression, Jungian archetypes, and holotropic breathwork. She studied psilocybin mushrooms with Mazatec shamans in Mexico, the San Pedro cactus, and ayahuasca in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. Many leaders in consciousness studies have joined her retreats, including Rick Doblin, founder and president of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), and psychedelic artist Alex Grey. At her ayahuasca retreats, Silvia led us through group workshops such as regression to the inner child, going to the root cause of traumas, understanding the victim mindset, cancelling unconscious contracts, reconnecting with our power, breaking soul ties, and releasing negative attachments from our body. We begin this conversation by talking about Silvia’s ADD, her strange intuitions as a child, how she became interested in psychology, and about being a conscious medium. I ask about my lack of visions on ayahuasca. Can someone get better from an ayahuasca experience even without vision and insight? What is the future of the relation between human and nature? We talk about past and future lives and their connection with ayahuasca. Are there cases where ayahuasca can amplify someone’s ego, or harm them?

66 · Astrophysicist · Eclipse, Black Hole, and Einstein's Gravity

Dr Aaron Zimmerman is professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, researcher at the LIGO gravitational wave detector, and our speaker from episode 8. He speaks here about how an expedition was undertaken during the eclipse of 1919, to show evidence for Einstein’s theory of gravity. He then talks about the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, and the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

65.3 · Special Agent · Healing Trauma with Ibogaine

‘All the meds I was on for eight years through the VA did nothing for me whatsoever. From what I know now, psychedelic treatment is the number one way to treat PTSD in veterans. I did that stuff, and the next day I had my life back.’ In this final episode, veteran Albert shares his struggles with physical and mental trauma throughout his life and career, and how he received a surprising amount of healing from ibogaine treatment, through our psychedelic research study.

65.2 · Special Agent · Saved by Synchronicity

‘This anger started coming over me, and I didn’t know what it was. As it reached an uncontrollable boiling point, it all came back to me. My step-grandfather had molested me and my handicapped sister. I got out my gun to kill him, then realized that he was already dead. So I wanted to blow out my own brains, and right then came a knock on my door, where nobody ever visits. ‘I didn’t make it to my social security office appointment at 9. At 9.02, it was bombed. 168 dead. When my paramedic student reached there to help, she was given a bucket to pick up body parts. Months later I went for that appointment to a different office. I was there for 2 minutes when I blacked out. Next moment I woke in the parking lot, and there was an explosion in my head, blood red, body parts flying towards me. That’s when it clicked.’ In this second part, Albert shares two mysterious stories of synchronicities that saved his life. In the first story, a lifeguard who he had a crush on was led by a mysterious mind voice to his doorstep in one of the lowest moments of his life. In the second, a chance phone call pulls him away from the Oklahoma City bombing, but months later the explosion strikes again, inside his mind.

65.1 · Special Agent · A Turbulent Life

‘I went down to the train tracks, and heard someone walking up behind me. I turned around. They both had bows and arrows with real razor hunting tips. “You’re our prisoner now”, they said, and started walking me to the train underpass. I knew in my heart that if I went there, I would not come out alive.’ Albert Hobaugh is a retired special agent, tactical operator, EMT-Paramedic and combat instructor. He was a U.S. Army Ranger and a federal investigator and undercover agent. He is the author of ‘Blacksheep Ghost: The early years: The Life and Making of a Special Agent’. Albert’s journey through PTSD and neurological trauma led him to seek an ibogaine treatment study at our psychedelics research center. Here Albert shares his surprising and unusual life story: the difficult and adventurous story of his childhood and youth.

64 · Enemy of the State

‘I saw dead bodies, rotting and smelling in the heat. I realized that they had not been collected because there were mines planted all around, and I was walking through them. ‘The military found out that I was involved in secret anti-regime propaganda, and sent me to the war front. One night a rocket dropped on us. The shrapnel chopped the head off a running boy, but he kept on running without his head. ‘I was setting fire to a shop as a political protest, but the petrol got on my shoes and I caught fire as well. They arrested us and gave us 75 lashes with a hard rubber radiator tube. They took us prisoners to a big public prayer by a mullah, where I saw my father. I stood up and started challenging the mullah. They beat us and took us to a bigger prison where the in-charge molested the younger prisoners, and insects from the rubbish crawled over us all the time. They made us watch as they hanged our friends. As I was leaving after my year-long sentence, a guy at the prison entrance happened to see me and sent me back for one more year. ‘This girl and I were stopped and searched while driving with anti-regime leaflets. I was arrested again and given a death sentence.’ Hussein shares with me the stories of his rough childhood in Iran, fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, being imprisoned and sentenced to death for his anti-regime activities, and his harrowing odyssey to flee Iran through four countries with fake documents.

63 · Vision Scientist · Seeing without Eyes

‘I have narcolepsy. Sometimes in sleep paralaysis, I hallucinate that my visual world is split. The left side is reality, and the right side is a bad dream, and I am sliding towards it. ‘I met this blind woman who at some point started hallucinating technicolor light, then started seeing her hand as she waved it across her face, then other objects. I ran experiments, and her brain images looked similar to those of a sighted person looking at the same objects.’ Dr Jesse Breedlove studies mental imagery and hallucinations. We first talk about her own narcolepsy and sleep paralysis experiences. Then she describes her experiments on a blind lady with non-optic sight, the blindsight on ibogaine phenomenon from the previous episode, and her theory for what’s going on here. Then we talk about stretching the definition of ‘vision’, the pushback in the scientific community against such phenomena, and about neurodivergence.

62 · Psychedelic Retreat Director · Blindsight on Ibogaine

‘The traditional ibogaine ceremony of eating the ground root bark is a rite of passage for all males in the Bwiti tribe. They use it as an oracle. We have adapted it as a treatment for the diseases of the western developed world, like PTSD, trauma and depression. When an 18 year-old enlists in the military and conducts sanctioned violence for 20 years, they sometimes can’t get out and live a normal life without these psychedelic interventions. ‘On ibogaine, the participant often perceives that they can see through their closed eyelids and the eyeshade. I see them starting to peek through the eyeshade, and wave their hands in front of them to verify, and there’s disbelief at first. It can feel like a superpower, but also terrifying, because you can no longer hide from your visions. You can also see beings you know, or humanoid creatures. The ibogaine can also take on a voice and an entity that can be in dialogue and answer questions. And you can experience a life review, like a projected home movie, with your life memories and trauma. ‘I myself experienced being able to see the room through closed eyes and eyeshades, then I saw a six-foot-tall humanoid with a goat head. I could walk around and look away and look back, and it was exactly where and how it should be in 3D. These beings will often tend to you for the entire visionary experience. ‘The ibogaine asked me if I wanted to know how I would die. I am a death doula and comfortable around my own death. I said no, because I don’t want it to take away the surprise. It said, good answer, and moved on.’ Colm Walker is a veteran and the executive director of The Mission Within psychedelic retreat, where the patients we are studying at our Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy (at the University of Texas at Austin) go for their ibogaine and psilocybin treatment. He shares his background and a description of their program, and what a typical ibogaine experience is like. Then we talk about a strange phenomenon that is allegedly common on ibogaine: being able to see through closed eyes and an eye mask, and we discuss the prospect of seriously scientifically studying it.

61 · Dr SQUID · Life & Psychology

‘1985, first year, second semester: Professor Ed Diener walks into the lecture hall and asks, “what do people want in life?” “Love, sex, money, happiness, a new boat, rock and roll, drugs”, the chalkboard fills up. He circles “happiness” and says, “I believe that all the other wants are about this one. I am studying the nature of happiness, and here’s my research.” I learned something life-changing in his class. He’d found two variables that mattered most in the pursuit of happiness: the quality of your relationship with others, and with yourself. SQUID is such a simple but powerful concept that improves quality of life so quickly. So it has become the focus of my life to put on a costume and teach it full-time in the streets, instead of being a traditional professor.' For years, Dr Mel Ganus, doctorate in education with a focus on applied psychology, has put on street shows in a squid costume to teach kids how to not get triggered by situations, and has co-authored a book about it with Dr Philip Zimbardo who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. Dr Mel starts by asking who I am, why I’m here, where am I going and what do I want. Then she shares her life story and her experience of attention deficit disorder and neurodivergence, about how she was introduced to positive psychology, and the origins of her lifelong work on Quality of Life Experiments. We end with talking about psychedelic mushrooms and the connectedness of mycelium.

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