Throughout the Western World, people increasingly participate in indigenous shamanic ceremonies using psychedelic plants to open a path to deep personal insights and high spiritual truths. These plants -- including mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca, and salvia divinorum -- are revered by ancient tribal societies as potent teachers capable of healing the body, expanding the mind, and strengthening community.
The renowned anthropologist Jeremy Narby has explored these questions for over two decades. In his much-admired books, including The Cosmic Serpant and Shamans Through Time, Jeremy has shared his wisdom and insights. For the first time, in this special video teleseminar series, he will pursue these questions through two exclusive online lectures, and one-on-one discussions with four of the world's leading experts on the shamanic use of mind-altering plants: Stanislav Grof, Wade Davis, Kat Harrison and Luis Eduardo Luna.
You will be part of this unique online event -- unlike any in the history of consciousness studies --· watching the live video stream and asking your questions directly to these inspirational pioneers. Here's a video invitation from Jeremy describing his vision for this remarkable series:
Dim lights
This course gives you the tools you need to integrate the shamanic knowledge offered by teacher plants into your life, so you can fully embrace the change called for by this time of global transformation.
This course takes place on 7 Sundays, between January 23 and April 3 and you can participate from your laptop anywhere in the world with a broadband connection. The video above was recorded using the same system that's used for the online course. If you can watch a YouTube video, you can take part in this course.
Special Added Class with Daniel Pinchbeck
Introductory Lecture
In the first call, Jeremy will recount his own experiences of living for two years with the Ashaninca Indians and how their intimate knowledge of psychoactive plants introduced him to the shamanic world view, and fueled his commitment as an activist on behalf of the rainforest and its indigenous inhabitants. He will also discuss his long experience trying to integrate shamanic knowledge into his Western mind frame, with a focus on his groundbreaking initiatives to bring science and shamanism together.
In this call, you will:
The next 4 seminars are devoted to one-on-one conversations between Jeremy and our featured guests, followed by a Q & A session in which you can take part. This will be a live, dynamic experience in which you become part of a community of students sharing real time with some of the most inspiring visionaries of our era.
In the last seminar, on April 3 at 3:00 p.m. EST, Jeremy will provide a comprehensive conclusion that will include student feedback.
SPECIAL ENCORE SESSION: One of the most influential anthropologists in the field of ayahuasca research, Luis was the first to study the ayahuasca shamanism practiced by mestizo (or mixed-blood) people in the Amazon. Born and raised in the Colombian Amazon, Luis was educated in Spain and Norway, and always had a foot in both worlds. His work revealed the importance of the diet that ayahuasqueros follow, and the pivotal role played by the icaros, or magic melodies, in shamanic ceremonies. Luis has also studied the Brazilian ayahuasca churches such as Santo Daime, Uniao do Vegetal and Barquinha.
He is the director of Wasiwaska, a research center for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary arts and consciousness, in Brazil, and is the author of several books, including Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (co-authored with Rick Strassman et al.), and his much loved collaboration with the painter Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions: the Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman.
In this call, you will:
Kathleen (Kat) Harrison is an ethnobotanist, artist, and photographer who researches the relationship between plants and people, with a particular focus on art, myth, ritual, and spirituality. She has done fieldwork in Latin America for 30 years, and is the director of Botanical Dimensions, a nonprofit foundation devoted to preserving medicinal and shamanic plant knowledge from the Amazonian rainforest and tropics around the world, which she co-founded with former husband Terence McKenna.She brings a distinctly "feminine" approach to the study of psychedelic plants and shamanism, one that stresses humility relative to the plants themselves and the cultures that have used them most judiciously. A widely published illustrator, Kat enjoys teaching people how to see and draw the plant world
In this call, you will:
Stan Grof is a pioneering psychiatrist with more than 50 years experience researching the healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. His early studies of LSD's effects on the psyche are landmarks in the field of psychedelic psychotherapy. Following the legal suppression of LSD in the late 1960s, with his wife Christina he discovered that non-ordinary states of consciousness could be explored without drugs by using certain breathing techniques, which became well known as “Holotropic Breathwork”.Stan has described psychedelics as “unspecific amplifiers” that make deep unconscious contents of the human psyche available for conscious processing at a level that cannot be matched by any method used by mainstream psychiatry. His is the author of more than 20 books, including LSD: Doorway to the Numinous, Psychology of the Future,· and When the Impossible Happens.
In this call you will:
Through his many books and films (often produced by National Geographic), Wade Davis has become one of our greatest advocates for cultural diversity, as can be seen in the popular video of his TED talk. Part of the generation of anthropologists who witnessed ayahuasca coming out of the Amazon, and out of the hands of traditional indigenous people, Wade brings a knowledgeable perspective to the "vine of soul's" use in the modern world.
His books include One River: Science, Adventure and Hallucinogens in the Amazon Basin, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World and Light at the Edge of The World: a Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures.
In this call you will:
Jeremy Narby is an anthropologist and activist who has worked for 25 years as Amazonian projects director for the Swiss non-profit "Nouvelle Planète," backing projects for the self-determination of Amazonian indigenous peoples that involve land rights, primary education, village health, botanical knowledge, fish farms, tree nurseries, and other local initiatives.· Jeremy has also written several books that explore Amazonian systems of knowledge, aka shamanism, and their possible interface with science, including The Cosmic Serpent and Intelligence in Nature, and he is co-editor of the anthology Shamans Through Time with Francis Huxley.
By participating in this online course, you will receive:
We hope you join us for this unique opportunity to discover the rich wisdom of the plant kingdom.
