In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Jason Grechanik — a curandero, tabacero, and the host of The Universe Within podcast. Jason spent over a decade living in the Peruvian Amazon training in the Shipibo tradition. His work bridges plant medicine, traditional cosmologies, and deep healing practices through tobacco and Ayahuasca.
We touch upon topics of:
- Jason’s path to becoming a curandero and his early interest in spirituality and martial arts (00:27–03:39)
- The concept of Ayahuasca “calling” and plant consciousness (04:02–06:36)
- Tobacco as a master plant and its traditional uses (07:06–11:57)
- The role and practice of a tabacero (12:09–14:34)
- Tobacco initiation and altered perception (15:01–20:28)
- Intention and the neutrality of plant medicines (21:02–25:44)
- Sam’s personal relationship with tobacco and the loss of tradition (26:29–29:20)
- Risks of Ayahuasca being misused or misunderstood (29:20–36:40)
- Cosmovision and how worldview shapes experience (39:45–47:25)
- Definitions of spirit across traditions (47:30–54:35)
- Understanding spiritual disease (55:02–60:06)
- The emergence of plant medicines into the modern world (62:09–67:32)
- Advanced civilizations, pyramids, and Ayahuasca as ancient technology (68:02–82:50)
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to www.lawayra.com
Find more about Jason Grechanik at nicotianarustica.org or on Instagram @jasongrechanik. You can also listen to his podcast The Universe Within on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca
Jason Grechanik: podcast.com. These sacred plants like tobacco, ayahuasca, they’re very strong. They can give us power, they can give us insight. People who work with ayahuasca, they would often use ayahuasca as a tool to diagnose, to see, and so tobacco’s the same. And so along with that comes a big responsibility and that’s where I think it’s very important to go through very rigorous training where we’re constantly put to the test and we have to overcome obstacles.
We have to, in a way, pass these tests to be able to handle that responsibility.
Sam Believ: I remember Ayahuasca calling me to drink it for the first time. I remember Ayahuasca calling me to go and drink. Aya was in the jungle. It’s something that really hard for me to explain.
Jason Grechanik: In a lot of these traditional cultures, when you’re speaking about plants, it’s this idea that they have a spirit, that they have an aliveness, and that spirit can heal us, but it can also teach us.
So everything has an ability to teach us, and it’s coming back to what we talked about in the beginning, is this idea of a calling. And as we begin to open our senses, we can get more in touch with that calling and be more open to receiving the information of Spirit and everything has spirit.
Sam Believ: Hi guys and welcome to Iowa Podcast. As always, we do the whole Sam. Today I’m having a conversation with Jason Nik. Jason is ERO, taro, and the host of universe Within podcast, he spent many years living in uvn, Amazon, where he trained with Quero from Shapiro Tradition. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat.
At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Laira, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you. Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Grechanik: Thank you, Sam. Thank you for having me on.
Sam Believ: Jason, so first question I always ask all my guests is your life before Ayahuasca. What brought you to this line of work, of working with plant medicines?
Jason Grechanik: It’s a big question. I, how to sum it up shortly. I think ever since a young age, I was very interested in indigenous cultures. I was very interested in martial arts and I was very interested in shamanism and. I think at the time, martial arts, there was no like real path to be able to do that.
And so I found myself doing many paths, but especially I became very interested in plants and plants as medicine and eventually that led me to travel around the world looking for different paths eventually to the Amazon and eventually to I guess doing the work I’m doing.
Sam Believ: Interestingly that you mentioned martial arts, I think I never mentioned it on my podcast, but I did boxing for eight years when I was young boy and a teen.
So martial arts is definitely a spiritual practice in itself. So I’m reading a book currently by this Peruvian ero who his path was martial arts. Let me actually look it up. ’cause I don’t recall the name of the book. He went from martial arts to then tai chi, to then like healing with energies and then eventually plant medicines.
It’s called Journey Through the Invisible by Haak. Have you heard about him? Interesting. Even without knowing you, I guess you have a somewhat similar path, but so talk to us about finding where are you from originally and how did you end up in the Amazon?
Jason Grechanik: I grew up mostly in the States, but I had an interesting life and that my father was very interested in indigenous cultures and so I ended up traveling with him quite a bit growing up. So I had been to the Amazon as a child to, to some actually quite remote areas. Like I said I just became very interested in spirituality and religion.
I think it was something that I was very much seeking or longing for. And at a certain point I guess in my twenties, I just had a very strong call to, to work with Ayahuasca. And that was at a time when there really wasn’t much information out there. And I heated that call and I found myself in the Peruvian, Amazon and ayahuasca was very enlightening for me, not in a, the way that word is usually used, but it was just very revelatory for me.
And I ended up, going back originally it was just for a year, for my own growth, and it ended up being, I don’t know, over, over 10 years now, probably close to 15 years ago now. And it was just a very organic process.
Sam Believ: So you described the Ayahuasca calling and I felt it myself. I remember Ayahuasca calling me to drink it for the first time.
I remember Ayahuasca calling me to go and drink Ayahuasca in the jungle. It’s something that really hard for me to explain. You’re better with words. Can you give a try and explain what is it where does it come from? How can it be that sometimes something you’ve never even met before is calling you?
Jason Grechanik: It’s an interesting question and I think it’s a common experience that, that people have and that they’ll often use language like that. Something was calling me. I think in a lot of our, or maybe more, for lack of better words, western vocabulary it’s maybe more difficult to express certain things, but I think in a lot of traditional societies around the world there’s a much deeper sense of kind of the interconnectedness of things.
And so the idea of me speaking with words, the idea of my dream time, the idea of the consciousness of animals or plants, or that the wind has a certain energy or mountains have a certain energy, and that we’re always in a relational aspect with these things. There, there’s always a, an open channel of communication if we were raised in a way to see the world that way or to be open to that way.
And so I think that idea of being called. Is in a way quite literal, it’s that the energy or the, it’s often said like the spirit of the plant or the consciousness of the plant that the essence of the plant is calling to us. And that can be a deep sense of intuition. It can come in the dream space, it can come through synchronicities, it can come through a gut feeling through a heart calling.
But I, I think there’s something deep inside someone where they feel like they’re opening a relationship to, to, to something. And it’s often beyond the rational mind. And the rational mind may even try and come up with some explanation that kind of diminishes it, or, but usually at a certain point it, it becomes more difficult to rationalize it as something that’s just a coincidence than to, to believe that something is calling to you.
At least that’s how I experienced.
Sam Believ: Yeah, synchronicities are definitely real. Once you start to live in this world, you start noticing them. And my entire last six years of my life is basically one synchronicity after another, as I like to say. Meanwhile, me and my wife, we do all the work, but the decision making comes from somewhere else that just keeps pushing us along a certain path, which is very cool.
There’s something I really wanna talk to you and I’m excited about because you are, I believe, the very first quero that I have on my podcast. I have a pretty profound relationship with the tobacco. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life. I started working with tobacco when I started drinking the medicine.
And like the shamans were teaching me, how to smoke tobacco and look at it and try and interpret certain things or how to use it for cleansing yourself and, I had some deep revelations from tobacco alone. So can you talk about tobacco, most westerners think about as this nasty thing and without any positives to it.
So talk to us about the traditional use of tobacco.
Jason Grechanik: It’s interesting because as you said, on the one hand, almost everyone in the world knows of tobacco, which is pretty amazing if you think about it in a way that up until recently, almost no one had ever heard of ayahuasca. Very few people had heard of a lot of these other plants like Wachuma or peyote, iboga, although they’re becoming more well known.
But everyone was familiar with tobacco and I think the reason of that is because it how we look at history the most recent kind of conquest or the meeting of the two worlds of the. For lack of better terms the old world and the new world when those met, tobacco was so widely used as a medicine, as a teacher, that it was adopted very quickly by the newer people.
And so it spread very quickly. Like obviously most people know of tobacco through cigarettes, but tobacco’s a really interesting plant and that there’s a lot of different ways you can work with it. It’s quite unique in that way. Like most plants, like you’re referring to ayahuasca, it’s usually just drunk, but tobacco’s interesting in that it can be smoked, it can be drunk, it can be made into a powder and inhaled through the nose.
It can be made into a liquid and inhaled through the nose. It can be taken as a past, it can be chewed. And all of these different ways were traditionally worked with in a lot of the indigenous traditions of the Americas. Tobacco is considered a master plant or a teacher plant. And it’s considered like one of these handful of plants in their really creation myths or their origin myths these plants that God gave to humans to really connect with spirit.
In many traditions, it’s considered the most sacred plant. Often like the grandfather plant because it was often considered the first plant. But it’s certainly on this kind of pantheon of what’s considered teacher master plants. As you said, even in most ayahuasca ceremonies, tobacco is always used.
It’s used for protection, for cleansing, for diagnosing for connecting to the spirits of the other plants. It’s often said that the spirits of plants feed on the energy of tobacco. Tobacco is a, is like a type of food for the spirits of plants. And so in the same way, you have people who specialize in one plant like ayahuascas, people who specialize in ayahuasca or wchu martos, people who specialize in wachuma, baos, people who specialize in trees.
You, you also have tobacco erdos, people who specialize in the medicine of tobacco. And I, I think. In short, like it, it was always considered one of these very sacred plants. And the fact that people know it is something else is I think, indicative of something that happens when these plants go maybe into hands of people who take them and they forget the origin stories.
They forget the stories, they forget the dances. They forget the traditions. They forget the cultures they come from. And over time, then the plant can be corrupted and we lose its essence. And it’s not just like that with tobacco with really any sacred thing. You could say the same thing about religion.
You could say the same thing about really any of these plants, any of these traditions. It’s just tobacco happened to spread much quicker than all of these other plants. But the. The rights the stories the ways of working with it were lost for the majority of people. And yet there are still some traditions that survive, that still carry those stories, that carry those ceremonies, those rituals of using it in a sacred way.
Sam Believ: So what does the Tabak do, for example? I envision you somewhere in a jungle, like a choa, like a building with a straw roof. And a person comes and says oh, I have such and such problem as a ero. What do you do? De describe this process. And I’m asking, ’cause I believe in tab tobacco.
I think tab tobacco is an extremely amazing medicine. But honestly, I just don’t, I just don’t know enough. Maybe someday I’d love to learn from you as well.
Jason Grechanik: All of these are, they’re very often titles that I think are used to describe someone from the outside. I think in general, like probably as like traditionally, like an IO may not necessarily refer to themselves in I ito, but there, there’s someone who has a connection to to, to plants, to the plant kingdom, to spirit, to a way of healing.
And so it’s the same thing, but it’s the idea that someone has a mastery, has a command, has a knowledge of that plant, and most of these master plants in, in the same way of ayahuasca or chuma or coca, it’s really a medium to connect to the plant world. And so most traditionally, most of these people you could loosely say were doctors or healers or wisdom keepers.
And so someone would come to you for a sickness, a physical sickness, a spirit loss, an emotional sickness for insight, for wisdom, for advice of their own process or the process of their village or their lives. In order to receive some sort of insight, some sort of healing, and so much like maybe in the way that, that, people who work with ayahuasca, they would often use ayahuasca as a tool to diagnose, to see.
And so tobacco’s the same. It’s usually something that would be taken one in order to connect. So whether it’s ingesting a tobacco we also tend to do a lot of work with our pipes. And that the pipe becomes a big extension of our beings. A tool to diagnose, to see, to have insight.
And then to take that insight and to begin to do work, whether that’s prescribing plants, whether it’s working energetically on someone cleaning, clearing, bringing order, but much in the same way, any type of ERO or person who’s working in that field would work. It’s very similar, but the medium that we use to connect to the plant world is tobacco.
Sam Believ: How does one become a Tao? I used to work with one shaman from Columbia who was no, he was mostly doing ayahuasca or he was working with Jaha, but he, he would use a lot of tobacco and he would, for him, it was like Google, you ask him a question, he could go and sit down, smoke his tobacco, and then come back with a, with an answer.
And a lot of times it was extremely accurate. And I was like, how the hell does he do it? And I asked him like, how do you be, how do you get this connection with tobacco? ’cause a lot of people smoke cigarettes and they never get any positive revelations. And he said that and I don’t think it’s, doesn’t seem too traditional, but there’s this cigars that they sell here in Columbia.
They’re like very loosely rolled, like very poor quality cigars. And he said, you need to smoke a pack of these in like few hours or something like that. And then you say, you start tripping and you start to connect to something else. And then once you do that, then you can come back and start seeing more stuff.
So obviously I’m not crazy, so I’ve never done it. But I’m assuming there’s this better way to do it, or it does have to be with like. Poisoning yourself with nicotine?
Jason Grechanik: I think a lot of what he said actually resonates. One tobacco is used as I was saying, as a diagnosis tool. So to, to diagnosis to see that can be visually with your eyes. It can be through, as we were talking about earlier this sense of a calling. So an intuition, a vision.
A knowledge something that comes to us. But it’s this ability to see, it’s often said that tobacco allows us to, to see through the veil, to see the world as it actually is, rather than through kind of the veil, the lenses that, the filters that we see the world through. Much like in a way ayahuasca can be used to see the world as it is.
And so it’s opening us to things that we may not be able to perceive in our normal day-to-day consciousness. That usually entails a training an initiation and apprenticeship. And much like your friend or teacher said, it’s usually through ingesting very large amounts of tobacco, often bringing us to the point of death.
It, it seemed that when we go through these very deep initiatory experiences, that there’s this sense of dying and that the dying is this shedding of our skin and being able to be open to something new, a type of rebirth to where we have this connection to the spirit world, to where we’re able to navigate that shamanic realm and that.
It comes through initiatory experiences. It can come through deta, through dieting, different plants, different trees who become our allies, and then they’re also able to help us to diagnose, to see and as you said like tobacco, as like it was probably the, I think the 14th or 15th century Swiss physician, Paracelsus, who said very beautifully, the difference between medicine and poison is in the dose.
Most people, when they’re smoking cigarettes, which are quite far removed from natural tobacco, they have all sorts of chemicals added to them, and it’s hybridized forms of tobacco, but the dose is very small. But if you were to work with tobacco in a traditional way, whether it was through smoking, as your teacher said, smoking a copious amount of a very strong tobacco will get you Maria or smoking we would usually work is through a pipe, a very big pipe and smoking a lot will get you very Maria ingesting tobacco in its in different forms will get you very Maria.
It will take you to a space where your perception is much more open. But also through the, that’s what I was saying, that the mastery of these plants the deeper connection to them, we don’t necessarily need to ingest huge amounts to be able to connect to that space. And something you’re probably familiar with, like even usually when people begin to work with ayahuasca for a long time, they’re able to ingest smaller amounts and still have a space open where they can receive information.
And so it’s very similar with tobacco. So it’s through a process of, as I was saying, of initiation, of training, of working not only with large amounts of tobacco, but with other plants, other trees that then become our teachers, our allies. And through that process we’re able to open up and to perceive.
These spaces that allow that information or insight to come. And I would say, much as your teacher was saying, one of the real powers of ayahuasca sorry, of tobacco, is this idea of clarity, of actually being able to see things not through all the noise, through all the mind filters, the things that other people are saying, the things that other people are telling us through what society is necessarily showing us, or the picture, but into the essence of things and really seeing them as they truly are.
And then there’s a very deep insight with that, that we can begin to work with and to move forward.
Sam Believ: So somehow I’ve formed this belief system that we have, we all have like spiritual powers, right? We’re all connected, but tobacco and other plant medicines, but tobacco specifically is used a lot of times as as an enhancer, as a, as an antenna, as something that makes your signal stronger.
For example, if you’re smoking a tobacco and you’re praying for something, then your prayer is more likely to be answered. And as a, and vice versa, if you’re smoking a tobacco and you’re thinking negative thoughts against a certain person, you will send negativity towards them. So what can you say about there’s obviously some like religious practices and also spiritual practice where people use tobacco to do bad things and just generally, maybe you can talk about the neutrality of the blood medicines, that it’s less about the medicine itself and more about the intention.
Jason Grechanik: I think that’s very well put. Just as you, you put it. Plants are gifts from God and, we can believe that God is good or we can believe that God is not good. And that’s a worldview that we ultimately have to choose. But assuming that God is good and looking at the world that way then all of his creation is also good.
And tobacco is one of the most beautiful creations. Humans are defacto good. Doesn’t mean that we can’t do bad things. We can, but humans as a whole are good. Hummingbirds as a whole are good. Jaguars as a whole are good. Water as a whole is good. The mountains as a whole are good. Mountains kill people.
Jaguars kill people, but it doesn’t mean that they’re bad. But part of life is this duality, and that’s also the duality of good and evil of God and the devil of light and dark. So all of these plants in their essence, I would say are good, or as you could say, neutral. But I tend to think good because they’re truly gifts.
The Shabo who I spent a long time, I think have a very beautiful way. They’re word for good is haku. And Haku, from what I understand, the etymology of it. It means that which is true and that which is true is that which is life-giving. And so that which is not good, is that which is not true.
It’s that which is not life-giving. It’s that which is separating. So I think when we see the world that way, that which is life giving is good, it’s the truth. And that which is separating is not good. It’s divisive. And so we, as human beings, we can embody both of those energies. And as you said, the, these sacred plants like tobacco, ayahuasca they’re very strong.
They can give us power, they can give us insight. They can give us a deeper ability to see the world. And so along with that comes a big responsibility. And that’s where I think it’s very important to go through very rigorous training where we’re constantly put to the test and we have to overcome obstacles.
We have to, in a way, pass these tests to be able to handle that responsibility, to really look at all of our shortcomings to make good decisions. Because when we’re carrying these medicines we do have a certain power. And with power comes responsibility. Not much. Like we were talking about martial arts.
It’s a very similar thing. In, in some worldviews you have this idea that like certain plants are bad or they can be used for bad. I, my sense is that’s more of a Christian way of looking at things that the only thing good is God. And anything that’s outside of that is not good.
And that’s why a lot of these plants like tobacco, like ayahuasca have been demonized. You’re in Columbia, I’m sure that a lot. Up until recently and still probably, so most Colombians would view ayahuasca as the devil’s work. They’d view tobacco as the devil’s work. That’s not the case.
The, these plants were venerated by people probably for eons. Again, along with that, the, these plants carry a lot of power, and so as you said, like if someone is working with these plants or using these plants and their intentions aren’t good. Where they really haven’t done a lot of work for themselves.
Of course that’s going to amplify. So just as you said, if someone is having bad thoughts or they’re using bad words, it gives it more of a charge, more of a power, and then it can have that destructive force to it. But that’s not the plant, it’s the person. And so any of these plants there, there’s a relational aspect to the person.
And so the person, it’s a very Buddhist concept. Like the first two fundamental ideas are this idea of right ways of being, right actions. And that’s super important. Like that we, we have that responsibility to to be in right action. And these shamanic traditions teach that, they teach it very strongly that we need to be in right thought to, to have our plants go straight connected to the earth reaching for the heavens.
Because if they’re not, that plant will grow crooked. And then that plant can, can harm, but it’s not the plant it’s us who’s using it in a way that can harm.
Sam Believ: Yeah. The power of intention. I’ll share, I’ll take advantage since we talk about this topic, which is really rare, but I’ll share my own journey and my own complicated relationship with tobacco of Salt.
I went from never smoking anything. Like I never, I still never had a cigarette in my life, ever, it never had hold a cigarette in my mouth or anything like that. So I was always like, brought up knowing that smoking is bad and you just don’t do it in end period. So then when I started working with the medicine, I saw the side of it and I was convinced to, to start.
And I and because I never smoked anything, it was very, really strong for me. Smoking those loosely rolled cigar type tobacco. And I was getting messages and I was getting some really powerful ones actually. Some big decisions came from me sitting down with a tobacco in like a very concentrated way.
But then I also, eventually I got addicted to tobacco and I went to, so I went from smoking those loosely rolled very unpleasantly tasting cigars to exploring the world of cigar smoking, like nice cigars. And I ended up for a period of about a year smoking almost like one cigar every day. Enjoying it a lot.
Mostly in like less of a ceremonial setting, but more of like from a place of being really stressed. And then the cigar would be my therapist. And it was I still think it was necessary. So now for. For the last few months I’m now only smoking one cigar every week, and I cherish that experience.
And if I do it by myself alone I always do this ritual where I set an intention and I use to smoke to cleanse myself. And I try not to use my phone or distract myself with anything. And occasionally an interesting thought might come by, or my, my pers my perspective, perspective on things might change and helps you process emotions.
So I think it’s a very good tool, but I myself have experienced, the danger of taking it out of the traditional context. So I know you talk about that and it’s a good way to bridge the topic of we have tobacco that was removed from its tradition. And became a cigarette and went from healing people to killing people.
We have Coca, like this is, I have some mamba here, which went from healing and helping people to, to killing people. We have, we did it with cacao and many more other things. As, and losing the context and losing the tradition, do you think there’s a risk that same thing would happen with ayahuasca and yeah.
What are your thoughts in that direction?
Jason Grechanik: It’s a, yeah it’s a good question. It’s a big topic. I think a lot of us still view. The world in this way that certain substances are addictive. And a lot of that came, maybe as you’re familiar, may, I think it was maybe in the sixties or seventies, it was called like the Rat Park experiment.
And they kept a rat in a cage and they had a bottle of liquid food and a bottle of liquid cocaine. And after a while the rat just kept drinking the liquid cocaine until it died. And so it was said that cocaine is addictive, but many decades passed. And then a number of years ago they replicated that experiment because the researchers saw flaws in that experiment.
And they said that rat wasn’t living in its natural environment. It didn’t have its friends, it didn’t have family, it didn’t have things to do. It didn’t have normal food. It couldn’t exercise. So they created. This rat park, which like mimicked its more natural environment and it, had its friends, its lovers, its family things to do.
And they did the same thing and they had a bottle of liquid cocaine and food. And what they found is that it tried the cocaine once and then it never went back to it. So that kind of disprove the idea that something is addictive in and of itself. And again, I think we know that, like we know people who can use cocaine once and they don’t like it and they never go back.
And then some people are addicted, some people can try smoking. They hate it. Some people can become addicted to it. And so I, I think the root of addiction is again, much like we were talking about the plant. It’s not the plant itself. It’s not that a plant is addictive, it’s that the plant is serving something within us and it’s trying to bring us to some form of equilibrium.
But. If we’re using the plant to bring us to some sort of homeostasis, it means we’re not in a homeostasis, homeo homeostasis. It means we’re in a state of disease. And so we’re using something as a patch to try and bring us back to a state of normality. And so always we have to go back to that substance to, to achieve that effect.
It’s probably similar to something like coffee, like we were talking before we started about coffee. Most, most people who drink coffee probably have some addictive relationship to it, but it’s not the coffee itself. It’s the coffee is making them feel a certain way. And if they don’t have that, they long for that feeling.
And as you were saying it’s about coming into right relationship with these things. Understanding them, using them as tools rather than. As something that, that’s feeding something or trying to substitute for something that we’re lacking. So in that way and it’s also interesting, you were also mentioning that this idea of like smoking cigarettes, before cigarettes were as popular, people were smoking pipes.
And even in Europe many, hundreds of years ago, I think Bach wrote an ode to tobacco. Even people were still connecting to tobacco in a very strong way. But in terms of, something like ayahuasca becoming addictive. That’s also why I was saying a plant like tobacco is very interesting that it, in that it can be worked with many different ways and smoking is one of them.
But I spent some time training with a group of people actually in Columbia called the bu. They come from the Val Paste region. The apa Portus River. And they’re very interesting because all of the plants, before you would work with any of them, you always sit down in a ceremony and you share the story.
You share the origin story, you share the song, the dance and it’s constant, and imagine anytime you’re smoking a cigarette or anytime you’re ingesting Mabe or anytime you’re drinking Keisha, you’re constantly hearing the story. You’re constantly singing the song. You’re constantly dancing the dance to where that really gets ingrained in you.
So none of these things are used in a way that’s outside of that ceremonial context. And you have the kind of keys, the knowledge the stories, the traditions that are always being imparted on you. And when you remove those things you lose those. And so tobacco was the same. When you began working with tobacco, you learn the stories you learn the dances.
You you learn the uses, when to use it, how to use it, the dose, why you’re using it. I think when you lose that you can form an addictive relationship with these things. I think when you don’t lose things, you don’t. And I also say that because again, when you began to develop a relationship with tobacco, it was usually you were at least beginning to, were building up to a very initiatory experience of that plant.
As I was saying, that plant often brought you very close to death. And so when you go through those experiences, you don’t see that plant as something lighthearted. You don’t see it as something that you would just use. Without purpose, without intention, you have a very strong reverence for that plant, and you have a very strong respect for it.
And so you approach it from that place. I think the thing with ayahuasca is, unlike tobacco or coca, as you mentioned, it hasn’t it, it didn’t start by going out to the masses in a way that was outside of a ceremonial context. So I think the way it’s spreading is still more of a ceremonial plant that’s used in that context.
Still with certain traditions, still with certain respect. And I think most people when they work with ayahuasca, especially if you’re working in a more traditional way, it would be very strange to think that you would have an addictive relationship to that plant because it’s a very strong plant.
It takes a lot of courage to, to work with it. It takes a lot of dedication. It’s, they’re often very difficult experiences, so it’s not something you would do unless there was a real need to do that. And so I think it’s the same with any of these plants, like when they’re worked within that way, there, there isn’t that danger of it becoming addictive.
Having said that, with ayahuasca, if it begins losing the stories, the traditions, if it begins to go out into the world and you can. Have more access to it, or maybe it’s condensed into some pharmaceutical pill or, the essence of it is lost then potentially. So it, it could potentially become addictive just like tobacco or cocaine or any of these plants have that ability to, but I would think not, but that’s also dependent on how it continues to move forward into the world.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I think what protects ayahuasca from completely, so I’m less worried about ayahuasca being completely taken outta the process because of the tradition. Because I think in order to get addicted to something, in a way that you feel pain and you want to run away from the pain as, as somebody who I recently interviewed, don’t ask why the addiction ask, why the pain the pain you the substance or the medicine should be causing you pleasure and removing the pain.
And with Ihu ask a lot of times there’s even more pain. It’s healing long term, but it’s not gonna be like lemme just have a cup of ayahuasca as opposed to cigars. In my case, let’s say I’m feeling really stressed or like I’m having a conflict or something like that, and I’m just like, I know that if I sit down with a cigar, first of all, it means that it’s a one hour of meditation for me, no distractions.
I have a little nice spot that I built for myself where with a nice view, then I know it’s gonna taste really nice and it’s gonna feel really good. So for me it’s there’s nothing unpleasant about it. So there is no this lever there should be this balance of pleasure and pain in a way.
And Ayahuasca has it well, because every time you go into the ceremony, you don’t know whether it’s gonna be beautiful or difficult. Mostly it’s gonna be difficult, and I hope that the spirit of medicine, unless they bastardize it so much, that it somehow loses the spirit, which I don’t know if it’s even possible to be done, but when you drink too much medicine for too often, a lot of times it just comes in and says worry back so soon it happened to be once worry back so soon you haven’t done the homework and it gives you a bad trip and tough love grandmother kind of spirit.
But yeah, I think there’s definitely dangerous to removing the tradition from a. From the use of any medicine because it’s, we might discover another tradition or we might just lose it and it becomes something completely different. I wanna talk to you about a word that you use a lot, which is cos cosmo vision.
It’s it’s a word that it is not used that much. And I love it. I learned a lot as I was preparing for this podcast. So talk to us about what is Cosmo vision, why we all have it, what are the different Cosmo visions, et cetera?
Jason Grechanik: It’s a, it is, it’s a, it’s an interesting word. It’s a very beautiful word. I think it’s more in our vernacular now. I think often we still tend to use it when we’re speaking more about indigenous or traditional cultures. As if they have a cosmovision which they usually do.
That’s part of what separates one group from another group. That’s what separates, for example, in the Amazon, the shabo people from the Alka people or from the Schwar people is part of who they are. Part of what they call their people is they have a very particular Cosmo vision. They have a worldview.
They have a language that expresses things that’s very particular to them. They have a relationship to the natural world. They have a relationship to the spirit world. And so all of these things taken together could be said that’s someone’s Cosmo vision. It’s also interesting because it has the word cosmos in it, which is the stars, the universe.
And I think traditionally that was very much an integral part of these cultures all over the world. When you look at the pyramids, they have those, that culture had a cosmo vision mean they’re in very specific astrological alignments. When you look at temples in India or temples in, like Ancor wa and Cambodia or these temples all over the Americas.
There, there was very specific cosmologies, but just in a broader sense that, that word cosmovision I think what it means is the way that I, or I think other people often translated is in English would be your worldview and I. I think it’s something that’s really important to understand and to reflect on, because often I think in the West, we think that we don’t have a Cosmo vision, but everyone has a Cosmo vision.
I I interviewed a, an ayahuasca, a French guy, very interesting guy, and he said very beautifully that, that cosmovision and consciousness are interrelated. You can’t have one without the other, basically. Meaning you can’t have a consciousness without a cosmovision. And that’s very true. Who we are is directly related to our cosmovision.
It’s directly related to our worldview. You often, you can even look at that in even like a very basic, like a political sense. Like I have a neoliberal cosmo vision. I believe that people should be working cooperatively and da. I have a. A capitalist world vision or I have a socialist world worldview belief in justice, belief in good and bad religious worldviews.
All of these things shape our world mu much like I was saying earlier, do I believe the world is good or do I believe it’s bad? Do I believe God is good or do I believe God is not good? That’s going to shape your worldview. We even have little sayings that reflect that. Do I see the glass is half empty or half full?
That literally shapes my worldview every time I see that. Am I looking at that glass is, oh wow, I still have half of a glass. Or am I looking at it saying, oh shit I only have half of a glass. It may sound like something very small, but it’s literally shaping how we interact with the world and everything in the world is a relational aspect.
Everything. That’s the nature of this world is it’s a world of duality. It’s a world of me and everything else. And so in that way it’s how I interact with the world, how I see the world what beliefs do I have? And that’s literally creating my reality. As I was mentioning to you often, like in Spanish for example they speak they often use this word marilo or Maria when they’re speaking about the effects that these plants create with us.
And it’s often seen that, usually that word translated in English, it comes from sea, so it means seasickness. So it’s like these plants make us dizzy. But really what they’re trying to do is to break us from the dizziness of life because it’s seen that we all are seeing the world through a certain lens, and very often those lenses aren’t true.
And like Vedic philosophy for example, it’s the idea of Maya that we’re all seeing the world through a veil, through an illusion in a Christian sense, it’s the idea of the apocalypse. It’s that Greek word is usually very misunderstood. It’s not the end of days, it’s the end of the illusion of time, and it actually means to lift the veil and to see the world as it actually is.
That’s part of the medicine of tobacco that, that I was mentioning. And so these plants are helping us. To remove us from the dizziness of life. They’re trying to move us, as I was saying earlier, towards truth, towards union, towards that which is good rather than this separative state that, that we’re all inherently born into.
And so our cosmovision shapes that, that it’s literally how we see the world. It’s the imprints. Depending on your cosmovision, you could say the imprints of your ancestors, of your DNA, certainly of your epigenetics, of your family of the words that they raise you with, of the actions that they take of your surroundings, of your friends, of your educational system, of the society, everything that they imprint on us, all of the, you’re mentioning Gabor Mate, all of the trauma that we acquire.
All of these things are shaping our worldview. If, you know someone who in general has a lot of childhood trauma, is going to have a very specific worldview, they’re going to be a very heightened in their senses. They’re going to be more like aware of their surroundings. There, there’s a he mess.
And so all of these things begin to shape how we see the world. And I think doing this work, it’s very important to understand our cosmovision and these plants are very much tools that are helping us to do that. Only when we begin to understand our cosmovision do we have one, the ability to shift that, to change it or to go beyond it, to look through it.
And so all of these plants or traditions are trying to give us insight so that we can choose and in a sense, what is it that I believe in? What is true, what is good, what is life giving? And to really understand how our cosmo visions like literally shape and create a reality.
Sam Believ: So I know indigenous Cosmovision and others include the understanding of spirit and I like your explanation of it.
Can you tell us what is spirit?
Jason Grechanik: This is a perfect question of what is our Cosmo vision? Because that word is going to mean very different things for the very different people. I worked for many years at a very big ayahuasca center called the Temple of the Way of Light and in the Peruvian Amazon. And it was always very interesting because we would, in, in general, we would always translate for example, we would have consultations between each guest and we were working with a group of people called the Shabo people and the Shabo healers or s and there would always be a facilitator who is translating literally the language usually Spanish.
Sometimes with a little bit of shabo as well, but from most of the guests who were speaking English. So we were translating what the guests were saying in English to Spanish or to, to a much lesser degree to, to some shabo if people had a, some understanding of that. In the beginning, if someone spoke Spanish, then we wouldn’t translate that.
We would often just say, just speak Spanish to, to the shabo. And you can converse that way. But at a certain point we actually change that. And we said, even if you speak Spanish, speak to us and then we’ll translate back what they’re saying. Because what can happen is a clash of worldviews.
And so like a little example I’ll use is, for example, a Shabo healer may say to someone, you have a demon inside of you. Depending on the person who’s receiving that, depending on their Cosmo vision, that word has all sorts of connotations there. There’s literally a word that, that word is creating all sorts of images, of past ideas, of ancestral ideas of images, of literally creating a world.
But that can be very deleterious because what the shabo person was saying, or meaning by that word, wasn’t what the person who was receiving that was understanding, because there was two very different Cosmo visions of what was being spoken. So that’s that’s an example of where these things can go awry.
Does that kind of give some insight into your question? Yeah,
Sam Believ: no I like the also like when you speak about language and expire, inspire that part.
Jason Grechanik: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I mean that, that idea of spirit, that, that’s why I use that example is because that word is a word that has very, a very deep meaning and it can mean very different things to different people.
Usually I think that’s also where etymology is very interesting. What does that word mean, like in our language, where, what does that word mean? And as you said, like it’s often related to inspiration or expiration or respiration and all of those things. It that they have a meaning of what does expiration it means to expire to for spirit to leave something.
So if I’m expired, it means I’m dead. Or if if a yogurt is expired, it means it’s no longer good. It’s life forces is no longer serving us to inspire. It means to be filled with spirit. So if I’m inspired, it means I’m filled with spirit. It means I’m looking at the world through the magic of spirit and etymologically.
It has to do with breath to, to respire. It’s to to breathe. Like a respise is like a place to catch your breath. And so etymologically spirit often has to do with breath. And breath is the fundamental thing of what it means to be alive. We’re born, we come into this world with our first breath to be filled with spirit.
And when we leave, when we expire, we let out our less breath. And so I think for me, that word spirit it’s the animating force of life. It’s that which is beyond the body. Sometimes people may correlate it to soul, although some people may have differentiations between that. But I think for many indigenous people, and again it’s very difficult to generalize because again, even different indigenous cultures and people will have different ideas.
I think it’s this idea that everything has spirit, that everything in this world, because it’s part of this world, because it’s part of creation, because it was created, it’s filled with spirit, it’s filled with this vital life force that animates it, that allows it to be alive. And again that’s quite a different cosmology or cosmovision than a lot of us think about.
Because we often wouldn’t view, for example, a rock as having a spirit or we may not, for example, view a hummingbird as having a spirit, but it’s this idea that everything has spirit. Everything because it’s manifest, because it has been created is alive, it has a spirit, it has this animating force.
And so I think a lot, probably to some degree, this question is also because a lot, when we’re speaking about these plants, I think one of the interesting things that differentiates these traditions from a lot of other. Ways of working with plants. For example, allopathic medicine. It’s also working with plants.
Most pharmaceutical or allopathic medicine is plant derived. The vast majority of it is derived from plants. But in general, in an allopathic cosmovision, they’re not speaking about the spirit of plants because they’re not viewing that medicine as necessarily being alive. And so in a lot of these traditional cultures, when you’re speaking about plants, it’s this idea that they have a spirit, that they have an aliveness and that spirit.
It can heal us, but it can also teach us. So everything has an ability to teach us. And it’s coming back to what we talked about in the beginning, is this idea of a calling. And as we begin to open our senses, we can get more in touch with that calling and be more open to receiving the information of Spirit and everything has spirit.
And so we’re more and more able to be in a relational aspect and a communal, relational aspect with that idea of spirit
Sam Believ: on the topic. I wanna go a little deeper. So we have the in our western understanding of the disease, we have the physical disease, and we have the emotional disease.
Can you talk as a cor, can you talk to us about the spiritual disease?
Jason Grechanik: Yeah, as you said, and as we were talking about and for example, most allopathic medicine, which is the vast majority of medicine in the Western world, most diseases are seen as something physical. So there’s too much of something or not enough of something.
There’s some sort of imbalance. So also in our western systems, we do have the department or the idea of psychology or psychology, and this is the medicine of the mind of the emotions. And so it’s also seen that some of our disease can come from the mind, and that’s where you mentioned like a guy like Gabor Mate, like these ideas that if we’ve had trauma in our lives or if we’ve had very difficult experiences or as I was saying, negative thought patterns, worldviews, that those can also cause us disease.
I think much more in Western Medica the medical system. There’s much more of an acceptance now, sorry
Sam Believ: to interrupt. You have unexpected guest at the studio. Oh, sure.
And interrupting us, he liked the conversation.
Jason Grechanik: Yeah. And do you want to take him
Sam Believ: out or no. He’s, he is outside. It’s just that the glass. For those who are listening, you can see the, I have in the window in my office, I have one side of the window is transparent and the other one is a glass.
So he’s, he probably sees himself or another bird and he wants to hang out, but he is chirping loudly. It’s a pretty looking yellow bird.
Jason Grechanik: Yeah. Beautiful burden.
So yeah, as I was saying in our western system there there’s much more, I think of an acceptance now of this mind body connection that, that these things also have a relation to each other in, and I think these traditional systems all over the world, they would look at things in three levels.
There’s the physical, there’s the mental emotional, but there’s also the level of spirit. And that in, in most of our, kind of our Western model, we look at things more. In the inverse, we look at primarily the physical, then potentially the mental or emotional. And we don’t even really necessarily have a spiritual component, or if we do, it’s something that’s completely unrelated in these more traditional systems, there’s three levels.
The physical, the mental, emotional in the spirit. And I would say the model is inversed or reversed, where the primary aspect is spirit. And when we have a spiritual sickness, eventually that’s going to cause us mental emotional disease. And if we have mental or emotional disease for extended periods of time, that’s going to cause a physical problem.
Now obviously that’s a general statement. If I. If I get hit by a car and my leg is broken, maybe we can look at that as something happening in the realm of spirit. But for sure, there’s a very physical ailment that needs to be treated. But usually when we’re talking about sickness or disease, there are things that are more chronic.
It’s not acute injuries, it’s things that have been building over a long period of time. And so in these more shamanic or traditional systems. They’re working on all three of these levels. They’re often working with plants or certain treatments to, to affect the physical body. They’re very often working on the mental emotional level.
That can also be through plants. It can be also through talking or through other practices. And there’s a very big emphasis on healing the spirit. And that’s usually where these master plants or teacher plants come in because they’re taking us into this spirit realm or shamanic realm or dream realm, this dizziness that begins to take us into the deeper nature of who we are.
And to really see, to feel, to understand, to gain insight into where our spirit is. You could say we’ve lost aspects of our spirit. That’s this idea of calling our spirit in our soul retrieval or our spirit is fragmented. And it’s these ideas of weaving these patterns back together or harmonizing them, cleaning them, clearing them, bringing order opening.
And so that scene as a vital, fundamental part of our healing is working in the spirit realm.
Sam Believ: Yeah, thank you for the answer. Recently, my title with whom I’ve been working for more than a year now. And previously I was working with his uncle and I was working with his dad. They come from Inga tradition here in Colo, but he had appendicitis, like literally in the ceremony.
He was like feeling really unwell. So we just took him to the hospital. We didn’t try and fix it through the spirit. So if you have appendicitis or a broken bone or something wrong with your teeth, Western medicine is amazing and I think western medicine is good for so many things, so there’s nothing wrong with it.
But if you’re you of spirit affliction, like in my opinion, a lot of chronic diseases or autoimmune diseases come from that psychosomatic slash spiritual place where. Then western medicine is yeah, it’s all in your head. Just move over. Just stop being depressed or whatever.
So this is where I think this approach comes really well, the traditional. So I think that there’s definitely a space somewhere in the future where you can have that side of it. It’s also gonna be more complete. And as you said, most of the western medicine, most allopathic medicine is coming from plants as well.
Like the anesthesia we have comes from the, from indigenous people from ra karate, s like the poisons. And we learned a lot from it. And there, there should be a place for alliance and for a more complete version of the medicine. Honestly, that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m hoping for.
I don’t know if you’ve heard from any shamans you work with or taros or, there’s this notion and this understanding of medicines only now specifically in this period of time, leaving the jungle, leaving the mountain, and going to the city, going to the civiliz as people do. Do you think there is a reason why it’s happening now?
Have you heard anything about that as in a sort of bigger, like almost prophetical level of spreading of this medicines?
Jason Grechanik: Yeah. I think as you said I have tremendous respect for doctors doctors of all forms because when someone comes to you and they’re sick, it’s a tremendous responsibility you’re taking on. And ultimately medicine is medicine. Anything that works. Good medicine and I think that’s really important to to always remember.
Healing is a extremely complex art. It’s as complex as the universe, as complex as the human being. And so I think any good doctor is going to be open to any medicine that works, whether that’s an indigenous doctor or western doctor. Ultimately the idea is to help people and to always work with whatever form works.
That’s also related to the question about these medicines moving out of the jungle or moving out of the mountains into more civilized areas. It’s a big subject. I’m a. I would say a big believer and part is belief, but I think also part is a deeper knowledge that, that I’ve seen, which is that really what a lot of these traditional cultures all over the world have been saying that time moves in cycles that, that humans and culture and societies are cyclical and that we’ve had great ages in the past and I think more people are becoming open to that idea that there have been civilizations in the past that were very advanced.
Even now in the Amazon there, they’re finding because there, there’s not the traditional methods of stone or artifacts in that way but through lidar and unfortunately to some degree the destruction of the Amazon, they’re also finding that there were civilizations in the Amazon.
What is the civilized world? What’s the not civilized world? What time periods, what epochs are we talking about? My sense is that, I think a lot of people who begin working with these plants they often begin to describe them as a very high technology, which is often related to this idea of cosmovision and literally to cosmology.
That literally these technologies originated from the stars. They originated from places that were are much more advanced than we as humans are at this moment. And so I think that’s a very fascinating cosmovision. And all of the indigenous people that I’ve worked with would say is such that these plants originated from the stars.
Maybe not their physical beings, but the spirits of them came from the stars. And so it’s this idea that even in that cosmovision, these plants had a purpose. They descended the 12 dimensions of time and space came to this planet because it’s often, one of the origin stories is that even eons ago, humans were suffering.
And so these, the spirits of these plants were gifts, remedies, medicines, to help people to end that suffering. And it would often be said that the reason human suffering is because humans had forgotten who they were and where they came from. And so even today, as these medicines, as you said, begin to leave the jungles to the mountains, I would say it’s, for me, it’s that same origin story.
It’s that they’re coming from technologies that are more advanced and where we as humans or cultures are at right now because there’s a deep need because we as humans. Have also forgotten who we are and where we came from. And these plants are remedies to help us to remember that, to help to heal, as you said, this soul sickness, this spirit sickness that I think so many humans are feeling these things of feeling loss, feeling confused.
We’ve forgotten our stories, we’ve forgotten our origin myth. We’ve forgotten this interconnectedness, which leaves us feeling separated and depressed and anxious and unwell. And so there is an intelligence in these plants that is moving out because they’re needed. And ultimately, if these plants are medicine, the goal, the animating life force of medicine is to heal.
And so they’re going to heal to where it’s needed.
Sam Believ: Yeah. You literally touched on the two topics that were going to be my last two questions for you. So it’s almost like we’re following the same agenda. Which is not pre-planned, but it’s interesting which is the suffering and the duality and then the big civilizations in Amazon and like discovery of the medicine.
So but before that, I like that understanding that we’re physically very advanced. Like we can spaceships and smartphones and internet. Like you’re in Portugal and I’m here in Colombia and we are having a conversation that’s amazing. But physically and like technologically we’re, we feel like we’re on top of the world and we’ve never been better, but spiritually we’re extremely poor.
I, I would say that. Thousands of years ago, we were much more advanced. Like all those traditions, when you become a part of them, you’re like, wow, these guys, they really know their stuff. And I have a feeling regarding those past civilizations. And honestly, I am, I’m a big fan of Graham Hancock’s work, and I really hope, Graham, if you’re listening, let’s let’s talk.
I don’t think he’s listening, but it would be great to interview him because there seems to be a connection. And I have a feeling that there was a time before where we were both technologically advanced and also spiritually advanced. Because I almost feel if the beginning use of the plant medicines is for healing, but then the end of it is for learning because you can learn about universe and so many things.
And even like the computers we use right now, they were. The technology was created by people who were tripping on LSD. It’s pretty well known. So I think sometime before this big apo apocalypse or whatever Graham Hancock talks about, there was a period of time because building those pyramids, for example, that’s not a single simple feat.
And a lot of people don’t understand that we would not be able to recreate some of the things that Egyptians did, like it’s just impossible as because of the space and type of materials. And as an engineer, I can clearly see that there’s more to it. And interestingly enough not that I’m obsessed with the topic, but when I first drank, I wascan many times after, and out of thousands of people came through my retreat.
Some people, for some reason tend to have experiences based around Egyptian cosmology. Like my first experience was all about pyramids for some reason. I received a clear message that if I go to Egypt, I’ll receive a gift. I still haven’t went. It was five, six years ago now. So I just, I need to find them.
But then I had experiences where I would hang out with like Egyptian gods and they would teach me things and it’s like, why? I never been to Egypt. I don’t think about Egypt. Why would it come to me through an Amazonian medicine? Then I drank the medicine. There’s this wilker traditional, which is San Pedro and then a DMT snuff that the shaman told me that they were drinking San Pedro in a, this megalithic temple through San Pedro.
They were able to understand the writings on the wall and some kind of message came to them, which taught them how to do WIL care. So it’s like a new but all tradition that was rediscovered through psychedelics. So it’s really fascinating. And the fact that I ask itself is a very complex technology.
Like how the hell did they mix the two plans and all of this? There’s so many questions in the direction. I don’t know if you know anything about it or you wanna talk about it? A little bit.
Jason Grechanik: Yeah. It’s a big subject. A, as you said, the e even just the ayahuasca brew is a very complex technology. For me, these things aren’t super hard to understand in the sense that I think when people begin to develop relationship with plants, that’s, again why they’re called teacher plants is they can’t teach us and we can receive very direct insight.
Through the altered space, through the dream space. We can receive messages from plants of how to prepare the plant or what the remedy to use is. So it, it’s not farfetched for me to believe that someone also received that information of ayahuasca. And yet the origin stories are saying that these technologies were given to us by more advanced beings from the stars.
And that’s not just an Amazonian origin story. You literally find that story all over the world. And every culture that I studied, it’s something that just personally I’m very interested and fascinated by. And it just, you find it all over the world. These often beings that, that came from the ocean.
Often, like the seven wise men, the seven sisters correlated the ple. And a, as you said, like we all have, we’re all unique, we all, we’re all unique beings. We all have unique gifts. We all have unique life paths. Some people are born to play basketball that’s their calling. And some people aren’t.
Some people are more inclined to these spiritual paths and some people aren’t. And that’s why, as you’ve seen working in an ayahuasca center, like people have vastly different experiences on a plant like Ayahuasca. You wouldn’t even necessarily be able to say those two people are ingesting the same plant if you were simply looking at their experiences.
As you said, some people can have information about the pyramids and stars, and for one person it’s just understanding that their dad’s an okay person. Vastly different experiences. But some people obviously are called to, to, to that idea of Egypt. And I think Egypt is very fascinating in that,
We, and this kind of ties back to this idea of Cosmo vision. I always found it very interesting as a kid that like I would sometimes go out with my father and like sometimes we’d go on these bird watching like expeditions, I guess you’d call them. And there’d be all these people there with their cameras and they’d be like, oh, that’s that bird.
And they’d snap a photo and then they’d go to the next bird. And that’s that bird. And even as a kid I would, I found it very strange because it to me it just felt like they were trying to capture this thing and naming it, but they weren’t even really. Experiencing it, that there was no depth to it.
It was just this kind of grasping. And I think in the same way, like because of our cosmology and the stories we’ve been told, or like we look at the pyramids and it’s the pyramids. Like we even just give it a name and it’s a tomb or something. But if you really sit with that, if you really contemplate that, there’s something extraordinary there.
In the same way that we look up at the stars, and unfortunately a lot of people can’t look up at the Stars because they live in cities and there’s light pollution. But if you go somewhere and you can see the stars, for many people it’s a similar thing. They look up at the stars and it’s just, oh, that, that’s the stars.
Or maybe that’s Orion, or that’s the Big Dipper. If you really sit there and look at the stars. You can be in awe, like there, there’s something extremely deep there. And I think these pyramids for people who are really open to sit with that, there’s something extraordinary there. Even recently they maybe you saw, but there was a group of Italian scientists who use this new technology.
It’s this ground penetrating kind of sonar technology that works on sound. And they were mapping the pyramid at Giza the Kafra pyramid. And they were able to use this technology in very accurately map the inside of the pyramid and even discover a couple new rooms inside the pyramid. But they also noticed there was structures at the base of the pyramid, which at first they just thought was, might not be anything, but then they began to look more.
And what they’re claiming is that there’s something like eight cylindrical. Structures descending from the coffer pyramid at its base, which are something like 648 meters below continuously, and there’s a spiral form to these eight cylindrical structures at the bottom of 648 meters. They opened to two 80 by 80 meter cubic chambers.
The idea that the pyramids were built with stones and copper tools and that those people would have the ability to hollow the earth 648 meters to any rational person, that makes absolutely no sense. That’s why I was saying, the cosmovision really shapes our reality. If we don’t.
Have the possibility that there were advanced civilizations, then we have to come up with some very mundane explanation or just not really think about it or not look at these things in a sense of awe because it doesn’t fit our Cosmo vision. But if the Cosmo vision is open that there were very advanced civilizations, then you can look at that and say, my God, like something there is beyond what I understand.
And I think for someone who’s in that state and of course all of those things can be taken to an extreme to where we can believe things that also are maybe not true. Maybe be in states of grandiosity and illusion and delusion. But I think for some people who are open to that, these plants, because you mentioned that these plants are for healing and also knowledge and I think a lot of people.
Even we use that word with these plants. They’re medicine. But traditionally that’s not the words that were correlated to these plants. The words that were usually correlated to them had more to do with some aspect of knowledge or wisdom. For example, the SPI people who I worked with their word for ayahuasca is not ayahuasca.
That’s a Quechua word. Their word for ayahuasca is uni. And uni has some meaning of knowledge. And so someone who works with uni is an anaya, someone who has knowledge, a wisdom keeper. And so I think these plants in their fundamental aspects are much more plants of knowledge. Healing is a byproduct.
Healing. We have to heal. We have to be healthy and hold in order to be able to go into the deeper aspects of this knowledge. ’cause it literally can shake our worldview. But I think for some people. As you were saying, the these ideas of the pyramids come because they’re tapping into a technology, to a past that was, as you said, much more spiritually advanced.
And these plants, as they are gateways to knowledge, are beginning to put people into touch with that. And I think another way of looking at these plants is portals. They’re portals, and as you said, things can be discovered or rediscovered of going to a power place a megalithic site or somewhere in the mountains like you were describing, and using wachuma and wilke.
And then under the effects, under the dizziness of that actually being able to understand something, looking at those paintings or something and seeing in a different way the story that was passed down. And yeah, I think in this way, like these plants are very much portals and if people are open to that, if that’s part of their journey and that’s not the journey of everyone and that’s not inherently good or bad, it’s just we’re all different that these plants can be used as portals for a knowledge that, again, as I was saying, is.
Even beyond what we can imagine a knowledge of the stars and a knowledge of something that’s ancient. Something that’s getting us much closer to the, to, to the nature of spirit of God, of something that’s highly complexed. And which is also why often these traditions had very long initiatory experiences, very long trainings, because to be able to hold that knowledge, one needs a tremendous capability because also that knowledge can be extremely overwhelming and cause people psychosis, mental breakdowns.
It’s the kind of the classic story of the bag Gita is, it’s the story of Arjuna preparing for war. And he’s having a direct dialogue with kina who’s a manifestation of God. And Krishna comes to him in his anthropomorphized form, his human form, because that’s what Arjuna is able to comprehend is him as a human.
But eventually, Arjuna gets very comfortable with God, with Kna. And he says to him, can you show me your true form? And Kna warns him. He says, are you sure you wanna see me in my true form? And Arjuna in his comfortability, in his hubris says, yeah, show me your true form. Krishna transforms himself into his true form, which is, I think literally said he shows his 10,000 fold face and 10,000 is very ancient, esoteric number for infinity.
And when Arjuna sees him in his true form, he drops to his knees and he begs, and he pleads him to go back to his human form because it’s so overwhelming. It’s so awe inspiring. It’s so terrifying. It’s so horrific. It’s so beautiful that he can’t comprehend it. It’s too much, it’s too much information.
And so God has to go back to his human form. So that’s maybe a long answer but I hope that kind of conveyed that, that point.
Sam Believ: Long answer is what we like. But yeah, we, it’s time for us to wrap up. Thank you for the, thank you for the interview. Thank you for your wisdom. I think it was really interesting and also entertaining.
So tell us tell the listeners where they can find more about you and about your work.
Jason Grechanik: If they’re interested in my work I have a website which is nicotiana tika.org. It’s the Latin name for the type of tobacco we work with
Yeah. Yeah. And and also as you said I have a podcast which is called The Universe Within Podcast, and you can find that on all the big platforms, YouTube, Spotify, apple, and also I have an Instagram page that people are interested, Jason Hannick.
So yeah, any of those are good ways.
Sam Believ: Hopefully I’ll be a guest on your podcast soon.
Jason Grechanik: That’s absolutely, so that’s the next that’s the next round.
Sam Believ: Cool. Thank you Jason. Thank you guys for listening. As always, we, the host and I’ll see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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