And to research for david yaden about the links these drugs have to profound mystical experiences,

extreme, transformative, once in a lifetime kind of experiences where you feel truly at one with all things,

and why a little help goes a long way. You're going to surrender, if you're going to allow your ego to dissolve, you have to feel supremely safe. And that's the job of the guide. I'm dave disteno, and this is how god works. Michael has written many thought provoking, bess selling books, and a theme that unites them all is food, and especially plants, interact with human desires. And since his first book, aptly named the botany of desire, there's one particular urge that has piqued his interest. Since botany of desire, i've had this long standing interest in, like the desire to change consciousness, to transcend our ordinary selves and lives. What's that about? You would think that, you know, uming plants that change your consciousness. There're a lot of reasons not to do it from an evolutionary standpoint, but they must offer something or the drug takers would have been weeded out of our species a long time ago. So he started his own research, which, as i mentioned before, didn't only involve reading about psychodelics, but also taking them. And it's there that, after seeing himself explode in ac of blue postet notes and fall to the floor as paint, his trip took a more, you could say, poetic turn. And then this was followed by a sense of merging. I mean, without a self, you have no walls, where you're part of everything. In my case, what i merged with was very specific. It was a piece of music that the guide was playing. It was a unaccompanied cello suiet which yoyoma was playing. And i, i became identical with this piece of music. It was me, i was it. There was no there was no subject object difference that had completely melted away. And it was the most wonderful experience. Was that a spiritual experience? It sure felt that way. There was no, there was nothing supernatural about it.