Ayahuasca - My Heart of Darkness
Nic Gabriel returns from his Ayahuasca retreat in the jungles of Peru to discuss his experiences at El Purguero under the supervision of Shaman Ron Wheelock, the terrifying images and life lessons gained from his 4 ceremonies, his uncomfortable afternoon with the plant medicine San Pedro, and why he feels that the “Old Nic” died in that jungle.
London Real speaks to Nic Gabriel about his Ayahuasca retreat in Peru
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London Real Transcript: Episode # 64 (Ayahuasca – My Heart of Darkness)
Date published: 1.6.2013
Hosts/Guests: Brian Rose (BR), Nic Gabriel (NG)
BR: Happy New Year London Real’ers, we are back and with a vengeance. We’ve got a crazy year coming up. We’ve got Dorian Yates next week, we’ve got Tim Ferriss the following week, we got a week in February when the UFC is going to be here with corner men, announcers, fighters, it’s crazy, I’m really looking forward to it.
I get asked all the time by people how they can help. A few simple ways you can help right now, you can click on the “like” button on youtube and like this video, you can click on the “share”, share it out with your Facebook people; tweet it out. Or if you really want to get bonus points, you can go onto the iTunes link, it’s right on the youtube video, and write us a quick review. It takes about sixty seconds, and it helps spread us the word; gets us out there, moves us up the rankings, and let’s people know what we are doing here, which is asking questions like “What the hell are we doing here?” so I would appreciate that. If you want to take it to the next level, you can email us at info@londonreal.tv, if you want to volunteer your time, we can always use the help and (??) anywhere in the world, we can use it, so appreciate that.
This week we have Nic Gabriel back from the Peruvian jungles where he drank Ayahuasca in the heart of darkness I would say. Nic came in about six days after his last ceremony. I hadn’t spoken to him in three weeks. He literally walked in the door, sat down, and I started the cameras. So it is a very personal confession that Nic gives. He’s quite vulnerable and he’s very honest and I have to applaud Nic for doing that. It’s not an easy thing to do, but I think it’s a very important thing to do to get the message out about the power of this plant medicine Ayahuasca. You know, Nic talks about a lot of visions he has and it’s something that you might not understand if you haven’t drank Ayahuasca so I would highly recommend that you not judge him for any of this stuff, because you get these visions, and they don’t always mean anything in particular, but they are part of the experience and part of the healing process in some way. So, please I hope if you enjoy that show again, please share this with people you know. I think the only way of getting the message out about Ayahuasca as a plant medicine that we need to embrace is for more people to do it, and more people to talk about it. So, please forward this message on, tell people about it, just so they can see what Nic’s talking about.
As usual we’re sponsored by Onnit Labs, which are the makers of AlphaBrian, ShroomTech Immune, Hemp Force Protein. I’ve just made an order for all three. I am taking one AlphaBrain a day, some Shroom Tech Sports for my workouts, and Hemp Force protein, I’m taking one of those after every lifting session. So if you go to onnit.com and when you are checking out use the customer code: LONDONREAL and you get 10% off.
Also we are sponsored by Audible. If you go to audiblepodcast.com/LondonReal you can sign up for a free thirty day trial and a free audio book. I just downloaded Life of Pi, which I was told was very good. I saw the movie, I’m told the book is even better, and I find that you might find that sometimes when you are tired of hearing myself and Nic and Joe Rogan and Joey Diaz yappin’ all the time on podcasts, you might want to sit down to something that’s been written that is a bit more structured and I like it as a break sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I love my podcasts, I listen to all those people, including
(3:37 Video/Audio)
ourselves on a regular basis, so check that out. And now I give you Nic Gabriel speaking about his time in Peru. It’s our longest podcast ever and I hope you enjoy. Namaste.
//LONDON REAL INTRO MUSIC//
BR: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, this is Nic Gabriel, and our guest today, I guess you could say is Nic’s Ayahuasca journey. I’ve just seen Nic; I haven’t seen him for two and a half weeks. I haven’t spoken to him except for a like a minute on the phone. I have no idea what happened to him, so I am just as curious as you guys’ are as to what happened and we are going to talk all about Nic’s experience today, so Nic, how the hell are you?
NG: Um…buddy I am so incredibly well. I am so incredibly well and bursting with love and you know some of the things we are going to talk about today, I’m going to do my very very best to use the power of speech to convey what happened to me in that jungle, but a lot of it is beyond the kingdom of words, and for anyone who is doubting what I say or thinks these are the ravings of a lunatic, I would say before you make up your opinion please go, and go into the jungle and drink Ayahuasca and then we will chat again after that.
BR: Okay, alright. Now you left, I think it was two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, it was a Tuesday, I think you flew to Peru. I was wondering if you could just tell us, where did you go and what were the details of you getting there?
NG: I took a flight from London to Madrid, and then from Madrid to the capital of Peru which is Lima, and then from Lima I took a flight to Iquitos which is a smaller city, and it is pretty much in the middle of the jungle. As you are flying over, I had a window seat, and the last couple hundred of miles, maybe even three hundred miles of the flight, I don’t know if you know when you are on an international flight, you know when you are coming into a city you pass over a little bit of unspoiled geography and then it might become agricultural land and then eventually it will become the suburban parts of the city and then eventually becomes the densely populated urban geography, with this there was nothing like that, all you saw, until you saw the airport was a canopy of green, just a sea of green as far as the eye could see. So we landed in Iquitos, or I landed in Iquitos and then I met with the rest of the group. There was a group of thirty three people who were doing this experience and they had taken a different flight from Amsterdam and I met them there and we took a bus, no…we didn’t take a bus we took a, something called Motorkars, which is spelled M-o-t-o-r-k-a-r-s, which are, it’s almost like a motorcycle that’s been retrofitted with a little passenger Tuc Tuc type thing on the back.
BR: So like a Tuc Tuc.
NG: Like a Tuc Tuc but a motorized one, yeah, similar to the ones in Thailand, very similar, and we took those into Iquitos, to a little café called the Yellow Rose of Texas which is a typical tourist place, I guess it’s the main gringo meeting point in Iquitos for tourists and travelers and then from there we all piled on to a bus and we took a bus 26 kilometers into the secondary jungle. I found out on the trip there’s two main types of jungle in the Amazon, the primary jungle and the secondary jungle. The primary jungle is a lot denser, the trees are a lot taller, it’s a lot more…I guess it’s a lot more intense. We were going towards into what is called the secondary jungle which is, I would hesitate to say, it’s more like a forest than a jungle, but still definitely, you would call it a jungle if you went inside it.
(8:15 Video/Audio)
BR: And were you, when you are traveling, you were traveling alone. Were you scared? Were you calm? That’s a long flight. That’s a lot of time to think.
NG: Yes. Brian, I knew something big was going to happen and I was definitely scarred. You know, when we had Graham Hancock on the show, even back then, he was talking about his experiences and saying how profound they were and how difficult they were, and even then I was scared, so I had a lot of time on my own on the journey until I arrived in Iquitos and there is no doubt about it, I was definitely scared.
BR: But you were gonna go through it either way.
NG: I mean my mind had been made up; there was no doubt about it.
BR: Okay, so you go into the secondary jungle on this bus, 26 kilometers outside of Iquitos.
NG: We traveled 26 kilometers along a specific road and then we took a turn off to the retreat where we were staying. The retreats name is called “El Purguero” which means “The purge”. Apparently certain Shamans in the Amazon are known as “Purgueros” which means people who initiate purges because that’s what the medicine is doing, is helping you purge up negative thought patterns and negative entities in some cases. So yeah, we arrived at El Purguero and there were….we had to take a walk, about a kilometer walk, from where the bus couldn’t travel any further to where the retreat was, which was quite an idyllic location. There was a big dormitory where we all stayed, we’ll not all of us, about twenty of us stayed in this double storied dorm and the dormitory was pretty much just made out of wood, and not a thatched roof but a leafed roof almost, so it was quite, uh….
BR: Was the place charming?
NG: It was very idyllic. It was an idyllic location. It had its own little creek where we would go wash in the morning. You could take walks deeper into the jungle. You had chickens walking around.
BR: Was there running water?
NG: The water in the creek was running but just barely. There was flow through it, but only just barely. I think the fresh water and the drinking water was actually brought into the camp every few days in huge ten liter drums or fifteen liter drums.
BR: So you didn’t have showers or sinks or…
NG: We would clean ourselves in the creek.
BR: And what about toilets?
NG: Um, yes there were, what could be called toilets which were basically long drops, basically just huge holes in the ground that you know, it definitely wasn’t a flush toilet by any stretch of the imagination.
BR: So it was pretty rough. Rougher I mean…you were roughing it.
(11:13 Video/Audio)
NG: Yes, it was definitely um…. I found myself asking Suzanne who is the Shaman that took Brian and I on our very first Ayahuasca trip, I found myself asking her “Do you think Brian could do this many times?”
BR: I was expecting you might be?? Doing that??
NG: So yet, it was pretty rough. I definitely think you could do rougher things, I mean, I guess sleeping in a tent somewhere in the middle of a forest is definitely more difficult than that.
BR: Right.
NG: But it was by no stretch of the imagination a holiday or a resort. Sorry, a hotel or a resort.
BR: Okay, Okay, Um…When did you meet the shaman and what was that like meeting him? I know you had seen some video on him, ah Suzy has said he is one of the more powerful Shamans and she said he had a very powerful brew. What was that like?
NG: So we all arrived that first night which was a…potentially a Wednesday or a Thursday night. I think it was a Wednesday night when we arrived at El Purguero. We were all on the bus on the way there, we were like…a lot of people were saying “I just want to get this in me, I just want to drink, I hope we’re drinking tonight” And it transpired that we didn’t drink that first night. We met the shaman, what happened was um… in the camp, there is what’s called a Moloca, which is a temple, which is a big round structure, with a wall about waist high and then a continuous window strip running around just above that wall, and then a roof over it, a conical roof. It’s a big…I can’t really describe it very well. Just a big round room.
BR: So, its weather proof?
NG: Its weather proof definitely yeah. It’s not actual windows it’s just a ring of open mosquito netted structure.
BR: And what’s the diameter of it roughly?
NG: I would say it is about 15 meters in diameter. Yeah, 15 meters in diameter.
BR: And that is where you hold ceremonies?
NG: Yes, that where we would drink Ayahuasca and also we had San Pedro on one day. So we all field into this Moloca to meet the shaman and he came in and instantly when you meet this human being, his name is Ron Wheelock, he’s an American guy from Wichita and he um…you would never in a million years that this guy is a shaman, but you can sense his power. He radiates power. He’s balding and he’s kind of old and he has the most intense piercing blue eyes you have ever seen. One of the people said that it looks like he died many years ago, and his spirit is just keeping his body alive as a tool and that’s a very good way to describe him.
BR: Was he intimidating or comforting?
(14:22 Video/Audio)
NG: He was definitely slightly intimidating in the beginning before we all knew him; we were kind of intimidated by him. We all sat down, you sit in a circle on plastic chairs around the edges of the temple on the inside.
BR: And how many people are in there?
NG: About thirty three of us plus him and a couple of his staff.
BR: And that’s the max for this temple or could it fit more?
NG: Yes, no…it couldn’t take more than that. If you can think of us all siting in a continuous circle, at one point in the circle is his alter. Maybe alter is not the correct word. It’s a table where he keeps all his sacred tools, where he would pour the medicine before we drank it, covered in the most incredible things you ever seen, crystal skulls, ceremonial daggers, Chakapas, which you know, those leaf bundles that Suzanne used to shake. So we file into there by candlelight, everything is lit by candlelight; there’s no electricity in the camp. So if you can imagine we’re all in this temple and these candles are burning and he stands up and introduces himself and you know, we are all getting to know each other, it’s kind of a little stand off-ish amongst everyone, we’re all far away from home, we’re all jet lagged and tired and I remember one of the very first things he said to us, after he introduced himself to us was: “I will take you to hell, but I will bring you back to the light” and it turned out that those were very prophetic words because he took us into hell, he took us into the depths of hell, but he did bring us back to the light as he had promised. Bryan, I couldn’t make this story up if I wanted to.
BR: Yeah, I don’t think you could. Okay, so he introduced himself that night and told you that and…
NG: Then we went into a dining room, there’s another little dining room about 100 ft. away from the Moloca where we would congregate after the ceremonies and regroup and just take stock on what had just happened to us, so after that we went and had dinner, and then we all went to sleep.
BR: How’s the food?
NG: The food was very plain. I don’t think anyone will argue with me when I say it was very plain but wholesome.
BR: Like what kind of stuff?
NG: A lot of vegetable soups, lentils with rice, and maybe a little bit of chicken that had just been…you’d see them grabbing the chickens and killing them which was quite interesting to me.
BR: But not a lot of meat?
NG: There was no red meat. No red meat in the camp.
BR: So Ayahuasca friendly diet?
(16:55 Video/Audio)
NG: It was an Ayahuasca diet, there was no dairy, we didn’t have coffee, only tea. It was very wholesome simple food. I grew to like it after a while, it needed salt, there’s no doubt about that but it was nourishing. There’s no doubt about that.
BR: And what’s the state of everyone else in the camp at this point?
NG: Trepidation was definitely the overwhelming sentiment. We all knew something big was coming.
BR: Was there much chat? or was it pretty much…
NG: Yeah, yeah, a lot of banter, a lot of peoples…Our masks were up, and our fronts were all up at this point, we were all equal parts. I don’t want to say bravado, but we were like all definitely putting on our fronts.
BR: Did you like the people you were with before, I mean?
NG: Yes. Yes, obviously there were a few who I was, you know you’d have brief flashes of irritation and just, but I definitely could sense that this was a good group of people and this was going to be good.
BR: ‘Cause I remember when Aubrey said he first went down, he had a couple you know, tough guy, loud mouth guys, yeah bring it on, all that…it was just really weird energy that obviously he couldn’t control cause he didn’t know who was on there.
NG: There was none of that until the last night strangely when one guy, and I’ll get to that story.
BR: So, do you think it was ‘cuase it was selected by Suzy, do you think it was kind of a good group or do you think that it was so serious that people…
NG: No. Everyone was vetted by Suzy, and I mean, we all have our own issues like everyone else on this planet; we all have problems and neurosis, and whatever but this group of people was, although some of them had the most horrific past. Some of them had been heroin addicts, some of them had been abused by their parents, they were all very very good people, there’s no doubt in my mind about that.
BR: Okay. And um, half men, half women, what’s the gender breakdown?
NG: I’d say it was about 50/50 yeah.
BR: And age range?
NG: Mostly people in their 30’s. A couple of older people, a couple of people in their 40’s and some in their early 50’s, but mostly people in their 30’s if I can remember correctly.
BR: Okay alright. What happened next?
NG: So we went to sleep and then we, the next morning we all woke up, in fact we didn’t go to sleep, we went to our dorms but my good friend, not my friend, my brother, I will use the name Jon, it’s not his
(19:22 Video/Audio)
real name but he was one of my very good friends before this and has subsequently become my soul brother. We went up, there’s a lookout tower a few feet away from the dorm which was used to get mobile signal, cell phone signal. You know after diner, Jahn and I, we climbed up this tower and we just stood and we spent, it started raining and it was misty and we were just looking out over the jungle just talking, talking about this trip that was going to happen to us and what we were going to do getting ready for that. We eventually went to sleep maybe 2:00/3:00 in the morning and the next morning we all woke up and then we filed into the little dining room and had breakfast and we were given a few instructions. We were told that we were going to have lunch but then there was no eating after 2:00(pm) in the day, you fast.
BR: So you knew it was on for the next night?
NG: Yes, Yes, that night, that night
BR: Okay. That night, which is Thursday night you think.
NG: Thursday night, no, no it was Friday night.
BR: You flew out of here on Tuesday.
NG: I’m sorry it was on Friday night.
BR: Okay, Okay.
NG: So Friday night was the first ceremony and we led into…we drink at approximately 7pm when it gets dark, that’s when you drink, but we were instructed to be in the Moloca at 6:30pm, so at 6:30 we all started to file in or shuffle in to the temple, and you could just sense there was you know there was tension you could cut with a knife. We were all very very scarred. If anyone was saying they weren’t scarred they were lying, because we were all very scarred.
BR: Okay and had everyone participated in a ceremony?
NG: No, there were about 5 people who had never drunk Ayahuasca before, maybe more than that, maybe 8 people who had never drunk Ayahuasca before, who my heart goes out to, they were very brave.
BR: Do you think that they were more scarred probably just more unkown?
NG: Yes. I was probably up there with just me and another woman called Ruth who were probably the two most terrified actually. I was incredibly scared.
BR: Were you visibly anxious?
NG: Yes, I was visibly anxious. In the meeting the day before I asked the shaman, I’d said what is…I said
“Is it okay to be scared in front of everyone”, I said “Is it okay to be scarred” and he said “yes” that
(21:44 Video/Audio)
something would be wrong if you weren’t scarred because what you are doing is quite a heavy undertaking. So um…
BR: Why were you so scarred?
NG: You know my mother and my brother are very religious Brian and their own prejudices and fears had start to manifest before this. They were sending me messages. My mom sent me a long email saying this is witchcraft, and it’s of the devil and my brother sent me a message saying, in a very biblical, with biblical overtones saying, I tell you some believe this will only increase your sorrow, and I used to be a fundamental Christian until the age of 23 and those thought patterns and belief systems had been implanted so deeply in my psyche that there was still a deep rooted fear that I was doing something wrong, that this was not right, and that this was against God.
BR: So it’s not the fear of the unknown, or even the fear of your own self, it was more that you thought you were doing something…
NG: There was also a lot of fear over what I was going to find out about myself. You know, Graham Hancock, remember he said on his interview with us how he realized he wasn’t such as nice of a guy as he thought he was when he did Ayahuasca, and I was terrified of that, I was very terrified of being shown how much I had hurt people in my life and how I had let people down in my life. So between that and the Christian fear I was very anxious. But Ron asks us all, we were all sitting down, he asks us all “Who would like a small dose?” cause he gives us two doses, a small and a normal, and some people wanted a small dose, I took a large that night.
BR: Is that a decision you had made long before? I think you had told me before you left.
NG: It was a decision I had made long before. Now Ron’s Ayahuasca is widely regarded as being one of the strongest, if not the most strongest brews available. I know other Shaman’s come to him to get Ayahuasca, it’s that powerful. He uses Ayahuasca, Wombesa(sp?), flowers of bobinsana(sp?), and he had also started experimenting with another plant called Huayruro. He mixed all of these into his own special brew which he claimed, he said “this is a strong one”, and it turned out to be very very strong.
BR: Does he just boil it down and reduce it that makes it strong?
NG: It’s a combination of the ingredients and the process that creates the strength of the brew. I mean, he showed us, he actually made some Ayahuasca one day which we drank, which we had seen him make, some of them actually helped him chop the plant, I didn’t, but we had seen him make one of the brews for one of the subsequent ceremonies.
BR: What does it take, a couple days to boil it off?
NG: Yeah it takes a couple of days to reduce it down; it might even take three days if I remember correctly. I had a piece of the Ayahuasca tree that I wanted to bring with you. I’ll bring it next time. We were all given a piece of it just to see what it was. Excuse me. We were also shown the vine growing around the camp um….
(25:03 Video/Audio)
BR: So it’s surrounding you really while you are there?
NG: Yes. There is different kinds of Ayahuasca as well which I didn’t know. There’s the two that I was told about were Cielo Ayahuasca and Ayahuasca Negra which means, the first one means Sky Ayahuasca and the second one is black Ayahuasca, and we had the first one Cielo Ayahuasca on that first night.
BR: And what’s the difference between a small and a large dose? Is it like a shot worth or two shots versus four shots?
NG: I would say the small is 75% of the large, they are both are in the same sized cup, the one is just full to the brim and the other is full to about 75%.
BR: Okay, and what kind of volume? Like half of that can would be the large?
NG: No. No not so much
BR: A third of it?
NG: Maybe a third of it, maybe even a little bit less. Yeah maybe even a quarter of that can Brian.
BR: Okay, maybe 3 oz.
NG: Yes, and if you’ll excuse me, I just want to refer to my notes very quickly. I’m about to tell you about the first ceremony.
BR: And he only lets you drink once? It’s not like…
NG: No you can drink again. You can drink again when he’s not singing Ikaro during the ceremony you can drink again but you can’t have two in a row at the start of the ceremony.
BR: How long does it take to get 33 people to drink? It must take ages.
NG: No it doesn’t take long because what he does is he sits down and he verses a prayer of Ayahuasca and he says thank you to his teachers, he says thank you to his family, he names his son, he names his daughter, he calls upon God, he calls upon Ayahuasca, he calls upon all the plants in the mixture, he names all the plants in the mixture he thanks them all, and he finally closes with, and he says all my work is positive, and he bows his head in prayer and then he stands up and he lights a Mapacho cigarette. Mapacho is sacred tobacco. Its natural tobacco, it’s a sacred plant teacher as well. He lights the Mapacho and he first pours out the Ayahuasca into the 33 cups, obviously he’s segregated some cups as being small doses and some cups as being large doses and then he blows the Mapacho smoke over the cups once he’s poured them, just to bless them and ward off any negative spirits. And keep in mind before this they’ve walked around the whole center of the temple, and they’re blowing sacred tobacco smoke over us, him and his helper have done that.
BR: Was Suzy involved in the ceremony?
(27:36 Video/Audio)
NG: She was, but not in that capacity. She was sitting there, and she sang a few times. In this ceremony she didn’t prepare the Ayahuasca, she wasn’t involved in the preparation or the actual act of serving it to anyone. She was a participant from that point of view. So, then he says “Step forward please”, and we all step forward up to the alter, and then he says, anyone who asked for a small measure, then he hands out the small measure to people that asked for a small measure, and then he starts handing out the large measure. Now strangely enough, his young son who is 10 yrs. old was in the first ceremony, which was incredible to me.
BR: That wasn’t his first ceremony I take it?
NG: It wasn’t his first ceremony, but Ron told us that Ayahuasca had instructed his son to be in this first ceremony. So he handed out all the drinks and we were standing around the alter holding our respective cups and he bowed his head, and he held it up, he raised up, and we all did the same, we held up the Ayahuasca and then he sad “Salud”, and we all knocked it back, and then we all returned to our seats, and from this point there is no talking, there’s no talking in the ceremony.
BR: And did you have anything to chase it with the taste?
NG: No, not in the first ceremony and I wish I did because it was the most vile tasting thing, just the thought of it now, sometimes when I think of it my gag reflex is initiated. It’s the most vile tasting thing you could possibly imagine.
BR: Worse than Suzy’s stuff?
NG: Without question, without question.
BR: And it stuck in your mouth.
NG: Yes, yes, everyone was spitting, and some people were shaking. So then he sits back down at his alter, there are two helpers sitting in the middle of the temple and there are two supports that keep the roof up. There are two Peruvian helpers who work for him. They weren’t drinking Ayahuasca they were just watching and being involved. He had another Shaman working with him called Medado, a native Shaman, and an assistant, an Australian guy called Mark, and those were his two main assistants. So the two helpers sit down at their chairs, their job was to help us go to the bathroom, which is basically just outside the Moloca. He gave them instructions, they only spoke Spanish but he said to them etc., etc. in Spanish, blah blah blah, when you hear the word “Help”, you bring your torch over to someone and you take them outside and then you bring them back. He bowed his head in prayer over the alter one more time, he was sitting down in his seat, they blew out the two candles in the middle of the Moloca, there was one more left on his table, and then he picked up his Chakapa, and he blew out the candle and we were in total darkness.
BR: Total?
NG: Total darkness, you could see the discrepancy between the blackness of inside and the light of outside. But the light of outside was not electric light, it was just the light, the ambient light of the jungle.
(30:47 Video/Audio)
BR: Okay so some starlight, maybe a little moonlight.
NG: Yes, maybe starlight, a little moonlight, no electric lights whatsoever. And then we all just sat.
BR: What are the chairs, do the chairs have backs?
NG: Yeah, back chairs just like…
BR: Like plastic lawn furniture.
NG: Plastic lawn furniture
BR: They have little armrests?
NG: Armrests, exactly, not very comfortable at all.
BR: But not stools?
NG: Not stools, yeah back chairs, and so now it is black and dark and silent, and just silence has to be observed or that was the rule, and we just sat, and I just started breathing. I was terrified, absolutely terrified, and I just started breathing deeply.
BR: Did you try meditating?
NG: Yes, I was just trying to calm my mind, let go of the fear, just breathe deeply, just breathe, breathe into this experience, preparing myself for what was coming, and then he started to sing…he started to sing. Now…
BR: Did you have to make sure you have to keep it down; was that ever an issue in your brain, to keep it in?
NG: No, no that was not an issue with me. For some people definitely, but for me, luckily for the first few ceremonies I didn’t have to feel it, and then he started to sing. Now you know Suzanne, you’ve ceremonies with her and she has the voice of an angel. She has a very melodic, beautiful uplifting voice and her Ikaro’s…for those of you that don’t know Ikaro’s are called the songs of power and they are actually alien in origin, they don’t come from this planet, they were brought to this planet by aliens and what they do is they start the magic of the plant working in your body, they call the spirits of the forest, and the spirits of the jungle and they begin the process working. Now he began to sing, and now Jen’s singing, Jen’s singing is a pleasant thing to listen to, I mean I could put on a Walkman and listen to her singing and I would enjoy it. Its uplifting, it’s beautiful. Would you agree?
BR: Yes. Yeah yeah I look forward to hearing Ikaro’s.
NG: Now Ron was not like that. Ron sounded like a cross between a Gregorian monk and a Gremlin.
BR: Okay.
(33:03 Video/Audio)
NG: I don’t remember the words of the songs but it was something like “Ayahuasca, Ayaahh…”
BR: Shit.
NG: And so he would start singing Ikaro’s in this voice, and terrifying. I mean, Ron’s job is not to make you feel great and feel the love and beauty of Ayahuasca. Ron’s job is to dig into your soul and find the darkness and bring it out.
BR: Okay, alright, Okay, and for people that haven’t drank it (Ay??), your setting is very important, and I believe if you had that kind of audio or even energy coming in, it could take you to some dark places. Okay.
NG: So, I laid back and I started to feel very relaxed, very relaxed. There was a point where I just felt, well, this is doing something. You know the first 15 minutes I was like, mmm, maybe this is a dud, maybe I didn’t drink enough, whatever…but suddenly I started to feel very relaxed and I started to slump in my chair. My hips slid forward, and my shoulders slid back, and I started to slump and then the magic, that medicine began, it kicked in and I saw…people started to retch. You know after maybe third Ikaro, people started to retch.
BR: Do you think 20 minutes or 30 minutes?
NG: Anywhere from 15-45 minutes. I’d lost track of time at this point in mind. People started to retch.
BR: Were they retching in the thing or they went outside?
NG: We all had a puke bucket in front of us yeah.
BR: Big bucket?
NG: No o a small bowl
BR: Okay.
NG: Like a small bowl, like a wash basin almost. People had started to retch and I just leaned back in my chair and I was breathing deeply and then suddenly I felt an entity. I remember Aubrey Marcus spoke of a giant space ship that looked like it was made out of feathers and a bunch of strange things. This was similar but it was a living entity that was made out of leaves and vines and it was definitely of an order of intelligence above mine. I don’t know what it was, and to this day I’ll never know what it was. But I think it was some sort of space ship, but it was some sort of entity that was floating over me. I was definitely scared but something told me it was benevolent. I felt that it was there for my good, not my bad, it was there to help me, not harm me, and then shit got real. My head just snapped back, my head snapped back and my tongue stuck out an my jaw opened as wide as it could possibly open and I realized that I was doing this to allow this entity to interface with me. And so if you can imagine, for those of you that are watching, I was lying back like this. Literally my mouth gaping open, every muscle in my jaw stretching, my tongue sticking out, my eyes were probably rolling into the back of my head,
(36:11 Video/Audio)
and this thing started to work its way into my soul and my brain and my psyche and just connect with me and I just went with it. Then I sat up, at one point I just sat up forward in my little plastic chair and as I did that my spine just went “Grrrttt”, every vertebrae slipped into the position it was made to be in. I had perfect postural alignment, you know I’m someone who’s relatively in touch with his body, I know what’s wrong with my body and what’s right with it and this is how my spine was meant to be. I just can’t explain. I had just the most perfect posture and I was sitting up in that crappy little plastic chair and it had become a throne and I was…I’m still trying to figure it out, but I was either a king or a pharaoh. The phrase that I keep thinking of is “God King”. I was some kind of God King and I was in Egypt and I was looking over the sands of Egypt, and I could see the pyramids as well, and I had been entrusted with the creation of a civilization, with the creation of the Egyptian civilization, that was my mandate on this planet, and I felt the staggering pressure of what it is to do that. I could feel the overwhelming responsibility I’d been given to do this and it was too much for me. It was too much for, this Nic incarnation to handle that power, that energy that was being channeled and I just slumped forward. I just slumped forward and that vision was over, that vision was gone. I told you this was heavy.
BR: How long did that last? Do you know?
NG: Not more than a minute. It was a short vision. It didn’t last more than a minute. So I’m just checking my notes, and then…
BR: Did you know, were you completely inside your own brain at this point, do you know? Did you even know where you were?
NG: At that point, I was in Egypt.
BR: Okay, and there’s no one around you, you’re not in the Moloca, there’s no…
NG: No, at that point, this was as real as you and I sitting here talking, I’m mean, I clearly wasn’t there but in some dimension I was there.
BR: Okay, I understand.
NG: At this point I needed to get to the bathroom. I needed to take a piss, that’s all I needed; I had to take a piss really badly.
BR: Did you have any water with you in the room?
NG: Yes, I had water with me, everyone had a bottle of water so I stumbled outside in…I didn’t ask for help but I managed to stumble outside, and there were helpers outside to help people when they were outside to go to the bathroom and to come back and I was just confused beyond confused. At one point, you know, I couldn’t urinate, all I wanted to do was urinate, I just couldn’t but it was stuck there, like in my bladder, like I couldn’t take a piss for love nor money. All I wanted to do was take a piss. I felt, I mean…and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the depths of my own madness Brian. I really understand now how most people, myself included are insane. They are literally insane, most Westerners are insane, you know and I was confronted with that. I was shown just how insane I was, just how many fears I had, how many neuroses I had, like how I thought too much, like how I sat in my little flat in
(40:11 Video/Audio)
London just overanalyzing and over thinking stuff and trying to control life and I remember I needed to get back into the Moloca and I started walking towards it and I just collapsed. I remember thinking to myself I can’t hold this anymore it’s too much, I’ve been carrying this, I’ve been carrying my own ego and my own madness for too long. It’s too heavy for me and I just collapsed to my knees. I literally just collapsed to my knees, and I’m a reasonably big guy, and at that point I probably weight about 200 pounds and these little Peruvian guys, beautiful men, angels, they were trying to help me up and take me back into the Moloca, but at that point I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I didn’t have the motor coordination, or the strength to get to my feet and walk inside I just didn’t have it.
BR: Okay, but you were supposed to stay inside. That’s one of the rules. You can’t leave.
NG: Yes, yes, that’s one of the rules; you stay inside from beginning to end. And now at this point it started raining and I was utterly confused, utterly, utterly confused. I couldn’t figure out if I was inside or if it was raining or not. I knew I was wet.
BR: Are you are laying on the ground right now?
NG: Kneeling, kind of kneeling then sitting then just discombobulated.
BR: And the guys have given up on you?
NG: They were coming back to me every now and then saying “house, house” and pointing towards the temple ‘cause I had to go back in but I couldn’t, and eventually they picked me up and they took me inside and they sat me down, god knows how.
BR: Do you know how long you were out there for?
NG: It could have been a few minutes, it could have been thirty minutes, I’m not sure. Now, you were supposed to stay seated in your chair, but I couldn’t. I was In that ceremony I was the one person, I think the only person who couldn’t sit in his chair, and I first started sitting on the ground and eventually it ended with me lying on the ground in like a fetal position, whimpering, but then it got very scary. Then I became a kind of a creature with only mind, like I had no body, I had no spirit, I was stuck in this mental realm. I didn’t know what I was or who I was I just knew I wasn’t human, and I was stuck in this strange mental realm and I remember I was trying to call up memories of being human, memories of my life, memories of what it was, and I kept thinking to myself, if a bright ball of fire comes into the sky, that’s the sun and that means everything is okay. That means I’m supposed to be here on this planet. And then I remember, I started realizing that thought in this mental realm kept everything going. So, I knew that I had to keep thinking to stay in this realm, and then I started playing a trick with myself, if I keep thinking I will stay here, and then I realized I was thinking about thinking, and then I realized I was thinking about thinking about thinking, and I got stuck in this mental loop which was absolutely terrifying.
BR: Terrifying? Okay.
NG: Terrifying beyond…but terrifying in a cold emotionless way. It wasn’t fear like oh I’m afraid of a monster or I’m afraid of…it was just fear like I am stuck in the void. You know, I am stuck in the void. And then I started doing yoga, I started doing weird yoga stretches to try and remember what a body was
(43:52 Video/Audio)
and what a body meant. I remember we had been told to breathe. Like remember to breathe, like when you are in your darkest hour and I managed to take a few breaths, deep breaths and that made me understand, okay I’m in this, I’m in this, I’m in something, I’m in some sort of vehicle. I remember the vehicle doing this, I remember breathing was something that I had done before and then the first candle came on and that signified the end of the ceremony, and Brian when I tell you I’ve never been so happy to see anything in my life as that candle.
BR: That’s when he tells you the ceremony is over?
NG: Not just yet, but that signifies the start of the ending process once the candle comes on.
BR: And is there a time that he waits?
NG: He turns on the candle…
BR: How long after then when you drank?
NG: This was a four hour process, three to four hours. It was now about 12 o’clock, 12pm in the evening when that candle goes on.
BR: And you drank at 7(pm)?
NG: Yeah, yeah, it was about 12 o’clock.
BR: So three hours later? Four?
NG: No five, it was about 11:30, 12:00.
BR: When he starts lighting the candle to end the ceremony.
NG: Yeah yeah
BR: So ceremonies are about 5 hours?
NG: Yeah, yeah, some are a little bit longer; some are a little bit shorter. And then I mean, I’m just…
BR: Did he ever tell you to get back in the chair?
NG: Yes, someone may have told me at one point to get back in the chair. I was….for example, the girl who sat next to me, my chair ended up in her lap. My physical lawn chair was in her lap at some point, that’s how much confu…
BR: While she was sitting?
NG: While she was sitting. I wasn’t in the chair, the chair was in her lap, that how much confusion and…
(45:35 Video/Audio)
BR: So you knocked it over or something?
NG: I knocked it over. There were points where my friend Jon tells me, I was sitting next to him in the first ceremony and I was lying back like this, he said “Bro you had no dignity, you were just lying in a heap in the dirt”. So the candle comes on, and the closing ceremony is him and Medado and Mark, they split the participants into thirds and they walk around the room doing a closing ceremony which involves blowing tobacco on our crown chakra or on your head, blowing tobacco on your throat, your chest and your back down on your spine and saying a sort of a shamanic prayer to seal you off from negative energies once you leave the temple, because the temple was a protected space, and you are very open during and Ayahuasca ceremony and now he has to re-seal you before you can go out.
BR: And are you vision free at this point or are you still not sure?
NG: Vision free. Now I realize I am human. I am Nic, I am in a body.
BR: But still a little fuzzy like the end of an Ayahuasca ceremony?
NG: Very, Yes.
BR: And you still have mild hallucinations, like…not hallucinations, but the light is funny colors.
NG: Yes, yes, like…
BR: But you are back?
NG: I’m back. At this point I could stand. I could stand and make my way outside, and also come back without assistance, but I was shaky on my feet, like very shaky on my feet. And then it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to do this closing ceremony on everyone, maybe a little bit longer, and then Ron walks to the center of the room and he says…no…. and after that he puts his head down on the table and he is exhausted, he is exhausted from the extraction of negative entities, and the singing he’s been doing.
BR: Was he singing the whole time?
NG: Pretty much. Oh no, in this ceremony there was a point where, Jon started babbling incoherently, speaking in French, making weird sounds, there was a point where people were wailing, which we weren’t supposed to do, we were told off the next day after this but most of the time during the ceremony Ron the Shaman had been singing. Suzanna started singing at one point. Medado also sang.
BR: They sang separately, never over each other?
NG: No never over each other. When Suzanna started singing, a lot of people sang with her because they knew the Ikaros, a lot of people started singing with her. And at the darkest point there was another thing that happened, one of the people who was doing the ceremony, he had entered into a hell realm of some sort, he had also been lost in his mind, but in an even darker place that I had been and he was wailing, he was just wailing “Oh god, Oh god” wailing like that for about 20 minutes, and the energy became very dark. There was a thick negative energy in that room.
(48:36 Video/Audio)
BR: You remember this?
NG: Yes, I remember that, I left it out. It was around the time of the infinite loop, the infinite mental loop I had entered into, and I can’t remember that happening, but I couldn’t quite figure out who was doing this but I knew we were all in hell at that point. We were all in some kind of hell. It was horrific.
BR: So the group energy was negative in that sense?
NG: Yes. Yes.
BR: Was there anything positive about the group energy?
(*49:03 – Audio interruption – Trumpet with Harmon mute and Saxophone for a split second?)
NG: …started singing, and everyone started singing with her, that’s when the cloud broke, that what broke the veil. And that was shortly before the candle came on as well.
BR: Okay, so he seals everyone off…
NG: He seals everyone off and he says his closing prayer with his head bowed on his desk and he stands up and walks to the center of the room and he says “Thank you everybody, the ceremony is now over, I am going to bed, I am very tired” and he goes home. He didn’t live on the camp; he lived a couple miles out.
BR: So he drives away? Or he walks?
NG: Yeah, I don’t know if he drove each night, sometimes he drove. I think one of his helpers drove him that night.
BR: Okay, and then what do you do?
NG: And then we all stand up and we just look at each other like, with…the only way to say it is what the fuck. What the fuck just happened to us. And we filed out, a lot of us went to the dining room, all lit by candlelight, and a lot of us went back to the dorm. I went to the dining room, and we would all just start to talk about our experiences.
BR: Did you want to talk?
NG: Yes, a lot of people didn’t want to talk.
BR: And you wanted to….
NG: I wanted to talk. A lot of other people wanted to talk. We were all just high, high on that experience, like vibrating at a different frequency.
(50:36 Video/Audio)
BR: Positive for everyone?
NG: Positive. It was definitely…everyone at the end of it was positive. We had all seen some incredible things. I mean one of the predominant themes on this trip was…there were points where I would turn someone next to me with my head on my hand and just say “The things I’ve seen” because unless you were in that group or unless you’ve done strong Ayahuasca, people cannot understand the things I’ve seen Brian.
BR: Do you compare this….okay, you had two ceremonies before. One was with me, the very first one we did in March where I think Suzy said she gave us a medium to small dose, and then you had a second group experience, that I don’t think you got much effect from. Is this anything like those? Or is this a factor in an order of magnitude higher.
NG: It was an order of magnitude higher.
BR: Is it like apples and oranges?
NG: The queasiness in the beginning, a few of the visuals were similar, you know, visuals of like plant spirits, eating into me, that was similar, a couple of times but, this was an order of magnitude. Incomparable. I think maybe your second ceremony was on level, I don’t know what you went through, but maybe your second ceremony was on level.
BR: It sounds like it wasn’t. It sounds tame compared to yours. Um, so alright so you went back and did some chat and spoke for a few hours and then crashed out, or….
NG: Yeah, it was hard to get to sleep, but eventually I did in the early hours but Jahn and I went up this tower, we were known as the, we loved the tower you know, and we went up the tower and we would just…
BR: Is it just like stairs like just a few stories up?
NG: No it was like a little ladder to the first platform, a little ladder to the second platform, and then a ladder to the top. A very rickety structure…
BR: You didn’t use your mobile phones up there you just wanted
NG: No I just wanted to get up there and see the view. So Jahn and I were just up there and we were just talking and really bonding, sorry not Jahn, Jon um…
BR: You sold out everyone’s identity at this point by the way so I might have to bleep some things.
NG: So Jon and I were just up there and we were just talking and connecting and sharing our experiences and then I went down and I tried to go to bed. I couldn’t go to bed, so I went back to the dining room, chatted to people who were there, had a cup of tea…managed to keep that down.
BR: You didn’t purge at all this first night?
(53:15 Video/Audio)
NG: No, no not at all
BR: And did you feel sick or ill or…?
NG: No, no I didn’t feel sick. I didn’t shit myself, other people shat themselves, other people pissed themselves. And fortunately I didn’t that first night. And so eventually got into my bed, and managed to get a few hours of something resembling sleep.
BR: Yeah.
NG: You know what it’s like. Then, yeah, I woke up and…
BR: Now can I…did they tell you how many ceremonies you were going to have while you were there and did they tell you the frequency of them?
NG: Yes, we were having four ceremonies every other day except…yeah every other day, so on Friday we did Ayahuasca, then it was a little bit different because on Sunday, Saturday we rested and on Sunday we did San Pedro, we did San Pedro ceremony, and then Monday was the next Ayahuasca thing.
BR: And San Pedro was a daytime.
NG: San Pedro was a daytime ceremony. It was a very interesting thing as well. Very powerful medicine, I had a very bad trip on the San Pedro.
BR: And did they time that intentionally where you have an Ayahuasca and then San Pedro next after the Ayahuasca?
NG: Yes, yes, yes, exactly right.
BR: And is there anything you want to say about the first night before you talk about San Pedro or ah…?
NG: No that’s pretty much all I can share right now about the first night. I’d like to talk about the San Pedro if you like to as well.
BR: Yeah, yeah definitely. Yeah this is intense to listen to. You know, I’m sure people watching you can tell, you are kind of reliving it a bit there, definitely, especially with your vocals there. I had to adjust the volume a few times there.
NG: You had to turn it down?
BR: Up and down, reliving it. But um, but uh, okay, it is a good description and I kind of feel like I was there.
NG: I wish you had…dude, I missed you so much Brian, I missed you so much dude. I literally, I have to take you there one day; I have to take you there one day. I know I don’t want to….you had your own
(55:26 Video/Audio)
experience with Ayahuasca here, I’m not belittling it, I know you had an incredible experience but I really don’t want you to miss out on what it’s like to drink Ayahuasca on her home turf.
BR: Do you think it’s the home turf thing or do you think it’s a Ron Wheelock thing or do you think it’s a Ron Wheelock brew thing?
NG: It’s definitely a combination of all of those. Remember the spirit of the jungle…the jungle is alive dude, like I know this sounds crazy but the jungle, all the plants and animals have their own spirit. They are literally alive, and when you are in the jungle they come to you and in an Ayahuasca ceremony, good spirits and bad spirits come and it amplifies the experience beyond…we live in a city we are disconnected from nature, we’re disconnected from where Ayahuasca comes from.
BR: Yeah, or his brew is really strong.
NG: I guess, I guess.
BR: Maybe I’m being devil’s advocate, but someone has to be.
NG: No fair enough, fair enough.
BR: Um, but okay.
NG: Fair enough.
BR: Okay, well there you go, so you had Saturday off and then Sunday was the San Pedro. Now I don’t know much about San Pedro, I heard about it, but for people that…
NG: Its mescaline, San Pedro is mescaline. I had never tried it. I’d never had any real desire to try it. I was invited to a peyote ceremony a few months ago which I turned down but I was kind of interested in it. So we had the mescaline, the San Pedro ceremony which was completely different. We all filed into the…you can’t eat breakfast, you have to do it on an empty stomach, so we…Saturday we took a day off, to decompress after the Ayahuasca, talk about our experiences. We ate a breakfast lunch and dinner, and then we were told the next day, anyone who wants to do San Pedro can do San Pedro, so, but there was no eating if you were going to do San Pedro.
BR: And it was optional?
NG: Optional.
BR: Were the other ceremonies optional?
NG: Everything is optional. Everything is optional.
BR: But in your mind you were like I’m going to do the four and one, I’m gonna do…
(57:17 Video/Audio)
NG: After the first one no. After the first one, I was seriously contemplating whether I would ever do Ayahuasca again.
BR: Really?
NG: Yes.
BR: The next day?
NG: Yes. Yes, I was seriously contemplating whether I would ever touch that medicine again
BR: Cause it was terrifying?
NG: It was terrifying beyond…yeah incredibly terrifying.
BR: Did you get a certain buzz about making it through that? Did you get any kind of, I don’t know, a good feeling that you made it through that night, that you were back?
NG: Um, yes. I didn’t get…. I felt a lot of my ego had been taken off me; a lot of the pressure of the ego had been relieved.
BR: Which is a good feeling.
NG: Definitely a good felling, but I would not at this point say that the benefits had outweighed what I went through at this point.
BR: Okay fair enough. But you had Saturday to not worry about that?
NG: Yes, Saturday we just chilled out.
BR: Do you get bored there? Is there stuff to do?
NG: No, no.
BR: What do you do?
NG: Talk to people, connect to people I guess is the main one; I mean I took a few books and stuff, but I made a decision not to read. I realized that one of the reasons I’ve not been as happy as I could, is because I read too much. My mind is overactive and so I decided not to read at all for the duration of this thing. There’s no TV, no mobile phones, no video games, none of those things so you really are forced to face yourself, and face people and connect with them in a way that I think the distraction of the modern western world definitely interferes with.
BR: Well also, I think post Ayahuasca you want to connect with people. Am I right?
(58:51 Video/Audio)
NG: Yes, Ayahuasca I found it’s called, its what’s known as an empathogen. It’s something which allows you to feel empathy for others. It allows you to open up and connect to other people.
BR: Who told you that?
NG: I just know it.
BR: Empathogen, I never heard of that term, Interesting term.
NG: Yeah, here’s the crazy thing. I had never heard that term before.
BR: You just created it?
NG: I didn’t create it, it is an official term.
BR: Okay, empathogen.
NG: Yeah, um so after that…
BR: So Sunday, San Pedro.
NG: Sunday, San Pedro. So went go into the Moloca, Ron is not involved with this, he said to us at one point “I do not serve San Pedro, I do not work with it, but you guys are welcome to the ceremony” and we all drank this…one of the people there who was practicing to be a shaman he said a prayer to the four corners of the, north, east, south, west, and he called upon all the pachamama – the earth spirits, he called upon the spirit of the wind, I mean very, I don’t like to use the word hokey but that’s what it was, it was hokey, I mean at that point I thought it was hokey.
BR: Okay, as opposed to the Ayahuasca ceremony which isn’t hokey right?
NG: Yeah it’s not hokey, that is a sacred thing.
BR: And its short, the Ayahuasca, there’s not a lot of yippin’ and yappin’.
NG: Yeah, no, no, no.
BR: You get down to it pretty quick.
NG: And this was short too, the San Pedro ceremony. So we did the San Pedro.
BR: You drank it as well?
NG: Drank it. If you are not aware of it, San Pedro comes from a cactus. It’s grown in….forgive me I can’t remember, I think high in the mountains somewhere. It comes from a mountainous region. A very very, very bitter tasting thing and almost made me wish for the Ayahuasca it was so disgusting…
(1h 0m 36sec Video/Audio)
BR: Really, wow.
NG: …in its own way. So we all drank the San Pedro…
BR: Same kind of volume? Was there a volume choice?
NG: You were given a regular sized cup, a drinking cup with, it was filled about 1/3 with this powder, which was ground up San Pedro, and then you had to keep diluting the mixture, keep stirring it up. It didn’t dissolve, it just turn into a suspension almost, and then you had to shoot it back and then pour more water in to get the dregs, and you had to do that 3 or 4 times. Disgusting, absolutely vile tasting stuff. And so then we were told and to go enjoy the day, do whatever you want, go for a hike, go for a walk, hang out with people, I went and lay in a hammock, there were some hammocks in the little camp, and I waited for it to come on. And it started to come on in a strange way. I became pretty nauseous, I remember asking the woman Tracy who had administered it, I said “Is it supposed to make you fell nauseous?”, and she was like “Yes” and uh….
BR: Of course it is.
NG: Its part of the medicine.
BR: That’s why you drink it.
NG: And then things just became strange, things just became very strange, like my senses became heightened. I just became very in touch with nature walking around, like, looking at leaves, and looking at plants, and insects, and just very in touch with nature and in a way I’ve never been before. The only thing that comes kind of close is magic mushrooms that I did in California once, but this was a far more powerful medicine, probably due to the dosage, I didn’t take many magic mushrooms, but I think is quite a large dose of San Pedro. And then um, I saw a guy called Vaz, who subsequently became a brother of mine, a soul brother, and Vaz and I we took a walk out of the camp through a part of the forest into this clearing by a river and there were a few of us, a few of the people from the camp, they were all waiting there, taking some of the chairs out there, and they were sitting there, and at this point we were all giddy with laughter, like just laughing our asses off and I became very touchy feely, like I was that guy. I was giving people massages and back rubs, you know, yeah, not in a…but not in a sexual way, strangely I just wanted to heal people, I just wanted to connect with people and I was, this one guy was a boxer and I felt how fucked up his hands were from years of boxing so I was just trying to massage the scar tissue out of his hands and wrists and just helping with it, and in some, I dunno why, to this day I don’t know why I was doing that, it was just my instinct telling me to do this and apparently I was giving great massages, and it was to girls and guys just ah…there was absolutely nothing sexual…
BR: I believe it.
NG: …or cideous about it, I was… I just I felt I needed to use my hands to help heal people and we were all just making each other laugh and then I started having these profound insights. You know we were sitting in this little clearing and ants were crawling over us, and spiders were crawling over us and we could look down, and we looked down at this river and we were sitting next to this old abandoned house that had…it was a surreal place and we were joking and laughing and everything was making us
(1h 4m 06sec Video/Audio)
laugh. It was about five of us, and then I started having these profound insights. One of them was that human beings are hybrids of alien and primate DNA. I don’t know where this came from, but I just knew it to be true. I instantly, I just…like this, it is what it is. I was looking at everyone in the camp, every one of these five people and I could see, I could see that they were alien. I could see that there were different strains of alien DNA that had been synthesized with primate DNA. I could see like – Oh wow she’s a more insectoid species of alien and he’s a more feline species of alien – and I could just see it Brian, I know this sounds like the most crazy fucking shit you’ve ever heard in your life…
BR: It does.
NG: …but I could see the stuff.
BR: Okay. I don’t deny that you saw it.
NG: And at this point, I started to freak out a little bit, I was like, I hadn’t eaten, you know my blood sugar was low. I was really starting to think, Nic you really pushed it too far, and now you’ve crossed the line, you’ve pushed it too far in your quest for whatever it is you are looking for, you have taken too much, and so I started to freak out and I went back to the camp and we all went back to the camp, at some point we are standing around the camp and now it was time for a mud bath that was part of the…
BR: Is this the San Pedro ceremony?
NG: Yeah, just part of the day’s activities is that plan to all give us a healing mud bath, so all the girls in the camp started to prepare this mud bath right, that had been brought up from the creek, they had brought up all this mud and they mixed it with water and they prepared this mud bath, and all the girls had stripped down into their panties. Ok now, at this point I was starting to get paranoid as fuck. I was looking around, and I was saying to people, doesn’t this remind you of that Heaven’s Gate cult? You remember that cult about 10 years ago when that crazy guy took everyone into, I can’t remember, he took every one to somewhere and he made them put on a set of Nike’s and a purple t-shirt, when Haley’s comet was coming and he…
BR: They drink cyanide or…
NG: They drank some poison and he said that some spaceship was coming to get them. Now at this point I remember standing around looking at people and I was in my underwear by this point, literally just standing in my underwear, and I think I was one of the few people in my underwear, but there were others, all the girls were in their panties and I was saying to them to a few of my friends in the camp, I was standing there in the sun, we were all in the sun being driven fucking stark raving mad, standing in the sun on strong hallucinogenic drugs, and I was saying to them “You know this has all the recipes of a large scale cult suicide. We are…a thousand miles from home.
BR: Okay so you told them that?
NG: Yeah, I told them.
BR: You started freaking out.
(1h 7m 16sec Video/Audio)
NG: I was the guy; I was the paranoid andoid (?) in the camp dude. I was telling them, like, we are a thousand miles from home, we are all on strong drugs, we’re in the sun, we’ve just taken Ayahuasca yesterday, you know Ron could tell us anything, he could tell us he was the second coming of Christ and that he was taking us away in a spaceship tomorrow night and we would believe him.
BR: Okay so you started tripping out.
NG: I started tripping out. Some people found this funny, other people didn’t want to be around me, and I ‘m sorry to…
BR: I know the feeling.
NG: …and to those guys. Yeah you know the feeling well too. To those guys I completely apologize. I was not really in charge of my faculties at this point.
BR: Alright so what happened? Did you take a mud bath?
NG: Well then all the girls were saying “Come on boys and…
(*1hr 7m 56 sec – Audio interruption – Jazz break?)
NG: …Come on boys come on and get involved, and they were all like dancing around like temptresses, dancing around like, I couldn’t make this up Brian. I can see you’re getting uncomfortable; I just want to tell you the story.
BR: No, it’s great I just want to hear the end of the story.
NG: So they were going come on guys, who wants to get involved so I just like fuck it, so I just walked up to them, and I got into this bath of mud and they were all like joking around going “Awww, he needs some healing. He needs some healing, let’s give him some healing” and they were like dancing around me, like rubbing their breasts on me, rubbing their breasts on my face. It was like this weird sexual fucking ritual thing that I can’t even begin to…it was…the archetypes, the male and female archetypes had become very strong in the camp at this point. Men were becoming very manly and women were becoming very feminine.
BR: On the San Pedro.
NG: Yes on the San Pedro. I remember looking at this one girl, she was covered in mud in her panties and I just looked at her and I went, I looked across at her and I went “You are a goddess!” and I ran up and I picked her up and I started running around the ca…the camp descended into fucking madness
Brian, I couldn’t make this up. It descended…
BR: It sounds horrible.
NG: It was horrible, it descended into madness. And then after the mud bath I mean, we went and got washed off a few of us and we were laughing and playing in the creek like five year olds and throwing
(1h 9m 42sec Video/Audio)
water on each other and then…Brian, I’m sorry I know this story is insane but it has to be told. And then we ah…what happened then? Let me see, I don’t have notes on the San Pedro ceremony, I’m just trying to recall. Oh then we started to come down a little bit, but I was still very, very paranoid. I was very paranoid. I was starting to see everyone’s ego. When I looked at a person, people in the camp started to have little arguments. It was weird, strange little arguments started to break out, and I knew it was the ego, I could see my own ego as well, and it was an ugly thing dude, I could see the worst aspect of myself, the worst aspect of myself. And when I’d look at someone I would see their ego on their face. I couldn’t see their heart; I could only see their ego. But a few of the people were not like that, like there were little children in camp, the children of the Peruvian workers, they were innocent and pure there was…when you looked at them there was no ego.
BR: Okay so they were around watching all of this?
NG: Yeah, I mean, I…I cringe to think what these workers must think of these crazy gringos that come to that camp. I cringe.
BR: I know. And his son wasn’t there for the San Pedro ceremony?
NG: No no, his son wasn’t there for the San Pedro ceremony, but there were little girls that were younger than this. I mean they were just…
BR: Just watching you guys.
NG: They were kind of oblivious to it, I mean mainly the older workers were just looking and laughing every now and then but…
BR: So how did that end?
NG: That ended with Vaz walking me down to the creek, Vaz became my advisor, he was the guy that talked me through the bad trip and I will always have love in my heart for that man. He saved my life on that day because I remember lying on the little wooden dock thing by the creek and I was like (breathing hard) like hyperventilating, and I was on a bad trip Brian, and Vaz just said to me “What are you afraid of?” I said to him “I’m afraid to die” and he said “There’s no reason to be afraid” and eventually it broke out of that but yeah…
BR: Okay, so that was San Pedro.
NG: That was San Pedro.
BR: Um…that’s us hour so I don’t know if we’ll have time for every single Ayahuasca ceremony, but you’ll have to keep telling us how the rest of the week was.
NG: Okay. So the next day was….we were all just a little bit shocked after this. Like I think the Ayahuasca and the San Pedro taken consecutively like that, so close together I think that was a little bit too much for a few of us, myself included.
(1h 12m 9sec Video/Audio)
BR: Did people regret that ceremony? Were they feeling weird the next day? Was there any tension or uncomfortable-ness in the camp?
NG: Yeah, there was a little bit of tension but we were all good. I mean I’m very glad I…
BR: Did orgies break out after the San Pedro?
NG: No, no, no, when I say orgies, no one had sex with anyone. It was a lot more innocent than I made it out to be, but it had a very…
BR: Bacchanalian?
NG: A very Bacchanalian feel to it. That’s a very good word you used.
BR: Okay. And that’s not a nice thing always? … (you saw like)…
NG: No it’s definitely not a nice thing always. I’ve had my share of it. I won’t go to Killing Kittens or anything like that ever again. I’m done with that. I don’t want that in my life anymore.
BR: Interesting.
NG: And so, it was almost time for the second ceremony.
BR: Okay, that’s the next day, Monday. So you have a whole ‘nother day.
NG: Yeah, and now we were all scared. Now we were really fucking scared Brian. I remember I didn’t want to go in that room. I did not want to go, I was looking for excuses, but I knew it had to be done. So 6:30 we all file back into the Moloca and now it’s different, the tension is heightened.
BR: Did anyone opt out?
NG: No, everyone did it the second night. And now there’s a storm brewing. There’s a proper tropical storm brewing – 6:30, it’s raining lightly but there’s full cloud cover. And there’s a storm brewing, and we’re all in the temple same thing 6:30, we’re sitting down, we’re all chatting a little bit, but he’s pouring the medicine its time, then he turns off the light, you know, we’ve all drank. This time I had a small measure.
BR: Okay. Why?
NG: I just…my instinct told me. My instinct told me take a small measure. Had a small measure. He turns off the light. Its pitch black, but now the storm begins, lightning, the heaviest most powerful storm I’ve ever been in, in my life. Lightning flashing up, illu…rain so loud you couldn’t hear him singing his Ikaro’s.
BR: Jesus, that’s not the kind of…you don’t want that noise when you are drinking Ayahuasca, it’s too much?
(1h 14m 20sec Video/Audio)
NG: It was, but it was so powerful; there was so much energy and power in that storm. I can’t…it was a sacred thing that storm brought. So that storm started like…it was something I feel so blessed to be a part of, I will be grateful to my dying day. I don’t think many people have experienced anything like this.
BR: Okay, you were also drinking Ayahuasca at the time.
NG: That’s what…I mean I couldn’t make it up. Ron sitting at his table, like a mad scientist with all his sacred potions and the rain coming down, and the candle light and the storm; it was the most surreal experience of my entire life, up until that point
BR: How was the ceremony for you?
NG: The ceremony was powerful. The ceremony…he had ordered a gong, a huge gong that he had mounted on a frame, a massive…I mean maybe this big in diameter, for those of you that are listening, it was maybe 4 ft. in diameter this gong, and it had only arrived that day, and so he hadn’t used it that first night, because he used a few musical instruments, strange musical instruments that I’ve never seen before either, but that gong hadn’t arrived until this night. And so, the Ikaro’s were very powerful that night and then he started banging on this gong.
BR: Like The Gong Show gong…like < gong sound effect>
NG: Yeah but he was doing some weird tune…like there was a rhythmic thing to the gong. Like it wasn’t just random like just whacking on the gong, he was going
BR: Maybe it was one of the aliens.
NG: Alright I put it back up. That’s it, okay. So people started retching and this gong was, I mean I had to put my fingers in my ears because it was so loud and so intense.
BR: The gongs or the retches?
NG: The gongs the retching, the Ayahuasca, it was just….
BR: Okay…but you stayed in your seat this time?
NG: Yes I stayed in my seat for the full ceremony; I managed to stay in my seat. Thank you god or whoever was helping me do this.
BR: But you retched?
(1h 17m 14sec Video/Audio)
NG: But I retched….no, no I didn’t retch, no retching, no puking. So I have something in front of me, some notes I’m going to run through a little bit of what happened if this is okay?
BR: Yeah, just, can you push the mic forward a little bit because, no up, towards me. Just for this.
NG: Is that good?
BR: Yes, that’s better.
NG: So, then it started to show me things about my life.
BR: Break it down for us.
NG: It started to show me all my friends, and what they mean to me, and what I mean to them, how they perceive me. I saw you a lot. I realized just how important you are to me. I saw us doing London Real, you know the funny thing is I saw my friends, and I saw that this human experience is just a game. It’s just an amazing game we’re all playing. And I saw how all my friends are all put here to help me play the game, and how I’m put here to help them play the game. And I saw ways that they were helping me to do it, that I didn’t realize. I saw how you were helping me grow as a person; being around you helps me grow, like you teach me in ways that you don’t know, in ways that I didn’t know and I saw how other friends did the same thing you know. I saw my family, I saw how massive the weight on my father’s shoulders were in the last ten years when his business started to fail, I saw how much it aged him. I saw my brother and how his second child syndrome, ‘cause he’s the middle of three children, I saw how much that plays on him, how difficult it has been for him. I saw my family, I saw how they are my little tribe, my family is my little tribe and how they’ve done so much for me, and how much they love me. I went to my own birth; I saw my own birth and what my mother did to give me life. I’m mixing the second and third ceremony here a little bit.
BR: Okay.
NG: I saw how broken my heart was with my ex-girlfriend, I saw how incredibly broken my heart was. I saw how much I’d loved her and you know there was one point, were I was just sitting, just cuddling myself, just rocking backwards and forwards saying “it’s okay, it’s all okay. It’s okay. You were hurt. It’s no one’s fault and it’s all okay.”
BR: Was it painful seeing these things or was it…
NG: It was painful and illuminating at the same time.
BR: Some euphoria in this?
NG: No not…yes, at some points, after the ceremonies is when euphoria came. I was shown Osho and how much he taught me. I was shown Rickson Gracie, and Roger Gracie, the two Gracie’s who I resonated the most with, and how much they taught me and I saw how enlightened Rickson Gracie, what an enlightened master he is. I saw myself as a holy man under a tree just laughing, just laughing at the enormous gift life is, this incredible gift that we have all been given, and it is such a precious gift.
(1h 20m 40sec Video/Audio)
Every day wake up and be thankful for what you’ve been given. Your eyes, your ears, your senses, your body, these are all tools you’ve been given to enjoy life with, to experience this incarnation with and you know the universe is working so hard for you to be able to play this game, it’s not…don’t take it for granted. This is such a powerful and beautiful thing. You know at one point in I think the third ceremony, the girl next to me, I reached over and grabbed her hand and I put it on my heart, right, because I just needed someone to rub my heart, and she started to rub my heart and I felt that my heart started working properly again, and I had known intellectually, I had been speaking to people about this before. I had known that my heart chakra wasn’t working properly, but you know, I’m someone who had lived in his head a lot, you know this better than everyone. You know when you always say to me “be present, be present”. You’re always saying like when I’m playing on my phone, and you are always saying “be present”. I saw you doing that and I was like: Oh, Brian was trying to teach me, he was trying to help me; he was trying to bring me into the moment. Because it used to irritate the fuck out of me when you did that. But I understand that you were trying to help me you know. And I realized why that was, because I was working in my third eye chakra, it was having to work way harder, because my heart chakra wasn’t working. So I was someone who was having to think his way through the world as opposed to someone to feel his way through the world
BR: That actually makes sense.
NG: It makes a lot…I finally understand that now and what’s changed since that experience is now when I speak to people, so much more I speak from my heart, I don’t speak from my head. I cannot put it into better words than that. But that has been the fundamental change in me is I’m becoming a heart centered person and not a head centered person and a little bit of advice I want to give to anyone who’s listening, whether you do Ayahuasca or not, your heart knows a lot more than your head knows. It knows a lot more than your head knows. And whatever you do, I think Ayahuasca is an amazing way to do it, but whether its meditation, whether its prayer or whether its yoga, whether its…whatever your own search entails, always let that be the focus, is trying to find your heart because your heart will always know better than your head.
BR: As in your instinct knows better than your intellect?
NG: Yes, yes.
BR: Okay.
NG: Yes, exactly that. Um, I’m almost finished with what I have capacity to share today.
BR: And that’s second and third ceremony?
NG: Yes, in the second ceremony there was a point where… Brian I couldn’t make this up.
BR: You gotta drop it for us man.
NG: There was a point where I became a snake. I literally became a snake. My tongue started moving around in my mouth doing the craziest things, and my vision, it became strange, almost like a fish eye lens field of vision and my head started bobbing and my whole spine started moving in this strange
(1h 24m 04sec Video/Audio)
serpent like manner. And I realized, this is what a snake is like, this is what it’s like to move like as snake through the jungle. I couldn’t make this up.
BR: Was there any reason for that? Or it just happened.
NG: It was trying to teach me. Like, another profound insight I had on this trip is that the earth is our mother and Brian, that was something I knew intellectually, it was some hippie concept I had been exposed to many times: Oh man the earth is your mother man. You know but the earth is out mother. It is literally, the earth is our mother and we are absolutely destroying her, she asks for nothing from us and we are just abusing and wrecking her, and that became so clear to me and I understand that so much now.
BR: Will that change the way you do things?
NG: Yes, it will definitely change the way I do things a lot. It will definitely change the way I do things. I’m just gonna pull out the notes…
BR: Can I ask what the fourth ceremony was, and was there any different dynamic about that? Did you consider not doing it?
NG: I still have a little bit more about the third ceremony if you like to hear.
BR: Tell me, tell me.
NG: The third ceremony was…there’s two more things I want to speak about the third ceremony.
BR: Are you going to write all this down? Are you going to write an article or something?
NG: At some point, at some point. There was a girl I met on this trip. Her name is Sarah. I don’t care, I guess I might as well spill the beans, I’m sure she won’t mind and in that third ceremony we had become close, there was some sort of strange attraction to us, some magnetic attraction. The moment I laid eyes on her, I felt something between us, something strange and we just ended up sitting next to each other most of the time, and we spent a lot of time in the camp. She was the girl that I saw on San Pedro, and I said “You look like a goddess”
BR: Okay.
NG: And in the third ceremony…she was also the girl that was rubbing my heart and who kick started my heart again, my heart chakra. In that third ceremony, there was a point where she became a queen, an Egyptian queen, like the name that keeps coming back to me is Queen Samaramus or Isys like this and I saw her sitting there and she was the most beautiful goddess like Egyptian queen I’d ever seen and I’m pretty sure we were connected in another life. I’m sure we were…either connected in another life or someone, another intelligent person in the camp said we might have been accessing another point in time in another dimension that was pretty similar. Both been in a similar frequency where we had crossed over and we’d both been king and queen, if that makes sense. And the most important insight I was given on that third night, on the day before in the camp, we had all been chatting, actually on the
(1h 27m 10sec Video/Audio)
San Pedro day and I was speaking to one of the guys called Collin. We were having an in depth chat about the nature of reality in the world and what we were doing here and he said to me, he said “The truth is hidden in plain sight” and that line it…it snapped like electricity. I was like, I just kept repeating it over to myself “the truth is hidden in plain sight; the truth is hidden in plain sight”. And in the Ayahuasca journey on the third night, it showed me that, it showed me how Hollywood, there is so much truth in Hollywood that you know…I saw…remember Elizabeth Taylor she was Cleopatra in some old move if I’m not mistaken.
BR: Yeah it was on recently. She’s awesome in it.
NG: Yeah that’s interesting. I didn’t know. It showed her and then it showed me like movies like Prometheus, you know about these stories of these aliens coming and seeding our planet with their DNA. It showed me the truth is hidden in plain sight. It’s waiting there for anyone who’s looking. You can find the truth and it showed me Star Wars bro, I understand why the Star Wars movies are so incredibly popular. It’s nothing to do with the special effects or any of that bullshit, because the stories the Star Wars movies tell, at least the first one, that is all happening…you know there are other planets with aliens on, you know.
BR: That’s also a very popular story line, the dark and the light, it resonates for most people.
NG: Yes, that’s my second point that I’m about to get to is, you know when Luke goes to Dagoba, he’s doing his training with Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back, and he comes to that tree. He’s walking with Yoda, and he knows he has to go into that old tree, it’s a hollowed out tree and Luke says to Yoda, “What is in there?” and Yoda says “Only what you take with you”. Now, we’ve chatted about this before I think and it’s been something that’s been in my psyche for a long time, but it showed me that is the age old story of a man facing his shadow and that is what Ayahuasca is. It is facing your own shadow. That is what Luke Skywalker went through in that tree, when he had to slay his own father, that is what I went through in that jungle, that…
BR: And that was himself ultimately.
NG: It was his self, his own shadow, because that’s what Ayahuasca is, it’s a journey into your own shadow. And that’s the most scary thing is facing yourself, facing who you are, seeing the dark and the light, seeing the ugly parts of yourself. It’s an incredibly difficult thing you know and you’ve done it as well, I know you’ve done it, you’ve changed since you’ve done Ayahuasca, you saw your shadow bro, you went into the darkness.
BR: I saw part of it.
NG: You saw part of it and on the final…now we’ll come to the final ceremony. I had another full dose, I…again, I’ve left out a lot, I actually didn’t write down the final ceremony, just because I’ve been unable to verbalize it into…
BR: Is it been a week since that ceremony? Just to give people a rough idea.
NG: Just under a week buddy, maybe five or six days, ummm.
(1h 30m 17sec Video/Audio)
BR: So it’s probably still processing going on?
NG: I am still definitely processing. I will be processing this for six months to a year I think.
BR: Definitely, maybe even longer.
NG: The final ceremony I took a full measure. I decided that day I’m going to take a full measure, that’s what I’m here for. The day of the final ceremony was on the Mayan, the day of the end of the Mayan calendar, December 22, upon which there was a galactic planetary alignment. Our sun is at the ce…if I’m not mistaken, I don’t know the specifics of it but our sun lined up with the center of the galaxy and what that meant, it’s my understanding of what that meant is that there would be a huge cosmic energy beam being beamed down upon earth. That was the point for this whole trip, that’s what we planned it around, the 22nd of December.
BR: To have that last ceremony on that day?
NG: Yes, right, and during that day there was a very strange feeling in the camp, there was a spec…some people were so excited, I was scared as hell. I was very scared.
BR: More so than the other times?
NG: Yes, yes, that was the apex of my fear. I knew something big was coming, I didn’t know what it was, but you could feel there was an oppressive spirit on that camp, something was coming. Suzanne the Shaman, she had been keeping this whole group together, she was acting as pretty much the group psychologist for the people who were freaking out, and she just needed to just, she needed to pull back, she needed to be on her own, because she was under a lot of pressure, there was a lot of energy coming down at her. So I decided, I said “fuck it” I’m taking a full dose, this is what we came here for, I somehow grew the stones to take a full dose and we all filed into the Moloca for the last one. This time, Ron, he had been wearing a tan colored ceremonial Shipibo, Shipibo is a tribe in the Amazon, he had been wearing a Shipibo ribe, sorry robe and this night he was wearing a white robe, okay, and we all just knew. Then we…Suzanne took control of the start of the ceremony because she wanted to do a few things. She all wanted to…we all did face paint, we painted our faces, with the crushed juice of this strange Amazonian berry, we painted our faces red.
BR: Did you take any pictures while you were down there?
NG: No, but there were a lot of pictures that certain people took, I’ll show you them.
BR: Okay, okay.
NG: So we painted our faces and we all stood in a circle and we chanted a few chants, ‘Ohm’ was one of them, and then we chanted another chant, I can’t remember what it was but it was designed to open the heart, and then…now what I asked to have painted on my face was a perfect circle on my forehead with a point in the middle of it, the reason I asked for that is the movie called Watchmen and the protagonist who is a guy called Dr. Manhattan, he becomes like a Superman in the movie, like a god, he is disassembled in a nuclear accident and then he reassembles himself somehow and he draws that own
(1h 33m 38sec Video/Audio)
thing on his forehead, and that becomes his symbol and I don’t know why but the whole day I just kept thinking about him, and I kept thinking I need to have this symbol on my forehead, pretty insane right? And I took the full cup, and we started the ceremony, and then it was a decent into madness, it became a decent into absolute madness. One of the guys next to me who strangely enough was the only person who hadn’t been vetted for this trip by Suzanne, he became possessed by some entity, and he started rolling around on the floor wailing and then he started shouting “I am God, I am God” like shouting, screaming, and then cursing, like swearing the most vile curses and profanities and demonic stuff from his soul I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t figure it out, I didn’t know who it was, I was so under the depths of the medicine, I couldn’t figure anything out, I just knew I was terrified, I could sense the evil and the negative energy that was radiating off him or whoever it was I didn’t know who it was at that point, and somehow I got the strength to stumble out of the Moloca, I don’t how I got out of there, but I got out. And at that point I lost sight of what I was again, I started thrashing around in the dirt Brian. Thrashing around in the dirt like a possessed animal. I didn’t know what was going on but it was…to this day I still cannot believe what I was doing. I was rolling on my back like I was doing Jiu-Jitsu on my own like my legs over my head, um, just mumbling strange things. One of the helpers who is an angel and who probably helped me to cling on to the only tiny little thread of sanity in that ceremony, he was a guy named Cesar, a beautiful spirit, he just…the only English he knew was my name, and he just kept going Nic, I just kept hearing Nic every few minutes he would shine the light at me and go Nic just to check if I was okay, but Brian the only way I could put it is that was the death of my ego. That was the death of what I was, and the birth of what I am. When we did our debriefing ceremony as we did every day when everyone would sit in a circle and talk about what happened to them, I just kept saying I was born in the jungle, because I was born in that jungle. There’s no other way to put it, I was born in that jungle. Nic died in that jungle and whatever I am now was born in that jungle.
BR: On that fourth night…
NG: On that fourth, it was…you know I spent like maybe 30 or 40 minutes, maybe an hour, it was longer, it was probably around an hour lying on the ground, lying with my head face down in the dirt, ants crawling over me, raining on me just lying down. Eventually Sarah, the goddess, she came, I remember at some points, I remember her saying “Are you okay?” and I as looking up at her and she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life. She had the face of an angel looking down at me and I’ll never forget her so long as l live. I mean, she got the workers to put a blanket over me. Also, this guy who had this psychotic episode, he had been thrown out of the temple and he eventually…while I was writhing around possessed, some of the other guys snapped out of their own trip and got enough composure to drag him back to his hut where he was staying. Thank god, because he just…there as a very dark energy on him.
BR: Dragged him from the Moloca to his hut?
NG: No, outside, because he had already been thrown outside but he was still standing outside screaming “I am God, I am God”.
BR: Jesus.
NG: And I didn’t know who he was. I just knew he was evil. I just knew whatever was in this human being, whatever was coming out of him was evil and I wanted no part of it. And eventually one of the
(1h 38m 10sec Video/Audio)
guys on the trip, he had come outside and he was kneeling down, a guy called Sanjaya, an Indian guy, he was kneeling down holding my hand and we had a heart to heart chat while I was lying down, I couldn’t get up I was lying in the dirt, I couldn’t get up and he was just kneeling over me and he was say, and we hadn’t got on very well on that trip because he kind of, he had a thing for Sarah, the goddess, like she’s kind of like his unrequited love, you know, and they’re friends but you know, he loves her and she loves him as well but not in that way, and so, because her and I had been becoming close there was a negative thing between us, you know, but in one of my darkest hours he was the guy sitting there holding my hand, you know, chatting to me and we had this deep, deep heart to heart conversation. I was just speaking from my heart, you know, just telling him things that I couldn’t possibly know about his life, you know and about him and he was happy to hear them and we bonded, we bonded incredibly. And somehow I managed to get help to my feet and we went back to the, we went back into the Moloca, and it was only about half way through the ceremony but at this point I realized, I’m not going back under, I’m going to sit and stay present, I don’t want any more trips.
BR: Okay, and were you successful with that?
NG: Yes, yes.
BR: So you stayed as…you stayed back on earth?
NG: Yes, yes. The thing I did was that I kept trying to hold on to my next days’ debriefing, I was trying to plan it through my mind. What am I going to tell the group what I went through.
BR: But you were done tripping?
NG: I was done.
BR: You had seen enough.
NG: I was still fucked out of my brain. I was still…one of the phrases we used on this trip was I was still tripping balls bro, but I realized okay, I’m done with Ayahuasca like for now. No more…and we…eventually that candle came on and I knew it was over. I knew this trip to Peru; I knew it was done, finally.
BR: And you were glad? You had enough?
NG: Yes, I was very happy that it was all over Brian.
BR: And how was the next day? And how was leaving the camp and coming back?
NG: Strange. I felt like for a long time, in fact it’s only just starting to…I felt like a stranger in my own head for a long time. At one point I actually was, I thought I’d lost touch with reality completely, you know I was just like I’ve gone too far as I said earlier on the San Pedro, but this time when I woke up that next morning I was so confused. We were all walking around in a daze. If you had seen me the morning of that next ceremony, you would’ve…I was covered in mud, one of my shoes was missing. I was just stumbling around the camp. We were all just stumbling around, babbling, giving each other hugs, so
(1h 41m 17sec Video/Audio)
happy it was over, you know, like some guy had bought a bunch of candy which we were so grateful for. We had gone to town to buy candy which we were not allowed to eat. We probably shouldn’t have eaten but it was the best thing I had ever seen in my whole life. There was a campfire that night that we were all just sitting around, just discussing life and the universe and we were all on a massive, massive high.
BR: So you did get a buzz? A big buzz?
NG: That last night a massive buzz. The relief combined with the DMT, combined with the rite of passage that we’ve all just been through, um…massive buzz.
BR: Was everyone positive after the end of that, that trip?
NG: Overwhelmingly yeah. Everyone was positive. We were all giving each other hugs and you know I…
BR: Even the “I am God guy”, did you give him a hug.
NG: No, I didn’t give him a hug. I didn’t want to touch him but some people did. He was the only person who was not happy; you know he realized he had almost spoiled it for all of us. But, I mean, I don’t blame him at all, he had something bad in him. I don’t blame that man at all. He’s a good guy, we all got along with him up until this point, I mean he has his own issues.
BR: Maybe it’s the beginning of his journey, you never know.
NG: Yeah, yeah, I mean he’s staying there, he staying on to do shamanic apprenticeship which is….Brian that’s pretty much all I can take right now.
BR: What? Of telling me you mean?
NG: Of telling you the story.
BR: Okay, no, no, I think you covered most of the things. I just wanted to ask you, what do you say to your mom and your brother after this ceremony? You just described everything you went through about how you were so concerned before. You know, what do you tell them now about what happened to their son Nic?
NG: I’m so happy you asked me that because I really hope they listen to this. I doubt they will, but I really do.
BR: I think they will.
NG: My mother and my brother I love very much. I saw what it means, whenever they say they will pray for me, I saw them. It’s one of the things I’m so grateful for, I saw what prayer means. What an incredibly powerful thing it is to have someone praying for you. I know my brother, he’s not a bad man, I know that he’s in touch with God in his own way. That Christian framework is the framework through which he sees God. I called them all and I tried to impart this to them, I tried to start telling them the
(1h 43m 51sec Video/Audio)
story. I wasn’t trying to rub it in their face. They were asking me, I was trying to tell them the story, and when I did he started saying “You are not the king of Egypt, it was all just a demon”, and I couldn’t talk to him about it. And I realized I’m not interested in his opinion of Ayahuasca, I’m not interested in his opinion of my spiritual path. I love him. I love him more than anything, but that is their fear. Their fear of Ayahuasca belongs to them, it’s not my fear. I don’t want anything to do with their fear anymore. This is my spiritual journey. I really believe that Ayahuasca is one of the right hands of God; it is put here for our healing; there’s no way it could be evil from the devil, it could be used in that way by a negative Shaman but ultimately Ayahuasca loves us it’s here to help us as human beings; it’s here to help us grow; it’s here to develop so I would say to my mom and my brother “Do not worry about me, I was given healing in the jungle. I was born in the jungle and I thank you for giving me the physical life you gave me” to my mom. “Thank you for being there or my brother but don’t worry about me”
BR: Okay.
NG: Yeah.
BR: It’s interesting how they were saying your weren’t really in Egypt and you weren’t this pharaoh, and I think that some people confuse sometimes the value of Ayahuasca and the visions, and while the visions are very powerful and you see them, I find that the reason I go back to Ayahuasca is because that the way it changes my life afterwards. I mean the things that you see aren’t always relevant. Like the things you see might mean nothing. But what I take away always is that it changes your life afterwards, so someone may be like, Nic was a snake and then that’s why he goes down there, but you know, you really go down there to confront the dark side of your personality.
NG: And you know I was terrified. At one point I was like I’m not even going to do London Real with Brian on this, I’m like, how am I going to tell people that I was a snake? How am I going to tell people that I’ve seen aliens and had a plant spirit connect with me? I mean, fuck dude, I realize I’m really putting myself out there. I’m known as a guy who’s kind of on the fringe anyway when it comes to life and I know you are a little bit as well. But this is really, there’s no turning back now, you know. My credibility and everything will probably be questioned from this moment forward, but this is a story that had to be told. Ayahuasca is….I just want to say to anyone if you’re looking for some answers in your life, and God knows I was looking for things, and I’m still looking, but now I look from a point of curiosity, not a point of need. I don’t have to know what God is or where we came from, I’m just interested. If I continue this search it’s just from a point of curiosity. And I would say to anyone listening to this go to the jungle and find out who you are…find out who you are, face what you are. And I want to say a thank you to everyone, those 33 people on the trip, to Ron, to Suzanna to Mark and Tracie who run El Purguero, I will love you people for the rest of my life. I will know those people; I will be friends with them for the rest of my life. They are my soul brothers and my soul sisters. Something happened to us in that jungle, we did something, we did something special and I am so indescribably grateful for it and I’m so happy to be alive, and that’s pretty much all I have eft to say Brian.
BR: Okay, a couple more questions before we wrap this up. What happens now?
NG: If you will still have me on London Real, I would like to use it to change the world with you. I know we work really well together when we do work. I know we have our own issues but as I said to you when I walked through the door today “I love you very much”. I know I still have so much to learn as a human
(1h 48m 18sec Video/Audio)
being. I’m starting to make reparations with the people I’ve hurt. I realized Jiu-Jitsu is something that I’ve taken for granted for a long time, and my ability to teach Jiu-Jitsu is a gift from God and I need to honor that gift. Another thing that I can’t believe I almost forgot to tell you guys, this is another teaching that I was given, you know one of the most important, if not the most important question you could ever ask yourself is, don’t ask for how I can make money, don’t ask for how I can be successful, don’t ask for what the meaning of life is, ask yourself one question and if you can answer this question, and answer it every day and continuously answer it, you will have all of that and more and that question is “How can I give my gift back to the world?” How can I give these immense blessings that the universe has given me, how can I share them with the world and that’s what you and I do with London Real, we’re good at speaking, that’s one of our gifts, we’re good at communicating and using language, the tool of language to draw things out of people you know and that’s why I still want to be a part of London Real. I didn’t know why I was doing London Real, you said to me once “I get the feeling that you don’t really want to be here sometimes” and sometimes I didn’t know why I was here but know I understand. It’s to help us all connect. It’s to help bring the light of things like Ayahuasca to the world you know. It’s to help us elevate the consciousness of humanity you know. We don’t have to compete with anymore because a rising tide raises all ships right? I mean this is not about me it’s about everybody you know. And yeah, I want to be involved in London Real in a big way, I want to be involved in Jiu-Jitsu in a big way, I want to take this forwards man, I just want to live life, I want to fuckin’ enjoy it man.
BR: Okay, and what’s up for you next year? 2013, Nic Gabriel.
NG: To grow the brotherhood, the Jiu-Jitsu brotherhood, build my network of schools, to give back, to give my Jiu-Jitsu back to the world. To hopefully hang out with you, to learn more from you in whatever way that means. London Real, if I’m still involved, umm…to do London Real. I know we are going to travel a lot together you and I, we got to take the show on the road. Definitely going to do Ayahuasca again next year.
BR: Okay. Yeah, one of my last questions was what is the role Ayahuasca is going to have in your future?
NG: I have a lot more to learn from Ayahuasca. I don’t think Ayahuasca is my ultimate…I mean I know it’s just part of my journey. I don’t worship it, I don’t bow down at its feet, but I know it is a powerful plant teacher that’s given me many valuable lessons and gifts and I know it still has more to teach me. So I would like to learn more from it. I also know just like Aubrey Marcus and certain other people have said they reach a point where Ayahuasca will say “that’s enough, you’ve learned all I’m prepared to teach you, all that I need to teach you”. I will be doing other plant medicines this year, I’d like to do peyote, I have a calling to do peyote, umm…yeah.
BR: Will you go back to the Amazon next year?
NG: I will definitely go back to the Amazon, I don’t know about next year.
BR: Okay.
NG: Maybe next year, I want to take you there Brian; I want you to see that if I have to drag you…
BR: Jesus Christ
(1h 52m 04sec Video/Audio)
NG: …If I have to drag you kicking and screaming. I know that you need to see this.
BR: Once you told me about the San Pedro ceremony there’s no way I’m going anywhere near that country.
NG: You won’t have to do the San Pedro. I’ll never do San Pedro again, that’s for sure.
BR: Really?
NG: Yeah, I totally got a clear message; it’s not a plant teacher for me. But um, yeah buddy lets shake the world, let’s set the world on fire Brian.
BR: Okay man. Thank you for coming on, thank you for being so honest. I think it’s important that you say all that stuff, you know I mean, you said maybe people will question your credibility because you talk about these visions, but I know the feeling. After our first ceremony I talked about a woman in Africa after she had been raped by soldiers and I was getting a message from her and maybe that makes people uncomfortable, but I mean it’s what I saw and it’s the truth and in some way the plant medicine affected me, and so if this is uncomfortable for people to hear, then maybe should ask why it makes you uncomfortable. I might not have the same conclusions that Nic might have, but I don’t question he saw all of those things, and believes all of those things. I think it’s very important that you came out and talked about this stuff.
NG: Cool buddy.
BR: And I know it would have been easy for you to not to, and I personally feel the more ceremonies I do the less I have to communicate about them. And so I think this is a great resource because maybe after your fourth or fifth or eighth ceremony you might internalize it and I think it’s important that you told people, so…so thanks.
NG: My man, thank you, I love you very much Brian, I won’t say that on any further podcasts.
BR: Jesus Christ man, it’s like the fourth time you’ve said that to me.
NG: But I do man. I do, you know, I do.
BR: Okay, I appreciate that. No, I do. Well, welcome back and that’s it. I think this is our longest podcast ever and I’m glad we took the time because we had to cover all this stuff so I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll probably put some information on the site about where Nic went and all stuff and of course…
NG: Yeah we will.
BR: …If you have any questions, contact us at the information piece on the website at londonreal.tv or tweet to us or on facebook, you guys know how to get a hold of us, and there you go. Happy New Year.
NG: Happy New Year, Merry Christmas to all of you.
(1h 54m 21sec Video/Audio)
BR: And uh, until then…
NG: It’s about the journey.
BR: Awesome, alright buddy, peace.
//LONDON REAL OUTRO MUSIC//
Transcribed by: ghost_runner
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