During my week in the darkness in Germany, my only companion was a tape recorder. What was captured was raw, brutal, and illuminating. Ben Stewart is a legendary documentary filmmaker and he compiled all of the footage into an incredible film, woven together with stories of the ancient rituals involving the darkness. In this podcast we talk about the making of the film, the lessons from the darkness, and how it applies to the crazy world we find ourselves in today.  

Awake In The Darkness Documentary |  aubreymarcus.com/darkness

AUBREY: Ben Stewart, my man. 

BEN: Aubrey Marcus. 

AUBREY: Here we are. 

BEN: We are here. 

AUBREY: You just spent months listening to the most intimate thing I have ever produced out in the world. Four hours of audio that I recorded in my darkness retreat. I actually think you might know me in some ways better than any human on the planet because it's pretty much me and you that have listened to that. Some of the most intimate stuff I've ever actually spoken aloud. Or recorded anywhere. I mean, maybe some of my deep journals, like the deep cuts of my deep journals somewhere have some of this shit, but this was raw, man.

BEN: You went deep. You went real deep. What I really like about it is how well you speak to the process that's going on inside you. It felt like that's the kind of stuff that goes on in me in Ayahuasca Journeys, and you speak very well to it. So, luckily I had a lot of time to work on it. I did it a lot when it was dark, when it was completely dark. So I would just listen to it. Sometimes I'd put headphones on. Sometimes I would just lay there in bed and listen to it. Four hours, cause there were a lot of times where I would stop and I would rewind and I would cut a part out and I'd be like, save that part. So it was over four hours, but I think I spent like 15, 20 hours just selecting the right parts. And I made sure that I didn't transcribe it. I didn't send it off to Rev.com to have it transcribed for you. 

AUBREY: So somebody in Indonesia just has my most intimate thoughts. They're like, “Hey, I wonder if Aubrey Marcus wants this stuff out in the world.”

BEN: Yeah. So I trimmed out the stuff that you said, what I loved about it is you're a let's go kind of guy. Like if it's a yes, then you just sent it to me. I remember you were on a plane somewhere and you were like, “here it is, man. And I trust you. There's certain things I don't want anyone to hear.” So I just made sure that not even my editor and stuff like that have that. So I just cut out parts and I'm like, here's what we're going to work with for the film. But so thankful that you had that audio recorder. What were your thoughts beforehand? Did you know this was going to turn into something? Did you have the audio recorder because you knew it was going to help move towards a book or something? What was it?

AUBREY: I didn't know exactly. I've been through a variety of medicine journeys where I brought an audio recorder with me. Some MDMA assisted psychotherapy, that's a big piece of it. Some different other journeys where I've had a recording and I've always enjoyed the fact that there was a recording there, but I also realized in the darkness there was no other way to record my thoughts and I know that one of my patterns is if I get a download of something that's really valuable that I want to remember, I will spend so many thought cycles just trying to remember it and refresh my memory. So I got with Ryan, who's the podcast tech, always behind the cameras here. And I was like, all right, we got a blackout of the recorder and I got to learn how to use it in the dark so that I can at least get some of this stuff out. I thought that maybe it could become something. Obviously I've released a Huachuma documentary and an ayahuasca documentary, and there was some part of me that was like, maybe this will become something, but I'd never been in the darkness, so I didn't know, but either way, I knew this was going to help keep me sane and actually allow me to progress to new material. Assuming that I had the faith that I was actually recording something, which I had to struggle with. But I think you actually heard that on the recording at some point.

BEN: Yeah, it was a really funny moment because you were also dealing with, like you basically said, I hope this is being recorded. But you know what? I'm just gonna release all my attachments, but I really hope it's recording. And like, damn, look at me, hopping right back into my attachments. It was great though. And you did, I mean, as far as I know, you recorded everything you intended to record. There's over four hours of it there. Super rich stuff. My favorite part was the way you explained God's law. Loving A Perspectival Witness, and was that something that came to you in the dark? 

AUBREY: Yeah, there's so much time and the experience just ramps up steadily. I mean, the first few days in the dark, it's just you and your mind, and I was just spinning through all kinds of different things. I really decided that all of my problems, I didn't decide this, it just came up like everything that I was feeling internally, there was an external solution. So if I moved this house, if I changed this relationship status, if I did this one thing in business, then everything would be all right. And that's what was going to fix everything. So the first little bit was a lot about how I could change the external world. And then from there I started to go a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper. And by the end, I realized that none of this. Actually, my external world was just fine. There were some things I was going to come out and do, but it was really all about what was going on in my internal landscape. And that's universally true. So one of the things that came out towards the middle is I started to really explore myself and my connection to the divine. And that's where this idea of God's law came up and that acronym. And I also created these acronyms. So just in case the tape recorder wasn't recording and just in case my handwriting was writing over itself because I had a journal in there too. But writing in the complete pitch black was also difficult. So just in case none of that got recorded, I wanted to remember things through acronyms. And so thinking about the divine, I realized that it really fit with LAW, the loving cause my understanding of the divine is love is this universal force. This is the substrate of everything, it's the way that we can express. And it's a state of being the highest state of being that we can actually become ourselves when we're in a state of love. As love, loving another object, we think it's something we give to someone, but it's something we have to bring forward to become–

BEN: It’s like a state.

AUBREY: It's a state that's mutually shared. And that's my understanding of the divine is that all of this is another way to look at love, love from the highest perspective. A perspectival was really important because if you think about the divine as everything, all of the perspectives of all of us as divine beings in the divine creation of everything from the plants to the animals to the beings, not only in this planet, but if there's beings and other planets, it's all the perspectives, even the perspectives of the energies that don't have bodies and don't have form here at this point. So as the universal perspective, it's either all the perspectives or a perspectival because all and none, it meets in this kind of point at a circle. Everything in the nothing. So loving a perspectival and then witness was also really important because what I realized is that from really the divine perspective, if all is God, like Paul Selig says, all is of God or nothing is again, all in nothing becoming the same. Then God's not rooting for anything. It's not like, “good job, way to go,” these people and a bad job, these people, that's the judge, that's a different thing, which is outside of God. And that's, I think, a big area where we've gotten the understanding of the divine misconstrued. We're already thinking of the divine in polarity, already thinking in good and bad. And that does have a place, there is polarity and there is a place to say Christ consciousness and delusion, or the enemy or the devil or whatever else you want to say and create this Zoroastrian kind of cosmology. But ultimately, if you go to the source head, source itself, then it's just a witness. It's like, it's just God, Godding. One way or another. So it's not cheering these things on and cheering and booing these people over here. It's just witnessing in a loving way. And of course Ram Dass said a similar thing when he said, “I am loving awareness.” And that's him reaching his own divine potential, loving awareness, but just to look at the divine in that way was really, really helpful. Because of course, as you heard in those four hours of recordings, I was really grappling with judgment, judgment of what I thought was good, what I thought was bad, what should be, what shouldn't be. And so understanding that from the divine perspective, there's a place to escape all this was really, really valuable to kind of set a landscape that I can navigate.

BEN: I think, the audience is especially now in the world, really going to have access to some good tools through this because in the world without going deep, I mean, everyone knows what I'm talking about because it's such a global thing that wondering if what's happening is good. Is what's happening good? A lot of people say it's bad, and they have all these preferences. And usually that's what has us thinking, oh, well, this is good, this is of the light, but that's dark, that's not. Because my preference wants me over here. So I think it's a very valuable film that's being put together and the tools that you are dredging out of yourself through that process. It's interesting because we did the interview afterwards and you had mentioned so we put this part in the film. But when you came out of the darkness, this was just weeks before the world went into lockdowns, and what's been happening with businesses and it hasn't stopped since then. And I can sense it because people are emailing me all the time, but they're hungry for something not to solve the problem, but to make sense of it.

AUBREY: Yeah. 

BEN: To help make sense of what's going on in the world. And I think that's what's beautiful about this. And especially that part, you even mentioned Hermes Trismegistus. It was, help me remember that–

AUBREY: As above, so below, as within, so without. 

BEN: No, it's the circumference. 

AUBREY: Yeah. God is God can be expressed as a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.

BEN: Is nowhere. Yeah. And if your perspective is everywhere, then it is a perspectival. I love that. It definitely helped me. The editor, Brian Sheehan, he just lost his father a few days ago, and he says that working on this film has been one of the most rich and valuable things throughout this process for him, as by his dad's side as he was dying inches away from the darkness. And he found so much value in that. I find that with every film that I work on. Mainly because I only work on films that I think are rich and valuable to the soul of the audience. Even the animators that we brought in said, I needed this right now. And I think the world is going to find a lot of value out of it as well.

AUBREY: Yeah. That's what we're both here for. I mean, of course there's elements to any piece of art that we create, our ego, of course, gets attached to, Oh, I want it to be successful. I want people to like it. I want people to like me in it. I want people to like my work that I've done. And I think it's important to acknowledge that and not pretend that that's not a factor, but really the reason is that we want this to be medicine. We want all the things that we do to be medicine for the world. And that's really ultimately the only thing that is sustainable. That's the only thing that has substance when you actually pierce through deeper into the layers. 

BEN: Yeah. I really feel that because every film that I've ever worked on has been in some sense an altered state. And the first few films that I made, it was before YouTube, actually. It was Google Videos. I didn't even have a concept for what viral meant. That wasn't really like a talked about thing. And so when I put my first film out there it started going viral. But I remember the process of my first two films. It was the Esoteric Agenda and Kymatica. I barely remember the process of it. It was just a stream of consciousness. It started just coming out very naturally. I didn't have a thought of how to monetize it or who it should reach or what it should do. But obviously that's important. If there's a valuable message for people, then it goes viral, for the same reason why we want real medicine, which doesn't need to have a certain substance or a container for it. You want real medicine to be viral in that respect.

AUBREY: The antithesis of real medicine is absolutely viral. And speaking about the darkness, the funny thing is like we use the word darkness for bad, and I think you being in this darkness, which I found, and I use the word obsequious. It was like, just this loving, nurturing womb of medicine that I was in. So I catch myself now even using that dark equals bad. Certainly the darkness that I went into was everything but bad. It was an access point. It was a bridge to love, love for myself, love for the world, the love of the divine. But this shadow you could call it, or this challenge that the world's been in really, this has been a virus. It's not only an actual virus, but the virus of fear. And what that's actually created in the world, I think that's the thing that's far more dangerous, long term it is, it is the virus and in this virus of fear is something that you can't quantify. You don't know exactly when you caught it. You don't know what your viral fear load is. And there's certainly no vaccine for it and there's no other way other than finding the opposite, which is faith or love. And one of the really challenging things about this time is fear has spread out of control and then the manipulation of people because of that fear has spread out of control as well. And this is just one of those journeys where I had to confront my own fears. This is the way with ayahuasca, this is the way with anything. You have to go stare at that dragon that's in the dark, that monster under the bed and say, all right, here I am, do your worst. Let's see what's at the bottom of all of this. And always when you have the patience and the courage to go look at your fear. You find that it's all just an illusion that, sure you don't want to die or you don't want to suffer. It's not the preferable way. If I'm choosing my paths and outcomes, I'm not like, yeah, it doesn't matter if I'm tortured and kidnapped and killed, that's all good. Or if I live a beautiful, loving life with my wife and father, children and go on to a beautiful existence. Of course, I want the latter. But nonetheless, there's a huge release when you can release the fear that you have of all of these things because you faced them and you know that you'll be okay even if you die, even if the worst thing, and I think that's really where a lot of this fear comes from is this fear of death because we don't understand death. And I feel like through my journeys and probably yourself as well, and a lot of people who've done these deep journeys like ayahuasca, they call it the vine of the soul or the vine of death because you have to confront that. And you have to pierce that veil just enough where you understand, all right, there's some part of me that exists beyond this physical reality and this part can't be destroyed, can't be killed. It's the diamond in a world full of pillows. Like nothing's going to scratch it, mar it. This is my consciousness. This is love expressed through my perspective and this is mine forever. 

BEN: I love that you get into the Tao because really, I mean like dark and light, we have our preferences, but of course it's more preferable to be in the light, to not have the suffering, to not go through those dark nights of the soul. But like, if our greatest teacher in life were only there in the light, then sure, darkness would be the worst thing because there would be no lesson in there. But when people really do get a lot out of plant medicines let's say ayahuasca, you're experiencing things that a lot of the times you'd prefer not to, but what's the outcome? You're taught something about yourself. You're revealing that an aspect of you also exists within the dark. And seeing that and opening to it like God's law and seeing that everything that I'm learning about myself in the dark, those things, when it brings you back to things that you wish you would have done better. Well, we all have those preferences, but what could that teach you? That's what I see is going on in the world right now, is people do use the word dark as synonymous with bad and stuff that we don't want near us. But like I said, if the teacher was always in the light, then we would all have our enlightenment. It wouldn't be such an ancient technology going way back. I was researching it for this film which is what I love about films. I get to like deep dive into topics, but I've been into rites of passage and a lot of the times that's psychedelics or something else. But darkness is that technology that's been around for how long you go into how many ancient traditions from around the world. They all seem to use darkness and it's to see what hasn't been seen yet. And usually it hasn't been seen because we'd prefer not to see it.

AUBREY: Sure. And the light is very distracting. It's just appearing all the time. You have something to actually look at, whereas they call this Maya the illusion. And I think that's a paradox because it is very real. This table is very real. If I bump my knee into it, it's going to make a bruise like it's real. So it's not an illusion on that dimensional reality. But in some dimensional realities, it is an illusion. And so that's the paradox of real and not real illusion and not illusion. And I think people can get lost in like, Oh, it's just all illusion. It doesn't matter. No, it matters. As long as we have a body like this, it is as real as it gets. But there's another level that's beyond this that we have to look at. And when you actually remove the sight of things. You get access to those other dimensional realities that are beyond this one, where sight is apparent and sight takes preference and I think that's the way our brain is designed. If there's things that we can see, a good portion of our brain is designed to navigate the things that we can see. Can I eat it? Is it going to kill me? And can I have sex with it? That's what our brain is thinking. 

BEN: That's the food pyramid right there. 

AUBREY: Like our brain is trying to figure that out at all times and right now we got things we can eat. Right here on the table. Nobody we can have sex with here in the room, but nobody's going to kill us. So it's like a pretty relaxed environment. We've assessed it. But if we had like an unchained tiger in here trying to do this podcast. It'd be fucking hard. Half of our brain power would be like, I hope that fucking tiger doesn't get frisky. You'd get up and start moving around and be like, of course we can't help it, but in the darkness, there's the proverbial tigers but there's everything. There's nothing that the brain has to worry about other than exploring those deeper depths of what's inside and what's inside is also what's beyond. We're not a drop in the ocean, we're the ocean in a drop. So the distinction between what's within us and what's without us also fades away. But there's something very powerful about removing everything so that you can really see deeper, deeper, deeper. 

BEN: I sort of loved the film as you were talking about it you were even saying like that. It's not like there's nothing to see in the dark either. And I would love to know from you when the vision started coming on, how it compared to things like Ayahuasca or San Pedro. How are those visions in your visual field compared to that? What was meaningful in it. I know sometimes in Ayahuasca things will come by and you're like, why would I have to look at that. And it almost seems like your mind is– 

AUBREY: Defragging in a way. 

BEN: Yeah, exactly. Like getting rid of some garbage. But I'd love to know how that compares to the visions. 'Cause you imagine dark is so empty and you were saying it's anything but. 

AUBREY: Yeah, by night three it was anything, but, and it started differently, I've had hundreds of DMT experiences at this point in any variety of different combinations from Vilca to Mimosa that I've smoked and in DMT and Vilca is a snuff or Ayahuasca and many different analogs. Silahuasca is something that I definitely want to talk to you about because that was one of the other beautiful things is we both have such extensive medicine experience that talking to you about this, like you really got it. But it was interesting how it came on. I didn't know if it was going to happen. First of all, I was like, you hear that people have visions and these ayahuasca like visions. I was like, yeah, maybe, I don't know if I will or not, because even with ayahuasca, some people don't even have visions. I always have. But I didn't know if this was going to create it, if my neurochemistry was actually going to produce what was necessary to create that, whether that's producing, whatever it was that was going to create the visions, whether that's something that is actually DMT producing or whether that's restricting the things that prevent us from having access to DMT. We talked about that with John Dean and John Chavez whether we're actually producing which part of it, whether we're producing the vine or the leaf. And so ultimately I didn't know, but when it happened, when it started to come, then it started with flashes of light. And this was almost like there was a subtle strobe light and it was just steady. And this is how it came on just strobe light, no content within the strobes, but everything would flash from, you know how when you close your eyes, like there's a kind of like a muted orange ish, yellow light that can come through as your eyes have maybe adjusted to light that already exists. It was like that color that was coming through and then quickly. Over the course of some hours morphed into these glowing dripping globules of light that were around the room, almost like dripping pulsing stalactites 

BEN: You call them polyps. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Polyps is a great word. And they were these dripping globs, polyps of light that were around, I mean, obviously I couldn't see the room, but there was this kind of room feeling like I was in some kind of cave with these glowing polyps. And then the strobe effect started to slow down. And then eventually the polyps gave way to more of the fractal DMT visions. It was light. It was always like an ayahuasca. Come on or twilight. It wasn't like the peak. We're just getting blasted with lights of all colors and fractals within fractals. And then from there, from that place, that was steady, but then there also visions that could come like the vision of my father and the vision of Buddha and all of these different visions that came. And there were also interesting moments that reminded me of Iboga visuals where things were absolutely eight D photo realistic, like full on like 8K I mean, like full on like, whoa, this is crazy, like realistic and those would come in every once in a while as well. So it was a really rich visual landscape starting from day three all the way up through day six and it was just incessant and I had my aura ring that was going and I don't know how it kept a charge, but it somehow did and I was sleeping steadily less started off sleeping like nine hours, seven hours, and then it got down to like four, three, two, it was like less and less and less because the visions were so strong that like, I wasn't really able to sleep. I would just drift off for a little while and then I would take naps whenever I would take naps, but  that visionary state was intense. And that was where it got really intense. And then a lot of the emotional content was coming through. And I think the DMT, obviously the same with ayahuasca, it's not about the visions, it's about whatever your emotions are, dark visions, beautiful visions, powerful emotions, a lot of tears, some anger, different things that were inside me that were coming. All part of this kind of purgative psychic process to get me back to a deeper state of love and appreciation for the world. 

BEN: Man, I loved it. I had access to so much of you. So I really tried to give a nice, well rounded view of what it was that you were going through. So there were some funny moments. There were obviously some sad moments, there were moments where it seemed like you were just, I guess just kind of irritated by yourself or something that was going on and it was working itself through. But there's this one moment where you were like adjusting in your seat and you were like, I know Bob Lazar and everything like that, aliens but like, I don't know it could all just be one big DMT trip because I'm seeing tons of flying saucers up in here. And what was super cool about this was like, cause I didn't want to cover every bit of the dark. I want the audience to experience the darkness with you, but also have something other than just a black screen to look at. So we got the animators working on that golf ball planet with sprouts coming out of it. And also that when you were talking about the polyps hanging off the ceiling that are glowing, I saw this kind of cathedral rounded kind of like a cave, but something almost like Alex Gray, like those halls. That's kind of what I saw. So we got the work, starting to animate some of those things and it's going to be a cool experience because what we tried to do was there were a lot of particle effects and the coolest thing is we get to animate from a black background because mostly they don't ever get to do that. They don't animate from black, come on and then fade back out. So we got the opportunity to do that. Coming from the darkness and then something like a wisp of particles comes through and then it congeals into something that you're talking about. So it's a pretty cool evolution. What I like about how we're moving through your process, going day by day is almost like, day one, this is kind of the way it was. Day two, day three, and then, by the end, you're talking, your voice is different, and you're even saying you said something towards the very end. And my favorite part is right, the journey out of the darkness, the music that's playing and everything. And you say, it's something like remember to talk about the nervousness about the journey home. You've seized the sword of love today, but nobody else can see it. And that really hit me deeply because as a dad, just one example, no one's going to see 99% of the growing up you have to do when you're a dad. No one's going to see that there, they'll just be like, Oh yeah, you seem like a great dad. And they don't see the journey you had to go through. And that's also not the point of it. And so what's great about that is, you're kind of, thinking what's the next step gonna be? I get home, I know I've done this with plant medicines before, where you're obliterated down to South America or wherever, and then it's starting to come back together, you feel it, but then you go back home, and here's all your patterns, and all those lanes that take you down, and what do you do when you're in this lane? Oh, well, I drink this, and I eat that, and I smoke that, I hang out, I complain about this, or whatever, like, you get back into your patterns, and I noticed that already starting to become apparent to you, like, okay, tomorrow I leave, and there's a journey home. So, we organize the entire journey that you go on to the hero's journey. So at the beginning, there's the calling. You have Akshay, talking about his experience. And you're like, “dark retreat. Yeah, I want to try that.” And it's a beautiful experience because you get to see, which is rare in documentaries a lot of times documentaries are heady. You have to like, scratch your chin wondering whether you believe it or trying to just keep up with all the info. But this one, it's more about just tagging along with you on this journey you're going on. And that's rare for me as a filmmaker to be able to do that because usually, I have to set that up. I have to organize that. And then I have to do that for somebody else. I have to set up that journey for you. But you actually filmed yourself with, thank God, phone cameras are good these days. And just everything about it. You took a walk in the black forest. I was like, I know how I'm going to integrate that in there. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Right. As I was prepping for the time. And people have heard me talk about the darkness on podcasts. And I know I did a podcast with Erick Godsey going into a lot of the content so much has yet to be explored. And one of the things I love about the film is there's all kinds of areas that I haven't even talked about, and if I've talked about them, it's talking about them in a third person kind of way. Me back then, this is what I went through. This is like people are right there as I'm going through it, it's real time. And nobody's seen any of the footage or heard any of the actual clips. So it's pretty powerful. And even for me, like every time I see myself and I go back to that moment where I took that blindfold off and it was the most overwhelming feeling I've ever had in my life. And I can't help but cry when I see that even now, however many times that I've seen it, just because I remember what that was like, I remember looking out into the world and seeing a whole world of light and joy and love that I'd hardly ever fully allowed myself to enjoy to really take in all of that. So not only was there this overwhelming appreciation for everything that I was seeing, but this deep, deep grief for the 40 years, 39 years that I'd lived without fully enjoying it and really loving my life and loving the relationships that were within my life. And it was just all condensed in this one moment where it all hit me. And I could feel that coming on. I could feel how much I'd shifted more than I'd ever shifted in any other journey and any other journey experience. And I've had some powerful journeys. And my audience has heard about a lot of them, but this was profound. So when I was thinking about coming out, I was like, how the hell am I even going to do this? Like, how do I go back to the world, my own life that I used to know? And the way of thinking that I used to be and hold this me that I've, kind of forged in the darkness. Because I could feel that it was still fragile. I wish I could say that from that day forward I strode out of the darkness and I was a new man forever, no. The old habits, the old patterns, they drew me back into the old ways. I don't look outside at every sunset and nearly burst into tears with appreciation for everything that I have. I've gotten used to it again. And I think that we can work on that. But it's beautiful to see this and just get reminded, just get a glimpse. And I think people watching might just get a taste of it as well. Just a little reminder of like, wow, this is regardless of what's going on and how challenging things might be. Because things are very, very challenging. I mean, not only people getting sick and actually dying, but then there's all of the mechanisms of control that are being overlaid on top of that and all of the financial concerns and everything that people have had to deal with, but still there's great, great beauty here. And so I think it's important to anchor to that and not get too lost in this idea that the world's all gone to hell because yeah, there may be some challenging things, but can you still kiss your lover and can you still pet your dog and can you still taste your food and can you still make love and laugh with your friends. If you can, there's so much beauty, infinite beauty here for us to experience. And that's what we're fucking fighting for anyways. 

BEN: Totally, and I think this is all of it is necessary. I was actually just listening to Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein's book. And towards the end he says, was it back in 2012? He was talking about the housing bubbles and everything, and he was saying these financial crises, they're not going to go away, it's going to keep happening probably in the next couple of years. And he said, but this is how change works. Change, the exact quote he said was, change rarely comes in the absence of crisis. And I think that's, again, we're talking about preference, like what, what the world's dealing with right now is heavy, but just before that, who did we have as a president? Barack Obama. What was his slogan? Change, it was like, yes we can, but it was all about change. And so we've been culturally, globally asking for change. We see that, there's things that need to be worked on in society for sure. And we're advanced in some ways and it feels like we're still archaic in other ways. But that's what I loved about, especially at the beginning when you were saying, see if I can get what you said. But I think fundamentally there's two choices that a person has. You can either wait for the darkness to come find you, wait for the challenges of the world to come find you, and then you can be reactionary and just hope that you're up for the challenge. Or you can start doing what rites of passages have been for how long and enter yourself into the darkness, enter yourself into challenging experiences and learn what those things are always there to teach you. It's always about like, what is it here to teach you? Because at the end of the day, that's what you're going to take beyond the physical. When you leave this place, it's what you learn, what your soul got to experience and how you were able to stand in honor. of what the soul was whispering to you the entire time. The thing I love about darkness, I love psychedelics, I love any kind of challenge in rites of passage whether it be physiological or psychological, but darkness predates all of it. Darkness predates even concepts, it predates the human mind, it predates all creation when you're looking at the Tao I remember you had on who is it? That was–

AUBREY: Daniela Bilelli.

BEN: Yeah, and you were talking about how the Tao is older than God. So when I was making Psychedelica for Gaia, I remember I found out that the endocannabinoid system has been on this planet for 60 million years. We found it in sea cucumbers, sea squirts. The same, and it hasn't evolved much, those receptor sites. But the plant, cannabis, didn't come along for like, that's only been here a couple million years. So I wonder if this kind of cannabis experience existed back then. Well, no, it couldn't have, because humans wouldn't have been around. So what we're thinking about is what does darkness give you when you are in, let's say, a dark room, and you're experiencing that. You're experiencing something that predates what psychedelics could probably bring you to so that's why I was really interested. I have yet to do a darkroom retreat. I stood inside your darkroom for a little bit and it's just weird how when it's shut and it's closed everything feels different, the pressure, the air everything feels different. And I just find that really curious that darkness seems to predate a lot of these other kinds of rites of passage, which is probably why you find it all around the world as far back in time, and culture as you can go, and as far across the globe as you can go. We found the Kogi, which is probably my favorite in Northern Columbia. But the Eleusinian Mysteries, there's the Telestrion and I think that was the Mithraeum in the cult of Mithras. The Telestrion was the ancient Greeks in Athens. There were Celtic, Egyptian.

AUBREY: Yeah, the inner chambers of the pyramids. Designed acoustically and in absolute darkness. So many different ways. My teacher learned from a Hindu tradition where they would go into caves and the great yogis would stay in the caves for sometimes months. And just bask in the darkness till they could see the truth that emerged in there.

BEN: Ananda Bozeman who's one of the experts. Basically, he coined dark room retreats. And like who is it? Montauk Chia, because Montauk Chia apparently learned from Ananda Bozeman and then Montauk went off and wrote darkness technology or something like that. But Ananda, he gets his name also from the Hindu traditions and he says that it goes back way farther than any documents will tell you. And he had stories of a woman who spent, not 100 percent of the time, but like 60 years. And I think she was in Japan or something like that. 60 years in darkness. And she would leave her house every now and then. But they said the one thing that was so different about her was, she was really old, not a single gray hair. Her complexion made her look 30 years younger. And Ananda says like, there's some real physiological, neurochemical, hormonal changes that happen when you're in darkness, and you're not getting battered by light all the time, especially the artificial light. But he said that he would take people in two, three weeks in darkness, and if they weren't in a cave, they could hear the solar radiation raging outside. Even if it was dark, they could hear it. And then he says there's something about the pineal gland that can perceive UV light, and so ultraviolet and infrared light. And after a while, if you really attune yourself to it, you can see objects in the room, you can see things in front, you can see your own nervous system. So there's got to be something to the darkness that's deeper than some of the other rites of passages that others have gone through. 

AUBREY: Yeah, this is the womb. This is the void and when I was in that podcast with Daniel, we were talking about how the Tao could be older than God. And really, obviously that only makes sense if you separate God into the everything and the nothing, but the nothing is the substrate from which the everything is birthed. So if the Tao is the nothing, this pregnant void of possibility, then yeah, okay. It predates the God of light, the word that speaks things into existence. And so this is your access to that primordial God soup before anything is articulated into being and you get to go bathe in that. You bathe in that until some part of that aspect of yourself comes online and you can see within and see into the void all of the things that are coming. I think it's by far the most underrated technology that the world has, and I really hope that people watch this and more darkness retreats come available because now there's only a couple, there's the hermitage out in Guatemala. I may end up starting some with a partner who's been down to the hermitage before. One of the most important things to bring to the world right now is everybody's trying to “fight for the world.” Like, what are you really fighting for unless you love the world? Like, the very first thing, you gotta fucking love this world. And if everybody loved this world, and they loved each other, if we loved people and we loved the world, then we would all respond differently. If we really could feel that we would want to save it. We would want to fight for it would be, Oh yeah, of course. Like who doesn't fight for what they love? 

BEN: Right. 

AUBREY: But I think we're missing this key point. It's like we're doing this out of some moral righteousness and maybe some little bits of love and fragments of things that we like. But I know just speaking personally, there's an even deeper love and appreciation. That is the real emanation point of all the motivation to do this. And if people could go in and strip off all of these other things and allow themselves to go through this molting process and find that love within and love for the world. Then all of that would be there. And it's a scary thing to do. It's not the easy way, but the easy way doesn't work.

BEN: Right. And I still feel like a lot of it, for one, having gratitude for the process we're in globally, no matter whether you're in literal darkness or just proverbial darkness, having gratitude for the process. I just interviewed this guy, Paul Mills, and his wife or partner, Tiffany Barsotti. And he was the head of the Chopra Foundation. And he was saying he did a big study on gratitude. And keeping a gratitude journal actually lowered inflammation around the heart. It did a lot of really interesting things that other things could not reach. So for one, having gratitude for the process, and then also just understanding that it is through these kinds of changes in the world that we get faced with options and choices. Because when we're super comfortable, we're just in our groove, we're in our pattern. And what I really love is to take a note out of the book of the Kogi in Northern Columbia. They're this tribe that lives in the mountains of Northern Columbia and they take select children to become not shamans, but high priests and they're called mamas or mamus. They're basically taken from birth until they're 9 to 12 years old in pitch darkness, which is just crazy. Imagine, most people would say, well, that's child abuse. But to them, that's the highest honor. And there's a movie called Aluna, and in their tradition, Aluna is the great mother. It's darkness, and that's where everything comes from, so you need to go into darkness to connect back with what predates all of these, not just externalities, but our preferences as well. And so, the interesting thing about that movie is, when they came out, you see them walking around seeing culture for the first time, going on a plane for the first time, so they have to put on shoes for the first time. And they're not sitting there with buggy eyes like, what is all this? They're not mystified by it in any way. They see it and they're like, yeah I got a lot of work to do, all right. They see what needs to be done but they see themselves as big brothers and they can see what's being done to the planet and they actually believe that there's certain spots on planet earth that need to be protected because it houses our connection. Their connection between the waters and the top of the mountain, but also their connection with Luna. And so the destruction of the planet literally and figuratively is our disconnection from that kind of darkness. And there was this one spot in that movie where this guy from BBC took one of the Kogimamas to an observatory, and they did a printout of just all these galaxies. And here's this Kogimama just staring at this printout, puffing on his pipe, and then he just points at a star. And it's the only individual star, everything else is galaxy. And he names it, and he says that's so far away you can't see it with the naked eye, blah, blah, blah, and this is where I think some of our ancestors or an energy of our ancestors come from. And you see the astronomer, okay, he just located the one individual star, the only individual star on this entire map immediately, and he didn't name it the same way, but many things he said about it were absolutely right. So I think, the reason why we're not seeing the world with such just awe and beauty is because we're so deeply in our grooves, and there's not enough of a crisis to wake us up from some of our habituation. So, in that sense, I have to say, I'm super grateful for what's happening in the world. It's not like I don't see the suffering that it's causing. But, I just go back to that Charles Eisenstein quote. Like, what change has ever come in the absence of any kind of crisis and the Chinese characters, crisis and change and opportunity are the same. So I find that to be super fascinating. 

AUBREY: When you really see the state of interbeing and you see the Illumina, you see the great mother, you see the source and the substrate from which it comes. It starts to change your understanding about how to stand for what we want to fight for and what we believe in. I've been seeing some clips of what's been happening in Australia and it's really challenging to watch. Police coming in and arresting people for organizing peaceful protests and censorship that's been going on. And then the actual protests themselves, people just getting shot with rubber bullets and sprayed with pepper spray. 

BEN: You see the girl getting taken from her father?

AUBREY: Yeah.

BEN: As a dad, that riles me up. 

AUBREY: I mean, it's really intense. But some part of me thinks the way in which revolution must happen must be from a whole different set of understandings and rules. And I could only imagine the different approach, which is like with utter calmness and love, like going up to those who are enforcing these rules because the people enforcing them, they're just kind of doing it because I don't think they're bad people. They're not malicious. And these are like the dogs of hell that are out, unleashed on humanity. They're just following orders and they think they're doing the right thing. And they believe in the kind of ideas that have been coming down to them about how to do this. I really like walking up to them and even if it's not with a bunch of other people and just introducing yourself being like, “Hey I'm Aubrey.” And then just start speaking vulnerably and let them see the humanity in here. Like say something vulnerable, my dad was really hard on me when I grew up and it was always difficult for me to feel like I was worthy of love. But, I've been working on that a lot and sometimes I don't get there. Sometimes I do, but just going and talking to them and like, what's your name? And just finding the commonality between that person behind the riot gear and the SWAT gear and the visors and saying things like, “Hey, I'd love to buy you a coffee at some point, and talk to you more about this.” And just have this whole different approach, like what Starhawk wrote about in her book, Fifth Sacred thing, when the oppressors were coming in, they didn't fight them. They just continue to welcome them for a seat on the table. And some of them were shot and killed, but ultimately they won the revolution by embracing these people who really, everybody just wants to be loved. Everybody wants this. This is true. And that's like using the superpower, but all too often I'll see these things like, good thing we got our guns. I'm like, the moment that it comes to guns, we're fucked, we're absolutely fucked. Because we've then bought into the whole paradigm of ‘guns versus guns’ and it's never going to work. And the moment someone pulls out a gun, the moment the other guns, the unlimited supply of guns, starts pointing back at us. Like it cannot work. We have to just completely Shed that model and come into a new model, but to get to that understanding, to really feel that and trust that you need some of these tools, some of these consciousness technologies, whether it's darkness, whether it's plants, whether it's breathwork, whether it's meditation, whether it's a gratitude practice, whether it's nature, whatever. Like you just gotta find that. So it's real. So you can trust it. So you can come from that point. And this is I think one of the opportunities that's gonna come. I don't think we're gonna see any actual change happen until people start adopting this other way of being. And so I'm grateful that the psychedelic revolution is at hand and all of these medicines are coming online. And of course, the one thing that nobody will ever be able to take from us. Even if we're locked down in our house, we got our breath and we got a dark room that we can black out the windows, fucking tape tinfoil up over those things if you really want to, whatever, you can do it. And we have access to these technologies and I think we have to feel it in our heart first and then let ourselves organize in a completely different way and trust the love and humanity and trust the divine in everybody. All the way from the police on the front lines to the politicians backing them to the corporations behind the politicians all the way back as far as you want to go. All the way back to that initial source of that energy. Like it's going to be love that changes all of it. The moment we show up with violence to combat the violence. I think we're lost. I don't think this is going to work. 

BEN: It's setting a bad example as well. I mean, especially here in the United States, we think back to the revolution and we glorify that, but it was war. Let's not call it what it's not. It was a war. What was the percentage of the US population that engaged in the war? Like 4% or less. Most of the other people didn't even want to engage with it. But in that respect, we have our guns and it's okay to have that right. But I absolutely agree, like if it comes to that–

AUBREY: I have my guns. I enjoy shooting them and whatever. And in a specific circumstance, I'm not saying that there's zero chances ever where a gun is the right choice. I would never say that. But not in this situation, not in the macro.

BEN: Yeah. And I think, in our minds, we have to, it's evolutionary where we project out into where things could go. What would be the worst case scenario? What would I have to do in that scenario? I think with plant medicines and anyone who understands that we co-create a reality, we also are creative beings. And how do you manifest? You don't manifest while shitting your pants. You're going to manifest more shitting your pants. What you said there, and the way to approach this is also understanding that the law enforcement, paramilitary, and everything like that, these are people with families, and in many ways, they may not agree with what they're doing, but they're also in the world that's going, maybe not fully nuts, I wouldn't say we're going crazy like, we're dealing with change, change is always stressful, but these police officers and military people, they're dealing with a changing world as well. And so what do people fall back on when it feels like everything's going chaotic? You need to control something. You need to feel like you control something. And I feel that there's goodness in everyone. How do you ignite that? Yeah, you don't do that with the guns, that will just set up. Well, the next crisis that comes along, we'll only have this one to fall back on. And this one was bloody. So for sure, I think that there are good people in high places, as much as people believe that the richest of the rich and whatever the controllers, there's just evil in them. I understand when you look back at Gandhi and the sit down peaceful protests that many could say, it didn't work. But what do we think working is? What's our concept of what would have worked? Could we have stopped what's going on in the world right now if we'd have done something different 10, 15 years ago? And is that good for our soul? Maybe we absolutely need this. So I would say, how do we encourage, this is why I have a news show, I can't stand politics to be perfectly honest, it nauseates me, but I do a news show as a way to show like, even the news stations that I think are a bit more balanced, I never see any of them that they point out what they see is the problem, but how do we forgive? How do we have love? There's no examples of love. It's always heads on chopping blocks. Who's to blame this time? And how do we frame it to make you understand? You, the helpless audience member, the victim, know that these are the enemies. I'll tell you who your enemy is. That's what I saw in most news. So I have always thought, what if we could talk about these things in ways that are more apparent to our inner process. Like, we, as individuals, need to learn something from this. And if we don't learn, it's very easy to be like, “well, I can't wait till somebody else takes care of this for me. Come on, Nanny State, please just figure this out, so I can go back to what I was doing, previously.” Do we really want to go back to what we were doing previously? I don't think so. I mean, we never want to backtrack. 

AUBREY: This is the opportunity for a real revolution of ideas. And the revolution of ideas that's necessary to save the environment. I mean, I think the world will eventually self correct anyways. I do too. Whether we're here or not, I have a lot of faith in Aluna that she's going to sort it out. But nonetheless, if we want to be here in conjunction with the world, like we had to change anyways. So this is the catalyst that's giving us, as we've discussed that opportunity, but it needs to be total. And this is just the beginning of a very large revolution of ideas where everything has to be relearned as Jesus said, behold, I make all things new when he accessed the Christ within that universal nonjudgment and love. Behold, I make all things, all things are new and everything that you see out in the world. That's the revolution that's at hand. And standing for that, that's something, that's meaningful. And I think it's also easy to get lost in this idea that, yeah, of course, have a sense of prescience like this is important that we speak up, but also be mindful that we don't have to fix everything immediately, like dig in for the long haul, conserve your energy, be mindful, like be mindful of everything that's going on and just be ready to stand for generations, for love and for care, for all beings, everybody, and not excluding anything because just as there's good in everybody. And this is another thing that I want to chat with you about is just as there's good in everybody and love and everybody. If we look closely inside, we'll also see some evil in ourselves and in everybody. Like there's nothing external that's out there. Like there's evil out there, but me, I'm clean as a whistle. I'm fucking sparkly on the inside bullshit, like bullshit. If it exists out there, it exists inside too. And I think that's something that builds the commonality of all this and that we have a bit of everything. There are some, not only people, who always use euphemisms like, my shadow, my blah, blah, blah. Like when you get angry at somebody and I say you universally, I'm not talking about you, Ben, but when you get angry at somebody, there's some part of it that unleashing that anger, that feels good. It just feels good. It feels good when you yell and you're like, you get that out. Well, that's taking pleasure in somebody else's pain and dominating them in some violent communication at the very least, it feels good, there's a release of something. Well, that is in my definition, anything that feels good that you do that hurts somebody else. That's a little bit of evil. That's the evil energy, feeling good from somebody else's pain. It's the ultimate in separation saying that my feelings, I can feel good while you don't, you have to be lost in so much delusion to say that you are not me living another life so that I can feel good while you don't. And we can move these different seesaws where mine can go up and yours can go down. You have to be really deeply lost in delusion for evil to exist like that, but it's in there. It's in all of us. Like all of us have felt what the Buddhist called the Shempa, the hook and then the release of the hook. What Don Miguel Ruiz says is like, that poison dart that we'll throw at somebody when we're filled with poison and it feels good to stick them with that dart in the moment. And then, hours later, fuck, I'm sorry. Like I'm such an asshole. And then we point the poison back at us and just build more poison reservoirs ready to unleash on another person. This is that thing, this cycle that we've got to break. This is the wheel that we got to break. But to really look and say like, yeah, all right, there's some things that I get turned on by that are hurting other people. There's some things that feel good that are hurting us. And that's in me. Some of us have more than others because of whatever's been patterned in us throughout our life and whatever's happened, maybe it's just a natural inclination. It's okay. Like, it's okay. We all got a little bit of that in us, but what are our choices? Can we forgive that within us so that we can forgive that out in the world? And then can we move from a different choice, a choice for love instead of a choice for unleashing these pleasures that feel good at someone else's cost.

BEN: It's interesting when you mentioned that because in communication with somebody, getting riled up and raising your voice most often really is a jab at the other. Sometimes it's authentically showing, this is what you woke up inside me. And perhaps it's not for the end result to make you feel like shit for it, but you get to see what you woke up inside me by whatever it was. And so there's an aspect of that. This is kind of why I became a filmmaker and my first few films, like I remember that I was in a band called Hyrosonic and I was just touring nationally all the time and people were asking like, what are your lyrics about? So I decided to make a film. I thought it was going to be a 15 minute film about the band. It turned into a two hour film that had nothing to do with the band. Just my philosophies about the world, but it was a stream of consciousness. I didn't put the skeleton together and then build on top of it. I just built it out, edited it, put everything to it as I was building it. And before I finished it, I started putting clips up on Google videos. It was before YouTube and people were like, please finish this film so I can buy a thousand copies and hand it out. I had a ton of people asking because they wanted to hand this out and I was like, wow, am I really going to, cause this is turning out kind of like a conspiracy film. And I was like, I never wanted to just make a conspiracy film. So I figured I'd put a twist ending to it, which was all about human potential. And now people were like, ah, I love the last 15 minutes of that film. And I asked about the book, because there were a bunch of people that only saw the last 15 minutes and they were like, yeah, that's really good. And then when they saw the whole thing, they were like, whoa. That changed my life and I was like, did it feel as good? And they're like, no, it didn't feel as good until it got back to the ending where it reminded me how powerful I was. And so I really wanted to ask, cause I was about to just drop all, I'll just talk about human potential if people aren't enjoying the awakening part of seeing the world differently. And they were like, no, I feel like I needed to see. that stuff, but I also needed to be reminded of my own power. And for me, the reason I became a filmmaker is because I think when it comes to seeing darkness or what we would like to say is the things that we would prefer not to have in the world, the evil and all that. Again, that's just our preference. And to me, I feel like, why do we make it so dark? Why are we so afraid of seeing things slightly different? Like, we're okay with saying, yeah, there's a predatory, economic model and blah, blah, blah. But don't tell me that people's intentions are bad, right? Or don't tell me that people have the intention of further cracking down and whatever we're seeing today in the world, it's not gonna go away, it's just gonna get worse. And so, I really had to toe a line because what my main intention was with all films is to give people technologies and tools to awaken themselves. But my promise to them was, I'm not gonna sugarcoat or lie about what I see in the world. I may not be 100% right about what I see in the world, but there's a certain way that I'll put it like this is how the system came to be. I never thought it was just ignorance and ineptitude that built what's going on in the world today. I always felt there was some direction and organization to it. But the thing that always set me apart from most other people that went down that path was, I never took it too heavy. I never found that this was dark and it's going to lead to anxiety. The first time I actually saw a film, the moment I became a filmmaker, I was watching a film called Zeitgeist, if you've ever seen it. And it was not just one event. It was pretty global. It was talking about religion and then 911 and then RFID chips and track and trace technology. But I saw it on a plant medicine, and it didn't scare me at all. Like, I had to stand up from my computer, and I just shook my head, and I was like, whoa, somebody who made this film, really, they didn't want me to know their name, because it was anonymous. They put it together really well with a lot of artistry, and had a dope ass soundtrack to it. And I was like, that felt like this person, didn't want any of my money, not an email address, anything. They just wanted me to wake up. And I was like, I want people to feel like I'm speaking to their soul. Not trying to get something out of them other than like, I know you're a human. I know you're listening. I know you're probably scared, but guess what? We're fucking humans. Like, I think we forget. Humans are incredible, and so right now, we're like, I don't think the system disempowers us, I think we buy it, it's an easy system to become convenience by, and then we get used to the convenience, and a couple generations later, we're like, this is what we are owed, I'm owed all this convenience, and then when the convenience starts going away, and we're seeing that in the world right now, people get angry, and I get that, but to me, it's always about like, well, how do we remind people to remember who they are, to remember that we're a human being, and we've lost the memory of how incredibly powerful that is, and also the responsibility, that it is also our duty. We're not here just to feel great until we die. We didn't get a memo from God saying that, Okay, here's all the things you're owed in life, and if you don't get it, just come back to me and I'll take care of it. We didn't get any of that. So I could die tomorrow. So I'm grateful for the world, even the world as it is right now. And that's why I became a filmmaker, is because I want people to see that darkness, it ain't so bad once you actually look at it, and it's not gonna kill you. And actually, that's where your teacher's at. If you've been looking for a teacher, especially me, I've been looking for a spiritual teacher for years and years and years. And in a ceremony that I just did, which we'll probably talk about it dawned on me it's my daughter. It's the simplest relationship in the world. And it's also in my fear. So keep looking behind my fears because it's not in all the things I do for play and fun. My real teachers are hiding in the places I'd rather not look.

AUBREY: Of course. Yeah. And that doesn't mean that everybody's teachers are the same. That everybody's teacher is going to be their daughter, or maybe some, for some people, their teacher is playing because everything in life is too serious and finding that. But yeah, just to kind of wrap up these thoughts on the evil that's within and the shadow that's within, I saw a clip online on Instagram and it was somebody posting a clip from a video game they were playing and in the video game, they were playing this ghoul with these just big jagged knives. And it's first person point of view, they're chasing down humans in a graveyard and slashing them to death. As the video game. And it's funny because we'll have these video games. Even Grand Theft Auto is another version of that where you can run over people and mow them down and then you get to play the villain. And then there's horror movies where you get to see all kinds of these things, perverse things done to other people. And then obviously pornography, all different areas where these things are pandered to. But at the same time, no one really wants to look and say like, wait. Why is it that that is appealing to me? I mean, we know that we're different than that. We know that we don't want to actually do that, but nonetheless, there's some appeal to it and there's some appeal to this. And so if we start to just see that within ourselves, then that's how we're able to forgive those people who've exhibited that trait even more and say like, all right, I get it. You got more of this going on and maybe that means that it's so strong and it's such a delusion so strong that you do need to go to jail and we can't have you hurting other people. We have to step in and intervene. And maybe some of the interventions have to be lethal. Like we have to kill you to save other people from being hurt by you. And I understand that. And I think that's all very pragmatic and reasonable. But in that moment, we should also recognize that this is just them exhibiting something that's in all of us just to a stronger degree. And even if we hit the switch on the electric chair, like nonetheless, we do that with great sorrow and great sadness, that this is the last choice. Or if we shoot someone, this is the last available option. 

BEN: That’s Aikido. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

BEN: Because Aikido is not about banging heads around and being a better fighter. It's not one of my favorite stories. I think it might've even been Ram Dass that talked about it, but he said there was this Aikido master, he wasn't a master, he was training for a while and he got on a bus and he sees this guy that's causing trouble, big guy and he's thinking like okay if this goes any farther I'm gonna need to step in and stop this guy. So he starts getting his body ready for a fight. And right before he walks over there and he's like, all right, I'm gonna have to do what I have to do. He's got this savior thing going on inside him. And right before it gets to that point, there's this little old Japanese man sitting on the bus and he just diverts the man into a conversation And he starts talking, and he said something that's just like, I have these persimmons, and I have too many of them. You wanna sit down and have a persimmon? And then the guy, he stops dead in his tracks, and he says, my ex used to love persimmons. And eventually it got into a conversation, and the big burly guy was crying in this little Japanese man's lap. And the student was like, that's an Aikido master. Neutralizing harm. It's not about whooping someone's ass who's about to whoop someone else's ass. It's really about how do you neutralize the harm? And, yeah, I totally get it. Call of Duty was being played at my high school as the military was there, recruiting. And I thought that was kind of ridiculous as well. And I also see what you're saying is like, there is an aspect of us that does get turned on by this gruesomeness. And part of that I was just reminded earlier, because the woodchipper that was going on outside– 

AUBREY: A woodchipper interlude.

BEN: I had this ceremony where I was seeing just mutilation and just people being fed into woodchippers and the most grotesque stuff you could imagine. Luckily, I've had enough experience that I didn't invest myself in it. I didn't get carried away in it. I was just like, okay, that's what the body looks inside out. That's life, afterwards. And man, it is gruesome to look at, but I don't feel fear right now, and I can just look at it without being attached to it. Now those visuals are still very fresh in my mind, because this was just a couple days ago. But there is something to be said for understanding that part of our evolution and our growth as individuals is going to be facing things that we never thought we would ever be okay with and maybe we never will be okay with, but there's an element of this is there in the world and I don't make choices for other people and part of this whole thing of free will is other people have to make their choices and yeah, they'll experience the karma of that, they will experience whatever the end result of that action is, but what is my soul telling me to do? Is it to intervene and to stop them from having that conversation or from, yeah, you help people if someone's going to get hurt. If you can step in. But yeah, I don't want to divert too far, but that's what the medicine showed 

AUBREY: Yeah, I had that experience in the darkness, too.

And it was hours upon hours, and for me it wasn't a wood chipper, it was like a wheat thresher. But instead of wheat stalks, it was bodies. And it was just mowing over these bodies. Kids, adults, whatever. And again, I've had plenty of experience in plant medicine to know that if you resist such things, then you get in fear and then you get worked up and then you get emotionally invested. And then that's what makes a bad trip. 

BEN: You become one of the bodies. 

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly, or you just kind of witness it. And fundamentally what I've learned is, I'm shown those things just to learn acceptance, to learn to say, like, even though you would never choose this, can you love this too? Like, that's what God's saying, like, can you love this too? And it's hard. It's so hard to get to that point where you're like, all right, I understand that this is God to the destruction, Shiva destroys. As Brahma creates, Brahma creates. Shiva destroys, this is the wheel. This is the cycle. This is Nataraja, which are the two expressions of Shiva, the one that destroys and the one that creates, dancing in the fire. And this understanding is very difficult. And that natural destruction, like at some point, this planet is going to self destruct, our sun's going to self destruct, like things end, like things will end no matter what. And we live in a cataclysmic, like this is a part of it. It's just a part of the thing. So getting to that level of acceptance is important. I think the distinction is, if you can have acceptance for that, but it doesn't mean that you're encouraging it or hoping for it or wanting it, or certainly being the agent that acts upon it. Like I think we're here to stand for something else because the other principle is also true. And this is kind of a priori to that principle that everything must be destroyed. Well, we are everything. So every time something is destroyed, we are destroyed too. Like we cannot escape our state of interbeing, like we cannot. So that's why everything bad done to another person is us doing it to ourselves. And we may not feel it because our ego may be strong enough and our ego is so dominant and the ego, the one that says, I am not you. I am not God, ego standing for I am, but really it's saying I am not. Like I am separate, I am distinct, I am me, you are you, fuck you,  like that's what the ego wants to say, but it's not ultimately true. It's only true in one dimensional reality where the ego exists, but truly in interbeing, we're all the same. So there's nobody who can go into a wood chipper or underneath a wheat thresher. That's not us in the wood chipper, us in the wheat thresher. But nonetheless, the woodchipper and the wheat thresher, metaphorically, exist. It's an essential part of nature, the destruction of all things so that new things can be birthed. And so it's this interesting paradox of radical acceptance of these elements of destruction and chaos. And then also the recognition that every single time, no matter what, no matter if it's an animal whose life you're taking to eat. Or matter if it's a person or of course, or plant or whatever, like this is a part of us and send it that gratitude and say, “thank you brother, sister, animal, plant,” whatever has happened, like this is a part of us that has been put through the wheel.

BEN: Totally. I was just thinking there because in a state of gratitude, you're not so much in a state of fear. And I was even thinking when I was in that Sillawaska journey that a lot of the things I've become afraid of are not the things that are even happening right now, even in a journey, it's the fear that this might still escalate from this point because I was thinking, as you were saying, the whole world could end like we could try our hardest to correct all of what we call the problems in the world and finally dust our hands off. There, we did it. Perfect economy, perfect everything in an asteroid comes and destroys it all. What was it for? You could have been in gratitude the whole time. And that's not to say you can't build a better world in gratitude. But I was even noticing, like, a lot of what people are dealing with today, saying this is a terrible state of affairs. I believe what they're really saying is, if this keeps going in this direction, like ayahuasca. Because when it starts coming on, you're like, Ooh, I hope it stops at some point. I hope it doesn't just keep escalating faster and faster. Because that's when it starts to feel like the losing of control is, I don't even know where this goes from here. Like, this is kind of scary, but what if it gets even scarier? Like, the world right now might be pretty scary to some people. It might be very uncomfortable to some people, but step it up five notches and people will be begging for August of 2021. So it really is in that sense of perspective. And the greatest lesson I've ever gotten was, you don't know what tomorrow's going to bring love– 

AUBREY: Love what is. 

BEN: Love the people. Yeah. Love what is. There are people who are afraid, who are scared right now. Be there for them. Like really, truly relish the relationships that you have with others, with the plant kingdom, with yourself and really just move through that and discover where the gratitude exists in the struggle.

AUBREY: Yeah. We are always trading the rapture of our present moment for some future better moment, like we have it available right now. Like just a plenum of ecstasy that we can tap into and I know that from being in the darkness I know how I used to be frustrated in airports. Oh my god I can't believe my flights were 30 minutes late and I was thinking about it in the dark. I had music, I had people I could talk to, I could jump on my phone and call somebody that I loved, I could walk around, I could eat snacks at the food court. I mean, it was like a whole circus of activities and there I was like, Oh God, I can't believe I'm stuck in the fucking airport and I was like, what an idiot. Like it was all there. It was magical, that experience of being in the airport. But it was because of my preference. I had a miserable time and I'd go home and I'm like, Oh, I can't believe my flight got delayed. Can you believe it? And everybody's like, yeah, that's terrible. Blah, blah, blah. But everything can be a gift. We can find the gift in all of these different experiences. And as you said, the only way to have no regrets is to love everything the whole way. When I pulled that blindfold off, the grief was that I hadn't felt what I was feeling then for my whole life. And I felt like I couldn't get that time back. I could never get back all of that time where I could have loved the world in a better way, but still with that understanding, like, it's not like I give myself an A plus in living that. And that's why I've always been called back to the darkness to go back in and continue to revive that because there was no feeling. There's no feeling better than what I was feeling at that moment, like how in love with everything that I was. And the more that I can feel that that's what gives you that Hoka Hei mentality where you can look out at the sky and say today is a good day to die because you've lived so full. It's so rich, like everything has been bursting at the seams with love and joy and gratitude and pain and struggle and laughter and anger. And all of the things are so rich. You've really felt them like the life of the warrior poet, you've really felt that. And then you can look out and say, all right, okay, today's a good day to die. And that's the place that I'm always striving for. And at the same time, striving in some ways pushes you farther away from it. It's like, just, can I really accept that reality now, know that it's here. It doesn't need anything else. I just got to click into it. I just got to make one small sidestep pivot of perspective and I'm right there, right there.

BEN: I wonder, you with your audience, what you're doing, the kinds of topics that you get into. From my perspective, I can't help but see that that's also perfect. I mean, we all forget the things we want to remember, especially stuff from plant medicine. You're like, I'm never going to forget this. Two weeks later. It's the same you again. But you remember quicker each time. And I feel like, with you specifically, there's so many eyeballs on you and your process. And you speak to your own process very well so people can kind of track along with it. And I feel like the forgetting and the remembering and that toggling back and forth is something that is probably,  maybe you in your entire life will never see or feel the true impact of why you have to keep forgetting and why you keep remembering and then forgetting again? Because you speak and people listen. I remember thinking like I love Eckhart Tolle. When you listen to him speak, it sounds like he is just in that state all the time. And sometimes it's not relatable anymore, not for him, cause I read his books and it resounds and it hits very well. But there's something very authentic about that, yeah, I too forget. And then I remember. And when I remember, I bring a little bit more back. And I get to speak it into these microphones and thank God for technology. Millions of people can hear my voice going through this. And part of the thing that I do, my news show, my podcast and everything like that is really encouraging people to like to express what it is you came here to express. Like you have a voice and I love Paul Chek. He did this podcast a while back where he was talking about something about your careers, and he talked about the word vocation, and he was like, the root of that, ‘vocare’ is voice, your voice. You came here to do so. It's more than just your voice box, it's how you express yourself, it's how you live in the world. And so inspiring people to use their voice so others can see the path, not the end result, because I think when you look at Eckhart, you look at him and you're like, it almost feels like you're looking at a destination rather than the journey there. But he does talk about his journey there. Thank goodness.

AUBREY: That talking about it is, it's helpful. You have this nice asterisk of a backstory of here he was on a park bench contemplating suicide and then now here he is and seemingly. I haven't met him in person and I like that. But from everything I've consumed of his, written and spoken, pretty enlightened master status, but it's hard because we didn't have a window into the old Eckhart. Like we didn't really get to see it. So he still feels like an alien. He feels like an alien that's made this massive transformation from one state to another state and here he is and he's perfectly baked like we see the cookie or we see the souffle, but we don't know all of the process that it took, the mixing, the stirring, the baking, the whole, the heat, the pressure of the oven, everything that actually created the souffle. And I think that's the challenge. I remember, I was in meditation actually, no plants, just with the guidance of a kind of a body worker, intuitive guide. And she was helping me through this process, really went deep into my own meditative ability to kind of tap into different levels of consciousness. I felt the presence of Christ come through and it was really beautiful. And I was a little bit surprised, always. That encounter happened a few times, but it's always like, whoa, Christ. whoa, or Jesus. And he had the figure of a person and he was like stroking, I could see him stroking my head and I started to cry and I started to, I just felt like, man, I just got so much pain and I still carry so much suffering and so much anxiety. And so much of all of this. Like I want to do so much and I don't feel like I'm living up to it. And it was almost like this, what erupted out of me was this almost confessionary state of here's Christ was. And it just felt like, whoa, that his energy just elicited this feeling of me trying to express all of these things that I was going through and he just stroked my head and he just goes, me too. And I was like, “whoa, me too.” And that was the most powerful thing that any being of any type could have ever said. Cause then I was like, “Oh wow, like, I'm okay. Like I really am.” Cause if he would have been like, you're okay, like, all right, whatever Jesus. Did you not just hear me? That doesn't sound okay to me. But there he was, and there he goes, me too. Like all of these things that I was going through, every pain, every suffering, every anxiety, every shadow, every aspect, he's like me too. And in that there is this huge liberation that came from that. And I guess, I think that's one of the best things that we can do is just don't try to appear one dimensional to anybody because it doesn't do anybody any good, at that point, I mean, it can do some good. I'm not saying that Eckert's not doing people good. Of course he is. But I think it's really important for everybody listening, just share your truth. And that's why my idea, this vision I had of how to rethink the in person revolution of like talking to people with the riot gear on and sharing something personal and vulnerable, being like, man, I'm really scared. And I love my wife so much. And I think about this and blah, blah, blah, whatever you're going to share and just come out with it. Like what it's so disarming when it's real, don't use it as a ploy, don't weaponize it and don't weaponize it on social media to get more following. It's bullshit if you do that, but do it for real. Like share this as you're offering, as like, this is the proverbial olive branch. This is the piece. This is the thing. This is the bridge that can bring people into that state of interbeing with you where they're like, Oh, wow. Oh yeah. That's me too. That's me on the other side of this line. He may not have the gear on, but he's me. I know this person. And I know this person is myself. And like, we can get to that state. That's where the magic is. And that's where the medicine is. That's what we do in Fit For Service. That's one of the most important tenants. Like these opportunities just share our truth because there's never anything that someone shares or even in ayahuasca circles, you go in those ayahuasca circles, pass around the talking stick. Someone goes through some really challenging shit or some emotional stuff from their life. Even if that specific thing didn't happen to you, you can feel it like, wow, like I get it. I resonate with that. I can feel what you're going through. 

BEN: Those are some of the most powerful parts of ayahuasca journeys, is the sharing afterwards. You see people who would never talk about this stuff. But then, once they see other people being vulnerable, they're like, all right, I'm gonna go there. And those are always the ones where everyone is in tears afterwards. It was super meaningful, because you can tell, it was that authentic. And again, that's what I like about you and the way that you've made your voice one with the technology and what's available, so it can reach so many more people. It really is a fantastic world, but the way that you go through these processes and talk about them, really, I mean, that's cathartic for so many people. I've had people come to me and say, like, yeah, I'm really excited to watch that film, and then they share with me about how they got turned on to you. And what you've done for them in their lives. And it really felt like unlocking little compartments inside them. And they just keep coming back to the podcast and your content, but it unlocks compartments inside them that they didn't even know were there, but it feels more real than what they were living in. So there's something about that, just being raw and authentic with people that it disarms them, but it also reminds them. It really reminds them. You saw Game of Thrones every episode, I imagine. So I think it was the last episode but maybe it was the second to last episode. And it was when Daenerys went buckwild on. So like then you see the whole army just going crazy, but that one moment where you see John Snow sitting there, and then everyone around him, his own people, his own troops that he was marching there to take over that city. They just start going crazy, and they go to their lower drives, and all he can do, this noble person, is save a woman from getting raped and helping just a couple people as this chaos is going on. So to me, not that I feel like the world is going to go in that direction, but I feel like, all we must do is what we can do. We're not asked to save the world or to do more than what we're even capable of doing. So that's why I love things like Darkness Retreats, Rites of Passage, anything shamanic. It's just introducing you to you because you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, but if you know what you'll bring to it. You know what you can bring to the moment. And for me, I don't know how I'm gonna die, I don't know if there will be a way to get out of it at the moment. But the bottom line is, I don't worry about those things. I don't worry about where mandates and stuff like that are going. I wish to help people who are worried about those things remember that it's not about, yes, a bunch of people can change things on a large scale, but you are not a bunch of people, you're one person, do the best you can, and to me, that's always been the saving grace. And that's what's helped me going into some of the darkest ceremonies, is also to acknowledge that I'm not here to become Christ. I'm not here to, by the end of this, have solved all the world's problems so I can go back and tell people how great these solutions are. Can I discover love where I haven't discovered it before? I like what you say, can you love this too? Because I've always said, I did this thing on Gaia where I was talking about just advancing technologies. And there's a lot of people who are really pushing back against technology. And I was talking about the dangers of it, but I'm not saying that I'm against technology. So a lot of people, it was like 56% thumbs down on that episode. So they brought me back on, to answer some of the questions. And really, what I was saying in that respect, I was like, for one, this is Gaia, isn't it? You know how to manifest. You don't manifest from putting yourself in a state of what you don't want more of. And for two on top of that, it's where does God not exist? Like, God is in everything. Oh, but not in technology. 

AUBREY: Yeah, not on the phone. 

BEN: I hate technology. So it's like, where does love not belong, is another question. Where does love not belong? And it's not like, I've had people say, well, yeah, okay, I love my phone, but what if it's giving me cancer? And I'm thinking, How many people have phones that don't have cancer? Sometimes you just have to flip the script in your own head because we are driven by these narratives, we're driven by these scripts. Like, do you know how dangerous that is? Like, yeah. How many people are using it absolutely with no problems whatsoever? And that's not saying that there isn't some improvement to be had. But where does love not belong? Can you be in love even though there's that going on in the world, it's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. 

AUBREY: Well, I just to go back a few moments, I appreciate your acknowledgement about me sharing all this stuff that's going on. I do hope that at some point I'm sharing a lot more positive, deeply challenging things that have been my hallmark. But of course there's a lot of love and beauty in my life as well. And actually in some regards, it's sometimes harder to share the totally awesome things because it's just awkward, like, Oh my God, you won't believe how fucking awesome this night was. You know what I mean? I'd be like, fuck you, man. 

BEN: Yeah, where's my invite? 

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. So it is actually biased. It is almost, in some ways, once you get used to it, it's easier to share some of the challenging stuff. But part of humility, I think, is sharing everything. It's like not worrying about what people are going to think, whether you're sharing something negative or sharing something positive. So that's definitely something that it's kind of like my oath, my honor is to share it as it is, and allow myself to trust that the truth will hold. And that's the only thing, cause everything else is this weird game of strategy and you can always second guess that and it just leads to so much anxiety. And the other thing I wanted to touch on is. Talking about, how important it is for love, so you talked about the story, Game of Thrones, where Daenerys is teetering between rage and being a tyrant and a loving liberator figure, the queen of the people, and there's a couple moments that shift over to the other side, like betrayals from Varys and Tyrion in certain small ways. And then Jon Snow not loving her, rejecting her finally. Like these small little acts that ultimately when she's riding her dragon, she gives the call Dracarys for the dragon fire and then all hell breaks loose and that leads to it. But just a little small shift. Yeah, right. Jon Snow might have been a hero, but the way he could have saved the world is just have sex with his Sister, 

BEN: I get what you’re saying.

AUBREY: I mean, it's just really interesting. Obviously it was the rejection and he didn't know, I mean, it all made sense, but nonetheless, like you could just see the way they painted, I thought, a lot of people talk shit about the ending is like, I thought the ending was rad because what I saw was how these small little things had such a massively different consequence. Whereas like just a little bit more love, if she could have gotten a little bit more love, like a little bit more support from those who were close to her. Because at the top where she was, she had a very small inner circle. If she just had a little more love, maybe that would have been a different thing that would have happened. And I think that's an important lesson is that in the absence of love, that's what creates all of the madness. And so the solution is always like, find the places that you can love and love, love as much as you can. And that's how you show up, for the good of all. 

BEN: For sure. Yeah. And just about the ending of Game of Thrones. There's one gripe I had, and it was, they didn't play out the White Walkers enough. It was one episode, it was a dope episode. 

AUBREY: That episode was dope. 

BEN: I thought the White Walkers were gonna destroy most of the world. And it ended in an episode. I was hoping for a little bit more carnage.

AUBREY: They wrapped it up fast. 

BEN: Because to me, here's what I wanted. And I'm not saying I want this for our world. I'm saying in that world, I wanted everyone to be rocked to their core by this other threat that nobody believed was real. And then it was all taken care of at Winterfell, and the rest of the world was just the world again. So that was my biggest gripe about it. They did end it rather quickly. Even, what was it?

AUBREY: George R. Martin. 

BEN: R. Martin. He even said there's no way they can end this in six episodes. And they did a great job, but that was the one thing that I saw was there was this looming threat that most people thought like, yeah, that's not real. And there were so many parallels to this world as well. But then obviously Aria was the badass of that episode, but I wanted to see a little bit more humbling of the world. Because of the threat that nobody thought was real. 

AUBREY: And I get it. I read all the books and the way up to the point, and obviously the series took it beyond the books. But the way that George R. Martin was writing, and I think the reason why he stopped writing is because he was writing in, like imagining starting from a single point, like a pyramid that's upside down or a triangle that's upside down. But the way he was writing, it was going ever and ever wider, like there was never any possible way that without some serious decisions that you were going to actually be able to make that line where the thing had gone, we're actually going to come back together. It was just going infinitely. I was like, there's no fucking way. I mean, this is now a world. That's like our world. That's a story that never ends. And so they decided to, I think just because of budget concerns, the fact that that last season was 60 million and they figured they'd milked it out as however many crazy amounts of money. They were like, fuck it, cause each one was like a motion picture quality, like a full movie quality episode. And I think they just decided. So I fully respect that. But I think the subtlety of the message, white walkers aside, which I agree with that opportunity. And now we're in one of those Game of Thrones throwbacks to the series. It's completely off topic, but I love it. But yeah, I totally hear what you're saying about that coming abrupt and a lot of things coming abrupt. But ultimately the lesson is that, it's ultimately love that creates the lack of love that creates tyranny 

BEN: And those little things, 

AUBREY: Little things. Like imagine, at some point Hitler was a little kid and imagine if he had a really loving Nana or girlfriend, and apparently he had some kind of sexual dysfunction as well. And so this impotence got repressed and then something was wrong with his dick and his impotent got repressed and he literally. Burned into this rage and this impotence. And then he wanted to fuck the world. But like he had some loving teenage sweetheart girlfriend, just loved him and made him feel okay about himself and made him feel loved or something. Would he have been the monster that he became? That's the interesting thing. And maybe there were those moments where the universe was like, had somebody come in and there was a choice. Like, do you love this little kind of character? Can you see the good and can you apply that love? And maybe that would have changed the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust. Like you never fucking know, but I know that love has that power and I think that's what I appreciated about this story. Like these little insertions of love and whoever it might be, like you just never know. And it's not even about the scale. It's not to prevent the next Hitler or whatever. The love for love's sake is what's important, but it is ultimately the medicine, it's the medicine that is the only medicine that fixes. 

BEN: Yeah, I really think that putting out good content. I love being a filmmaker because putting out good content, you never know who it could reach. Like, when I first started, I found some people like Russell Brand posted his top 10, 15 favorite documentaries. And my first two films were on that list. And I was like, how did it get to him? But he's just another human with computers and stuff and access to it. So I keep thinking, like, there are people in high places. And a lot of people just assume that the richest and most powerful people are like, demented, only psychos rise to that kind of power. And you have to be a certain kind of person to rise to that power, but like, I think that it's not that they're beyond reach, and it's also not that they're completely devoid of love. And they're probably surrounded in an echo chamber. That's telling them this is the only way for the real good. You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet. And so making content for me. Like you said earlier, it's not, and it shouldn't come to a revolution with however many millions of Americans still have their guns. It should be the people in the positions of power that have seen enough content that shows them there's this out there as well. Like if I stick my neck out, I'm not going to get court martial and then executed in front of a bunch of like blank mindless soldiers. These are humans as well. And if I stick my neck out and I say what I believe, there's other people who would come to my aid and my support. So giving more of an example of what could love look like in a world like today? That's what I love about film. That's really what I like about this film as well, because it points directly back within. It's just like, you went in the dark to find you. You went in complete darkness to see something that you couldn't in the light. And I love that, because really the journey that we're all on, whether we like to say it or not, even in a family, Me as a dad, I can say my journey is still my own. My kids aren't mine. I get the privilege of raising them. And helping them not become the next tyrant. So yeah, it's all these reminders, but the bottom line is for me to be the best dad that I can for them, the best thing for them is for me to find who I am, to find my way.

AUBREY: Yeah. Amen. Well, This has been a beautiful journey so far with you, man. And obviously, as I know from writing books and doing these big things, A big part of it is in the creation of it and then there's another big part is just getting the word out and sharing that and I've been grateful for the process to be in the creation with you and I'm grateful for the process of being able to spread this message. I mean, it doesn't get more personal than this. I mean, this is it. So– 

BEN: I appreciate you coming to me with it, man. It was right on the heels of the DMT quest. And definitely it gave me something really deep and meaningful to do with my time, which is all I ever choose to do with my time.

So yeah, I appreciate that. 

AUBREY: Challenge is now that I'm hooked, now I'm hooked on some Ben Stewart I just want more. Now that I got a little taste of the Ben Stewart cobbler, I just want to figure out what the sequel is to this. 

BEN: Well,  there's more coming down the pike and for me, I love what you focus on the thing with darkness as a technology for awakening, it's free. If you know how to manipulate light or get a mind fold or something like that, maybe that's the most you'll pay. Like breath. There are some things that we have power and resources available to us. So, future films are going to reflect that. Like, how do you equip people with stuff that they freely have access to, they just never had it told to them in that way. They never knew that you can augment your breath for a couple minutes, and not only have a psychedelic journey, but come face to face with some things that you haven't been facing in a while. Just with breath? Well, I'm breathing all day. It's like, you're not breathing like this. I'm in darkness every night. Not in complete darkness. And you don't do it during the day. So thank you for what you're doing as well. And yeah, I'm excited for more of what you got coming in the world. I think you're doing the right thing with Fit for Service, and that's a service to humanity that we need a lot more of. So yeah, man. Cool to unite on this front. 

AUBREY: No doubt, man. No doubt. Well, onwards 

BEN: Onwards and upwards. 

AUBREY: That's it. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Much love.