Interview with Rak Razam.

Australia’s experiential journalist speaks out on entheogens, ayahuasca, salvia, and global psychedelic culture.
Interview by James Kent

Self-described “experiential journalist” Rak Razam is a busy man: Two wives, two kids, and two new entheogenic books to promote. Editor of “The Journeybook: Travels on the Frontiers of Consciousness” and author of “Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey”, Razam has his finger on the pulse of the Australian entheo scene and the global awakening. He graciously took the time to answer our questions for this exclusive DoseNation interview.

]]> http://rakrazam.com/2009/06/03/interview-with-rak-razam/feed/ 0 shazaman http://rakrazam.com/2009/02/24/singing-to-the-plants-extreme-celebrity-ayahuasca/ http://rakrazam.com/2009/02/24/singing-to-the-plants-extreme-celebrity-ayahuasca/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:04:53 +0000 shazaman http://rakrazam.com/?p=358 ]]> Singing to the Plants: Extreme Celebrity Ayahuasca.

From Steve beyer’s always fascinating blog...

Extreme Celebrity Ayahuasca

Three celebrities

It’s actually not a bad idea for a television reality show. Get several very minor celebrities, pack them off away from their home comforts, and subject them to a range of programs that claim to enhance inner peace, happiness, and understanding. That at least was the premise of a short-lived BBC program called, naturally enough, Extreme Celebrity Detox, on which the guest celebrities performed t’ai-chi exercises in the Slovenian Alps, practiced Taoist sexual yoga in Thailand, did body-cleansing hatha yoga in the Himalayas — and drank ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2009) —  A hallucinogenic compound found in a plant indigenous to South America and used in shamanic rituals regulates a mysterious protein that is abundant throughout the body, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered.

The finding, reported in the Feb. 13 issue of Science, may ultimately have implications for treating drug abuse and/or depression. Many more experiments will be needed, the researchers say.

Scientists have been searching for years for naturally occurring compounds that trigger activity in the protein, the sigma-1 receptor. In addition, a unique receptor for the hallucinogen, called dimethyltryptamine (DMT), has never been identified.

Read the full story

The talk underscores what I believe is the key lesson to be learned in the 21st century: that we must birth a new kind of Mind, a collective intelligence, group mind, global brain, Gain Mind. The Internet will eventually become a new kind of sentient being uniting the planet and allowing us to bring this mess back in balance. That is really our only hope of avoiding a collapse of civilization, a massive die-off and a new Dark Age ruled by ignorance and fundamentalist survivalism.

Psychedelic Thinking and the Dawn of Homo Cyber.