Archive 2012
Join Aubrey Marcus and Joe Rogan as they discuss Aubrey's profound experience at Iboga House in Costa Rica with Moughenda Mikala, a 10th generation Bwiti Shaman. Moughenda now offers similar transformative retreats at Bwiti House in Gabon. Interested in this life-enhancing experience? Apply today.
What is the idea behind it? It's been used in other cultures for eons, right?
Yeah, so the origin of it, they found it, uh, there's a legend surrounding a porcupine that was gnawing on a tree. Then the shaman came and brought it home to his wife to cook. The wife ate the porcupine and just started tripping out, having intense visions and encounters with deities, understanding the truth about things in a way that was never possible and the Shaman goes back to his wife and says ''Holy shit, what's going on here?" And then, so you know, they look back where they trapped the porcupine, and it was eating the bark of this particular tree, the Iboga tree, which grows in Gabon in Africa. The shaman took it, got it directly from the source, and started using the medicine. The Iboga Bwiti tradition was born, where the main shamanic tradition is. And part of the shamanic tradition that I went to see down in Costa Rica. I went to see a gentleman who was a 10th Generation Bwiti Shaman straight out of Gabon. So that's where it was initially founded. It gets a lot more press, actually, for its kind of drug rehab use. There are a lot of clinics for rehabilitation, for heroin addicts and different people like that. And they generally isolate the alkaloid ibogaine out of the iboga root when they do that. So it's not quite the same as what we did. We did a partial extraction, so it was like half ibogaine but still had a lot of the full alkaloids of the iboga root, but the clinics just focus on the ibogaine and have an amazingly high success rate with detox situations. And I actually saw a gentleman down there at the Iboga House (Now BWITI HOUSE) where I went, who showed up addicted to heroin and then just had a harrowing, brutal, like three and a half day iboga session and he came out, he was on top of the world.
Is it a mold? What are the active components or medicinal aspects responsible for its effects?
No it's actually root bark and the ibogaine alkaloid that is the main alkaloid, that alkaloid is found in the bark and in the roots of this particular tree that has this weird pepper-shaped fruit that grows on it.
So what is it doing to you?
Yeah, well, it's, you know, the interesting thing about iboga that separates it from everything else, and I'll tell my full experience as well, but the iboga shamans and the way they talk about it is completely different than the ayahuasca shamans. Ayahuasca shamans talk about going farther, everything is about exploring other dimensions, going beyond, and bringing back information from those dimensions. But the Bwiti shamans, they talk about going deeper, like going farther inside yourself because inside of you is a soul that has access to infinite knowledge. So you can actually go inside yourself and find out the truth to virtually anything without having to go outside. So it's a whole different kind of paradigm that it has. Holy sh*t, and you know, I really, I mean, as we'll get into my story, the lucidity on iboga is unreal, like nothing you've ever experienced. It's almost like ayahuasca when you're going farther and trying to get information from these other dimensions. There's a translation issue, so sometimes it smashes against your perception, and all you see are webs and colors and figures and spirit teachers and weird shit because you can't understand the information from beyond. But iboga, it's like yourself talking to you. It's like the best version of you just telling you what the f*** is up, and you're like, there's like no translation issue. Inner voice, is it the inner voice like that, but it's like a ruthless inner voice of truth, like you just can't fudge with it. You can't even argue. There are some things that are uncomfortable to think about, like you don't want to look at them, and it'll just be like stop, stop bullshitting, you know. It's just ruthless. I mean, it's been compared to dealing with your stern father. Well, you know, I mean, that's not a paradigm that I had because that wasn't just how I grew up, but I think for a lot of people, you know, that kind of voice of reason, that's just, you know, not letting you slide and not letting you slack on anything, comes in, and that's really what you experience on the iboga.
Would you do it again, or would you be scared ?
F***! Yeah, I would do it again, but it's only because of the amazing gains that you get. I mean, it's a ridiculously brutal experience, and I'll, I mean, I guess I might as well just kind of get you guys into the story to tell about all the physical downside of it, but it's rough. I mean, you're nauseous as fuck, you're dizzy, you know, you can't walk, you can't hardly drink water for, you know, 24 hours, you're on it forever, you know. It is not comfortable and not fun, and it's like, it's intense, but that access to truth, you know, if you're trying to figure something out, unparalleled. And that's kind of, you know, it's funny, the shaman is very, He's very kind of straightforward, and he talks to you like a normal person, like most of these good shamans do. They're not pseudo-spiritual. They're not trying to create an aura of mysticism. They're joking with you more than anybody. They're lighthearted. So, I'll tell you how it kind of goes about. We fly into Liberia, get picked up. Liberia, Liberia, Costa Rica, yeah, it's the northern airport. Nice little, sounds like Africa, yeah, it does, does. Get picked up, get set in, got a beautiful place, like a ton of acres, fruit trees, coconuts you can cut off and drink the coconut water straight out of the coconut, or pulling fruit out of there. It's like a really nice setup, you know, and fine lodging. There's like a lodging place for the people who are getting, you know, treated and going through the ceremonies, and then there's the shaman's house with his wife and his little baby who are great. So, uh, we get in, um, first day we have our, we just get acclimatized, and then we do what's called a spiritual shower, which is kind of very similar across most shamanic traditions. It's kind of preparing you, uh, for that. So we go to the stream, um, did a ceremony where we put some intention into some leaves and let them kind of flow through the river. I was impressed with the shaman then. He did it with a lot of earnestly, and it felt just very, very honest, you know, about what he was doing, and just kind of preparing you, um, traditionally for what you're about to go through. And then that night, around, uh, 7:30, we sit around there, and we're in a little circle, and, uh, he starts talking, and he starts talking, you know, just generally about basically faith-based experience and experience-based spirituality, and just kind of railing against people who just believe things on faith. He says, you know, in our culture, if we can't share that experience, if multiple people can't get it, it's bullshit, you know, and he was like pointing. He was talking about astrology. He's like, “some people want to tell me that that star is going to make me feel a certain way. Okay, you know, I'll go find out. I'll go check. I'll go see, and if that star doesn't give me anything, well, I'm not going to believe it, you know.” It's not, it's not true for me, you know. And that's they have this very much kind of like a show me kind of philosophy on their spirituality, which is very similar to what I encountered in Peru as well when they were talking, you know, very esoteric stuff about the Viracocha and about the soul leaving the body, and it's like, how do you know? Like, well, we see it, stupid ! you know, we see that happen, and it's repeatable, at least to them, it's repeatable, Where Ibogaine is native to ? Gabon in Africa. So, and it's actually, it's legal in Costa Rica and a lot of South American countries, legal in the UK as well, actually. Um, but um, but it comes out of Africa, so they just ship it over, and he prepares it in the same way. They ship him the whole bark, and he, uh, he does the preparations on it. So, we're going in this little speech, and he gives us one pill, and, you know, looks like about a gram and a half capsule, kind of like a horse capsule with a brown kind of powder in it. We start to, it's been about an hour, like a good hour and a half since we took it, and I'm still not feeling anything, and I'm starting to get a little cocky, and I'm thinking, oh man, you know, maybe I'm just so experienced, you know, maybe this is not going to hit me, and I'm starting to worry that oh maybe he didn't give me enough. So I'm thinking all that, but, and then, you know, I was there doing it with my fiancée, and she started to drop; she started to feel it, right? So she moves over to the bed, and she's feeling a lot of things. She's certainly not as experienced as me, so she's starting to feel a lot of weird things, and I'm like, I'm really not feeling it, you know, I'm not quite there yet. And the shaman, one of the traditions in the iboga ceremonies, is you talk to different people; you talk to get direct access to talk to their souls, they say. So whether they're alive or dead, you just have conversations with them, and that's like one of the main staples of the tradition of their spirituality.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Whether they are alive or dead, you're talking to them?
Yeah, it's almost like you're talking to them. This is what they believe. Now, now, I'm going to put a disclaimer out there,
But in the state, you felt this as well?
Yeah, and I'll tell you how it goes a little later because at this point,I didn't feel anything, right? So he was trying to ask, and you prepare these questions, it's different from another ceremony too; other ceremonies you prepare your intent, what you want to get out of it pretty much across the board, whether it's mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca, set your intent. In this, you do it even more focused, and you actually write questions down, and questions you want to get answered, you know, some people call it asking Dr. Iboga, you know, because iboga will tell you the answers. So he actually has you write the questions, so he starts trying to ask Caitlin these questions, and she's, you know, she's having a tough time, so she says. So he goes over to me, and he's like, well, why don't you, why don't you respond for Caitlin, you know, like have the conversation with her. And I'm like, ah, I'm just not, not feeling it. She's like, doesn't matter, it's not about the medicine, like, you know, you know what her soul would say, like you know how to answer these questions. And I was like, I can't see it; he kept trying to do these visualization things, and I kind of like half imagined it, half kind of faked it just to get through, and I was, I guess the question I was answering better than I thought I would. But so he goes through this whole thing, and then, you know, and then he kind of finishes with that, and he smiles, and I guess he'd gotten me to the point that he wanted, which was that to realize that I didn't need to take the medicine to have access to the truth. And I think that's one of the good things about iboga is you learn it's easier to take what you learn there and apply it elsewhere.So then, but pretty much as soon as he was finished talking, I started to feel like I'd walked into a high voltage shed, and it was like an intense, hot buzzing around my whole body, and my heart was thumping like crazy, and I was like, holy shit, am I nervous? Like am I freaking out here? Am I having a panic attack? My heart's just b-boom, b-boom, I'm like thumping in my chest, and he starts playing this music that's Brian's playing right now, and I'm just hammered in my chest, and the buzzing gets crazy intense, like around me, like literally like I was in a high voltage tent. And things start to get nauseous, I start to get dizzy, it feels at some point, I hear my fiancée go, I feel like I'm spinning, and the shaman just very matter of fact just goes, make it stop. And then so when I was spinning, I was just like, make it stop, okay, and you could, you had that kind of control to do it. And then all of a sudden, things start to crystallize a little bit more, and I start to see this like almost like the only thing I can talk about it being similar to is like the cursor on a Google search. Like I could literally point to anything I wanted to go, and any question that I had, and find answers, and access that would come to me in usually in words, but sometimes in pictures when I needed pictures. So then I was, I had full kind of control over this experience, yeah, it was nuts. Like, and so there, there from there, I start going through my questions, and I had about ten questions, and I start analyzing different things. So my first question was very personal, you know, it was about my own demons, my own limitations, things that were holding me back, and it gave this very kind of like in-depth dissertation about the different aspects of myself. So there was one aspect which was kind of my soul aspect, you could call it if you will, and that some people have called it your God self, but that's your ideal self, that's your actualized being, that's your soul, you know, the the best part of yourself. But then there was the mind, and the mind does all kinds of things for survival that end up sabotaging what you really want to do, there, what you know, what this Pressfield would call resistance, you know, all of these different games that your mind will play when it's running the ship and when it's at the helm that are going to sabotage what you're trying to get out of life, and your true happiness. For me, it was, you know, certain fears, certain fears of um, you know, bad things happening, fear I might get sick or fear I might, you know, something bad might happen, or worries about this, worries about future events that didn't need to happen, all these worries and fears which are part of some stupid survival mechanism, and you know, these doubts that my mind had created. And I realized that that wasn't really me, that was just some apparition of my mind, and so I ended up naming that part of myself, you know, the dominion of name, I named it mind boy, and that was an important crucial lesson there for me is that not always are you acting under your best truest being, you know, sometimes you got this juvenile little stupid kid who's trying to fuck up, you know, your happiness and sabotaging you, and that's your mind, so you just being, being able to recognize that, you know, was able to kind of put that in its place, and uh, and make a huge difference. And then, of course, the third component is, you know, the physical being, your body, the primate part of yourself, and um, you know, that's, um I think maybe in some illusion uh to what to being called clay before, I, I had the image that it was mud, you know, and so I called that mud body, and what does mud body like? Mud body likes to fight, mud body likes to f*** mud body likes to eat, you know, he just likes the physical parts of things, and that's the very animal side of us, and that's, you know, that's an important side. I mean that's part of the joy and the magic of being alive, but you can't get run by that shit either, you know, you can't be just on some obsession to cram as much pleasure into every orifice you can. It's the whole point of that being, the physical experience is brutal. I mean your body is going through some serious, some serious work, but your mind, your mind is just on this f***ing beautiful channel that you can access things that are really remarkable.
Do you think that this interface that you saw where it was almost like a cursor and you move it, was that influenced by your own experience with computers, and you think that it was like implanted like well this is an easy way to describe it to him let's just show it to him like this?
Totally I think, I think a lot of this stuff is just coming from what's best to explain to you how here's the most familiar way he's used to is a computer screen click on this totally and that's how and that's and that's how it comes to you and that was very evident too cuz everything else up up to the first three questions were were voiced like I said and then I was like all right I want to focus beyond myself and you know really kind of get out there and so I started asking questions about other phenomenon so I was like all right why not go for the fucking the big one what's the nature of God the universe and infinity you know and so immediately I started getting this image of the universe and planets and these planets were like bursting out like the big bang and I could see them I could see them coming from a point and then differentiating bam out and I saw them pushing out into this nether into this void that was like dark matter and the dark matter you know it seemed like nothing but it had just the mildest resistance you know to it and eventually this burst this big bang goes out and it runs out of energy and when that runs out of energy everything starts to suck back in slowly slowly slowly boom and goes back into another bit into another point which is another big bang so it's like and so I saw that and I was like whoa, so this is like, you know, this happens on a cycle. And then I was like, I got it, I got it, that makes sense. So this infinite Big Bang, like a heartbeat of the universe. And then that clicked, and then what I saw was this giant kind of electronic Titan that was like running, and the Titan was running and the universe was like its heart inside. And I was visualizing this like crystal f***ing clear, you know, no words, this time this is just images. And the Titan is running, and his act of running was what was keeping the heart pumping, and that is what it told me, that was the nature of God, was this Titan, and the reason all that God is doing basically is running, you know, he's running so that life can exist, so that the heartbeat of the universe will continue, you know, he's not making decisions, he's not deciding whether the Denver Broncos beat the fucking Colts or whoever else, you know, people think that this God up there is trying to do. No, he's doing the important thing, which is continuing to run and continuing to let that heartbeat of the universe go, and allow there to be life, and that was the force behind it. So, you know, so as to finish that, and then the nature, I was like what about the nature of infinity? And then, boom, like and I think you even have a comedy bit on this, and it's about the infinite, you know, parts of the universe, there wasn't just one Titan, you know, there was thousands of Titans, and they were all running around on a circular track, and that's the nature of infinity, this heartbeat in as many universes as you can imagine and as many heartbeats as you can imagine, running forever.
Think of how big the fucking solar system is, just the solar system, just the shit that we know, just what we have pictures of. You can't even wrap your head around how many miles that is, about how far away it is to get the fucking Neptune in your car, you know, you can't even wrap your head around it, it's beyond belief that anything can truly be that far. Yeah, now realize that that is a fraction of a galaxy, and then not even a very big galaxy, a normal-sized galaxy, yeah, and then even in the center of every galaxy, there's a super massive black hole that is one-half of 1% of the mass of the entire galaxy. The bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole, and they believe inside every one of those super massive black holes may very likely be a whole another universe, with hundreds of billions of new galaxies each with black holes, and that that's how the universe is structured, that the universe is massive, impossibly large things that are inside of massive, impossibly large things, and it just goes on and on and on and on, fractally forever. I think it is the hero's journey, you know, that's what I think these psychedelic trips on, I know people say that sounds grandiose, it sounds ridiculous, but when you, when you take a psychedelic, there's a reason why it's called a trip, it's not an ordeal, it's a trip. You're going some, you're going on a fucking hero's journey, you're going on to be a hero of your own life, to sort of reconstruct your own life, and get a chance at, at starting it anew, get a reset button, get a perspective enhancement, where you realize the terrible pattern that you've been existing under, and you don't have to do them anymore. Let's get through this, but yes, a harrowing ordeal, but every warrior must go through horrid battles to, you know, that's it.
I mean, we don't have the external fights that we used to, I mean, some people do, yeah, UFC fighters, they can manifest that, but really, those kind of external manifestations of testing what you have in a life or death situation, we don't have it, but where we can find that still is going deep, you know, challenging, you know, facing your fears about death, and coming out the other side. So, so I'll tell you how it kind of goes about. Drove us back, and then, you know, set us up back in our room, and then that was the second 12 hours of the trip, and then the kind of the physical symptoms started to go away, the nausea wasn't so bad, we could take little sips of water, but that was probably the f***ing coolest 12 hours I've ever had in my life because my brain was still like firing like it's never fired before, like really like lucid, and I could think clearly, maybe not quite as deeply as I could before, but still like brilliantly on things, and it was like so light and so flexible, and I was, it was just awesome. And so I was, I was there with my fiancée, and we were talking about things, and we'd get the same answer at the same time almost on every issue that we came up with, and that would be funny because, you know, usually we don't get that deep in philosophy, it's very rare, but this time we were just able to kind of expand on everything.
When she would ask a question, you would ask a question, it would give you both the same answer?
Yeah and then another phenomenon that I could do too, is anytime I felt like I wanted to talk to someone, like part of that kind of ancestor belief, it's called the ancestor medicine because you can talk to people. So I'd been talking to people during this kind of experience in my head, and I could imagine them, like I could imagine them in places where I grew up, like I imagined my father, I was talking to my father at some point, and I imagined him in one of my childhood houses, and I was, I could f**ing look around in the house and see the art on the walls, see the texture of the carpets, shits that I had totally forgotten, and I was like, I am f***ing there, like holy shit, this is the coffee stain on that chest table that we used to play that had the other chest table on top of it, it was over there on, and I could see the f***ing mark on that, just at that point, you know, I just had to trust like, hey, my body's a little f***ed up, you know, as soon as I get a little sleep, things are going to be fine, and sure enough, you know, the next night came, and they took us like to a spa, and we went ziplining, and you know, really kind of went out and did some active stuff, and rode horseback, and it's kind of cool, the little program they have on there, and by the time I did that, you know, rode horseback, took a few zip lines, sat in the spa, got another sleep, then, you know, then I was feeling f***ing great again, got some meals in me too, food was, food was important.
So it was a few days?
Yeah, you're down there for like six days.
It sounds like it's really worthwhile, Absolutely ! especially, my friend Ed, Ed Clay, um, he's been taking a lot of people down there that have problems with pills, you know, and uh, it helped him tremendously, and I know a lot of people, any opiate sort of problem, op yeah, it's brilliant, yeah, ibogaine is supposed to be the shift.
I mean, across the board they tout a you know, and I haven't researched and verified this, but across the board they tout a 93% effectiveness rate for ibogaine treatment on heroin addiction. Wow, so um, you know, obviously, again, I'm not an expert on that aspect of things, um, but you know, that's, that's generally uh, the figure that they use, and I literally did get to see somebody make an amazing transformation between being an addict arriving there, and then um, breaking through and really just the whole energy about him was pretty remarkable, and that's another thing they talk about, the physical health benefits, and you know, it seems like it's really taxing on your body, and really hard, but one of the things that it's uh, positive things that it's doing is it feels like being in that kind of high voltage shed with all of that um, all of that kind of energy around you, you feel like you've been retuned by like a master tuning fork, and um, it seems like you know, they say that you know, all of these bacteria and a lot of viruses have like a different kind of fucked up frequency, cancers and shit like that, you know, that's kind of they're operating on a different vibrational frequency which is replicate fast and they're not quite of the same healthy frequency, and so you know, it seems to make sense that you know, kind of retuning that body's you know, kind of vibration, resetting the whole machine, pulling out, reconnecting, yeah exactly, hitting reset on that, and you know, they boast a lot of you know, pretty dramatic physical cures, and who knows, I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't again, that's not a knowledge base that I have, but if that is true, if they are having you know, very positive physical results, that doesn't surprise me because that kind of retuning seemed to permeate everything, you know, it's was like so if something else was operating not on the right frequency, see you know, that thing got realigned, you know, I, I really feel like that was, that was definitely possible, but again you know, that's something, that's the problem with not having these things legal so we can't test, study it,
What did you feel is causing it, did you feel that it's like, does it feel like a higher power, does it feel like a higher intelligence, does it feel like just this is what happens when you mix oil with water, this is what happens when mix Iboga with people, you know what I'm saying, was it just a physical reaction that's benefit, did you feel like there was, I mean, obviously this is just going on your feeling which is you know what crazy evidence is that, but does it feel like you're being guided, does it feel like intelligent life?
It does totally, well because it because it's a question and it's a question and answer kind of scenario, now you feel like you're, I mean, never before have I had such a direct you get what you ask for kind of response, usually you kind of set intent and it's vague and it comes to you in weird ways and you put the pieces of the puzzle together after, after you're done like oh shi* that's why I was being shown that or you come to unique epiphanies that are kind of tangentially related, this one was a direct f***ing question and answer, it was like you got put towards the source of truth and whether that truth like they say is with inside yourself or elsewhere you know, I don't think it's even that relevant at that point it's really you are going to get to the truth that you know your infinite soul knows, and that's going to help guide you.
What is the idea behind it? It's been used in other cultures for eons, right?
Yeah, so the origin of it, they found it, uh, there's a legend surrounding a porcupine that was gnawing on a tree. Then the shaman came and brought it home to his wife to cook. The wife ate the porcupine and just started tripping out, having intense visions and encounters with deities, understanding the truth about things in a way that was never possible and the Shaman goes back to his wife and says ''Holy shit, what's going on here?" And then, so you know, they look back where they trapped the porcupine, and it was eating the bark of this particular tree, the Iboga tree, which grows in Gabon in Africa. The shaman took it, got it directly from the source, and started using the medicine. The Iboga Bwiti tradition was born, where the main shamanic tradition is. And part of the shamanic tradition that I went to see down in Costa Rica. I went to see a gentleman who was a 10th Generation Bwiti Shaman straight out of Gabon. So that's where it was initially founded. It gets a lot more press, actually, for its kind of drug rehab use. There are a lot of clinics for rehabilitation, for heroin addicts and different people like that. And they generally isolate the alkaloid ibogaine out of the iboga root when they do that. So it's not quite the same as what we did. We did a partial extraction, so it was like half ibogaine but still had a lot of the full alkaloids of the iboga root, but the clinics just focus on the ibogaine and have an amazingly high success rate with detox situations. And I actually saw a gentleman down there at the Iboga House (Now BWITI HOUSE) where I went, who showed up addicted to heroin and then just had a harrowing, brutal, like three and a half day iboga session and he came out, he was on top of the world.
Is it a mold? What are the active components or medicinal aspects responsible for its effects?
No it's actually bark and the ibogaine alkaloid that is the main alkaloid and that alkaloid is found in the bark and in the roots of this particular tree that has this weird pepper-shaped fruit that grows on it.
So what is it doing to you?
Yeah, well, it's, you know, the interesting thing about iboga that separates it from everything else, and I'll tell my full experience as well, but the iboga shamans and the way they talk about it is completely different than the ayahuasca shamans. Ayahuasca shamans talk about going farther, everything is about exploring other dimensions, going beyond, and bringing back information from those dimensions. But the Bwiti shamans, they talk about going deeper, like going farther inside yourself because inside of you is a soul that has access to infinite knowledge. So you can actually go inside yourself and find out the truth to virtually anything without having to go outside. So it's a whole different kind of paradigm that it has. Holy sh*t, and you know, I really, I mean, as we'll get into my story, the lucidity on iboga is unreal, like nothing you've ever experienced. It's almost like ayahuasca when you're going farther and trying to get information from these other dimensions. There's a translation issue, so sometimes it smashes against your perception, and all you see are webs and colors and figures and spirit teachers and weird shit because you can't understand the information from beyond. But iboga, it's like yourself talking to you. It's like the best version of you just telling you what the f*** is up, and you're like, there's like no translation issue. Inner voice, is it the inner voice like that, but it's like a ruthless inner voice of truth, like you just can't fudge with it. You can't even argue. There are some things that are uncomfortable to think about, like you don't want to look at them, and it'll just be like stop, stop bullshitting, you know. It's just ruthless. I mean, it's been compared to dealing with your stern father. Well, you know, I mean, that's not a paradigm that I had because that wasn't just how I grew up, but I think for a lot of people, you know, that kind of voice of reason, that's just, you know, not letting you slide and not letting you slack on anything, comes in, and that's really what you experience on the iboga.
Would you do it again, or would you be scared ?
F***! Yeah, I would do it again, but it's only because of the amazing gains that you get. I mean, it's a ridiculously brutal experience, and I'll, I mean, I guess I might as well just kind of get you guys into the story to tell about all the physical downside of it, but it's rough. I mean, you're nauseous as fuck, you're dizzy, you know, you can't walk, you can't hardly drink water for, you know, 24 hours, you're on it forever, you know. It is not comfortable and not fun, and it's like, it's intense, but that access to truth, you know, if you're trying to figure something out, unparalleled. And that's kind of, you know, it's funny, the shaman is very, He's very kind of straightforward, and he talks to you like a normal person, like most of these good shamans do. They're not pseudo-spiritual. They're not trying to create an aura of mysticism. They're joking with you more than anybody. They're lighthearted. So, I'll tell you how it kind of goes about. We fly into Liberia, get picked up. Liberia, Liberia, Costa Rica, yeah, it's the northern airport. Nice little, sounds like Africa, yeah, it does, does. Get picked up, get set in, got a beautiful place, like a ton of acres, fruit trees, coconuts you can cut off and drink the coconut water straight out of the coconut, or pulling fruit out of there. It's like a really nice setup, you know, and fine lodging. There's like a lodging place for the people who are getting, you know, treated and going through the ceremonies, and then there's the shaman's house with his wife and his little baby who are great. So, uh, we get in, um, first day we have our, we just get acclimatized, and then we do what's called a spiritual shower, which is kind of very similar across most shamanic traditions. It's kind of preparing you, uh, for that. So we go to the stream, um, did a ceremony where we put some intention into some leaves and let them kind of flow through the river. I was impressed with the shaman then. He did it with a lot of earnestly, and it felt just very, very honest, you know, about what he was doing, and just kind of preparing you, um, traditionally for what you're about to go through. And then that night, around, uh, 7:30, we sit around there, and we're in a little circle, and, uh, he starts talking, and he starts talking, you know, just generally about basically faith-based experience and experience-based spirituality, and just kind of railing against people who just believe things on faith. He says, you know, in our culture, if we can't share that experience, if multiple people can't get it, it's bullshit, you know, and he was like pointing. He was talking about astrology. He's like, “some people want to tell me that that star is going to make me feel a certain way. Okay, you know, I'll go find out. I'll go check. I'll go see, and if that star doesn't give me anything, well, I'm not going to believe it, you know.” It's not, it's not true for me, you know. And that's they have this very much kind of like a show me kind of philosophy on their spirituality, which is very similar to what I encountered in Peru as well when they were talking, you know, very esoteric stuff about the Viracocha and about the soul leaving the body, and it's like, how do you know? Like, well, we see it, stupid ! you know, we see that happen, and it's repeatable, at least to them, it's repeatable, Where Ibogaine is native to ? Gabon in Africa. So, and it's actually, it's legal in Costa Rica and a lot of South American countries, legal in the UK as well, actually. Um, but um, but it comes out of Africa, so they just ship it over, and he prepares it in the same way. They ship him the whole bark, and he, uh, he does the preparations on it. So, we're going in this little speech, and he gives us one pill, and, you know, looks like about a gram and a half capsule, kind of like a horse capsule with a brown kind of powder in it. We start to, it's been about an hour, like a good hour and a half since we took it, and I'm still not feeling anything, and I'm starting to get a little cocky, and I'm thinking, oh man, you know, maybe I'm just so experienced, you know, maybe this is not going to hit me, and I'm starting to worry that oh maybe he didn't give me enough. So I'm thinking all that, but, and then, you know, I was there doing it with my fiancée, and she started to drop; she started to feel it, right? So she moves over to the bed, and she's feeling a lot of things. She's certainly not as experienced as me, so she's starting to feel a lot of weird things, and I'm like, I'm really not feeling it, you know, I'm not quite there yet. And the shaman, one of the traditions in the iboga ceremonies, is you talk to different people; you talk to get direct access to talk to their souls, they say. So whether they're alive or dead, you just have conversations with them, and that's like one of the main staples of the tradition of their spirituality.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Whether they are alive or dead, you're talking to them?
Yeah, it's almost like you're talking to them. This is what they believe. Now, now, I'm going to put a disclaimer out there.
But in the state, you felt this as well?
Yeah, and I'll tell you how it goes a little later because at this point,I didn't feel anything, right? So he was trying to ask, and you prepare these questions, it's different from another ceremony too; other ceremonies you prepare your intent, what you want to get out of it pretty much across the board, whether it's mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca, set your intent. In this, you do it even more focused, and you actually write questions down, and questions you want to get answered, you know, some people call it asking Dr. Iboga, you know, because iboga will tell you the answers. So he actually has you write the questions, so he starts trying to ask Caitlin these questions, and she's, you know, she's having a tough time, so she says. So he goes over to me, and he's like, well, why don't you, why don't you respond for Caitlin, you know, like have the conversation with her. And I'm like, ah, I'm just not, not feeling it. She's like, doesn't matter, it's not about the medicine, like, you know, you know what her soul would say, like you know how to answer these questions. And I was like, I can't see it; he kept trying to do these visualization things, and I kind of like half imagined it, half kind of faked it just to get through, and I was, I guess the question I was answering better than I thought I would. But so he goes through this whole thing, and then, you know, and then he kind of finishes with that, and he smiles, and I guess he'd gotten me to the point that he wanted, which was that to realize that I didn't need to take the medicine to have access to the truth. And I think that's one of the good things about iboga is you learn it's easier to take what you learn there and apply it elsewhere.So then, but pretty much as soon as he was finished talking, I started to feel like I'd walked into a high voltage shed, and it was like an intense, hot buzzing around my whole body, and my heart was thumping like crazy, and I was like, holy shit, am I nervous? Like am I freaking out here? Am I having a panic attack? My heart's just b-boom, b-boom, I'm like thumping in my chest, and he starts playing this music that's Brian's playing right now, and I'm just hammered in my chest, and the buzzing gets crazy intense, like around me, like literally like I was in a high voltage tent. And things start to get nauseous, I start to get dizzy, it feels at some point, I hear my fiancée go, I feel like I'm spinning, and the shaman just very matter of fact just goes, make it stop. And then so when I was spinning, I was just like, make it stop, okay, and you could, you had that kind of control to do it. And then all of a sudden, things start to crystallize a little bit more, and I start to see this like almost like the only thing I can talk about it being similar to is like the cursor on a Google search. Like I could literally point to anything I wanted to go, and any question that I had, and find answers, and access that would come to me in usually in words, but sometimes in pictures when I needed pictures. So then I was, I had full kind of control over this experience, yeah, it was nuts. Like, and so there, there from there, I start going through my questions, and I had about ten questions, and I start analyzing different things. So my first question was very personal, you know, it was about my own demons, my own limitations, things that were holding me back, and it gave this very kind of like in-depth dissertation about the different aspects of myself. So there was one aspect which was kind of my soul aspect, you could call it if you will, and that some people have called it your God self, but that's your ideal self, that's your actualized being, that's your soul, you know, the the best part of yourself. But then there was the mind, and the mind does all kinds of things for survival that end up sabotaging what you really want to do, there, what you know, what this Pressfield would call resistance, you know, all of these different games that your mind will play when it's running the ship and when it's at the helm that are going to sabotage what you're trying to get out of life, and your true happiness. For me, it was, you know, certain fears, certain fears of um, you know, bad things happening, fear I might get sick or fear I might, you know, something bad might happen, or worries about this, worries about future events that didn't need to happen, all these worries and fears which are part of some stupid survival mechanism, and you know, these doubts that my mind had created. And I realized that that wasn't really me, that was just some apparition of my mind, and so I ended up naming that part of myself, you know, the dominion of name, I named it mind boy, and that was an important crucial lesson there for me is that not always are you acting under your best truest being, you know, sometimes you got this juvenile little stupid kid who's trying to fuck up, you know, your happiness and sabotaging you, and that's your mind, so you just being, being able to recognize that, you know, was able to kind of put that in its place, and uh, and make a huge difference. And then, of course, the third component is, you know, the physical being, your body, the primate part of yourself, and um, you know, that's, um I think maybe in some illusion uh to what to being called clay before, I, I had the image that it was mud, you know, and so I called that mud body, and what does mud body like? Mud body likes to fight, mud body likes to f*** mud body likes to eat, you know, he just likes the physical parts of things, and that's the very animal side of us, and that's, you know, that's an important side. I mean that's part of the joy and the magic of being alive, but you can't get run by that shit either, you know, you can't be just on some obsession to cram as much pleasure into every orifice you can. It's the whole point of that being, the physical experience is brutal. I mean your body is going through some serious, some serious work, but your mind, your mind is just on this f***ing beautiful channel that you can access things that are really remarkable.
Do you think that this interface that you saw where it was almost like a cursor and you move it, was that influenced by your own experience with computers, and you think that it was like implanted like well this is an easy way to describe it to him let's just show it to him like this?
Totally I think, I think a lot of this stuff is just coming from what's best to explain to you how here's the most familiar way he's used to is a computer screen click on this totally and that's how and that's and that's how it comes to you and that was very evident too cuz everything else up up to the first three questions were were voiced like I said and then I was like all right I want to focus beyond myself and you know really kind of get out there and so I started asking questions about other phenomenon so I was like all right why not go for the fucking the big one what's the nature of God the universe and infinity you know and so immediately I started getting this image of the universe and planets and these planets were like bursting out like the big bang and I could see them I could see them coming from a point and then differentiating bam out and I saw them pushing out into this nether into this void that was like dark matter and the dark matter you know it seemed like nothing but it had just the mildest resistance you know to it and eventually this burst this big bang goes out and it runs out of energy and when that runs out of energy everything starts to suck back in slowly slowly slowly boom and goes back into another bit into another point which is another big bang so it's like and so I saw that and I was like whoa, so this is like, you know, this happens on a cycle. And then I was like, I got it, I got it, that makes sense. So this infinite Big Bang, like a heartbeat of the universe. And then that clicked, and then what I saw was this giant kind of electronic Titan that was like running, and the Titan was running and the universe was like its heart inside. And I was visualizing this like crystal f***ing clear, you know, no words, this time this is just images. And the Titan is running, and his act of running was what was keeping the heart pumping, and that is what it told me, that was the nature of God, was this Titan, and the reason all that God is doing basically is running, you know, he's running so that life can exist, so that the heartbeat of the universe will continue, you know, he's not making decisions, he's not deciding whether the Denver Broncos beat the fucking Colts or whoever else, you know, people think that this God up there is trying to do. No, he's doing the important thing, which is continuing to run and continuing to let that heartbeat of the universe go, and allow there to be life, and that was the force behind it. So, you know, so as to finish that, and then the nature, I was like what about the nature of infinity? And then, boom, like and I think you even have a comedy bit on this, and it's about the infinite, you know, parts of the universe, there wasn't just one Titan, you know, there was thousands of Titans, and they were all running around on a circular track, and that's the nature of infinity, this heartbeat in as many universes as you can imagine and as many heartbeats as you can imagine, running forever.
Think of how big the fucking solar system is, just the solar system, just the shit that we know, just what we have pictures of. You can't even wrap your head around how many miles that is, about how far away it is to get the fucking Neptune in your car, you know, you can't even wrap your head around it, it's beyond belief that anything can truly be that far. Yeah, now realize that that is a fraction of a galaxy, and then not even a very big galaxy, a normal-sized galaxy, yeah, and then even in the center of every galaxy, there's a super massive black hole that is one-half of 1% of the mass of the entire galaxy. The bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole, and they believe inside every one of those super massive black holes may very likely be a whole another universe, with hundreds of billions of new galaxies each with black holes, and that that's how the universe is structured, that the universe is massive, impossibly large things that are inside of massive, impossibly large things, and it just goes on and on and on and on, fractally forever. I think it is the hero's journey, you know, that's what I think these psychedelic trips on, I know people say that sounds grandiose, it sounds ridiculous, but when you, when you take a psychedelic, there's a reason why it's called a trip, it's not an ordeal, it's a trip. You're going some, you're going on a fucking hero's journey, you're going on to be a hero of your own life, to sort of reconstruct your own life, and get a chance at, at starting it anew, get a reset button, get a perspective enhancement, where you realize the terrible pattern that you've been existing under, and you don't have to do them anymore. Let's get through this, but yes, a harrowing ordeal, but every warrior must go through horrid battles to, you know, that's it.
I mean, we don't have the external fights that we used to, I mean, some people do, yeah, UFC fighters, they can manifest that, but really, those kind of external manifestations of testing what you have in a life or death situation, we don't have it, but where we can find that still is going deep, you know, challenging, you know, facing your fears about death, and coming out the other side. So, so I'll tell you how it kind of goes about. Drove us back, and then, you know, set us up back in our room, and then that was the second 12 hours of the trip, and then the kind of the physical symptoms started to go away, the nausea wasn't so bad, we could take little sips of water, but that was probably the f***ing coolest 12 hours I've ever had in my life because my brain was still like firing like it's never fired before, like really like lucid, and I could think clearly, maybe not quite as deeply as I could before, but still like brilliantly on things, and it was like so light and so flexible, and I was, it was just awesome. And so I was, I was there with my fiancée, and we were talking about things, and we'd get the same answer at the same time almost on every issue that we came up with, and that would be funny because, you know, usually we don't get that deep in philosophy, it's very rare, but this time we were just able to kind of expand on everything.
When she would ask a question, you would ask a question, it would give you both the same answer?
Yeah and then another phenomenon that I could do too, is anytime I felt like I wanted to talk to someone, like part of that kind of ancestor belief, it's called the ancestor medicine because you can talk to people. So I'd been talking to people during this kind of experience in my head, and I could imagine them, like I could imagine them in places where I grew up, like I imagined my father, I was talking to my father at some point, and I imagined him in one of my childhood houses, and I was, I could f**ing look around in the house and see the art on the walls, see the texture of the carpets, shits that I had totally forgotten, and I was like, I am f***ing there, like holy shit, this is the coffee stain on that chest table that we used to play that had the other chest table on top of it, it was over there on, and I could see the f***ing mark on that, just at that point, you know, I just had to trust like, hey, my body's a little f***ed up, you know, as soon as I get a little sleep, things are going to be fine, and sure enough, you know, the next night came, and they took us like to a spa, and we went ziplining, and you know, really kind of went out and did some active stuff, and rode horseback, and it's kind of cool, the little program they have on there, and by the time I did that, you know, rode horseback, took a few zip lines, sat in the spa, got another sleep, then, you know, then I was feeling f***ing great again, got some meals in me too, food was, food was important.
So it was a few days?
Yeah, you're down there for like six days.
It sounds like it's really worthwhile, Absolutely ! especially, my friend Ed, Ed Clay, um, he's been taking a lot of people down there that have problems with pills, you know, and uh, it helped him tremendously, and I know a lot of people, any opiate sort of problem, op yeah, it's brilliant, yeah, ibogaine is supposed to be the shift.
I mean, across the board they tout a you know, and I haven't researched and verified this, but across the board they tout a 93% effectiveness rate for ibogaine treatment on heroin addiction. Wow, so um, you know, obviously, again, I'm not an expert on that aspect of things, um, but you know, that's, that's generally uh, the figure that they use, and I literally did get to see somebody make an amazing transformation between being an addict arriving there, and then um, breaking through and really just the whole energy about him was pretty remarkable, and that's another thing they talk about, the physical health benefits, and you know, it seems like it's really taxing on your body, and really hard, but one of the things that it's uh, positive things that it's doing is it feels like being in that kind of high voltage shed with all of that um, all of that kind of energy around you, you feel like you've been retuned by like a master tuning fork, and um, it seems like you know, they say that you know, all of these bacteria and a lot of viruses have like a different kind of fucked up frequency, cancers and shit like that, you know, that's kind of they're operating on a different vibrational frequency which is replicate fast and they're not quite of the same healthy frequency, and so you know, it seems to make sense that you know, kind of retuning that body's you know, kind of vibration, resetting the whole machine, pulling out, reconnecting, yeah exactly, hitting reset on that, and you know, they boast a lot of you know, pretty dramatic physical cures, and who knows, I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't again, that's not a knowledge base that I have, but if that is true, if they are having you know, very positive physical results, that doesn't surprise me because that kind of retuning seemed to permeate everything, you know, it's was like so if something else was operating not on the right frequency, see you know, that thing got realigned, you know, I, I really feel like that was, that was definitely possible, but again you know, that's something, that's the problem with not having these things legal so we can't test, study it.
What did you feel is causing it, did you feel that it's like, does it feel like a higher power, does it feel like a higher intelligence, does it feel like just this is what happens when you mix oil with water, this is what happens when mix Iboga with people, you know what I'm saying, was it just a physical reaction that's benefit, did you feel like there was, I mean, obviously this is just going on your feeling which is you know what crazy evidence is that, but does it feel like you're being guided, does it feel like intelligent life?
It does totally, well because it because it's a question and it's a question and answer kind of scenario, now you feel like you're, I mean, never before have I had such a direct you get what you ask for kind of response, usually you kind of set intent and it's vague and it comes to you in weird ways and you put the pieces of the puzzle together after, after you're done like oh shi* that's why I was being shown that or you come to unique epiphanies that are kind of tangentially related, this one was a direct f***ing question and answer, it was like you got put towards the source of truth and whether that truth like they say is with inside yourself or elsewhere you know, I don't think it's even that relevant at that point it's really you are going to get to the truth that you know your infinite soul knows, and that's going to help guide you.
I think you, uh, must have influenced a lot of people's ideas on the subjects of Iboga again today. I think there's uh, quite a few people right now that are are thinking that it's a great idea for them and quite a few people that are thinking there's no f***ing way I'm ever going to do that sh**.
It's a challenge you know, but I think having no the most important thing is just don't have this irrational fear about these psychedelics, like listen to yourself maybe ibogaine would never be the one for you but you know if you're afraid of exploring these parts of your mind just conquer that fear you know and take the tools that are available to you.
Credits: JRE Experience 2012 - Join Aubrey Marcus and Joe Rogan as they discuss Aubrey's profound experience at Iboga House in Costa Rica with Moughenda Mikala, a 10th generation Bwiti Shaman. Moughenda now offers similar transformative retreats at Bwiti House in Gabon. Interested in this life-enhancing experience? Apply today.