[00:00:13] [Intro]: Welcome to Brainforest Café with dennis mckenna.

[00:00:22] Dennis McKenna: OpticMystic, also known as Hugo Amadeu is just a human fascinated by being alive.

OpticMystic a.k.a Hugo Amadeu is just a human fascinated by being alive. He intended to be an astrophysicist or an oceanographer but ended up studying graphic design and becoming a freelancer. He worked on DMT: The Spirit Molecule documentary film by Mitch Schultz, ESPD 50 book and later at the McKenna Academy. Currently, he is working with Namae Ntumae at CWays Home performing all sorts of media wizardry. He is also a sandwriter, musician, writer and terrific dishwasher.

A bookworm from early age, his curiosity and passion for reading has made him a sort of accidental philosopher. 

A trance festival, more than 20 years ago, altered profoundly the course of his life and his hopes for the future. 

A few, yet, intense psychedelic experiences assured him that there is certainly more to the world than the eyes can see. 

Devout atheist with a profound feeling for the sacred, he will ignore the gods but embrace the spirits. 

There is something punk in his approach, an itchiness for authority and a refusal to compromise that arises from earnest questioning.

He has written a graphic meditation called humble. An exploration of ideas that reflect on openness, relativity and love as forms of approaching the self and the other(s). 

Hugo, it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the Branforest Café.

[00:02:08] OpticMystic: Hello, Denis. Thank you for having me here.

[00:02:11] Dennis McKenna: Did I get that right? I made a couple of pronunciation errors, but basically.

[00:02:16] OpticMystic: No, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. Its language.

[00:02:21] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

We’ve worked together for quite some time since really since the first ESPD50 conference in 2017, and done various things together since then. You designed the original website for the McKenna Academy when we were just getting started.

As you mentioned, you’ve worked for Mitch Schultz on dmt, the spirit molecule and many other things. And you’re just like. You’re a polymath. Hugo, you’re a very creative person. You have many skills in the cyber world, in computers and web design and writing, but you’re basically a philosopher, as this latest work of yours makes clear, which I hope we will take some time to review it because I’ve just finished it. It’s not long.

It’s very impressive though. There’s deep material here for meditation.

[00:03:30] OpticMystic: Thank you for your comments. For me.

As you know, when you bring something, when you create something, it’s always very difficult to evaluate if it makes sense, because in our heads it makes sense.

But.

[00:03:51] Dennis McKenna: Your work always makes sense, it seems to me. And it seems like this humble book or product that you produce makes incredible sense on so many levels.

You have a very insightful perspective on so many different things.

[00:04:15] OpticMystic: Yeah.

As you said, you know, I’m a bookworm. I love reading. And from early age, I read all the time. And I try to read.

I have some preferences, but I try not to have.

I just follow my. My guts, you know, and there, when I meet some author that I like, I start reading as much as possible from him. 

And that was what the case with, like, McLuhan. But I’ve read.

Honestly, I’ve read many stuff. I don’t know if I understood it correctly, but it gave me a lot of food for thought. So.

And yeah, from.

I remember when I was a youngster, at some point I was like, okay, this philosophy thing is interesting. And I had this intent to think about something, but things just progressed and life went on, and then this book happened. Now, at this point where I think in a way, I could aggregate all of many different ideas that I encountered through book reading, to be honest.

[00:05:48] Dennis McKenna: I.

[00:05:49] OpticMystic: Don’t really think there is one original idea in the book, but what I think I did was assembled a narrative that, in a way, brings a lot of, you know, many ideas, like ideas from you, from Terence, from Dave, from many people that influenced me and inspired me to think about the world.

[00:06:18] Dennis McKenna: I mean, I think, you know, you’re a very unconventional thinker. You’re engaging in subversive activity on a number of fronts. Number one, you read books.

That’s very dangerous, and people don’t do enough of it.

And you and I are the same way. We’re long lifelong bookworms. Books have shaped our lives, you know, and I think it’s a shame that many young people now, the idea of reading an entire book is just completely foreign to them. And it’s not even an expectation in their education. Their teachers ask them to, you know, read excerpts from this or that book. But to sit down and actually read a book is a foreign concept. The other thing that makes you subversive is that not only do you read the books, you think about books and you think about the ideas in books and ideas in general.

And I think there’s a line from Shakespeare where one of the characters says, these men think too much, therefore they’re very dangerous.

And you’re one of those. You’re a dangerous person because you do think deeply, and you have a talent for putting this together in a way that I think really resonates with people.

As I read humble, what I am thinking about as I read it, I’m wondering, what is this? This is not exactly a conventional Book, it’s more like a tool for meditation.

The way that it’s laid out all of the different pages one could select. There are 62 pages. You could do a daily meditation on each one of those, and one would become a better person for it, a more reflective person.

And so I think it’s brilliant, frankly.

And I hope that it gets attention. That will certainly get attention from the McKenna Academy podcast.

We will post links to it or we’ll post the document. I don’t know if you’re commercializing this or if it’s open access, whatever, but people need to read this, or you read it and you look at it as well.

It’s a visual and literary experience, but people need to hear these ideas and help them focus. This is my impression of humble, is that it’s a lens that you can focus on different issues, like, what is it to be a person, Fairly basic things, or what’s our place in the world, or all of the issues that we’re concerned with. And you’re a philosopher.

You really thought profoundly about these things. And I think people need to hear this, what you have to say.

[00:09:44] OpticMystic: Yeah, I mean, I hope, you know, this is also.

I also wrote it to myself to. Because, you know, I start doubting the moment I feel too sure about something, you know, because I’m limited. I have my limitations. I have my biases. I have, you know, I’m limited. And for that, you know, I can expand my. My. My understanding and books. For me, coming back to what you were saying, I know people don’t read that much, but I think it’s kind.

It’s tricky because in one hand, I think reading is more about listening because you are listening to somebody else’s ideas and effort.

And for me, the idea of a book, always.

I remember when I was younger, when I was reading Carl Sagan Cosmos, and I remember there’s one chapter where there’s this quote from. I don’t know, it’s. I don’t know if it’s Buddha or Tibet.

And when I read it, and I was like, wait a minute, but I’m reading a book about science. What is a quote about religions doing here? And then I started to understand, you know, things are all interconnected and it can bring meaning with, you know, different aspects and different perspectives. And in a way, I have.

My thing is currently, I think we are on a challenge.

According to McLuhan, we are on World World War 3, which is not a military war, but it’s a war of ideas. And this could be this could be mean many things. But what I think we are.

[00:11:58] Dennis McKenna: In.

[00:11:58] OpticMystic: A way, with the polarization algorithm, social media. And I think we are too distracted and we are easily distracted. You know, you, you start scrolling and you, you, you can’t spend the whole afternoon scrolling, you know, and.

[00:12:17] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[00:12:17] OpticMystic: If that can serve any purpose, I don’t know. I don’t do it. You know, the more and more I got detached from these new worlds, and in a way, maybe I’m too old, but for me, I think if you’re.

[00:12:34] Dennis McKenna: Too old, but you have a point.

This endless scrolling, this spending endless amounts of time on social media, listening to or absorbing the ideas of people who really don’t have much of an idea about much of anything.

What you produced and what your whole approach has been, what you get on social media and the different tribes and constituencies on social media, what they want to do is tell you what you should think.

They don’t teach you how you should think, they don’t teach you how to think. And I think tools like humble invites people to reflect and learn how to think and rely on their own intuition. We know a lot more than we think we do internally, but there is so much distraction. And everybody wants to be part of the tribe, which is being part of the tribe, that’s one thing. But being a literary person, as you and I are, is a different thing, because being literary implies that there’s a certain separation from the crowd.

You can’t read a book without having a point of view, and it’s in the nature of the process. So the ideas that you presented in humble are kind of an instruction manual.

If I could characterize it that way and feel free to challenge this, what it is. But it’s kind of an instruction manual to invite people to learn how to think for themselves and to reflect on some assumptions that we just accept as givens. They’re not givens. So you question everything, and that’s what a curious mind should do.

And so this book that you’ve made is basically a lesson, an educational tool for learning to think a certain way. Not that, I mean, you’ve done many things. You’ve been a very creative person all your life.

This is kind of the latest iteration of what you’ve been doing. But would you.

Would you agree with that? Is that why you wrote this book?

What led you to do this?

[00:15:26] OpticMystic: You know, I’ve never been a great planner.

This was at the time, like, I don’t know, six or seven months ago. I was reading Ai Wei Wei’s biography, which is a Chinese artist.

And he has this amazing book, 1000 Years of Sorrows and Joy, I think, which basically tells the story, his story and his father, and in the background of the transformation of China, like from about 100 years ago until now.

And this guy is an artist. And I was impressed by the way he approached things and the way he talks about things. And I was really moved by what I felt was the kind of punk that I like, which is someone that challenges thoughts. But the idea, you don’t need to provoke. You just want to remind people, you know, to question things or to.

To ponder about things. And, you know, I’ve been doing this. I think it’s an obsession. I keep thinking, I wake up in the morning and I start thinking, you know, a lot of stuff that really puzzles me. And, and for many, as long as I know, I’ve been always trying to figure out and understand how we got. How we got here. You know, our humanity is in the 21st century and we are facing all these challenges, you know, and what I tried to understand was where these ideas come from, you know, and understanding, for example, things like technology, which I think it’s not spoken of with the depth that it should have.

But then at some point, like six months ago, I was reading that book and I found this musician, the Flying Mars, which is a guy from Switzerland. And I was baffled with one of his albums. And actually I got one of his albums.

And one day I just sit for a long time. I had this eject your convictions, which is.

I remember reading that on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

And that’s been always something in the background of my mind is when you learn something, when, you know, talk about, you know, the, the theme of the moment, like AI, for example, everybody’s talking about AI, right? And I go like, okay, let’s. For me, I don’t have the, the knowledge, the, The.

The. The mathematical knowledge. I don’t have the, the technical knowledge. But what I wanted to understand was, you know, the concepts of what is behind it. I think, you know, our ideas.

And I started digging. And the thing is, you find there’s a lot more to it than you usually hear, you know, and my thing is always that is trying to figure out where the ideas come from.

And humble, I think you describe it correctly in a way is definitely a meditation.

And the way I laid out is in a way to try to capture this wave of, you know, memes. You know, you see memes all the time, right?

And I like, you know, I love quotes. I always Enjoyed Quotes. And I like this short form which is kind of, you know, it’s kind of a punch. You know, you, you, you got the idea and then, and that’s why, you know, I have these ideas and then I, I have small notes on each of these ideas because I don’t want to make it like, oh, this is final.

I can already look at the book and already I would change a lot of stuff.

So.

[00:20:08] Dennis McKenna: Well, and that’s part of the creative process. I mean, that’s what I like about what you do. It’s always in flux. You know, the humble book has gone through several iterations and it’s a living thing and it evolves and it grows with you as well. But I think it’s really useful to just as a tool to help people question basically everything, what they think they know about themselves, about the world, what the meme sphere and the social media sphere is putting out that people should think. Think. I mean, we’ve had several discussions previously about AI and I think you share my concern. I’m very concerned about AI because I think we’re outsourcing our creativity to AI. It’s, it’s a lazy response where, you know, it’s like, in many people, the feeling is, or the, the assumption seems to be, well, the machines could do the heavy lifting on our thinking. They could do our thinking for us and just output the results.

The problem is that no machine thinks. There is no such thing as artificial intelligence.

Machines are processors of words and thoughts that people have produced.

And if we give that up, we give up our humanity, we give up our inherent creativity. And I think, you know, I think, I mean, like, I’m reading a lot about AI and some of the, many of the books you recommended to me as well as other books. I think we need to be extremely concerned about it. Frankly.

[00:22:06] OpticMystic: I’m not so sure.

No, no.

[00:22:11] Dennis McKenna: Well, I think it may just collapse under its own weight. Eventually people are going to see through.

You know, I think first things.

[00:22:23] OpticMystic: Sorry, yeah, but I think the first thing is, you know, you know, you hear things like, oh, AI will do things much faster than humans. And you, you keep hearing these comparisons between those machines and humans. So. And I think that’s a terrible misconception. You know, it’s like comparing snails to flowers, you know, to a rose.

I think there’s.

Honestly, AI for me is loaded with, With. With loaded terms, you know, and that are not examined carefully. You know, take the word intelligence, you know, Right.

You go across the world, speak with neurologists or psychologists and you’ll get all sorts of definitions and what I think it’s the issue.

There’s a societal problem from a corporate side where this technology and if you look at the news where I think the media has had a terrible track record on this theme is because you mainly hear the voices in favor, right? And sometimes you hear people saying oh, the doomers, oh, the machines are gonna eat up the whole world and they are taking over and all this science fiction stuff. But if you look at the reality like currently there is notice not a single AI company making a buck. They are just throwing money out the window, right? The data centers, the promises. They keep talking about AGI, they can’t even define it.

So I’m honestly not worried of the technology, artificial intelligence, whatever they call it. I’m not worried because I think we are far.

You know, in a way I lost a lot of work, creative work, you know, it’s even. It’s increasingly more difficult to get work on what I’ve studied, you know, like graphic design and all this type of stuff because people are resorting to low cost solutions.

And for that matter I’m currently, I’m an artisan, you know, basically and for that so far I’m fine. So I’m not, I’m not thinking, I’m not worried. I have some work, but I see that everything changing. But I think the major problem, problem is how these companies are using these so called technologies, you know, to collect and gather more and more data on people, you know, and the technology for me does not exist. And I honestly would make the claim that we’ll never exist because I think.

[00:25:54] Dennis McKenna: That when true artificial intelligence, AGI as they invented it.

[00:26:02] OpticMystic: I don’t think so.

I’m saying this, but take now, this second, you are listening to me. There are a thousand processes growing on you. You had your breakfast or your lunch.

There are a lot of things that influence how you can get inspired.

How you can probably list a sound that will distract you but will evoke something else. You know, we humans are for me are way more interesting and astonishing than that.

And my problem is, you know, you see a lot.

I have friends started using it. I’ve known a couple of situations where I can say okay, this can be useful for this and that, but. But when you take all this imagery and people doing AI music and doing all this type of stuff and for example you have now companies that they can publish up to 25 books per day, you know, and will they ever get a noble or whatever? I don’t know. But the problem is you’re just spitting out things.

You’re selling books that not even the author read.

[00:27:30] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. And in a certain sense you’re selling books that don’t say anything because there is a limited sphere of information and all the AI does is mix that up and change it and extrude text.

And the text often very shallow. I mean, there’s no creative process.

No AI is ever going to have a eureka moment, as you were, or a moment of insight. And they wouldn’t recognize it if, if they did, other people might recognize it. But the AI, there’s no there, there, there is no self. There’s no entity in AI. It’s all code, you know?

[00:28:21] OpticMystic: Yeah.

[00:28:22] Dennis McKenna: And, and the creativity and the insights, those come from people, you know, people generate that. AIs are not able to do that. And I don’t think they ever will be because I don’t, I, I just don’t think that what we experience as people, we experience a sense of being, you know, a conscious moment to moment awareness, but then also an awareness of our past and, you know, the associations that we make in our memory and so on. I don’t think AIs do that because they don’t have the raw material for it. They take the material from other people and they endlessly, they sort of put it all into a blender and then they extrude, you know, different things out of it that may look like simulations of intelligence.

They may be superficially, apparently look like intelligent products like research proposals and course summaries and this kind of thing, but there’s really no intelligence behind it. And this.

And it’s very, you know, it’s frightening to me. It’s disturbing that particularly young people who should be learning how to think and how to discover their own creative resources are outsourcing all this to AI, and they never get the chance to actually, you know, they need to learn to do it themselves. I mean, they’ve read various studies. There was many studies have been made, but a study on different groups of students that were asked to write essays.

And one group relied entirely on AI to produce the essay.

They went full on.

And another group was allowed to use AI for some parts of the essay, for some parts of the project to fill things in. Another group was prohibited from using AI in producing or writing the essay. And then when they went back and they asked students to repeat, to comment on what they produced, repeat what they had produced, the students that used AI couldn’t say anything about it. They don’t remember they never even digested it. The students that used AI a little bit could sort of recite, but there were big parts of the essay that they couldn’t speak to. The only ones who could actually, who actually had a grasp of what they produced were the ones that locked themselves in the room away from the Internet and produce the essay.

Because that’s the creative process that you have to engage with.

[00:31:35] OpticMystic: Definitely.

[00:31:38] Dennis McKenna: We’Re being invited to be.

AI invites intellectual laziness, I think, and reliance on something that is very seductive in the way that it interacts with it. But at the end of the day, there is no there there. Whatever you’re getting. It’s a reflection back on whatever we’re putting into it.

And this is, I guess, one example among many with AI where that’s the case is when AIs become.

People use them as companions and counselors and that sort of thing. And they’re, you know, a person who perhaps is suicidal and is having lots of problems with depression, you know, can ask the AI, the AI partner about issues with, related to suicide. And the partner’s just as likely to come back and say, well, maybe you should consider suicide.

Maybe this is what you need to do. Well, how can that be a good thing? So it’s, there’s no inbuilt moral or ethical sense built into AI because those things depend on human experience and a shared human experience, which none of the AIs have. So. But this is all being drowned out by the people that are promoting it, you know, for profits. And it’s like, well, yes, it may, well may well lead to the extinction of humanity, but let’s move ahead.

Let’s put that aside for now and let’s just steam ahead. This is something that humans have often done with the employment of technologies.

We’ve also had conversations about this, that technology is always a two edged sword.

It has no inherent moral qualities. There is no.

I mean, AI is not inherently evil any more than any other technology. Drugs, for example, all of these things depend on how we use them, the choices we make.

The moral center comes within us. That’s where the morality and the ethical insight emerges.

Mm. Would you disagree with that? Probably not, I think.

[00:34:18] OpticMystic: No, no, no, not at all. You know, I think the issue with technology, one thing that we can look while, you know, for example, again, I do not consider LLMs that such technology or AI, I think it can be useful, but I think it’s, it’s not as important as the invention of the knife, for example, you know.

[00:34:51] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

[00:34:53] OpticMystic: Honestly, I tell everybody, for me, AI is useless. I don’t find a place in my world where I think I could gain anything from using them.

Call me old timer, call me luddite.

I see there’s a very dark side to it, and I don’t see it as a tool of use for me. So for me, it’s useless.

But I have, you know, my punk size says I will not use it, I will not work.

And when getting work, I will always state, I do not work with AI but that’s my stance. You know, if others want to do it, go ahead.

You know, I think the issue, you know, again, I think AI is overrated in a way. But the issue with technology is that, for example, I think one of the side effects of the Alphabet, for example, that we so much love, you know, about books, I love reading and all that.

But the Alphabet brought a dimension of perception into the world that humans were not used to. And I think one of you can see that by the rise of, you know, monotheism. You know, the Bibles appear right at a moment writing as was developing full on, you know, so I don’t know so much about the Old Testament, but, you know, the revelations were written 200 years after Christ was dead, you know, and the Alphabet brought this dimension of stillness, of dogma, okay? So once you get a text into a book, you cannot change it, you know, and while you’re speaking, our human culture, for ages, until the written word, our culture was basically oral. So, you know, knowledge was passed through generations, through songs, through talking, through many different ways. But this knowledge was not fixed. It would naturally a change because, you know, everybody. I tell you a story, when you tell this story to someone else, you will change something. You know, you’ll probably add something.

There are details, the way you tell it. And that’s the nature of orality, which is very flexible. It’s not so much dogmatic when you get the Alphabet.

And basically our notion of civilization comes from the Alphabet because the Alphabet really brought about, of course, we had constructions and all that, but the Alphabet brought a way of managing empires. Romans could not have that empire at the time without written text and messengers going all over the empire to bring the orders from, you know, the Caesars and all that.

But I’m kind of digressing.

[00:38:30] Dennis McKenna: But the thing is, digression is fine. This is what we do.

[00:38:35] OpticMystic: Yeah, but, you know, as you know, I have this McLuhan vein, and I’ve read a lot of many of his books, and one of his books, the Gutenberg Galaxy basically shows the impact of the Gutenberg printing press in writing itself. You know, writers start writing differently. So, you know, for example, in the Middle Ages, most books would not have, you know, punctuations or symbols. They barely had it. You know, we only. We started developing grammar more intensely and all the signs for texts, you know, around after Gutenberg, you know, and the thing is, we began formalizing more and more languages. McLuhan used to say that the nations, you know, the idea of a nation like a country, like, for example, my country, it’s probably one of the oldest in Europe.

It was a kind of a kingdom, but it became a country the moment we unify the language. And there is a Portuguese language that has been, you know, organized and into and formalized. And so, like, everybody in Portugal learns the same Portuguese, even though if you go throughout the country, you get many different accents, many different ways of speaking and figures of speech, even. But the unifying of the language was made through an indirect, in a way, consequence of the written word and using it across the whole population, even though the written word was, you know, the Alphabet is way older. But with Gutenberg, what happened is that the written word kind of pervaded all society. So, you know, more and more people started reading. And again, reading has this quality.

Again, McLuhan used to say, a reader is a rapid guess, a rapid guesser, because, you know, any word has many meanings. So when you’re reading a book, you are constantly attributing the meanings to things.

So I think one way to see that is if you read the same book with 10 years apart, you’ll see that you’ll find many different things, you know, because indeed, indeed, you know, I.

[00:41:35] Dennis McKenna: Think that’s a key point that your book and your whole perspective exemplifies, is that understanding is an ongoing process. It’s an evolving process. It’s never fixed. Like you say, you could read a book and then 10 years later, you could read the same book and get insights out of it or perspectives that never occurred to you before.

And the difference being that you have 10 years of experience and life experience to bring to that book that you didn’t have when you first wrote it.

To me, that’s the core of the human experience is exactly. We learn from our experience and we become. I mean, we rely on books, but books are books or guideposts.

They’re not fixed. And that’s something that we’ve sacrificed with our reliance on the social media, which is not fixed in any way. And is largely this iterative reflection on things that. That other people have sent. I mean, there’s no creative evolution involved in it. It’s just remixing and reexamining, sort of this limited sphere of the cultural meme sphere. I would like to.

This book that you’ve written, and again, I want to emphasize to our listeners that this is not the sole content. This is not your sole creative output, but it’s your latest. I’d like to take a look at this. And is this available, Hugo, can you order this or is this just online available?

[00:43:34] OpticMystic: No, I have a website where you can check the whole book there, and if you want the PDF, you can ask me for it.

I can give you the link to it.

I might print it someday.

But my thing was, you know, the website is kind of protected, so you need to go there and ask for a link because, you know, I’m trying to protect my work from being, you know, just copied from these old bots and all stuff. But, you know, if it’s a human, I don’t mind just sharing it with it. You know, I might again, I might do a print, but for now it’s completely free. And if people ask me, I will send the PDF.

[00:44:32] Dennis McKenna: Okay, so we couldn’t put it.

Put a contact email or something on the web. People can write to you and say they would like access to this thing and.

And you will give it to them?

[00:44:46] OpticMystic: Yeah, if you’re in the mood.

[00:44:48] Dennis McKenna: If you.

[00:44:49] OpticMystic: No, no, absolutely. You know, again, this is.

As I said, you know, I don’t think there’s one original idea there. It’s. But you. From there, you can go a lot of ways.

You know, my thing, it’s again, to be.

What is the thing about humble? How we can, you know, talk with other people that have very different ideas from us and where should we bother? Like, for example, I don’t care if you believe in God or not. We can speak, you know, and if what you believe and what you do, I think it’s up to you. It’s not up to me to say what’s best for you and how should you behave? You know, I think we should be more open towards each other, you know?

[00:45:48] Dennis McKenna: Right. And this humble is very good for that because, again, it’s interactive. This really invites reflection.

It’s different than reading a conventional book. So you read it and it’s pretty much set. But every panel in this invites a person to sit back and reflect on it and in some ways maybe respond to it. I’d just like to show A few pages of this, if I could.

So people have an idea what it is.

[00:46:24] OpticMystic: I can just add that I’m making a movie out of it.

[00:46:28] Dennis McKenna: Oh, yeah.

[00:46:29] OpticMystic: I had dropped the idea, but now I decided to.

To start making the movie.

[00:46:38] Dennis McKenna: Let me see here. I’m not having luck.

[00:46:42] OpticMystic: You want me to share it? I think I. Yeah.

[00:46:45] Dennis McKenna: Do you have it? Can you share it?

[00:46:47] OpticMystic: Yes.

[00:46:49] Dennis McKenna: So we can just take a look at it. Take a quick look.

[00:46:54] OpticMystic: So, yeah, it’s supposed to be the cover. This is the acknowledgments. And one of the things that I did is that I collected all the quotes that I’m using on the book.

But when I’m using that, you will never know who said what.

[00:47:19] Dennis McKenna: That’s really clever. And that’s really interesting because you list this whole list of people that you quote, and it kind of becomes an interesting exercise to figure out who said those things, you know, those fragments of text. I mean, I found a few of my own quotes, so I know that’s really cool.

[00:47:46] OpticMystic: Anyway, yeah, my focus again is, you know, many times people are profiling and hearing someone talk, oh, he’s like this and that. But I think sometimes we should focus more on what is being said. You know, what the other person is saying.

[00:48:13] Dennis McKenna: So.

[00:48:15] OpticMystic: Eject your convictions again, is from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And it was like one of the first steps when, you know, when you’re. When you die, you know.

And my thing is, I feel that it’s important to challenge yourself constantly. You know, I think that’s, you know, you’re gonna. I’m gonna die one day. So until then, you know, there’s so much you can think about and.

And question. Honestly, I grew up with this idea that, oh, we have it all figured out. But the more, again, the deeper you go, the bigger it gets, right?

And I think the more you start thinking of things, the more puzzling they become.

And for me, that’s why I say I’m not fond of gods, but I can easily conceive the existence of spirits.

So from the many experiences you hear about psychedelics, I just do not attribute that to a divinity.

I think that we can think differently or challenge that. Those thoughts, I don’t know.

So, yeah, the big bank.

Was it good? Was it matter?

Does it matter?

[00:49:56] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. You know, you have a very interesting way of using words and laying this out. Like, these are statements, but every statement is multilayered. And then there are quotes that you know. And much of the theme of this, of this product, this book or whatever it is, has to do with who are you, who, who are, who am I, who are you, who are we as people?

You know, and, and that, that’s something that’s very engaging about it. And you know, it’s just, it’s just hard to, there’s no box you can put this in, Hugo. It’s kind of like you, you can’t really be classified as anything.

Maybe philosopher is a very broad term, but philosopher, thinker.

And this sort of reflects the activity of a very active mind, you know, someone who really thinks about things in a very unusual and interesting way.

And when people see this product, this material, they understand that and I think people resonate with it. You are articulating a lot of things that people intuit, but they can’t really put it into words.

And you are able to put, put these sort of intuitive and essentially non verbal or supraverbal insights into use words as a tool for bringing these things forward and stimulating thought in people in a very interesting way. That’s why I think of this. And maybe I misconceive it, but to me it seems that it’s a tool for meditation in a certain way.

This is not like a book you read and you read it and then you put it aside and you may never look at it again. This is something that people would benefit from looking at every day.

One or two of these panels just make that a daily meditation. And there are 62 of them. So you’ve got a cycle of 62 days. And when you’re done with that, start at the beginning again because chances are you’ve learned things that you didn’t see the first time you looked at it. So that’s, I mean, it’s hard for me to articulate, but I think that’s what is just so appealing to me about this, you know.

[00:52:51] OpticMystic: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a philosophy meditation book because it, you know, it brings a lot of knowledge that we have some things, as we say, that are, you know, we think, but we do not really figure it out.

And sometimes I don’t think the book is that humble, but the way it’s laid out, because in a way it feels that it’s a lot of affirmations.

But I think that throughout the book you get that I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m just trying to raise awareness of many aspects of life that I think that we could focus, you know, being, you know, for me that’s the fascination of life. You know, I’m alive, I’m Talking to you now, you know, this is gonna go. And this is an experience we have, and every day you’re living, you know, as someone, there was this meme around when I used to be on social media, is that every day you’re breaking the record of days you live.

So you know, it’s not only when you’re having your birthday or you’re having special moments. Every day for me is as important and meaningful as any other. You know, can spend the whole afternoon just gazing at, you know, at the clouds, the real ones, not the other, you know, and you’re alive, you’re breathing, and you will die. I will die. You will die.

I don’t think. I’m not even interested in, you know, in uploading myself into the cloud. No way I’m going to die. And I’m glad I’m going to die. You know, maybe not so glad, but I think that what makes life a miracle, even if you look just from the scientific narrative of the Big bang and all that stuff, the truth is you are now here, alive, breathing, with millions of cells, millions of ideas on your head, people to love, people to, you know, if you want to spend your whole day scrolling, that’s fine, but that’s not what I want for me, you know, that’s not what I do.

[00:55:35] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, I think this book is a tool for helping us may be aware of how precious it is to be present in the moment, to be ongoing curious intelligences inside a skull that’s supported by neural machinery, not machine machinery.

And yeah, all of these things.

Obviously we can’t go through this whole thing and talk about it, but I really think that this is an important contribution because it really makes clear that there is no given truth.

Everything is open to question and everything that we investigate and look at the world brings home to us that for one thing, the limitations of what we know, you know, and there’s a. That people have a tendency to think they have it all figured out.

This makes clear we don’t have any of it figured out.

And that’s, that’s the, that’s the major take home, I think, for, from this work. And that’s what I would hope people would have a chance to experience this. So I really hope that people will use whatever means they have to to get their hands on this because I think it’s important. Actually, I found it extremely, extremely inspiring.

Inspiring is a kind of a lame word, but it was. Maybe challenging is a better term. This work invites us to question everything, including who we are and where we are and what the hell is going on.

And anybody that tells you they have it figured out, they haven’t got it figured out, because nobody knows what the hell is going on. Which is not a reason for despair, not giving up on that, but acknowledging the limitations of what we think we know.

And that can be a joyous thing because it means we have a whole lot left to learn, practically everything left to learn compared to the little tiny kernel of what we think we know, we think is accepted truth.

And this is the problem with a lot of science, with a lot of political movements, all of these things.

Everybody thinks they have a corner on the truth.

Everybody is more than happy to tell you what you should be thinking, rather than what people need to learn is how to think for themselves, how to evaluate and think for themselves, that’s discouraged because that’s dangerous. So.

[00:58:49] OpticMystic: I would just like to give a shout out to that book that I told you, which I’m reading now for the second time, which is the Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb.

[00:59:05] Dennis McKenna: Yes.

[00:59:07] OpticMystic: And that honestly is one book that I would almost say it’s a generation book.

I think it’s more than this.

Mine might be inspiring, but in terms of message, I think she did the best job that I’ve ever read.

[00:59:27] Dennis McKenna: What is the book again?

[00:59:29] OpticMystic: The Arrogant Ape. The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb.

It just came out. And I think she focused on this idea of human exceptionalism and this idea that humans are superior in some way or shape or as a spec.

That we are special, that we are more special than snails and roses. And she brings about an amazing account of many different perspectives from where these ideas come from and the arm these ideas are making to ourselves, you know.

[01:00:09] Dennis McKenna: So again, that’s on my list.

Thank you for pointing me to it. That I.

I will put a link to it on our website, on the episode site.

[01:00:22] OpticMystic: Yeah, I’ll send you those links. Yeah.

[01:00:25] Dennis McKenna: Oh, please do.

[01:00:27] OpticMystic: Yeah, I will.

[01:00:28] Dennis McKenna: Well, we’ve touched on a lot of really interesting ideas. And talking to you, it’s like an endless.

It’s like an endless well of understanding. And it’s really so good to speak to you because your knowledge is great, but you’re not arrogant about your knowledge. You’re humble about your knowledge, as we all should be.

[01:00:55] OpticMystic: I try to.

[01:00:55] Dennis McKenna: Honestly, that’s the whole theme of the book.

Being humble has a lot going for it because it makes you open to everything.

Arrogance closes you off. Arrogance is based on a notion that you know stuff.

[01:01:16] OpticMystic: Yeah.

[01:01:16] Dennis McKenna: But the truth is we don’t know shit. Most of it.

[01:01:21] OpticMystic: I Agree with that a lot. And again, I think we are. My thing about arrogance is, you know, when you’re too sure, you know, if somebody just says, oh, this is like this and that, you know, my first thing was try to, to find, okay, where’s the perspectives, you know, and sometimes, you know, for example, people, oh, you’re, you’re on the left or on the right. So if you’re on the left, you won’t like guys on the right. If you’re on the right, you want guys. And for me, that’s nonsense, you know, it is. It’s absurd, you know.

You know, you’re not really open to things. You’re just being proud, you know, oh, I want. I’m sure of this. And that’s how I think. Well, good for you.

I like people like you. Like you inspired Mila a lot. Dennis, this book definitely has your, you know, there’s a lot in it that came from knowing you and hearing you talk. Because I definitely think that you are a great example of that, of humbleness, you know, of someone that definitely has a lot of experience and teachings to other people.

And you are humble and you recognize.

[01:02:49] Dennis McKenna: You’Re making near embarrassing me.

But, but that’s true.

[01:02:56] OpticMystic: Okay, that’s, that’s.

[01:02:58] Dennis McKenna: I think, I think something both of us share here is considerable experience with psychedelics.

And, and I would have to attribute to the degree that I’m humble, I would have to credit psychedelics for that because they make clear how little we know. You know, they. If anything can bring tour. I often say psychedelics bring the background forward. And the background is all that we don’t know, which is vastly greater than what we think we know. And what we think we know is even subject to question.

So I think humility has a place just not be arrogant about what we think we know. And humility opens a person up to all possibilities.

And that’s where learning and development evolution on an individual level, even for species.

Humility and just being open to possibility. If you close yourself off from any possibilities, then you’ve automatically limited your choices.

And we should try to maximize our choices and maximize our understanding.

Always be curious.

Curiosity is what drives science about other things, what drives our individual.

Our individual development, our lives. And it keeps. It keeps us active and young in some ways.

Fresh is maybe a better term.

[01:04:55] OpticMystic: Yeah, and open. And I think it also makes everything more fun because you’re more open to listen to other people and to have non common experiences. You know, I think we could gain a lot with, you know, being less sure.

[01:05:18] Dennis McKenna: That’s the core of it. That’s the core of it right there. Being less sure, you know, because surety closed. Being convinced that you know something or convinced that you’re right closes you off from the possibility that maybe you’re wrong.

[01:05:38] OpticMystic: Yes. But being wrong is good. I think that’s something that many people think, oh, being wrong is bad, or I made a mistake. Well, it’s. You learn from there, you know, not at all. Some people say that you learn more from mistakes than from accomplishments.

Right.

[01:05:59] Dennis McKenna: Exactly.

Exactly.

[01:06:01] OpticMystic: And that brings, you know, as the last thing I think we have, it’s love, you know, and I think many times we underestimate.

[01:06:16] Dennis McKenna: That.

[01:06:17] OpticMystic: Love and this openness to others will benefit everybody. You know, that’s why I say.

[01:06:27] Dennis McKenna: Your.

[01:06:28] OpticMystic: Happiness, it’s your responsibility. It’s not something that you should expect from your partner or your friends.

No, it’s your responsibility to take care of yourself, to, you know, to manage how you spend your daily energies. Right.

[01:06:49] Dennis McKenna: And beneath it all is love. I mean, love is really all there is.

As they say, love is the fundamental basis of what we do as humans when we’re being our best selves.

And this is the reason why AI will never replace us. Because AI cannot love.

[01:07:12] OpticMystic: Yeah, again, I told you, there’s no space there for me. It’s, you know, love.

It’s such a powerful tool. And, you know, from now I’m working with Namae at this company as all our work is about how love.

[01:07:34] Dennis McKenna: Is.

[01:07:34] OpticMystic: Powerful, To inspect your life, to learn how to overcome challenges.

And it’s not.

It’s challenging, but it’s beautiful. And we humans, and I would say that probably all animals have some, you know, perception of love or something.

[01:08:05] Dennis McKenna: I think anything sentient has a perception of love. Yeah, Certain sense, I mean, because love comes out of relationships, you know, with more than one. And again, this is why biology will always triumph over technology, because technology doesn’t have that. Hugo, this has been a fantastic conversation. We’re over time, but. Oh, sorry, go on all afternoon, but we probably ought to wind this up. But this has been a great, great talk, and people will have a way to get in touch with you from our podcast. Right. And get this and communicate with you.

[01:08:53] OpticMystic: And Dennis, you have the PDF, and if you feel you can send to anybody you trust, because I trust that, you know, so if I send you the PDF and you think of someone that trusts you, you. You think might enjoy it, just send it.

This is not going to be copyrighted and printed and ESPN and. No, it’s something that. This is something that I really want to share with everybody, you know.

[01:09:22] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[01:09:22] OpticMystic: My only protection is I just want to be that human, share it with other humans.

[01:09:31] Dennis McKenna: Right. Well, we need to make a creative situation where you can share it and people can see it without necessarily, you know, taking it or modifying it or using it. I mean, that the whole. The things that copyrights are supposed to protect and, and don’t necessarily do. I think people should just respect this product and, and share it with people that they care about. And it needs to get out. So.

[01:10:02] OpticMystic: No, it’s almost Christmas. You can’t see. Yeah, that’s a cheap one.

[01:10:08] Dennis McKenna: Well, we’ll put a link up on the website and people can contact you or get it, however. And I think it’d make a great Christmas present to people, a digital Christmas present.

It would be a fine thing.

It’s got the potential to really change lives and few products, few books or anything else can. Can do that.

But we know that they’re able, they’re capable of doing that. So.

[01:10:42] OpticMystic: And I’ll keep you updated when, when the movie comes out. I think it’s going to take a while, but it’s going to be funny to do that.

[01:10:52] Dennis McKenna: Well, keep us posted on that and come back and talk to us about it when you’re further along. Always happy to have you.

[01:11:00] OpticMystic: I will nag you.

[01:11:01] Dennis McKenna: It’s great.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and thank you for everything you’ve done for me and for the Academy over the years.

You’re a stellar human being.

[01:11:17] OpticMystic: Thank you.

Yeah, it means a lot.

[01:11:21] Dennis McKenna: Flattering.

[01:11:21] OpticMystic: Yeah.

[01:11:22] Dennis McKenna: I don’t believe in flattering.

It’s. It’s just. It’s a fact, you know?

[01:11:28] OpticMystic: Thank you. And thank you for having me here and I’ll keep you posted.

[01:11:34] Dennis McKenna: Yes, thank. Thanks to you. Have a wonderful new year and we’ll be in touch.

[01:11:44] [Outro]: Join our mission to harmonize with the natural world.

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