Consciousness and psychedelics

This talk was given at the advaya event Consciousness: Re-Defining Our Parameters with Rupert Sheldrake and David Luke.

The traditional use of psychoactive plants and fungi for spiritual and shamanic purposes has occurred for thousands of years, whereas the Western scientific research of these substances has only been explored in the last 100 years, and prohibition stalled the last 50 years of this. Now that scientific research is resuming, what do psychedelics tell us about the stranger and more exotic side of human consciousness, and what can be learned from the traditional shamanic practices with these substances?