This is how Jason Silva’s latest video begins. The beanie-and-sweatshirt-clad spoken word freestyler releases a video each week in which he chews over such topics as human consciousness, societal systems, existence itself, and the allure of scientific thought. In this rendition he is sitting on a cliff above the ocean, discussing the altered states of consciousness brought forth by entheogens, a type of psychoactive substances that includes ayahuasca, DMT, iboga, cannabis, psilocybin, salvia, MDMA and many others. He describes a phenomenon happening now, across humanity, that he calls the “entheogenic revolution.”
“THE WORD ENTHEOGENIC MEANS GOD-FACILITATING.”
Dubbing these ecstasy-enducing substances “God hacks,” he explains that they are tools that “can act as conduits” and mediators for “encounters with the numinous.”
He quotes Terence McKenna who said, “Do not give into the astonishment,” and says “the realization that reality is but a matrix of perception, that we can pierce that veil… is astonishing.”
Against a swirling backdrop of starscapes, ‘rabbit holes’ and other superimposed special effects, Silva explains that philosopher Mircea Eliade spoke about “Techniques of Ecstasy,” describing shamans as “literally ecstatic technicians of the sacred.”
Within all of us, Silva says, is the ability to “hack in” to the divine, and that via entheogens “we actually are able to create conditions, to create spaces for all of us to become statisticians of the sacred.”
Watch Silva’s poetic narration below:
