Deep Time

Now, perhaps because of this strong collective orientation, I began to experience visions about humanity's evolutionary trajectory. I entered repeatedly into a state I describe as Deep Time—not eternity or timelessness, but a condition where you experience vast periods in a compressed frame, sometimes as a simultaneous now. I received teachings about humanity’s evolution...

The challenge becomes, how do we let ourselves begin to think and experience in galactic-size projects? The first is to unlock the barrier of linear time, to go beyond the confines of this moment. This is where the divine lives—in the present moment. Many spiritual practices focus on deepening the present. But in psychedelic...

Yeah, first, Stephen, thank you, buddy, for that very nice and warm introduction. I really appreciate our friendship, and I appreciate what you're doing with the conference, and Marc, you too. This is a great conference. It's my favorite psychedelic conference to participate in, and I always find it such a rich setting and...

I received instructions on how the crisis would catalyze rapid change through understanding the collective psyche as a unified field. Like physical systems in chaos, a non-equilibrium state in human psyche allows rapid change and new structures to emerge. Consequently, we'll move through this crisis faster than expected. Later, I experienced 'Deep Time' and...

Okay, so I just say 73 high-dose sessions. And I did this in a very rigorous fashion, following Stan's protocol. In my case, I used the same protocol, same set and setting, same substance, same dose level, same sitter, same recording process, and same location. I tried to standardize all the variables as much...

In December 1995, when I was deep into psychedelics, I had entered a stage I call the diamond luminosity material. I was halfway through years of work in this sublime diamond luminosity. Suddenly, I was dissolved into the species mind and underwent a process or experienced a death and rebirth of the human family....

Jumping many years ahead in my work, I summarized my experiences of our time in history, what's happening underneath the surface, where we're going, in a chapter called The Birth of the Future Human. There I was given a number of visions over many years of humanity coming to a turning point, humanity coming...

History expresses collective transformation through individual transformation. Going deeper, I experienced the universe's pulse as a single living organism. When you dissolve into that oneness, the Buddhists call it Nirvana or Śūnyatā—the self pops, and life breathes as one. Everywhere you touch it, the world is intelligent. At the end of my journey, in...

One of the last great visions that the universe gave me in one of my sessions took me deep into deep time. It took me deep into the future, and it gave me my last experience of the Future Human. It was as if it took me into the future and allowed me to...

Though I glimpsed the future human—a transformed humanity—I wasn't shown how nature would achieve it. Then, in 1995, I entered the diamond Luminosity phase, working at advanced levels. Instead of re-entering diamond Luminosity, I dissolved into the species and was taken into the future, into what I call deep time. There, I experienced a...

Later in my work, I began to have visions about human evolution over a period of about four years. The message was always the same: We are coming to a turning point, a profound spiritual awakening—a before and after in human history. It would involve tremendous collective purification, emptying out the pains of history...

This is one area where our work is complementary. You are a deeply committed, lifelong social activist, understanding social transformation beyond me. You understand the roots holding us back and see opportunities for deep social change at a collective, tangible level. My work has been more internally focused. Let me speak to the inside...

The way this showed up in my practice, my psychedelic practice, I began thinking this was part of a personal transformation. I would go through some purification process, some death-rebirth process, resulting in my personal healing, my personal liberation, perhaps. But it was always personally referenced. But what happened was, after about two years,...

Psychedelic states allow us to expand beyond this moment, dissolving into the intelligence manifesting the universe. They also allow us to experience not only the distant past but the future, entering what I call deep time. My experiences in deep time show dimensions where the universe knows itself far beyond this moment. Entering into...

Completely surprised by these visions—since I was at the tail end of thinking my work was about personal transformation—I found these consistently about collective transformation. Nowhere was I shown how nature would pull off this transformation. In 1995, during the diamond Luminosity work—having entered the diamond Luminosity twice—I was expecting to be taken back...

My understanding is that the Diamond Luminosity is an extra-Samsaric reality that lies outside the Bardo, outside of Samsara, outside all the cycles of physical reality, and the Bardo realities of psychic reality. It is the pure light from which the universe arises and returns. It is Dharmakāya, the clear light of absolute reality....

When I first began to enter the ocean of suffering, after ego death, and went into episodes of collective anguish, each session seemed divided into two halves. There was a purification half followed by an ecstatic half. You go through the purification, and if you submit to it, it crescendos and breaks through, spinning...

When I crunched all my experiences, I distinguished five fundamental levels or categories of consciousness: the personal mind, the species mind, the archetypal mind, causal oneness, and diamond luminosity. Let me quickly place the book chapters in context. There's a chapter on crossing the boundaries of death, telling the story of crossing what Stan...

Yes, death becomes your best friend. Truly. In your practice, you're always looking for your best friend. I just want to qualify a little bit: the hardest strip down I went through in any of my sessions, the most extreme destruction, was in the 70th session, the last vision I was given among many...

You're asking a lot, because the universe is so vast, and the mind of the universe has so many layers to it, which are all complexly interwoven. It's all alive, and it's all intelligent. Everywhere we dig into the universe, we discover aliveness and intelligence. We can't dig in anywhere and not encounter this...

As my work progressed, especially some 15 years in, time became porous. I was taken beyond linear time into what I call deep time—not eternity or timelessness, but different spans of time from a new frame of reference. I was taken into the future and experienced what felt like the death and rebirth of...

Yes, and I have to acknowledge that sometimes during near-death experiences, people see a life preview and sometimes a future they can change. Ken Rings' work, "Heading Toward Omega," touches on this conditional future, not a predetermined one. What I'm seeing is a possible future, maybe a probable future, but we still have to...

Over and over again, I was shown these visions that this is what's happening. Nature is taking us through this. We are going through a tremendous pressure cooker. We're going through a transformation that will result in the birth, not simply of a higher civilization or a more ecologically in tune economy, but literally...

When I went into the ecstatic portion of the same sessions, I entered into what I called "Deep Time in the Soul"—chapter, "Deep Time in the Soul." I had, for one year, a repeated experience, seven sessions, of experiencing my life, from start to finish, beginning to end, as a simultaneous present. I experienced...

You're certainly right. In my local community, we're not suffering much, and I'm retired, I haven't lost my job, I know where my next meal is coming from. A lot of people don't have those certainties. If we just expand the horizon to include the hundreds of thousands of people who are ecological migrants...

Beautifully said, Richard, beautifully. Reincarnation opens us to a more complex universe, changing directions of questions we ask. There's one question I want to address, considering its depth concerning an individual circumstance: the question about suicide. What happens with the soul of a person who commits suicide? I've got thoughts on this, and I'll...

Okay, collective mind. There are three chapters that have to do with the collective mind: The Ocean of Suffering—sort of the challenging, purifying part of working with the species mind. Deep Time and the Soul is an initiation into the universe. I'm going to come back to these in a minute. Archetypal mind, there...

I completely share what you're saying, because I do carry unusual knowledge, as you do. At the beginning of our series, we talked about the evidence for reincarnation, and I was in my professorial mode, intellectually digesting this evidence. In the second conversation, there was a blending of that type of knowledge and the...

Yes, that was another surprise. Physicists tell us linear time is not the only way time moves. Some particles move backward, and time behaves differently in certain conditions. In super string theory, there are non-linear dimensions of the universe. In deep, non-ordinary states, I—and others—experience different time modalities. Early on, over seven sessions, every...

At the level of species mind, there are three chapters in the book pertaining to this work: "The Ocean of Suffering," "Deep Time and the Soul," and "Initiation into the Universe." I'm skipping some chapters that cover methodology and typical session days, but these focus on visionary experiences' content.

In subsequent sessions, I was taken into deep time again and shown that this represented not simply a historical breakthrough or a technical or economic restructuring of our culture, but a truly seismic shift in the depths of the collective psyche. A pivot took place in this global crisis—a global systems crisis, which appeared...

Early in my work, I entered the ocean of suffering during intense collective cleansing. Coming through each session, I'd be spun into a reality so foreign that initially, I couldn't remember it. It took months to fully remember entering what I call deep time. For a total of seven sessions, I experienced my life...

That's a hard question because there are multiple levels and stages. It's tricky to jump into later stages since every stage builds upon earlier stages. One example would be time. I had a consistent set of experiences where I experienced my life's totality from beginning to end as immediately present. I had insights into...

It's because of what happened in the second half of the sessions. The first half involved terrible suffering, and I trusted the process completely. If you give yourself over to it, it builds to a crescendo, and if navigated well, spins you into positive, transpersonal spaces. The sessions turned into extraordinary experiences described in...

As I looked back, these circles oversimplify, of course. These represent a number of sessions, and the circles within circles mark a deepening of causal level reality. When I looked over all my psychedelic work, I identified five fundamental death-rebirth processes or levels of consciousness. These are: the death of self, meaning the death...

Let me back up a little bit to give context, and then you bring me back. If I don't get back to it, bring me back to this—the birth of the future human. I found that when I was working with these very high levels of LSD—and again, this is a protocol that I...

Now, I'd like to shift to the book and show you the relationship between these stages and the chapters of the book. For the death of self, there is the chapter "Crossing the Boundary of Birth and Death." Then, exploring collective mind, there are chapters on "The Ocean of Suffering," "Deep Time in the...

There was tremendous pressure building, an acceleration of consciousness dynamics, and detoxification through the reincarnation of generations. This was not merely influencing individuals but the entire human species—a collective dynamic. The vision showed we are coming to a great awakening, with an exponential increase in our psychological and psychophysical capacity. However, it gave no...

As I said, the first two years culminated in ego death. The next two years took me into what I call the ocean of suffering. It took me deep into the collective psyche of our species. Eventually, I came to understand that what was happening in these sessions was not aimed at my personal...

Experiences transcending time, what I call "deep time," involved immersion in time units as whole experiences, like evolution over 100,000 years, not merely as projections but how the universe experiences time. Many experiences formed a narrative of humanity reaching a crisis and transitioning to a soul-oriented, transparent archetypal state. Despite becoming easier, the universe...